5/14/07

Did anyone see that? 5/14: one month until I board a plane and leave Egypt. Again I have mixed thoughts about time, how fast and how slow it is passing. Seeing that I only have a month left makes me aware of the fact that I have already been gone for 2 weeks...but then I see that I still have an entire month left here. I think a 6 week duration anywhere is actually a really awkward time span. It is long enough that it is a big deal and you have to make semi permanent adjustments to where you are, but it is too short for me to actually get settled and consider it a home of sorts. If I were staying here for 3 or 4 months it would be different...but because it is only 6 weeks, it is as though as soon as I start getting settled ( I am assuming I will feel this way around week 3), I am already preparing for a return home. Either way, I suppose the one month countdown puts me in a good mood for different reasons. On the one hand, I am grateful for the fact that I still have an entire month here, taking in the culture, the history, the learning experience, the multitude of insight I will gain...and then I am equally as happy that I only have a month left until I get to come home and see everyone...funny...i just started to miss my cat...and she hasn't been there for me to see in over 4 years.

Speaking of kitties...one of the cats just had kittens in the backyard...I haven't gone to look at them yet...me and kittens are a dangerous combination. As I have talked about before there are a lot of stray animals- cats, dogs, jackals, that alll walk around. My roommate told me that a lot of the times the bigger dogs get to the baby animals and eat them. She said last year a dog had puppies and that the bigger pyramid dogs (it is an actual breed of dog) would come and the puppies would get snatched one by one and eventually the brother and sister puppies started eating each other until there was one puppy left...and then he was gone the next day. Given this, I have decided it is in my best interest to not pay any mind to any animals that may be here...my heart just couldn't take it. My roommate actually rescued and brought home a kitten last year. That is not an option for me, so the kittens must fend for themselves. Today already a dog was attacked by the mommy cat and stuck in the fence of the Villa yard trying to escape. He was crying very loud after being attacked and stuck. Animals in general are treated really poorly here and it is just one of those things you need to turn your eyes from. You'll see people strike them and ride them in this heat...they look hungry, and tired. But, I don't speak donkey, horse, or camel, or kitty, or dog...maybe they are not unhappy at all.

My aunt has requested that I write an entry about the food here. I know that I have made a few comments here and there, but I'm still going to wait until I get a more respresentative mix of meals before commenting on the food in depthly. That being said though, if anyone does have specific requests for entries, feel free to ask me. As I have noted at some point, I'm not really allowed to talk about my work because it is considered publishing, though I really wish I could. I think if I limit things to generalizations and methods I am ok. Like today: today I washed and sorted material. I got really excited towards the end because I was able to glue this one bone together that had been broken into 12 fragments. This is exciting for a few reasons. One, I am almost out of glue: this is because I have been gluing so much together, which shows how my eye is improving and that my attention to detail catches these things. Also, being able to glue the pieces together, obviously, makes my data that much more accurate. First of all, a few pieces of bone, may just look like a few pieces of bone that I may not be able to identify with much accuracy on their own. Per Richard's methods, I don't identify anything unless I am 95% sure of what it is. If i see bone shaft fragments, they could really be anything. But if I put them together then I can tell for sure what it is, and even more than that, i can tell if it is the right or the left, whether or not the epiphyses are fused etc. Additionally, if I have a lot of bone fragments, the data is skewed as far trying to figure out how many animals are actually represented in the sample, however if I know that all of these fragments are from one bone, then I know that that is one animal in the sample. Not to mention, gluing stuff together is just darn right fun and it breaks the continuity of just looking and sorting. If it's mammal limb bone, then in general I am fine...but teeth, small bones, and fish bones, require that I look at the comparative collections and various charts and graphs to figure them out. Also I'm still really bad at knowing the left from the right for a lot of things, for whatever reason. I know that I will get better though!

I totally meant to devote this entry to briefly talking about call to prayer and now it is already quite lengthy...oh well, here goes.

I have mentioned call to prayer a few times in my entries (mainly my striking ability to sleep through it at 4:30 a.m.). While most of you may be somewhat familiar as to what call to prayer is, for those that don't, allow me to explain (at least that which I know). In Egypt there is an elaborate intercomish system through which call to prayer is sang. To my knowledge, the "song" or prayer, occurs at every mosque and when it does, those of the Islamic religion are to pause and pray. It happens at dawn, at mid-day, and few times after. It is supposed to happen around 5 times, but I am pretty sure it happens more than that. It is very very loud, and the quality of the speakers is terrible. I mean it will definitely get anyone's attention- it is quite distinguishable and loud, but it is not exactly pleasing for the ear: a culturally naive thing to say I'm sure, for it lacks meaning and significance to me entirely, but I mean no disrespect. I am merely trying to give you a feel for what it sounds like. In the villa you usually can just hear the one voice for this area, but from the lab you can hear all of them going off at once, none of them in synch with one another. From there it sounds like an ambush of zombies is approaching. Difficult to describe, and you definitely get used to it, but still just another difference from home.

Well that's it for today folks. Bye Bye~!