Dodging Wind Chills and Exploring Egypt with UChicago at AUC
In just 10 weeks, a cohort of students from the University of Chicago have explored every corner of Egypt. From Alexandria to Luxor, the students from the Windy City are dodging subzero temperatures back home to spend a winter studying Cairo’s history and Arabic at AUC.
“You’re really living with history here,” says UChicago linguistics senior Sam Contreras.
Both daytrips and weekend excursions to Luxor, Khan El Khalil, the White Desert, Tahrir Square and the Grand Egyptian Museum have brought students face to face with Egyptian history.
"I feel like we've gotten to see so much of the country. We went way down south, west into the deserts and even on excursions in the week. We've seen different parts of the city."
“Driving an hour or two, you’re at the pyramids, which are thousands of years old. During that time, you pass through Coptic and Islamic Cairo, which are thousands of years old themselves,” Contreras says.
The students are enrolled in Cairo: Middle Eastern Civilizations, a three-class UChicago sequence taught at AUC New Cairo, which takes students through the city’s history from pharaonic to modern times. The core classes are taught by UChicago faculty Assistant Professor of Egyptian Archaeology Anna Latifa Mourad Cizek, Assistant Professor of Classical Arabic Literature Pamela Klasova and Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies Abdallah Soufan. In addition to studying Cairo’s history, students take Arabic classes taught twice a week by AUC instructors.
UChicago economics junior Teddy Robinson grew up in an Arabic-speaking area of Miami, Florida, but came to Cairo to continue improving his Arabic. “The Cairo program isn’t talked about enough in terms of how great it is. We have a campus in Paris, we have a campus in Hong Kong. Students there feel like they’re still at UChicago, whereas here we get to come to AUC. We go on all these excursions. Other programs don’t really have all the travel we get to do, and that’s been very enlightening,” Robinson says.
The students also explored Cairo and practiced Arabic with the help of cultural partners, Egyptian students in their age group who previously studied at UChicago and now live in Cairo. “You get a different perspective on young people’s experience in the city,” Kruger says.
Egypt’s fair weather plus AUC New Cairo’s campus have allowed students to enjoy luxuries usually locked off by a Chicago winter: working outside, practicing their sports and even stargazing.
A group trip to the White Desert was eye opening for Ashley Hayase, a UChicago economics junior also minoring in astronomy and astrophysics. “In the desert, especially, being able to see all the constellations — I didn't realize the size of them. I'd never seen them so clear before.”
Robinson and Hayase are both student athletes, running track and playing soccer, respectively. Hayase says AUC’s facilities have let her stay sharp in the offseason. “Utilizing the facilities has been great. During the winter back in Chicago we rarely are able to actually practice outside at all,” Hayase says.
A yearlong civilization studies requirement is needed to graduate from the University of Chicago, and students can meet this requirement by studying abroad for one quarter. Camille Kruger, a UChicago junior studying public policy, chose the Cairo program to experience a new culture beyond the popular study-abroad destinations peers sought out in Europe.
“I feel like we've gotten to see so much of the country. We went way down south, west into the deserts and even on excursions in the week. We've seen different parts of the city,” Kruger says.
“A lot of us have gone and explored Cairo on our own. But even if you didn't do that, you would walk away from this program having seen so much of the city and the country and gaining a lot of knowledge.”
