Going to Class

At our orientation before we left for Egypt we had a number of good, informative meetings. One of them was about culture shock. We learned a lot of useful things about how to deal with being away from home for so long, ways to recognize culture shock, how to deal with culture shock. All of this was good information and many of the lessons have come in handy: don’t isolate yourself, remember to give yourself some relaxation time (a favorite of ours being American movie nights), etc. Well, I want to give one caveat to our lesson on culture shock.

Apparently one of the symptoms of culture shock is thinking that everyone around you is talking about you, laughing at you, staring at you… you all get the picture. You think that somehow everyone in a huge crowded place is focused just on you, which is ridiculous, of course. Why would everyone in, for example, a train station in Paris care about a tourist walking around? Well, that lesson might hold true in Paris train stations, but if you are tall, pale white and have lots of bright red hair, maybe, just maybe, when you are walking through a crowded Egyptian university (where every single other person has brown skin and black hair) every single person who turns to look at you then turns quickly to their friends, speaks unintelligibly fast Arabic and then bursts out laughing is indeed staring at you, talking about you and laughing at you.

This was my experience as I wandered through multiple buildings at the university looking for the classroom of my direct enrollment class (we are taking college classes at the university with the regular Egyptian students). Although I felt like ET when I was walking around the hallways that first day, it helped me realize the importance of another lesson from orientation, always keep your sense of humor, it is one of the best tools you have to deal with hard situations. So, although pretty much everyone still stares at me whenever I walk to my class, I just smile and try to stare back as much as possible.