Month: December 2009

Stolen from another blog I read, Egypt’s version of “The Onion”.

El Koshary

Tonight I get on a plane to NYC. This is the first time I have flown domestically in 3+ years.

And it is the first flight since we arrived back in the US in July.
…. that is 5 months since our last flight.

In 3 years in Egypt I am pretty sure we never went that long between flights.

We are doing something wrong..

A friend of ours states that the equation for a successful social gathering  involves the correct ratio of “fascinating” people to “charming” people.

Fascinating people are the folks that have great stories and love to tell them.

Charming people are the folks that listen, with pithy commentary such as “oooh. really?”, “that’s hilarious” and the ever popular “wow”

I trust you get the idea.

Since we have been back in the US, we find ourselves being fascinating far more often than charming.

Not sure what to do about that.

A blog I read, Living in Egypt,
recently linked to a satirical news site in Egypt called El Koshary Today.

Sort of an Egyptian “The Onion”.

Most of it won’t really be amusing or enlightening unless you have spent time in Egypt.

But it is a pretty good chuckle anyway.

Man I would love a bowl of koshary.

We just heard that another set of friends from AUC are moving on up.

They are relocating to Dubai.

Another couple has moved to Oslo.

Another couple has moved to Portland (OR).

Another friend relocated to the SF Bay area.

This is all since we left in August.

Of our “cohort” (which is the group of people that went through orientation with us) we can’t think of anyone that is still there.

Now I am sure that there is an influx of people coming in, and we do still have a few friends there. But from this end, it looks like AUC is emptying out.

There was also a recent article about a 30% drop in study abroad students this year.

All of these are bad signs.

Now it is possible that people coming in now may have higher retention. Mainly because they don’t know any better. I mean, we moved there when the campus was still downtown. There were lots of reasons to dislike or even despise the downtown campus. But at least it wasn’t in the middle of the desert.

People that came in when we did (or before) were (at least partially) drawn there to live _in_ Cairo. Many of them were unhappy with the move to new campus.

Some of our friends have made choices to stay for various reasons:

• Close to retirement
• Their field of study requires them to be in Cairo or the Middle East
• Financial: one can live very comfortably in Cairo on a academic’s salary. Much more comfortably than most places in the US. Certainly more comfortable than any large city in the US

But it seems that people with options are leaving.

This AUC Diaspora is good in one way for us (and it _is_ all about us):

We now have friends scattering to the four corners of the globe. Which means lots of free lodging!