At Sea, passing Crete and Cyprus

Today I woke up and ate a big breakfast and a drank a big cup of coffee so I could focus in class! Yesterday I was having trouble focusing and staying awake from the crazy week we just spend in Istanbul with little to no sleep! In my 8am, we had a group presentation about Egyptians, Muslins, and Ramadan. It was really interesting and then in Global Studies, we talked about it too! It all related and intertwined, which made it more interesting because I was a little more familiar with it. I had a music test after those 2 classes, and it was actually a little tough! It was held towards the back of the ship, and today it has been rocking so much that it didn’t help taking a test in the rockiest part!
Tomorrow we will be in Alexandria, Egypt! That’s crazy. I can not wait!
We will wake up early and head out to Cairo and then Luxor! I don’t know what to expect… but tonight in the pre-port seminar, they will fill us in on everything we need to know.
By the library there is a sign that says something in Arabic, and it looks like a bunch of fancy cursive letters that all connect. It translates to ‘Hi You Are Here’. Wow how on earth am I going to read Arabic! It’s no even the same alphabet, it’s completely different!

Today in Global Studies we learned about Egypt, the past wars with Israel, and issue with the Suez canal. We talked abut the current president, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in his position for 30 years.
The issue with the Suez Canal is that Egypt built this with the French in 1869. This caused Egypt to go into great debt because it was such a massive build. The British stepped in and intervened and didn’t let the Egyptians operate it freely.
British then granted Egypt its independence in 1922 and Egypt was the first major country in its region to gain independence.
Nasser became president (1954-70) and was a socialist. He used state policies to control rents on land to poor peasants and created free health care and education. He had a strong agenda and vision for Egypt.
The Suez Canal became nationalized (which was a crisis with the British), and Nasser and all of the Egyptians now had complete control over it. The British and the French were upset when Nasser took complete control over the canal so they became allies with Israel to become enemies against Egypt. Nasser was going to invade Israel to take it over but the United Nation intervened. In 1956, Israel decides to make moves and invade Egypt and succeeds. They started moving towards Cairo but the United Nations stopped them, so they drew back to Israel. In 1973, Nasser and Egyptians attacked Israel, but they lost. These wars between Egypt and Israel caused land shifts to go back and forth. The Gaza strip was a settlement zone, full of Arabs and poor people. These wars have been a huge factor in relations between Egypt and its neighbors.
When Nasser died, Anwar Sadat took over the presidency and decides to sign a peace treaty with Israel, which shocked all of Egypt and caused major controversy. Through all of the hate and controversy towards Sadat, he got assassinated. Hosni Mubarak became the president in 1981 and is still the president to this day!
This is just a little taste of what we learned today about the country we will be arriving in tomorrow :)