despite the heat

I am writing from Bibliotheca Alexandria at the moment, which for those of you don't know is a huge and beautiful library built on the spot where Alexander the Great founded a library a very very long time ago.

Right now unfortunately a lot of my time and energy and stress is being taken up by sorting out my au pairing situation here. It is sticky. It is frustrating. I don't really want to go into details here but if you want more information please feel free to e-mail me and ask.

Hopefully it will be cleared up in the next few days or so. And regardless I am out for several hours today and plan to walk up the coast for a while when I am finished at the library. I really like being outside here, despite the heat. I like being where the people are. I am still used to Irish weather such that every time I walk outside to see the sky sunny and beautiful I am so happy and the morning feels new. I just want to be out.

This morning at the library has been nice, I found a complete copy of Alan Paton's poetry which was published post mortem. It is called "Songs of Africa." I really admire Alan Paton a lot as a person and as a writer. I feel he took the world's burden on his shoulders, though. It is important to have writers who will do this because the rest of up need to be woken up, but I feel it must have been very hard for him. At the same time, though, Cry, the Beloved Country does have a lot of redemption in it.

I got to go to an Arabic-speaking church Thursday evening, to the meeting for college students. I really loved it- a Palestinian woman spoke whose name was also Emily--or Eemeelee as I am called here more often. It was all in Arabic but I understood parts and one of the girls I was sitting with would summerize for me every once in a while in Arabic. We sang in Arabic as well, which was really fun and actually great language practice for me to get to listen, read, and speak (well, sing) all at the same time. I got to chat with a lot of people and my confidence in speaking is growing.

I am starting to get tutored this week in Arabic, which I am really really excited about. I realized the other day that I have never been tutored before, which is actually quite bad because I have tutored other people and need to know what it is like to be in their shoes.

Speaking of weeks, it is still hard for me to sort them out in my mind. Friday and Saturday are the weekend here, Sunday is technically a weekday. But it is hard to re-orient the weekend in my head. And it looks like if things go as planned Thursday is going to be my day that is completely off, so this makes me even more confused.

But confusion... this is all part of being somewhere new.