Halfway through

By Tim:

I wanted to write a post about my feelings about Egypt now that we're halfway through and haven't had our 5 day spring break vacation yet. Two words:

Utterly predictable.

The last thing you'd expect from a hastily planned, poorly prepared for, super-intensive language immersion study abroad is having it go exactly as expected. I worked really hard not to put any preconceptions on what Egypt would be like, so I suppose that rather than having predicted this trip accurately I've just substituted observations for predictions. But in some things I've been, if not let down, then surprised:

Heat: It's not really super hot here. Sure there have been some really warm days, but most top out at mid 90's which is just like Utah or my mission. The heat just came really early here and some days are really hot, up to 110 degrees.

Difficulty: Arabic has always been hard, and it is more intensive here, but I feel like I've made a lot of progress and kept up on my schoolwork without losing sleep or neglecting other duties.

Family problems: I was worried about bringing a family here, but we've all adapted well. Cait, after being disoriented for a couple of weeks is now thriving and Amir is taking to Egypt better than most Egyptian babies. For example, we were pretty worried about taking him with us for the 7 hour non-stop mosque tour yesterday, but he gave us no problems at all.

The Spirit: I've felt it here very strongly, but I'll talk about that in another post.

In fact, I struggle a lot more with the predictability of the days here than the unpredictability. I guess that's something to be grateful for though. Here's a picture: