Welcome Back to Class! - 9/30/17

Salutations! Alexandra here again to tell you that we are all doing swell. More or less. We have been rushing around like crazy for tours the past week and as we settled in for our first day back at lectures, illness crept its way into our group as well. Hopefully the rest of our time spent at our apartments in Egypt will allow for all of the rest we need to get healthy again!

Dr. Swanson led us through nearly six hours' worth of lectures today, but we hung on nearly every word as he illustrated for us the religious climate here in Egypt and gave an overview of modern Egyptian history. In this overview, Dr. Swanson presented us with a problem universally acknowledged by Egyptians: the state of their public education system. We have encountered comments about the public education system in Egypt before, from talking with students on campus and our guides who have children in school, but what Dr. Swanson's talk gave us was the context to understand modern Egypt as we see it today. The system was set up by President Nasser in the 1960s, and while it has significantly improved Egypt's literacy rate, it has not been able to handle the burgeoning population growth that stresses it. Just knowing this allowed us to understand the culture of private schools and resource pooling that still exists in Egypt to ensure a child doesn't get just any education, but a good education. 

And as I am sure everyone back home will want to know, today we officially became Olympic Athletes as the Opening Ceremonies of the First Annual Global Olympic Games was held! Stay tuned for updates as this is guaranteed to be the most exciting week of our lives. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(12/18) Hanging Temple and a Bus-Ride Home

Hi everyone! This is Peder, writing about our final events in Datong and the remainder of our day. After a great buffet-style breakfast at our hotel with buns and coffee, we all piled into the bus and traveled to the Hanging Temple. This temple hangs on the side of a mountain and is the only existing temple that has a combination of Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist elements. It was awesome to be there and witness it. This was probably the coldest experience of Global so far as well as an incredibly beautiful one. We spent a couple of hours touring this incredible sight, bundling up to stay warm in the wind, before jumping back into the bus to go back to Beijing. The bus ride was about six hours and people took advantage of this time to work on their final projects, read, and catch up on some rest. We arrived back to Capital Normal University about 7 pm and went separate ways for dinner. A few of us took the subway to a restaurant called Mr. Shi's where we had a delicious dinner...
Read more

We Are Family -12/1 Beijing, China

Image
Good day to you, families and friends of us Globies! Alexandra here again, struggling to find new ways to open this blogpost! Today we had the chance to sleep in, which is an opportunity none of us squander away. In the afternoon, we went out with our Chinese buddies to the Summer Palace, which at this time of year, is quite cold and the lake was frozen over, but it was gorgeous and we all had a blast making new friends. But the most exciting part of today by far was waiting with Matthew for acceptance emails from dental schools he applied to. Spoiler alert: He got in!!! Pretty early on in the trip, our group as a whole started to realize the potential for us to turn into an extension of our families. I always laugh a little to think back to Rome when one of our only-child Globies looked around the table at lunch and said something like, "You are all going to be my brothers and sisters at the end of this. I am sorry, but you have no choice!" I have to admit, there have...
Read more

HMI Final Presentations - 10/30/17

Hello, this is Rachael. Today was our final presentations for our Religions of India course at HMI. First this morning, we had devotions, which are a daily practice at HMI. Our group led devotions today so Prof. Ripley spoke about travel and pilgrimage, and then several of us sang Blessing, arrangement of an Irish Christian blessing which has become a favorite of the St. Olaf choirs. Next, we had a talk by one of our beloved hosts, Shribala, on how to continue interfaith dialogue in our lives after leaving HMI. After that, we began a long day of presentations. Our three Indian classmates presented first, discussing their final papers on peace as practiced by various religious groups, on the role of women in different religions, and on how interfaith dialogue should be carried out in our everyday lives. Then our group began a twenty-part series on the religions of India, sharing our individual research presentations on the history, practices, rituals, ethics, etc. of Hinduism, Islam, S...
Read more