It’s been a long time since my last blog, but I feel like I’ve been doing things non-stop since we got back from Egypt!! I’ll talk a little about the orphanage visit we did on the last day in Egypt (July 31). The day after that was the much-anticipated Sea Olympics, which I will also describe in full. =) Then began the work. I had two 5-page papers due on Monday, yesterday was completely devoted to studying, and today we had our second Global Studies midterm. I thought it was pretty easy, and I only know of one question that I got wrong! Too bad that class doesn’t count for anything back at Pitt. Anyway, here’s a backtrack to July 31….
Shaara, Steven, and I had a service visit to an orphanage in Alexandria on the last day we were in Egypt. It didn’t start until the afternoon, so we all got some much-needed sleep, went to lunch, and went shopping in the little souks right outside the port terminal so we could spend the last of our pounds. Got some good deals! We boarded the bus for our service visit, which was an FDP for Teachers at Sea (a group of recently-graduated teachers who are taking education classes on the ship) but there were extra spots so we had gotten tickets. I guess I was just expecting an institutionalized orphanage, but our guide explained something completely different. The orphanage is “run” by an elderly, wealthy couple and they take care of 34 kids. There is no adoption in Egypt so all orphans either go to orphanages or are taken care of by family members. Also, many orphans in Egypt are illegitimate children because if the mother keeps a child out of wedlock, she loses her home, her job, and everyone shuns her. The couple runs the orphanage as a big family—all of the kids are brothers and sisters and they call the couple mom and dad. They each have their own room in their 7-story apartment building, they all go to private school, and they eat the best food they can possibly buy. They range from 1 year old to 13, but most of the kids were between 5 and 8. Anyway, we get to the building and walk up a couple of flights to the first floor, where the “father” was waiting to greet each of us. We then walked to the back of the floor to a large room where all of the kids were ready and waiting for us. There were 35 of us, 34 of them, and many helpers….there were almost 80 people in the room and there was no air conditioning. All of us were sweating up a storm but the kids were used to it and had a lot of energy!! We had brought a bag of little toys like frisbees, balls, stickers, markers, paper, and bubbles, so we broke out the toys and started playing. Most of the boys started playing immediately, the girls were more reserved and just stared at us like “what are you people doing here?” Steven played catch with a little boy while I showed another boy the clay that I had (he was more interested in another girl’s bubbles). It was hard because there were more of us than there were children of playing age, and people just kind of surrounded the kids. One boy came up to me with a notebook and a pen and started drawing, so we drew flowers and then he started writing the English alphabet (A, B, C, D, F…and he forgot the rest). I then broke out my Toy Story stickers and he had fun throwing them around the area. He was apparently the “naughty kid,” I witnessed him hitting another kid when he tried to take a marker. Just like brothers! After about an hour and a half, the kids started to unravel and a few started crying, so we walked up 2 floors to the TV room and the father spoke to us about how he appreciated our coming and a little bit about the orphanage. He started with 10 kids and it grew from there, sometimes they hear a knock on the door and a 1-hour-old baby is on the doorstep. We were really amazed how much this man provided for these kids, and he said that in the Islamic religion, taking care of an orphan is a sure way to paradise, so he and his wife are ensuring their trip to paradise. Which sounded a little selfish when he said it, but they are providing the best care to these kids, better than any other orphanage they would have gone to!
The next day, we didn’t have classes so we could have a full day to enjoy the Sea Olympics!! The cabins on the ship are split into “seas,” and each sea is a team competing against each other in the Olympics. My sea is the Mediterranean (Steven is Aegean) and our color is orange (his is black)! The opening ceremonies started at 11:00, and they consisted of a few speeches by important people and then our chant competition. Kevin, our LLC (like an RA), came up with a chant for us. My favorite line was “we’re oranger than your fake-n-bake!” (it means fake tan for those of you not in the know). There were some pretty good cheers! Everyone went to grab lunch before the first events started at 1:00. There were a ton of events at each time slot, so I couldn’t go to everything. I watched Extreme Musical Chairs, the extreme part was that in the championship round, everyone was blindfolded and teachers moved the chairs around. Crazy! We didn’t place in that, though. The events I missed were flip cup (a type of stupid drinking game), Pull-ups, and Ice Cube Scramble (picking up ice cubes with chopsticks). In the next set of events, I was competing in Global Studies Jeopardy. We got absolutely dominated by the Aegean Sea, and they actually ended up beating the teacher’s sea! (The teacher’s sea was called the Diploma Sea). While we were failing at jeopardy, our team went on to win at Tug-o-war! I also missed the “Donut on a String” event, which was supposed to be eating a donut off a string without using your hands, but I guess they couldn’t get a donut and had to use a bagel. That must have sucked. We didn’t place in that either. We did get first place in mashed potato sculpting though! Each team had to make a sculpture using 3 pounds of mashed potatoes. Yummy! I watched synchronized swimming, which was hilarious. Our team of 6 guys, led by Kevin, won 2nd place for their rendition of Beyonce’s Single Ladies. It was hilarious! And it’s all on tape! While this was going on, we got 2nd place in the (female) pie eating contest. There were 3 events in the last time slot: Mystery Challenge, Shave the Airhead, and Limbo. I went to watch Steven compete in Limbo, and he won the championship!! He was an instant celebrity because he beat out all these tiny, bendy girls. I have that all on video too, it’s crazy! After limbo, we went to watch the end of Shave the Airhead, in which you have to lather up balloons and shave them with a razor with out popping them. My team came in 1st! Mystery challenge was just wrapping up so we went to watch that. The teams for mystery challenge included 7 girls and 1 guy, and the goal was to dress up the guy in the girls’ clothes. We came in 2nd for that! After all of the events, we had a barbeque with the same food as July 4th, so that was tasty. At 7:30 we had the final event, the lip sync competition. I got all of the acts on tape, they were all amazing!! Our team didn’t place unfortunately, but I think we should have! They did a mix of Halo/Walking on Sunshine (the Glee version) with Hey Mickey. Then they announced the final scores. We came in 3rd (yay!!), Steven’s sea came in 2nd, and the Caribbean sea came in 1st. The team that came in first gets to get off the ship first in Norfolk (now who would want to do that?) and they get a reception with the faculty and staff in the faculty lounge. We just heard that Steven’s sea gets off second and my sea gets off third, so hopefully I’ll be off the ship before lunchtime!
Yesterday (Tuesday) was the faculty and student talent show, basically a bunch of really good singers and funny skits. Tomorrow is the crew talent show! And I get to write another paper. Woo!
Due to popular demand, stupid questions and comments are back! There are three!
SAS Student: “Where are you from?”
Local person: “I’m from Egypt.”
SAS Student: “How far is that from here?”
Parent of SAS Student: “I need someone that speaks the language.”
Local person: “I speak Arabic.”
Parent: “No I need someone who speaks Egyptian”
“What flavor are Fig Newtons?”
“Are there cows in Egypt? I’ve seen a lot of cattle, but I haven’t seen any cows”
