photos from alexandria

ما هي العلاقة بين كيمياء و اللغة العربية؟

2009-08-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

اطلبوا تجدوا

لماذا ادرس عربية و بيوكيمياء؟

The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

على مستوية عالي، العلم ليس اللغة و اللغات ليست العلم. لذلك، لا اعرف اذا هناك العلاقة بين الاثنين، بس ربما فيها بين الشرق الاوسط و بيوكيمياء. فكرت عن هذا بعد ان قرأت هذا

waves in alexandria

2009-07-31T01:45:00.000-07:00

this is from this really cool little cafe that is tucked under the corniche, looking out at the mediterranean, right in front of the biblioteca alexandrina. i have read and seen pictures of people surfing in almost every mediterranean country, but i think getting any sizable waves requires fairly specific weather conditions. i don't think you really need that much fetch to generate headhigh waves, even if the swell period is fairly short...i've seen 3-4 foot waves breaking with only a mile of fetch before (of course, the wind was ridiculous). i also found an incredible-looking point break in lebanon last summer using google earth, and i've seen pictures of people getting really good-sized waves in tunisia and syria. i think if i ever have the chance to live in the middle east for longer than a few months, i'll bring a surfboard...

if you can't tell, i really need to get on a surfboard, mountain bike, pair of skis, rock wall, glacier, or something cool sometime soon. i should have studied bahasa indonesia.

الفلفل

2009-07-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

what you can buy in alex...

2009-07-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

القارب في الاسكندريةا

2009-07-27T02:52:00.000-07:00

mosaic

2009-07-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

احسن صورة من رحلتي

2009-07-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

my middle eastern vocabulary: zaatar, lebneh, halloumi

more from ras mohammad

2009-07-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

not actually sure what this guy (or girl) is. the boat captain said a beluga, but they apparently only live in the arctic. maybe a large dolphin?

snorkeling in sharm el sheikh

2009-07-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

this is another picture of me snorkeling from joe's underwater camera, which is a great point and shoot digital camera that is also waterproof and shockproof (both within a few meter limit). having a DSLR without a housing made me wonder about creating HDR images from underwater shots, so i looked it up on flickr when i got back and it turns out that it's a relatively unexplored territory in the world of digitally-enhanced photography. maybe fi mustaqbel.

here's a link to see more pictures from our trip to the sinai:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2456460&id=10713238&l=37eeced3db

sinai peninsula

2009-07-21T01:55:00.000-07:00

sunset from the top of mount sinai

we just got back last night from several days on the sinai peninsula. we climbed mount sinai at sunset, which was incredibly beautiful...i did the same hike at sunrise two years ago when i was here, and so it was great to get to see the sunset this time.

monastery at the top of mount sinai

apparently this is probably not the real mount sinai. not being religious, it's just a mountain with a nice view to me either way.

mount sinai's shadow at sunset

watching a mountain's shadow grow or shrink at sunset/sunrise is an incredible sight. it makes the mountain feel more discrete and much larger than it probably actually is....the only other time i've seen it happen is when i took a picture of this shadow from the top of mount baker a few years ago:

CLSers climbing to the top of sinai

people hiking on the other side of the mountain

CLSers on mount sinai

camels

after a visit to saint catherine's monastery, we drove out to sharm el sheikh, which is more or less cancun of the middle east on the tip of the sinai peninsula for a few days of swimming, snorkeling, relaxing on the red sea, and of course the obligatory belly dancing/bedouin night experience:

belly dancing in sharm el sheikh

we stayed in a luxurious hotel right on the beach with a pool and an incredible breakfast/dinner buffet. it is hard to not feel guilty about being spoiled by the state department like this, particularly in light of the economic chaos back in amreeka, but i basically just have to keep reminding myself that this is nothing compared to the checks that the government has written to the irresponsible american execs in the last several months.

the snorkeling in ras mohammad was incredible - i saw a moray eel, ray, squid, puffer fish, and tons of beautiful tropical reef fish. i had never seen a morey eel or squid live before, wow, i almost wrote in vivo, so those were particularly cool, and it made me particularly jealous of my little sister Martha, who spent the first half of the summer snorkeling and studying coral reefs/wildlife in the Marshall Islands.

boat trip in ras mohammad reserve

my friend joe had a waterproof digital camera which he used to take some spectacular pictures of the wildlife we saw...maybe i'll see if i can post a few of those later. in the meantime, it's back to arabic...three days of class this week, one day off, six days of class, and i'll be finished, insha'allah.

sunflower near st. catherine's monastery

2009-07-21T01:36:00.000-07:00

sunset

2009-07-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

زهرة

2009-07-15T01:27:00.000-07:00

tree branches

2009-07-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

This is from Magda's (our director at the ACL) backyard. We got to sleep out there last night...ate amazing food, swam in the pool, watched the sunset on the beach, discussed religion and food with her family...I also took a lot of pictures, as usual, and showed them the pictures that I had taken before. Middle Eastern hospitality continues to treat me quite well!

turkish coffee

2009-07-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

art gallery piano

2009-07-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

alexandria artist - mohamad shaker

2009-07-12T14:11:00.001-07:00

oud video

2009-07-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

magda's beach house

2009-07-10T15:35:00.001-07:00

magda's beach house 2

2009-07-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

We just got back from an amazing afternoon/evening at our program director Magda's summer beach house outside of Alexandria. We swam in the Mediterranean, ate some amazing Egyptian food, played frisbee with whole extended family, including her ~9 grandchildren, and listened to the oud being played. I really wanted to take a lot of people pictures but I didn't really feel comfortable at first but then Magda encouraged me because she wanted pictures of her different family members and instructors and everything.... so I took a bunch of pictures of the different families there and their kids, and I'm going to give them copies on CDs later in the week.

Also, I will never leave my room without my 50mm prime lens again. I was somewhat happy with a few of the pictures I got with my 28-200mm, particularly since the light wasn't great by the time I started shooting, but the 50mm prime would have been quite an asset.

ظلال البنات في الكورنيش

2009-07-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

النيل في الليل

2009-07-08T02:30:00.000-07:00

our trip to south Egypt

2009-07-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

Even photo blogs need verbal backup sometimes. 3-4 days in the south of Egypt, visiting temples of cosmic proportions, traveling from Luxor to Aswan on the Nile River, and witnessing quite tangible - sometimes dramatic - cultural, linguistic, and geological novelties is really hard to capture in 10 megapixels.

(There are more pictures at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2449521&id=10713238&l=1e9a894f8f )

We left Alex at midnight, drove to Cairo, and flew to Aswan at 6am. The first site we visited was the Nassar Dam, the downriver side of the 550km-long Lake Nasser, which extends all the way to Northern Sudan. The dam allows for relatively precise control of the Nile River levels, which throughout history had caused seasonal flooding in many areas in Egypt.

We visited the Philae Temple after this, which amazingly was moved from its old location (which had been flooded/submerged) to a new location on an island. "Amazingly" is somewhat of an understatement - it's not just a temple, it's an entire complex with multiple structures, columns, stonework, etc., that a dedicated team had moved piece by piece and reassembled. Here's a small portion of it:

We then visited an aromatic oil/perfume factory, where a guy explained the medical benefits of a variety of different oils and proved their worth to us by treating us to complementary samples. Inhaling the steam from pure mint oil dissolved in boiling water is actually an incredibly invigorating experience!

We then headed to our new extravagant floating cruise vessel (not quite a cruise ship) on the Nile River. I think this is possible one of the most luxurious places that I've ever stayed. The rooms were incredible comfortable, there was a pool on the top deck, and amazing meals served three times a day. This kind of luxury honestly leaves me feeling uncomfortable and undeserving a lot of the time, especially when I'm not even paying for it, but I have to admit that the AC, fresh fruits/vegetables, swimming, and relaxing felt amazing.

That afternoon, several of us boarded a small, open boat and headed down the Nile to see a Nubian village. The Nubians are a people that speak their own language (in addition to Arabic), and inhabit areas from northen Sudan up into Egypt. Their language is only spoken (though transliterated into Arabic and English), and in retrospect of antiquity, the Nubian civilization was incredibly wealthy and powerful, rivaling even ancient Egypt at times. We rode camels along the Nile to arrive to the actual village, where we were brought to a small teahouse to drink tea, make friends with a young crocodile, and get Henna tattoos. I got a scarab:

Asmaa (our coordinator at the Alexandria Center for Languages):

Experiences like visiting the Nubian village, riding camels, etc., always feel quite deliberately structured - it's not like everyday Nubians really spend their days with crocodiles crawling on their shoulders and getting Henna tattoos of a scarab - but the more I travel the more I realize that you just have to have fun with it and appreciate it for what it is. There are always travelers with the attitude that these experiences are bad or worthless because they're not entirely "authentic", but I'm not convinced that it's possible for a traveler, tourist, backpacker, foreign student - whatever you want to call yourself; they're increasingly synonymous to me - to ever be more than just a brief witness to another place, culture, lifestyle. I could spent years in places like Beirut or Alexandria, and I may integrate, become fluent, change, but it would compromise the incredible depth of those places and people for me to ever claim that I was truly one of them. Riding camels along the Nile, sampling local tea and food, and chatting a little bit in Arabic, English, and even a little Spanish with the local kids and vendors was just an immensely gratifying experience for this afternoon, and I hope that the opportunity remains open for visitors in the future.

Early the next morning, the boat headed downriver to the Kom Ombo temple, which is a massive temple built alongside the Nile during the Ptolemeic dynasty. Being a biochemistry student with no real background or strong interest in ancient history, I'm honestly not sure why I've seen so much of the ancient world or why I'm always so captivated by these places, but I think they'll continue to stun me every time.

The ship then continued downstream, and the subsequent day of cruising along the Nile might have been one of the most enjoyable days of traveling of my life. The Nile we saw was the Nile that I'd always imagined. Green on both sides, palm trees, the occasional ancient ruin or cave, solitary families, houses, or compounds every mile or two, and the desert extending to the Red Sea on our right and to the heart of Saharan Africa on our left; Khartoum and Addis Ababa behind us and the Mediterranean in front of us.

We arrived in Luxor that night, and spent the next two days visiting the Valley of the Kings and a variety of other temples. We saw some incredible tombs in the Valley of the Kings that still maintained their vivid colors after thousands of years. The tombs are located deep underground, and were designed and placed in sharp contrast to the dramatic pyramids to try to avoid falling prey to grave robbers. I took this picture at the Luxor temple:

I took it because it was in the last 10 minutes of one of the last temples that we'd be visiting during the trip, and this particular patch of the wall was about 8 feet above the ground. I think that somewhere around 75% of the surface area of every temple we saw was covered in hieroglyphics and designs like this that told stories, explained things, or whatever, and honestly after a few days of seeing it, it's easy to grow a little numb. I just happened to look up, and I saw this patch that really looked no different than the surrounding areas on this wall and on virtually every other stone wall that I'd seen in the preceding days. I got struck by the fact that thousands of people must pass under it every year without glancing at it because it might not hold any significant meaning relative to the rest of the temple, but really, it's an incredible work of art and design. It meant something to some people at some distant point in history...figuratively speaking, this impressive canvas is about 1 millionth of the total visible volume of carving and writing on the several temples that we saw in our few days.

South of Egypt - Aswan to Luxor

2009-07-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

a few pics before i leave for luxor

2009-07-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

small mosque on the way to class

2009-06-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

great buildings

2009-06-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

(the top building is the easternmost of the three, middle is the middle, and the bottom is the westernmost)

these are the three major buildings that line the corniche in the area of alexandria in which we live....we live on the third floor in the middle building. these buildings are incredible if you sit back and spend some time looking at all of the details in the brickwork, patterns, overhanging balconies, colors, etc...i also love all of the obscure little signs and things you see high above the sidewalk. there's one hotel called "hotel bahrain", some shipping companies, a few doctors and dentists, and several other little hotels. the structures were designed by an italian architect, and it seems like most of the cafes were established sometime in the early 20th century, which means they've been looking out over the mediterranean for over 100 years.. they function as cafes and restaurants and little shops around the periphery on the ground floor, and then the stories above are hotels, offices, etc.. i've done a ton of walking and exploring around the corniche area now, and i still think these three buildings are the most interesting that i've seen in alexandria. if you click through to flickr you should be able to look at higher resolution versions, though i still am uploading lower quality exports because the internet doesn't really allow 4MB uploads.

from montaza beach

2009-06-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

luxor weather

2009-06-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

صورة اليوم

2009-06-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

مسجد في الصحراء

2009-06-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

cafe de la paix

2009-06-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

photo albums

2009-06-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

click here to see my facebook album from the siwa oasis
and
click here to see another facebook album from alexandria

also, one of my friends here told me about this blog post that i thought was great, since i have definitely known at least one of each since i started studying arabic a year ago:
the 18 people you meet in your arabic class

Siwa Oasis

2009-06-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

This is a small watering hole that we stopped at for swimming during our desert safari...the trip was great - incredibly beautiful, actually - though I was so sick the first day (when we had the desert safari) that I don't actually remember much. This is probably also why I didn't really get any pictures that I liked....but I'll try to upload some more if I can get on some better internet.

Alexandria tram

2009-06-18T04:07:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow: Siwa Oasis for 3 days

2009-06-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

graduation, UW style!

2009-06-17T01:23:00.000-07:00

A modern diploma in the midst of an economic crisis...I wish I had an office so I could print this out and hang it on my wall.

CLSers with our Arabic language peers

2009-06-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is a few of us CLSers with the Egyptian students that the Alexandria Center for Languages sets us up with to practice our spoken Arabic. I think my language peer thought I had a slightly lower than room temperature IQ after our conversation, but oh well, it's a good opportunity to practice stumbling through new vocabulary and words.

I was studying this evening and I got hungry, so I went across the street from our hotel to an area with several little food stalls. I grabbed a 10 pound note when I walked out...10 pounds = 1.78463 U.S. dollars. I bought a falafel sandwich, still felt hungry, so then procured a fu'ul sandwich. I was thirsty after this so I bought a class of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I walked back to the hotel with 6 pounds...Egypt is cheap. And based on the stipend CLS gave us, we could be spending around 19 USD/day.

old chart of alexandria

2009-06-15T02:07:00.000-07:00

fisherman on the corniche

2009-06-14T04:24:00.000-07:00

...and by night

2009-06-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

panorama from my bedroom in alexandria

2009-06-13T03:38:00.001-07:00

shwarma

2009-06-13T01:07:00.000-07:00

facebook album

2009-06-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

I just created an album on facebook if you'd like to see more pictures (click the link below):
marhaba ya misr
(misr is the arabic name for egypt; marhaba = hello; ya marks the arabic vocative case...in arabic script it would be written مرحبا يا مصر)

Biblioteca Alexandria

2009-06-11T09:47:00.001-07:00

Apparently every known alphabet is represented somewhere on this exterior wall...

iphone

2009-06-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

What happens when I push the "find me" function on my iPhone... if I zoom in, it's actually accurate within a few hundred yards.

صورة اليوم

2009-06-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

Fusha is a bit brutal. I didn't finish the last several chapters of Al-Kitaab 1 (the first Arabic language textbook), and we started in Al-Kitaab Book 2, so needless to say there is a lot of vocab that I don't know. Fortunately Arabic is a language that is somewhat sympathetic to these kind of situations, since you can sometimes take an educated guess to the meaning of words if you've seen words with the same root before... I've also never learned the Arabic case endings, which apparently are covered somewhere in Book 1, but this was nothing that a bit of Wikipedia couldn't fix. Taking that single course in Latin a year or so ago also helped, since I was at least familiar with the concept of case endings.

غدا و اليوم

2009-06-10T02:28:00.000-07:00

امس مشيت الى القلعة (اسم قويبيت) في الاسكندرية. ذهبنا مع برنامجنا منذ ايام ثلاثة، بس اردت ان اخذ صور.
اليوم عندنا صف في ١٥:٤٥-٢٠:٠٠ و غدا في٩:٠٠-١:٠٠...بعض من زملاءي اصبحوا مريض بعد قادمة في مصر، بس انا مازلت البقاء صحية، الحمد لله!

(the reason I am writing in Arabic above is that we have to keep an Arabic journal as part of our program. my vocabulary is still limited so you can't expect my blog entries to be too profound....all the above really says is that i went for a walk to the castle again and took some pictures, and that some of my classmates have gotten sick since arriving in egypt, but i have managed to stay healthy, at least so far)

Egyptian food from a few nights ago

2009-06-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

This picture is from the dinner we got served at a waterfront seaside restaurant on the second night we were in Alexandria. These were just the appetizers - after working on these for an hour, we got served grilled fish, calamari, shrimp, and a rice dish...I'm not sure what the green and orange dishes in the foreground were, but the one on left is baba ganoush and one of the two in the background is hummous.

contact info in Alexandria

2009-06-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

Write me or call me here!

Spencer James
Room 305
Egypt Hotel
1 Degla Street
Ramleh Station Corneesh Road
Alexandria, Egypt

011 20 14 263-0058
(the 011 is the international access code from the US, the 20 is Egypt's country code)
Remember that I'm 10 hours ahead of Seattle...and I have class sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, but I'll pickup whenever I can!

كلمات اليوم

2009-06-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

١ - إيه = شو (لبنان) او ما في فصحى
٢ - كويس = جيد
٣ - إزّيّك؟ يعني كيفك؟
٤ - جُوات = خ. اخ
٥ - هذا = ده
٦ - هذه = دي
٧ - أوي = جداً
٨ - اتخرّجت = تخرجتُ

Alexandria Citadel

2009-06-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

We had our first day of class today at the Alexandria Center for Languages, and I had my first Egyptian ammiyya/عامية مصرية(colloquial) class. Every Arabic-speaking country has its own colloquial form of the language, which unfortunately for us non-native speakers is usually quite a bit different than the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) that is usually taught in Arabic classes. MSA is easier to learn in some ways, at least for me, but it's not really sufficient to only study MSA...at the same time, though, you can't really exclusively study one country's ammiyya, because it might turn out to be significantly different than ammiyya in another Arabic-speaking country...and since Arabic-speaking countries span from Morocco to Iraq, there's a predictably high degree of variation. Fortunately for me, Egyptian Arabic uses some of the same shifts and vocabulary as Lebanese Arabic, but it pronounces ج as a G instead of a soft J, which is another subtle complication of studying here in Alexandria.

Here's another picture from Cairo:

Alexandria Corniche

2009-06-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

This is the view over Alexandria from the balcony of our hotel room...we arrived here at about 10pm local time on Friday and today we have a language assessment than a tour of Alexandria. The internet is really slow so I don't know how regularly I will be able to upload photos...

Cairo panorama

2009-06-06T05:05:00.000-07:00

Look closely and you can see the pyramids (seriously).

Cairo Mosque

2009-06-05T22:36:00.001-07:00

Washington Monument in DC

2009-06-01T19:52:00.000-07:00

CLS Orientation in DC

2009-06-01T10:48:00.001-07:00

I arrived in DC yesterday and met the 24 other students in the CLS Alexandria program, then all day today we are going through different orientations...the photo above is from our lunch with one of the Egyptian ambassadors who works here in DC. They gave us a list of everyone in the Alexandria program -- guess who's the only biochemist (actually, the only natural scientist)? Wait, I don't technically graduate for another few weeks...can I refer to myself as a "biochemist" yet?

Also, it turns out that we'll be staying two nights in Cairo upon arrival instead of driving straight out to Alexandria. Coincidentally, President Obama will be addressing the Arab world on June 4th at Cairo University:
LA Times Article

off to alexandria!

2009-05-31T00:07:00.001-07:00

I fly to Washington, DC tomorrow morning! I'll be there for two nights before flying to Cairo via Germany, and then we'll be taking a bus out to Alexandria.

martha, emily, and dad sailing

2009-05-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

polar enterprise in port angeles

2009-05-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

backyard flower experiment

2009-05-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

bandsaw in victoria

2009-05-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

klahane ridge skiing

2009-05-24T21:52:00.001-07:00

2009-05-19T00:00:00.001-07:00

about me

2008-05-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

i was born in juneau, alaska in the USA and grew up in port angeles, WA. i started studying at the university of washington in seattle, wa in 2004, and studied in ioannina, greece in spring 2005. i traveled around the world in 2006-2007 on the bonderman fellowship and a year later studied arabic in lebanon at the american university of beirut (center for arab and middle eastern studies) in summer 2008. i graduated with a b.s. in biochemistry from the university of washington in 2009. my senior thesis was about fatty acid biosynthesis in Plasmodium (malaria-causing parasite), based on my research internship in the Kappe Lab at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute. i am studying arabic in alexandria, egypt this summer (2009) on the critical language scholarship, and then i am beginning a post-bachelor fellowship in public/global health metrics at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in september 2009, and will hopefully eventually attend medical school.

i started this blog to post pictures and to maybe to write a little about my experience in alexandria. i really don't know very much about photography but i take tons of pictures and i love to ski, surf, and mountain bike. i have two great sisters who also study at the university of washington, my dad builds amazing houses in port angeles, washington and my mom, who has traveled to incredible places ranging from sri lanka to tajikistan, works as a nurse in a hospital in juneau, alaska. i'm hoping to post pictures as often as possible from my time here in alexandria to share with them and anyone else who is curious.

thank you for visiting! feel free to say hello on a comment or by emailing me at spencerscomet (at) gmail (dot) com, or click here to friend me on facebook.

if you're interested, i have also kept the following blogs of my past experiences traveling and studying abroad:
2005: ioannina, greece
2006-2007: all around the world
2008: levantine summer