1. If you buy a bottle of water from a little market/convenient store type thing, it costs like 2 pounds. Maybe. That's about 28¢. Chips are usually like 1.5 pounds which is like 21¢. In America the cheapest bottle of water is like 79¢ at Safeway. And chips are like... a dollar?
2. Buses and microbuses are about 2 pounds each. The metro is 1 pound. (28¢ and 14¢ respectively) Yesterday, while we were waiting four hours for my visa, me and my friend went to the AFS office and back. To go from Nasr City to Tahrir to Giza to Tahrir to Nasr City was a total of 8 pounds each (ish). Which is equivalent to $1.14 each. To take the bus from my school to my neighborhood in Pleasanton is $2.
3. You can get a Tameyah sandwich for 2 pounds. I don't even know how much a falafel sandwich is in America.
4. Easter is on 12 April this year. Why? I don't know, maybe the time difference.
5. Christians don't do lent. Instead they do something different, for a longer period. They don't eat anything that comes from animals. No milk, eggs, meat, fish, etc.
6. Lots of Egyptians have really big phones. My friend's phone is literally the size of an iPad mini. And I've met others with phones that aren't much smaller.
7. I don't know if this is all of Egypt, or just my school. I can't use bathrooms that aren't on the same floor as my classroom. During break time, they close the bathrooms near my classroom. Most of the time, I hang out in the chapel during break which uses the same bathrooms. If I need to use the restroom, I can't go to the floor down or the floor up, is have to go all the way down and then all the way up. And I love my school, but really? I don't know I just think it's weird.
8. Senior year is the most important. Therefore, no one in third secondary actually goes to school. Instead they all take private lessons and only show up for tests. While I understand Egyptian schools aren't the greatest ever, I don't know why you'd pay to go to a private school, not show up, and then pay for private lessons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
9. Power outages. The power goes off, not everyday, but often. As the weather gets warmer, the more they will happen. When 7 million (ish) people have the A/C on, cities run out if power. During the winter, we obviously don't use the A/C so it doesn't happen as often.
10. There has not been a single fire drill, earthquake drill, tornado drill, or intruder drill. This doesn't mean schools don't have them. According to my friend, our school does. We just haven't had any yet. In the US we have them about once a month.
11. College acceptance is based solely on grades. If you don't get certain marks, you can't get into a certain field. For example, if you want to go into politics, but you don't have high enough marks, you have to settle on something like business, masalan (for example). In the US if you don't get into political science at UCLA, you could try for political science at San Jose State. Also, colleges look at SAT scores, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, etc (so I've heard).
12. If you don't play a sport, there are no extracurricular activities. I was very lucky to find ASMUN since it's pretty uncommon. The US is chock-full of extracurricular activities.
13. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day. The main meal, instead of dinner.
14. Spotify, Netflix, and Pandora have all "not come to this country/part of the world yet. Sorry."
15. Lots of people don't participate in tourist things. I know lots of people who haven't seen the pyramids. I'm not expecting everyone to visit every museum and landmark where they live, but if you live near something world famous how have you not seen it? It's right there!
That's it. I could probably come up with more if I tried, but those can wait.
I hope you all are having a fabulous week, and as always, learn something today.
Byeeeee
Corie.
So I started a whole comment yesterday, but for some reason it didn't get published so I'll try to write it again, I hope I don't miss anything.
ReplyDeleteAs an Egyptian exchange student in the U.S., I see that some of these differences are very true but I'd like to add a couple of comments.
About #8: I go to New Ramses College back in Egypt, too, but I'm in the British division. I totally understand what you're saying about senior year, people do this because a) they sometimes actually show up at school, mostly for Arabic classes, and want to learn stuff, and b) it looks good on your résumé to be a private school graduate rather than a public school graduate.
And #14 is one of the biggest problems I've had in Egypt. Have you tried using VPN creating apps? I used one for about a year before I left and loved it, it's called Tunnelbear for Apple devices. If you have an Android, you could google some apps. Tunnelbear made me able to access Spotify and Pandora, but unfortunately, Netflix still wouldn't work; however, there is something called OSN Go that's supposedly just like Netflix. It was launched after I had left Egypt so I didn't get a chance to try it, but my friends say it's great.
I'd love to help you out with anything if you need it, just email me or find me on Facebook.
Hey! Thank you so much for reading! I understand that private schools are much better than public schools. Coming from a privileged country and a really good public school, it's just a difference I've noticed and I find it weird.
DeleteThank you for the Tunnelbear tip I will check it out.