It's still 75, and I'm still cold.

The recent silence on the blogging front reflects the lull I've been in for a few weeks now here in Cairo. I haven't done any traveling since my recent trip to Mt. Sinai; however, on Tuesday morning I will depart for a three-day Nile cruise, stopping in Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel. Since we are an American institution, we take time off for Thanksgiving, and I think that a lot of my fellow students are as much in need of a break as I am. The infamous Cairene "Black Clould" obscured everything on the opposite side of the Nile this morning, and even the sunset looked a little smudged as we drove home at 5:30; my lungs will thank me for a few days away.

As things begin to wind down for the semester, I am repeatedly struck by how completely unprepared I am to return to the U.S. It's not that I'm not looking forward to seeing my family and friends again; rather, that I feel I have only just begun to find a comfortable pattern in Cairo, and to scratch the surface of what it is really like to live here. At long last, I have achieved victory over city transportation; having solved the mysteries of traffic patterns, cab fares and how to ride a crowded Metro train, nothing can stand in between me and my destination. My weekends as of late have been spent not on the road to exciting locales in the Middle East, but wandering my neighborhood with my friends, frequenting our favorite coffee shops and not considering a day spent simply walking and talking to be wasted.

In part, I think that some of my anxiety about coming home is due to the looming specter that is my college graduation, now less than six months away. I wish that I could say that my time in Egypt has made clear for me what I want to do with my life, but that's not the case; I have no more ideas, to be sure, but no more definite plans than I did six months ago. What I do know is this: whatever I do, I want to be doing it in Arabic. When I came here, I enjoyed the language - for both my triumphs and its continued challenges - but since September, I have grown to truly love the little nuances, the clever patterns, and even the occasionally baffling grammar that makes up the Arabic language. (Did you know, for example, that the verb "qalaba," meaning "to turn" comes from the same root, "q-l-b" as the word for "heart" ["qulb"], because the heart is something that may turn? I leave it to you to determine if that's a depressing or uplifting connection.) I actually like verb forms. I can hold my own against case endings. I can read a newspaper - not perfectly, but enough to keep up with what the Egyptian government wants me to think is going on. And Hans Wher and I? We're friends for life.

I had to write an essay for one of my classes this week about "My Experience in Egypt." I struggled with the assignment, largely because it was difficult for me to put into words (even in English) exactly what my experience here has entailed. When I say that everything here is great, or busy, or anything else, that's not exactly what I mean; it is all that, and it is more. Every day here is a joy and a challenge; time spent soaking up the sunshine outside Ewart Hall and struggling to recall my Media Arabic vocabulary, speaking in a combination of Arabic and Frantic Hand Gestures and speculating about what the future holds when the semester's over and half of us head back to the U.S. There are plans in motion - we're working on a trip to Istanbul in December, and I've already made plans to visit Stephanie and Molly in Pennsylvania in the spring - and until it's really over, and I'm standing back in O'Hare, I'm savoring every minute of being here...