School is finally back to normal

Let me say this year has definitely been interesting mostly thanks to the swine flu. In the summer school was stopped for a week because some study abroad students were infected and then school was stopped for another week during Eid (the holiday after Ramadan). The Egypt government was afraid of the spread of swine flu during Eid because a lot of people travel to and from Egypt during this time. A lot of students were happy that school was canceled for a week but none of the CASA students were happy because we came here to learn Arabic and there are no opportunities to make-up the missed classes. During the breaks the teachers were very helpful and would email us homework assignments. We even met some outside of the school and called them "swine flu parties." So during that week I slept a lot and did homework via email (we learned early on the skype classes are a major failure), played soccer and even watched a soccer game. The U-20 Soccer World Cup games were in Egypt and I was able to go watch the Egypt vs Italy game in the stadium. Pictures of this event are below. The pictures before the stadium pictures are of when I went to a restaurant to celebrate Iftar (breaking of the fast in Ramadan) with my friends. And they were all meeting because they were Egyptians were grew up in Kuwait. Its really interesting because it was the first time for most of them to meet each other but were all part of the same facebook group...and they had no problem that I was there even though I have nothing to do with Kuwait. In the stadium I went with another large group of people (you'll see some familiar faces between both groups) and they are part of a rotaract club (rotary international club). All the people I met are amazing and I had a lot of fun. I just wish I had time to hang out with all of them all the time. (Yes I'm still having problems organizing my time but I'm doing much better. Unfortunately life gets in the way:))

Hope you enjoy the pictures.
PS Egypt did beat Italy! But they didnt make it to the finals. Ghana ended up beating Brazil by penalty kicks. I'm glad someone finally beat Brazil, even if they were U-20 :)

Egypt Fall 2009