Well I lied. I said the last post was going to be my last but that was simply not true. Nope, as it turns out the motivation for writing a blog post increases inversely to the amount time I have to pack. But that just means I have some time for a couple more stories about Egypt.
The first is about my takdeem for armeeia class. That sentence was just in my shitty transliteration so I'm pretty sure that even if you do know Arabic you still have no idea what I'm talking about (the oral presentation for my Egyptian dialect class). This may have been a "you had to be there" story but I'll try to explain it and if it gets convoluted and confusing just skip over it and go on the story about the sleeping pills that I bought.
So we all had to give an oral presentation. The teacher asked us to do a little prep work and be ready to talk for 4 or 5 minutes about family, what you do every day and what you want to be doing in 5 years. Then we were supposed to have a dialogue planned about going to the store or renting an apartment, something like that. So our class has this one Korean guy who doesn't really speak a lot of English and didn't want to prep for the presentations. He got up and did a fine job with his family and his everyday things but then he forgot about the 5 years in the future. The teacher prompted him by asking the question in armeeia. The guy replied that he would go to the store, buy two kilos of fish and his wife would be very happy. We all kinda let this slide, an honest mistake, mixing up this afternoon with 5 years from now. But then he had to start his dialogue, which went something like this (translated)
To person 1: Whats your name?
Person 1: My name is Will
Korean guy tuns to person 2 and says: His name is Will, what is your name
Person 2: My name is Graham
Korean guy turns to person 1 and says: His name is Graham
This back and forth goes on for about 3 minutes before the teacher has to cut the dialogue off because everyone is laughing so hard that no one can hear what is being said. It was genius.
Pretend like there is a segway here. Yesterday my classes went out to dinner, it was nice and on the way back to the apartment I stopped by the drugstore to see if I could get something to help me sleep on the plane tomorrow. The long flight leaves Amsterdam at 10:00 AM Egypt time and lasts 10 hours. I usually have a pretty hard time sleeping between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM so I decided that a sleeping pill would be helpful. I asked the pharmacist for a pill to sleep and he went to the back room, rummaged around a locked cabinet and came back with a box of pills. I asked how much they were, he said 7 LE which is like $1.16 I paid the man and walked away.
When I got back to the room I examined the package closer to discover that the tamper seal was broken but the pills were still in the box (which means that they are probably either counterfeit pills or past their expiration). Then I decided to look them up online. Turns out this particular drug is basically ambien, however, it has yet to be cleared by the FDA and is currently a schedule IV narcotic. So what I'm trying to say is these pills may not be making the trip back to the states with me.
Well my flight leave Cairo in 8 hours and I should be in the airport in like 6 so I guess its time to start packing up and saying my goodbyes to this convenient, this country and all of my friends here. Have a nice night everyone and I'll be back in bend at 3:00 Friday afternoon (local time). If I can sleep on my flights I might call someone for a beer, whiskey and bacon.
Ben
The first is about my takdeem for armeeia class. That sentence was just in my shitty transliteration so I'm pretty sure that even if you do know Arabic you still have no idea what I'm talking about (the oral presentation for my Egyptian dialect class). This may have been a "you had to be there" story but I'll try to explain it and if it gets convoluted and confusing just skip over it and go on the story about the sleeping pills that I bought.
So we all had to give an oral presentation. The teacher asked us to do a little prep work and be ready to talk for 4 or 5 minutes about family, what you do every day and what you want to be doing in 5 years. Then we were supposed to have a dialogue planned about going to the store or renting an apartment, something like that. So our class has this one Korean guy who doesn't really speak a lot of English and didn't want to prep for the presentations. He got up and did a fine job with his family and his everyday things but then he forgot about the 5 years in the future. The teacher prompted him by asking the question in armeeia. The guy replied that he would go to the store, buy two kilos of fish and his wife would be very happy. We all kinda let this slide, an honest mistake, mixing up this afternoon with 5 years from now. But then he had to start his dialogue, which went something like this (translated)
To person 1: Whats your name?
Person 1: My name is Will
Korean guy tuns to person 2 and says: His name is Will, what is your name
Person 2: My name is Graham
Korean guy turns to person 1 and says: His name is Graham
This back and forth goes on for about 3 minutes before the teacher has to cut the dialogue off because everyone is laughing so hard that no one can hear what is being said. It was genius.
Pretend like there is a segway here. Yesterday my classes went out to dinner, it was nice and on the way back to the apartment I stopped by the drugstore to see if I could get something to help me sleep on the plane tomorrow. The long flight leaves Amsterdam at 10:00 AM Egypt time and lasts 10 hours. I usually have a pretty hard time sleeping between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM so I decided that a sleeping pill would be helpful. I asked the pharmacist for a pill to sleep and he went to the back room, rummaged around a locked cabinet and came back with a box of pills. I asked how much they were, he said 7 LE which is like $1.16 I paid the man and walked away.
When I got back to the room I examined the package closer to discover that the tamper seal was broken but the pills were still in the box (which means that they are probably either counterfeit pills or past their expiration). Then I decided to look them up online. Turns out this particular drug is basically ambien, however, it has yet to be cleared by the FDA and is currently a schedule IV narcotic. So what I'm trying to say is these pills may not be making the trip back to the states with me.
Well my flight leave Cairo in 8 hours and I should be in the airport in like 6 so I guess its time to start packing up and saying my goodbyes to this convenient, this country and all of my friends here. Have a nice night everyone and I'll be back in bend at 3:00 Friday afternoon (local time). If I can sleep on my flights I might call someone for a beer, whiskey and bacon.
Ben
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