Well after a week and a half of no classes, things are supposed to resume to normal as of Wednesday. The student body has finally reached an agreement with the administration over tuition prices and has worked out other demands which both sides were proposing. After the initial student strike and the closing of the gates, which allowed no one to get onto campus, the administration officially closed all school operations noting that it was a creating a “dangerous situation.” However, because the student body and administration seemed to be in a deadlock with no end in sight and we had already missed a week of classes, things began to get interesting when they threatened to cancel the whole semester, citing that we would miss too much class to make up and lose accreditation. So, towards the end of last week and the beginning of this week, we started online classes as well as having classrooms moved to the Zamalak dorms and the Tahrir Square campus. This proved to be a frustrating experience due to the fact that there was no provided transportation, direction and massive amounts of miss scheduling. However, after many distressed emails flying between teachers, students and the administration things seemed to partially work out and to the enthusiasm of everyone, as of late last night, classes are set to resume normally in two days!
Even though there was a lot of frustration and uncertainty regarding classes, all the time off was quite nice. During the past week I got to experience Cairo a lot more and did some walking through the streets (which is much more pleasant when the sun goes down). Also, it was nice to sit by the pool everyday which was quite empty due to the fact the campus was closed. Below are various pictures of the streets of Cairo, a picture of the dreaded traffic scene here and another of the entrance to AUC. There seems to never be a dull moment and I have definitely learned to expect the unexpected and go with the flow, so I guess we’ll see what happens between now and next week.