Apathesia

is that a word? hmmm i dont care. why? because i am feeling, well, apathetic. this is very strange for me... but i currently seem to be apathetic about pretty much everything. politics. what country im in. what language im speaking. guys. friends. who i hang out with. what we do. whether i do anything. even what music im listening to! well, within limits of course. im not going to be listening to beyonce anytime soon... paradoxically, i actually have motivation to do school work and read those interesting books i could never quite get up the energy to read. i dont know how i feel about this new state of being - mainly because i cant quite get up the energy to care. as a result of this new motivation i am actually getting rather excited about middlebury this summer. hmm. im doing my school work and dont really care about my tan............ the pollution in cairo must finally be affecting my brain. tragic.

oh, there is one thing i am faaaaaaaar from apathetic about. get ready. get excited. ALICE IS COMING TO STANFORD. hold on class of 2011. 2011. blech. i can barely say it. not that i can really say anything with this 'class of 2009' label i keep dodging. its all very unfortunate. anyway im kind of ridiculously excited about my younger sister being at the same college as me for TWO YEARS i cant wait to be the "cool (slightly corrupting?) older sister" i know i was destined to be. no really. so next year is going to be sweet. immidiate family! on my side of the country! (in the SAME country!) will the wonders never cease.

sooooooo yeah life is good, if a little low key. no emotional drama. whats with that? not that i live a very drama-filled life normally or anything. but i usually have, well, feelings on different subjects, she says being deliberately vague.

ah well.

oh! wait i have a good story that definately provoked some feelings. soooo i have a group of guy friends i hang out with from time to time and one of them had a party a while back where he met a girl friend of mine. we'll call them... ahmad and sara, ok? going for the generic here. anyway ahmad meets sara and decides that she's cute, whatever - wants to see her again, wants her to come out with us, wants to have her children, etc. i convey this msg to sara like the good friend i am, and she expresses a certain amount of...distaste for the idea. apparently this 'my chemical romance' was not meant to be. i hesitate to convey this msg back to ahamd, however, bc of the awkward reactions he has had to similar situations in the past.

ahmad: well, did you ask her?
me: yeah...
ahmad: sweet when are we getting together
me: well, here's the thing... she's not really interested
ahmad: you told me she didnt have a boyfriend
me: yeah...
ahmad: so whats the problem?
me: she's just not interested. in you.
ahmad: i..dont...understand...

ah sweet self-confidence... so anyway i put off discussing the matter with him, figuring sara and i were leaving soon anyway so i could preserve the sweet memory he had of sara by just not having them see each other ever again. good plan? well mumkin not. ahmad was a bit more persistant than i expected him to be - it got to the point where he was calling me up preeetty regularly wondering why we werent hanging out with sara. and again at this point it was too late for me to make up some ficticious boy friend bc im good friends with sara and it would be a little weird for her to have a bf i just happened not to know about for the last 4 weeks/ had forgotten to mention. sooooooooo anyway (this is all quite a build-up and i apologize) i was in a cab with another friend of mine and somehow this topic came up and i explained my entire predicament to her, in full. you know, i didnt want to hurt ahmad's feelings but dammit sara just did NOT find him attractive, but it had been so long that i really didnt have any excuse not to do SOMETHING, etc. about 3 min after we had moved on to a diff subject my phone beeps at me - txt msg received. i take it out. speak of the devil! its a msg from ahmad himself. a little confusing though... it reads "interesting conversation. check your phone". "whatever could he mean by this?" rachel asks in confusion. then, a lightbulb of comprehension goes off. no! its impossible... but she has to check anyway. yes! somehow, as a result of some still undiscovered event, my phone had CALLED ahmad JUST AS WE WERE HAVING THAT CONVERSATION. and ahmad heard THE WHOLE THING. now, i never lock my phone, so admittedly the phone does random things by itself sometimes. but, i mean, HOW did this happen. ahmad (remember, not his real name!) is not the first name in my phone book. he was also not the last person i called or the last person who called me or the first on any possible list my phone could have accidently opened to by itself. soooooooo basically god decided to step in and solve my mushkalla for me, in the most honest way possible. now ahmad knows EXACTLY what sara thinks of him. he also knows exactly what i think of him. luckily i like him (thank god) so i didnt say anything too harsh. i mean, there was a word or two i might have edited out has i known he was going to HEAR the whole thing, but honestly who predicts these things? but yeah... definately spent a few hours there torn between being hugely amused at the whole situation and dying of embarassment.

so, i still have the capacity to feel, is basically the moral of this story.

oh and dont worry we're still friends. because i know you were all really worried about that. but come on. awkward situation much?

getting deep

so im leaving cairo in a little over a month and ive started looking at things in a 'soon all of this will be but a distant memory' sort of light. suddenly everything is rosy! well, sort of... i mean, we ARE still talking cairo here. im reminded of my very last time ice skating before my family moved to saudi way the hell back when - i remember putting on my ice skates and very deliberately and with great ceremony stepping out onto the ice with the full knowledge that it would be the last time in a long time. (riyadh has one ice skating rink and its men-only. obviously the site of a woman in ice skates would be too much for your average saudi guy to handle.) i reeeeeally liked ice skating, so my last skate was very dramatic. saying goodbye to the ice and all that. the best metaphore i could come up with at the time - as a 5th grader - was the typical comparison to flying, but i have to say that 10 years later i havent found a metaphore thats much better. of course we're talking flying not in the tiny-bird-frantically-pumping-to-stay-aloft sort of flying but in the im-an-ignorant-land-animal-who-knows-nothing-about-flying sort of flying. ice skating... dude ice skating was FUN. but anyway i feel like everything i do in cairo now is really deliberate. im actually paying attention (unusual for me) so as to be able to describe it to ppl back home. although most of cairo is pretty much indescribable. aaand thats not necessarily a compliment. but dammit im going to MISS cairo. yeah i very much have a love-hate relationship with this crowded, polluted city full of obnoxious men and with the general efficiency of a toaster oven feeding the entire NFL, but it sure as hell has aspects to it i have never found - nor anticipate finding - anywhere else in the world. and trust me, ive looked. so it looks like ill be back here eventually - inshallah for CASA. lets all cross our fingers, shall we?

ok it is now 11:39pm and i am giving up my previous plan of going to the gym and heading home to dance around in my room a bit (thats for you libby) and then crawl into bed and finish my musharraf book. the excitement of my life overwhelms me at times... but hey whatever floats your boat. and my boat is currently floating on the barenaked ladies, a soft pillow and pakistan's war on terror. bite me.

Phooey

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

i just wrote a blog. and then bc my DAMN COMPUTER is broken and can no longer function unless its plugged into the wall, of course i knocked the plug out. losing everything i had just written. DEATH. there is a vast mac conspiracy to DRIVE ME INSANE. and i bet the egyptian govt is in on it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

so. i am certainly not going to re-type all of that. suffice to say there was some deep thought. and some not-so deep thought. and a political rant, which was a first. obviously it was not meant to be. god is telling me something.

anyway shout out to anybody who made my younger sister's admit weekend at stanford entertaining.

so today is 'international day' at AUC. spare me. the saudi tent brought a camel onto campus. i think thats rather presumptuous of them... i mean, saudi is certainly not the only country that has camels. there's also a horse and carriage which a) is really random b) how did they even get that on campus? i feel like they would have to disassemble it just to fit it through the gate and c) the entire courtyard is covered by stairs so unless that is a very special horse, that carriage has about a 3 foot radius to move around in. but no big deal. the norwegian tent had waffles. and the american tent tent set the iraqi tent on fire. kidding kidding just kidding.

generally, life is still continuing as far as i know. i suppose there's always the possbility that im in a continuous loop of what is the last day of my life bc my mind refuses to accept death. star trek anyone? anyone? but assuming that this is not actually the case, cairo is still standing. im reading about 5 books at once because when you dont have internet in your apt you need to be REALLY dedicated to find enough ways to procrastinate. and so far so good on the malaria front. thought maybe i had it last thursday but it turns out that i just had to let athena out of my head.

ok im bored of blogging now. sry youre only getting appreciate about a quarter of the actual effort that went into this blog, try not to be too bummed about it. aaaaaaaand im off to lunch. maasalama

A Triumphant Return!

Hello there blogland. It's been nearly a year since I last had anything interesting enough to say to merit a post. Life in an American university is certainly not a bad experience, but it doesn't provide the day-to-day excitement of life in Saudi Arabia. Mostly, my year has been spent getting ready to graduate and wishing, desperately, that I had already done so.

And now I have exciting news to announce: next year I will be returning from whence I came. Yes, the prodigal daughter is going back to Saudi Arabia, this time as an employee, to be "Coordinator of International Partnerships." I am really, really excited.

More to come.

So please be kind if i'm a mess. Cigarettes and Chocolate milk

cigarettes and chocolate milk - these are just a couple of my cravings. everything it seems i like is a little bit stronger a little bit thicker a little bit harmful for me.

speaking of rufus wainwright i rode a motorcycle for the first time yesterday! and i know i know donorcycles straight from the devil 103% chance of fatality etcetc but dude it was FUN. motorcycles are sort of the thai version of taxis so we took one from the pier to the bus station. to be honest it was incredibly painful - my shoulders were virtually skinless by backpack strap at the end of the ride. but the pedels vibrate so your feet get all tingly and the wind is in your face and a number of other cliches about freedom and adrenaline and i know ill never buy a motorcycle but i might look upon the idiots riding around on them with a bit more understanding from now on... and mumkin in the far distant future when im feeling particularly mohawk and tatoo-esk... you never know. i bet a red motorcycle would go splendidly with those red heels i bought over break.

anyway so yesterday after a long day of traveling we...wait for it... got a massage. at the hilton. and it was, of course, maahvelous darling but around the time the woman started exfoliating my armpit i almost ruined it. i mean, i had managed to keep my cool through the little plastic underwear (i swear they looked like diapers) they gave us to put on. i even managed not to smile when the woman tried to help me dry off after the shower. but the exfoliation of the armpit was the last straw. there i was - butt naked on the massage table - totally unable to stop laughing. and this wasnt giggles. we're talking belly laugh here. im sure i was disturbing the peace or whatever. and everytime i managed to stop id immidiately think of WHY i was laughing and start all over again. i mean, it tickled so for sure that didnt help. but i am obviously far from sophisticated enough to be able to keep a straight face when a small asian woman is exfoliating. my. armpit. my urbane exterior was cracked, irreparably. im sure she had no more respect for me. EYE lost respect for me. i need to work on my maturity level here. i have far overestimated myself and i shall have to write to my highschool class and let them know that they might have misjudged who to dub 'most sophisticated'.

this will not, of course, keep me from going back tomorrow. you know i always say when you cant do something once, try try again! so i must, for the good of my character, go get another massage. after all im doing the masseuse a favor too. can you imagine their normal customers at a hilton in bangkok? yick. skeezy old white men. yick. remind me never to become a masseuse.

ps

woops and forgot to mention. my sister is a god. alice got in bloody EVERYWHERE so for those of you of the correct opinion, you are welcome to write to her and encourage her to go to stanford. for those of you with any other opinion, you are welcome to go stuff yourselves.

there is a very cute little thai boy staring at me. i dont really know how to respond to that. ok. i smiled at him. dammit he's coming over here. i have to remember: no encouragement! they never go away. reminds me of another subsection of humans.... stop CALLING im not even on the same side of the country as you anymore! right. oh dear im attracting a whole crowd of them. back to the bungalow! mumkin a midnight swim?

wouldnt you like to know

why do guys insist on having facial hair? i ask you, honestly. the curly mustaches, the perfectly trimmed beards, the not-so-perfectly trimmed beards, the partial beards that they obviously trim every morning into perfectly geometric shapes on their chins, the SIDE-BURNS oh god the side-burns. this is a public service announcement. you might think you look good. you might think youre being edgy and would fit right in with the art-nouveau crowd wearing all black and smoking cigarettes in a basement cafe that only those "in the know" go to. but trust me. from a girl who knows these sorts of things, (my past life was spent in just that sort of cafe before i got bored and genetically engineered the camel), you dont. oh, and it definately does not mask your weak chin. we can still see it! really. in fact, the hideous little hairs sprouting out of it just serve to draw MORE attention to it. so just stop trying. in fact, you should really revel in your ugliness. take advantage of what god gave you. go stop traffic or something. be the before picture in the before/after plastic surgery commercials. marry a chinless girl and have chinless children. or better yet, marry a chinless girl and dont have ANY children. stop the chinlessness!

anyway, on that note i apologize for being a blog failure. i do mean to write here. i write blogs in my head all the time. but then i tend to me a bit too lazy to actually write them. plus, i dropped my boring islamic law lecture, so i have no forcibly-free, (well, 'free') time to blog. but i will try to be better in the future.

currently i am in thailand. it is my spring break and going to iran didnt work out for a number of reasons the main one being that the iranian govt is being spiteful and kidnapping british soldiers and generally throwing tantrums that involve not giving americans visas. i mean, the american govt picks on everybody. so its your turn? get over it. aaanyway when we realized iran wasnt going to work out martine and i sat down for lunch and basically said something along the lines of

rachel: so what do you want to do then?
martine: i dunno. go somewhere else?
rachel: where?
martine: india?
rachel: south africa?
martine: kazakstan?
rachel: cambodia?
martine: thailand?
rachel: thailand.

so we bought tickets to thailand that afternoon and here we are. and we have 2 full weeks which is sort of sweet. of course it also means missing a week of school but what are taking years off for, after all. and my teachers understand. sort of. but we've been here for about a week and have spent a bit of time in bangkok getting lost and buying useless souvenirs, a bit of time in the south crisping ourselves senseless on the beach, and quite a bit of time traveling. but ive always liked the feel of going very fast over narrow, winding roads so im ok with that. (am i being serious? am i being sarcastic? wouldnt you like to know) most lately, we went to ranong (which is a city on the myanmar border - burma? what are we calling it these days? how i do love to be PC - and is quite possibly the ugliest place ive been, well, ever). we had an...interesting experience where our thai taxi driver sort of decided we should eat dinner with his family, so we did. after turning down whiskey, beer, and a number of types of drugs, and almost turning down "light" which i assumed was yet another sort of drug until it became clear they actually meant "rice" - silly me - we headed back to our ghetto hotel and martine proceeded to get a lovely little case of food poisoning. thats what we get for fraternizing with the locals.

today we made our way out to an island off the coast. lonely planet had described it as "off the beaten path" so we figured, hey. we live in cairo! we're hardcore! we shouldnt be doing what the NORMAL tourists do. we're going to go "off the beaten path"! well, when they say off the beaten path they mean OFF the beaten path. like, you cant even see the path from here. THERE IS NO PATH. instead, there are bungalows. these bungalows have beds. that is all. and we spent about 2 hour wandering the island in hopes of finding something a bit more...luxerious. a flushing toilet? maybe a fan. i mean, come on. is a fan so much to ask for in 100 degree heat? oh yes. yes it is. we are spoiled spoiled first worlders who have no right to ask for such frivolous amenities. for shame. i mean, the bungalows dont have ELECTRICITY. (notice the irony of me complaining about this via the internet. of course, this is probably the only computer on the island. and we have our own tiiiny little satelite up on the beach. adorable) oh, and english? yeah none of that either. how do we get off the island? god only knows. swim? oh, and martine and i finally make our way to the bungalow, collapse on the bed (after untucking the mosquito net, which we then promptly tucked back in, sort of interfering with our much-needed collapse) and look up to see the world's BIGGEST spider sitting up on the wall, watching us. we're talking like, the size of my hand here. and it lurked. and lurked. and is still lurking for all i know. martine went back to lie down so it has probably eaten her. oh oh oh and i forgot the best part! malaria. oh yes. apparently this area is quite malaria friendly. and we dont have mosquito repellant, never mind anti-malaria medication. but no big deal. i mean, what could possibly be a better reason not to turn in my 2000 word paper (due 24 hrs after i get back in cairo) than having MALARIA? am i right?

but yes. we made it hear safely. and will inshallah leave here safely tomorrow. morning. actually i probably wouldnt mind staying here a bit longer (i mean, its goorgeous. i just spent about an hour hanging out on the beach watching the sun set and listening to the shins. arent i emo. and hey, i can be hardcore. i have a backpack. im backpacking! im cool. ha.) but martine is still feeling off from the food poisoning so she doesnt want to stay here any longer than absolutely necessary. so we're heading up to hua hin tomorrow and we'll hang out there for a few days. where they have air conditioning. ah air conditioning... and fewer spiders. and more prostitutes, according to lonely planet, but hopefully they wont be lurking above our beds. did anyone ELSE know thailand is the sex-capital of the world? mumkin i should have done a bit more research...