Posting Negative Experiences

I realize that some of my posts may paint a negative picture of Egypt and Egyptians. Nothing that I write is exaggerated and I try to be as true to my experiences as I can be. I think negative experiences, unfortunately, often have a stronger impact than positive ones, which may be why I write more often about bad things that happen.

Of course, there are lots of wonderful things about Egypt and Egyptians, and the Middle East and everything that relates to it as a whole, and I will make more of an effort to post these positive experiences to paint a fuller picture.

For example:

Students in my program get a monthly stipend, and the end of last month also happened to be Eid, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Because of this, the University was closed for about a week, and the director of my program mentioned to her friend that she was concerned because students would not be able to pick up their stipends and would be left without money at the end of the month to pay rent, etc. So her friend went to the bank and withdrew 1000 Egyptian pounds for each student. That is 30,000 Egyptian pounds, almost 5,500 US dollars, that a random Egyptian loaned to a bunch of American students trying to learn Arabic in Cairo. Pretty amazing, I think.