I’ve had these typed up for a while now, but life gave me a few other things to do besides post them.
But here they are, my messy/un-cohesive notes from SAA11, lovingly typed & hyperlinked for my [& possibly your] reference pleasure.
September 20th, 2011
SAA11 Notes & Reflections
July 13th, 2010
HOME
After about 22 hours of travel, I arrived back in Ypsilanti around 5pm last night. Some quick unpacking was followed by coffee from the Ugly Mug, beer from the Corner Brewery & lots & lots & lots of hugs & catching up & giving of gifts. Today I went to the lake with my best friend, scrubbed the kitchen & bathroom, am about to go grocery shopping & then it’s off to more hang outs.
It’s been an absolute whirlwind, but being home is wonderful & every bit as good as I remembered.
Also – it rained today!!!!!!!!! It’s the first time I’ve seen rain in about 3 months & there was thunder & everything. Really, it was nothing less than magical.
That’s all for now – just wanted to give an update that I’m safe, sound & happy to be back.
July 8th, 2010
Towards a conclusion
Not much to say lately.
Today I was supposed to go to Alexandria to get a tour of the library. I got to the train station at 8:30am, but there weren’t any trains until after 2pm, which would get me there too lately, so I had to cancel. I was definitely bummed, but at least I’ve been able to visit the library twice before [but never behind the scenes]. Lesson learned = buy train tickets in advance.
To make sure today had some sort of adventure, I decided to try to get home by tram. Heliopolis has a fairly extensive tram system, but I’ve never been able to find any information or map for it. It begins at the train station so I hopped on & had a great ride & it a cool way to experience the city. Although I didn’t make it all the way home & had to grab a cab eventually, it was well worth the 50 piasters [.09 US cents].
A week ago, my friend Dan & I went out to dinner, as he’s left for vacation in the States & won’t be back to Egypt until I’m gone. We ventured to Nasr City to try out El Borg – a four story restaurant famous for it’s fish from Port Said. We had tiger prawns, boori, a soup with a broth that was mostly butter & a variety of salads. It was a delicious meal! Then, walking out, I was taken by surprise by these giant pelicans! Definitely not native to Cairo, but hopefully well kept & fed by fish scraps.
Strange to think that this month would mark the end of our Peace Corps service if we had stayed in Bulgaria. But we didn’t stay. We can home & got jobs & started grad school & I fell apart & I pulled myself together & now I’m in Egypt. It’s crazy the places life takes you & the experiences you’ve been given.
I’ve been giving a lot of though to the rest of my life lately. It’s a little frightening. Here are my conclusions: I can’t live in a city, I need to have a garden, I need a place to put my hammock. Bonus points for being near water. A short commute would be nice too. We’ll see.
Just 3 days left! I’m already 85% packed, but I’ll find plenty of ways to fill my time.
May 15th, 2010
On integration
Integration.
That lofty, noble goal, promoted by the Peace Corps – a buzz word that became a caricature of itself through overuse. ‘Integration’ is the path to ‘sustainable development,’ with ‘meaningful relationships’ & ‘cultural exchange’ along the way. Always a little vague & always out of reach, I’m not sure how many volunteers would say they really felt they integrated.
As noble a goal as it is, it’s a little unfair.
Coming to Egypt & living in a culture that’s far more different in Bulgaria has helped me formulate my own ideas of integration. Maybe part of the problem was that my expectations of myself were too high to begin with [a chronic condition] & my fresh start here is helping me to redefine those expectations.
To live simply, quietly & largely unnoticed – these are my goals here.
I’ll never be part of the neighborhood here, for a variety of cultural, religious & socioeconomic reasons. However, by shopping at the same places as my neighbors, walking the same streets, taking the same cabs & treating those I met with respect, I can reasonably expect to blend in [as well as my blond hair will let me].
Knowing that – that ‘integration’ is impossible – is such a relief.
It allows me to be more genuine, more comfortable, to let things go, to cushion myself from disappointment.
This all probably seems like a no-brainer to most everyone else,
but it came as a breath of fresh air to me.
May 9th, 2010
Summer projects
It’s Sunday and I’m back to work!
We had an AMAZING time in Alexandria, probably one of the best weekends of my life. Alisha & Lila were the perfect travel partners & the trip was the ideal balance of sightseeing, relaxing and laughing. I posted some pictures on Facebook which you can see if we’re friends, otherwise I’ll be putting a lot on Flickr tonight.
I’ve also written up a description of the 4 projects I’ll be working on over the summer:
Hassan Fathy Architectural Archive
This is a collection of blue prints, photographs and other materials relating to Hassan Fathy, a renowned Egyptian architect. This project is in its beginning stages, with only a small percentage of the materials scanned and ready to be put online. I will begin creating online finding aids for the collection, using XML format. This will be great practice in using EAD [electronic archival description], a skill that will be very helpful in my future career.
Mahmoud Farag Vice Provost records
I’ve been given this unprocessed collection to sort through and describe and to then give recommendations on what to deaccession, what to migrate to other offices and what the archive should hold onto. There are 31 boxes that have very little order to them. Right now I’m going page by page, documenting what’s there. It’s pretty tedious, but being involved in the decision making process will be very rewarding and great experience.
Archive-It Collection Development
AUC has a subscription to the service Archive-It, a service that crawls webpages and holds a copy of the website at the time of each crawl. You might have heard of the “Wayback machine,” – it’s the same thing. I’ve been tasked with developing a new collection of websites to be crawled and archived – these websites should be within the scope of AUC’s collecting policy and should provide unique and worthwhile information. The topics I’ve begun to research so far include expatriates in Eygpt, Egyptian news and politics, Egypt & the environment, development in Egypt and gender equality in Egypt.
Social Media Plan
Lastly, I am developing a social media plan to increase the visibility of the RBSCL. This will mainly involve creating a Facebook page and Twitter account for them, as well as updating and promoting the blog they already have. Because I want them to be able to continue to use these tools after I’ve left, I’ve prepared a lot of information on what these services are, how to use them, how frequently they should be updated and given samples of the times of information to post.
Well it’s back to work for me, but I’ll leave you with a photo of myself and this wonderful stack of books in Alexandria.
Cheers!
