Events

The small class sizes and friendly atmosphere at Arab Academy naturally leads to friendships between our teachers and study abroad students. Often the two groups enjoy socializing outside of class time. Last Friday, a number of teachers and students decided to go to al Azhar Park together.

Al Azhar Park is one of Cairo's success stories. For 500 years, it was a garbage dump covering 74 acres in the heart of Islamic Cairo. Then the Aga Khan Trust for Culture decided to transform it into a beautiful green space that commands a panoramic view of the city of Cairo. During the building of the park, archaeologists found a wall built 800 years ago by Salah al-Din that they restored. In this city of 20 million, a park such as this provides a much-needed breathing space for citizens and visitors to enjoy the great outdoors.

The weather was lovely for the outing and the teachers and students enjoyed speaking Arabic, seeing the historical sites and learning and playing some traditional Egyptian games.

At Arab Academy, we believe that learning the Arabic language is enhanced by knowledge of Arab and Egyptian culture. Therefore, Arab Academy offers free weekly lectures (in Arabic or English) to all study abroad students. These lectures are given by instructors and staff on cultural topics about which they have a lot of knowledge. Not only do these lectures increase the cultural knowledge of students, but they also help develop students' Arabic listening skills.

This past week Ustaza Mervat (الأستاذة مرفت) gave a lecture entitled "Journey of the Egyptian Woman throughout Modern History" (رحلة المرأة المصرية عبر التاريخ الحديث). In this lecture, she spoke about the status of women in Egypt in the late 19th century and the beginning of the women's movement in Egypt during the 1919 revolution and about the leader of the women's movement, Huda Shaarawi.

The students are able to practice their comprehension and composition skills by writing essays the next day about what they learned during the lecture.

February 26th is the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.). Though it’s not an official feast of Islam and not all Muslims celebrate it, Egyptian customs around Al-Mulid al-Nabawi (المولد النبوي) go back to the Fatimid caliphate, which ended in the 12th century CE. Over the centuries, the celebration has included Sufi parades with flags, banners, and tambourines, and Quranic readings and gatherings in the mosques. These days Egyptians buy bride-shaped candies (عروسة) decorated with multicolored sugar for their daughters and similar knight- and horse-shaped candies for their sons. A new groom has the special obligation of buying a large bride doll for his wife as well as special mulid candies like Turkish delight (ملبن). Study abroad students learned about this holiday at a party at which they sampled these Egyptian sweets with their Arabic instructors.

On my way back from Washington, I could not resist taking a picture with President Obama!  That was a nice end to a pretty exciting short trip to Washington, D.C.  I stopped in London for 3 nights to visit my daughter who lives there, then returned happily to Cairo to resume my exciting work at Arab Academy.

It was wonderful to receive visitors to the Arab Academy booth then discover that some of them were my former students.  Nothing can be better than seeing your brilliant students, ever so intelligent and beautiful at MESA.  I was SO HAPPY TO MEET YOU ALL!!!  Thank you for passing by Arab Academy booth ya habaybi!!!  I hope we meet again soon!!! 

I was so happy to meet Mrs. Wissam Moula from Fairfax County, Virginia at MESA.  She had visited Arab Academy in Cairo, Egypt in the summer of 2008 to attend a Teacher Training Program.  She was so generous with her time and she and her daugther Judy, have graciously helped us prepare the Arab Academy booth at MESA and receive visitors. alf shukr ya wissam wa Judy!!!  Hope to see you again soon!

It was wonderful to meet Prof. Tawhida ElAskary from the University of Houston at MESA.  We had a meeting to discuss Arab Academy's program that is being used at U of H.  Tawhida is also in charge of alumni program of the American University in Cairo.  Being one of AUC's alumni we certainly had plenty to talk about.

Susan Blevins and Sanaa Ghanem arranged the Arab Academy booth.  It was so exciting to be working with Susan, an Arab Academy learner who volunteered to help on this booth.  She has also kindly prepared the Arab Academy banner and brought it with her.  We could not have done it without her.
I also liked the Arab Academy table cloth.  It was our designer Heba Abaza who bought it for us from Cairo.