A Whole New World

Unfortunately the other day when my parents came to visit me in Richmond and we went out and about I forgot to put my battery in my camera, but here are a few photos I took on a long walk I went on last Friday, just as the sun was sinking...

This first one is of my house, or more the tree in front of my house. The house itself is incredible, with high ceilings, wood floors, two sets of stairs, very cool roommates, and a small community park and garden out back:


Many monuments dot this city, many of them having to do with the Civil War. There is a famous one of Arthur Ashe. Here is one that goes a little farther back:


Here is an artsy one. Me on one of those highway overpass things, with all the cars going past below, it sounded like the ocean:

One more, some houses with a Baptist church bus and some chairs set up for a gathering:


Yeah, so strange days, new world...

Orientalism in English Class

So I have this friend, A, who just moved here from Egypt, where I met him, right? And he's going to school and of course he has to take English, since they need to assimilate him into the system and he needs to get by in this country, or whatever. Well, from all he's told me, his teacher is an idiot and super hands-off and doesn't take much time to help and explain how our insane language works, and does odd things like taking the class to a park near school and says, "Well, now you're here, it's a beautiful place, a beautiful day, no homeless people around, go have fun," and then he leaves. And he makes them write papers without going too deep into how a paper works, doesn't even give them the dreaded five-paragraph essay model, or anything. Instead, he pushes A to go to something called the writing lab where there are people who will supposedly help him.

Okay, moving on. A is writing a paper about Dahab, this beautiful, somewhat forgotten outpost on the middle of the eastern coast of the Sinai, frequented not by out-of-country tourists but moreso by Egyptians and expats living in Egypt and a few Israelis. Dahab's got little hotels on the beach with tents and carpets set up right by the water. It's relaxing...and incredible. Amazing fresh fish dinners to be had on those carpets. There's also snorkeling and horseriding and bedouin treks into the inland desert. It's paradise and it's cheap. You should go. But back to A. Tonight, I was helping him with his final draft since he's ailing in bed and I take a look at what the guy at the writing lab did, which was basically just add a few commas and some sort of fancy sentences, but really miss a lot of other pretty basic grammar stuff and A tells me that his teacher read only the first few broken sentences of his first draft and then the guy went off on how he wants to see! and feel! and hear! and smell! and taste! the place! How he doesn't even care if it exists like that, how he wants a picture of this foreign paradise. So, I'm like, damn, A, let's give this guy his Orientalist wet dream. And we do. We give him bedouin boys on horses and camels frolicking in the sand and men smoking sheeshas under palm trees and the calm waters of the Red Sea. And all those things exist in Dahab...but so many other things exist in Dahab, too. Oh well. Maybe A can write something more interesting and true for his next story. I hope he gets a good grade.