Rainbow for a Friend

By Suraj Baadkar

Keep looking for a rainbow
It soon will fill the sky,
You never have to worry
When friends are standing by.

Love in life will gather
In times when you are blue,
With all the rain that's falling
The rainbow's there for you.

So here we are just waiting
For a storm to go away,
Knowing that our friendship
Always brightens up the day.

No wonder I feel happy
No matter what the weather,
You cover me with sunshine
Whenever we're together.

Arrivals from Burkina Faso: Introducing the World of the Collins

By Ibrahim Fathelbab

The Collins have been to so many different places, seen so many different things and interacted with a diverse number of people and cultures around the world. I got a chance to better understand the “world” of the Collins. My experience was very fascinating, and I had a great time getting to know them much more.

Where are you from?
Mr. Collins: Philadelphia
Mrs. Collins: Tennessee, but Philadelphia is home for both of us.
Is this your first overseas assignment?
Mr. Collins: No, our first overseas assignment was in Burkina Faso.
What are some of your hobbies?
Mr. Collins: Traveling
Mrs. Collins: Reading, traveling and playing with our cat.
What do you do on your free time or weekend?
Mr. Collins: Though we are still exploring Alexandria, the place that we have been to so far has been the Opera house to watch Flamenco Dancing, which we really enjoyed.
Mrs. Collins: I go to the beach and watch television.
Do you have any favorite eat outs in Alexandria?
Mr. Collins: We have not eaten out that many times, but we really liked Zefirion in Abou Kir.
Mrs. Collins: My favorite restaurants so far are sea food restaurants.
Where have you traveled before, and how did you like where you went?
Mr. Collins: We have traveled to Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Gibraltar and Andorra. We like seeing new places and trying new things.
Why did you choose to teach in Egypt?
Mr. Collins: We like teaching internationally and traveling.
How do you like your so-called home away from home so far?
Mr. Collins: I enjoy it, plus we do not have to travel far to see Egypt. I love it!
Mrs. Collins: It is nice living on campus, and there is so much culture and opportunity in Egypt.
What were your worst and best subjects in school?
Mr. Collins: I did not like handwriting, and I had a hard time in chemistry. My best subject was history.
Mrs. Collins: I did not really like math all that much. I also did not like music because I had to play the bassoon. Well, it is not really what class I liked the most, it is just that I liked any class which involved much discussion.
Mrs. Collins, is this your first time being a Principal?
No, this is not my first time working as a Principal. I was working at the Ouagadougou International School as the Elementary Principal and K-12 Counselor.
How do you like being the Elementary/Middle School Principal at Schutz?
I like it very much. It is a very neat environment. The kids are warm and positive,and everyone knows everyone.
How do you like your classes so far Mr. Collins?
I enjoy most of them, and the students seem very interested.
Are you excited about the upcoming soccer season? Have you coached soccer before?
Yes, I am very excited and hope that we will do very well this season. No, I have not coached soccer before, but I did play first string “goalie” in high school.
How is Schutz different from the school(s) you have taught at before, and is there anything that you would like to see change at Schutz? If so, why?
Mr. Collins: Students in our old school would stay on campus much longer than students here because there were not really any hangouts or anything like that.
Mrs. Collins: It is somewhat different, I guess I could say, since Mr. Collins and I never really see each much of each other like we did in our old school. There is not much that we would like to change. We would just like to support students to be successful inside and out of school. Also, we would like to prepare students for their later years in life.

Re-reading the History of the Last King of Egypt

By Aya Kordy

"His Majesty Farouk I, by the grace of God, King of Egypt and Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, Kordofan and Darfur" was the last King in the house of Muhammad Ali Pasha. He became king when he was only sixteen due to the sudden death of his father, King Ahmed Fuad I. King Farouk was born on February 11, 1920, at the Abidin Palace in Cairo.

Later generations were taught to detest King Farouk. Everything they knew about him was from schoolbooks, published during Gamal Abd El Nasser's reign. Yet after more than fifty years, people are re-reading his history due to a series that has been released this Ramadan called "King Farouk". Its author, Dr.Lamis Gaber, spent about fifteen years researching and writing the script, which showed us a totally different reality. History books taught later generations that King Farouk was a megalomaniac who loved nothing but women, power, and alcohol. He was a king only in name, they stated, and that the real ruler of Egypt was Great Britain. King Farouk I was overthrown in the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and was forced to abdicate his throne to his infant son King Ahmed Fuad II.
Approximately fifty five years ago democracy and freedom of speech were aspects that King Farouk I tried to implement, allowing people to "raise their voice" and ask for their rights and privileges. Ironically, the biggest proof of this was that during King Farouk's reign, a group of young revolutionaries known as the “Free Officers" called secretly for independence and for an end to the monarchy. Unquestionably King Farouk knew everything about them, yet he still granted them the freedom they wished for. On the other hand, if we look at Egypt in this present day, both democracy and freedom are minimal. Many people are against the current government. However, establishing a group like the “Free Officers" nowadays is a very remote possibility.
After re-reading history, people now know how much they have been deluded by Gamal Abd El Nasser. He appointed Muhammad Naguib as Prime Minister and Regent of the then one-year old King Ahmed Fouad II. Nevertheless, the Free Officers decided they had no need of a monarchy. They then appointed Muhammad Naguib as President of Egypt, only to be dismissed from his office and placed under house arrest very soon afterwards.
Gamal Abd El Nasser was loved by millions of people. His funeral stands as one of the largest funerals people have ever attended in the world. The question is "Were all these people deluded by Gamal Abd El Nasser?" If I were to answer just one month ago, I would have totally disagreed and said he was a gracious man. If I were to answer you now, my answer would be yes. In addition, it seems that the Egyptian people including King Farouk I and Gamal Abd El Nasser and his companions were deceived by British power.
Just before King Farouk was ordered to leave Egypt and abdicate his thrown to his one-year old son King Ahmed Fuad II, he met one of his private secretaries,
Dr .Hussein Hosny and told him, "I know they'll say a lot of horrible things about me, but please if one day you are able to write, write about the truth that you have seen with me, the good and the bad." Dr. Hosny has in fact written a book called "Years with King Farouk". However, during Abd El Nasser's time democracy and freedom of writing were non-existent, particularly after the Ministry of Education had released history books based on the history made up by Gamal Abd El Nasser and his companions. Other books were buried along with Karim Thabet's book called "My Diaries of King Farouk".
The truth was buried, and King Farouk left Egypt and eventually died without being given the respect and love he deserved. He died in a restaurant called "Ile de France" in Rome while he was eating. Some people even say he was poisoned. His body was flown to Egypt in the middle of the night in a coffin, and he was buried secretly in Muhammad Aly's burial site. He was buried as a stranger in the middle of the night in a country that he once ruled. Freedom and democracy were buried that night and until now Egyptians are digging and searching for them.
After revealing the truth of this episode of Egyptian history, will the Egyptians ever stand up to defend their history that has been misused? Will Egypt ever become a Kingdom once again if the Egyptians choose it? Or will it always remain a republic, with its rights lost? The answer is definitely inside every Egyptian. It is hard to answer since freedom and democracy were buried fifty-five years ago. Imagine. If King Farouk I were still alive till today, what would we possibly tell him after we have discovered the truth? Do you think he would ever forgive us?

Facebook- Connecting People or Minimizing Privacy?

By Shereen Hassan and Ingy Fahmy

“Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” Or is it really? Facebook started out as being a fun and dependable way for high school and college students to stay in touch with each other, but now people across the globe have started to misuse this privilege.
Through Facebook, one could upload photos or publish notes, get the latest news from friends, post videos on profiles, tag friends, use privacy settings to control who sees personal information, join a network, and see people who live, study, or work around them. Nevertheless, one could say that people have started “stalking” other’s lives.
As of October 2007, there are 49 million active users on Facebook, and of those 49 million, 60% log in daily, 85% log in weekly, and 93% log in monthly. It seems like addiction has started and is still continuing to increase within the barriers of Facebook. The stalking and addiction that have risen within Facebook are starting to effect the real connection between people.
Although Facebook has privacy settings that can limit personal information , one can still never be in full control of people out there who get to see personal conversations between friends.
Facebook members can join or create groups such as study groups, common hobbies, culture, etc. This might seem like a good way to find people who have common interest in life, but people have misused this privilege. The content of the posts are most often offensive to different kinds of people, some might be offending or discriminating on the bases of religion, culture, ethnicity, etc.
In addition to the loopholes in Facebook, there is another problem of caching. Caching is a term used for temporary storage of updated files called cache. Once something is posted it cannot be erased completely.
The Journal of Consumer Research found out that “negativity is contagious” through studies. The behavior of people toward products and services are a lot of times influenced by the others around them. Facebook, as one of the largest social networks, will continue to be an important driver of individual beings’ attitudes as societies become more interconnected.
Now that the younger generations of middle and elementary schools have started to have active accounts on Facebook, there is no control over what these children will be exposed to and what experiences that might have a serious effect on their lives. What was originally launched to create a bridge between college and high school students that are sited away from each other is turning out to be potentially harmful.
Next time, think again before signing up to Facebook or logging into your account because no one never knows who is watching.

Social Networking; Technology’s No Return Point

By Suraj Baadkar

Technological advancement may be defined as inventions and discovery, but it actually reflects the kind of community and the society we live in. One of the major reflections comes from what we call today "Social Networking. There are millions of people using it everyday. Social Networking is the use of the Internet to interact with friends, family and to make new friends with similar personal interests, hobbies etc. This technology has advanced a lot for many simple reasons. It is cheap, easy to access, and it removes distance between people. For entrepreneurs, it has become a source of business. The founders of such platforms use advertisements that bring in money.
Platforms like these have become a place for marketing as well. Some of the famous social networking platforms used today are Facebook, My Space, etc. They make millions of dollars in annual revenue. Now with these platforms becoming the hangout place for teens, some of these sites have also been made accessible on their cell phones. These upgrades bring improvement for sure, but all good things are accompanied by bad things. Bad things here mean that more and more people are vulnerable to break certain laws, more and more children are vulnerable to explicit content like adult rated photographs or videos.
As the social networks like Facebook and My Space grow, so do the concerns of Internet security and privacy. According to the Center of Missing and Exploited Children, there have been 2600 incidents reported in which adults have used such networks to track down their potential victims. In another instance, a qualified graduate was turned down by a company because he had posted explicit photos of himself on Facebook. One of the cases was astonishing. Five students were arrested for using My Space to plan out an attack on a boys' hostel. One of the social networks called Orkut, which is famous in Brazil, reported arrests of two adults who used to look for potential child victims whom they could use for their pornography website.
Caching is the technology that monitors such illegal things on the net. Caching is a procedure with which file images are saved as cache in the search engine servers. For example, suppose you upload a photo on Facebook and then delete it. The cache of this photo will still be saved in the archive.
People today use social networking sites to represent themselves in the community by uploading photos and music, etc. While doing so, they should keep in mind not to produce false identity and not to portray any potential harmful stuff for the viewers.
With this pioneering leap of comfort in the field of information technology by which people now can get in touch with each other, it is obvious that there is no way back. In the years to come, there will be ad-ons to this technology, but we should keep in mind the requirement of privacy, personal space and safety.

This I Believe

By Laila Afifi*
Special to The 83rd

First day of my freshman year, I walked into the English class, bewildered and anxious. The seats were set in a U form, different from my middle school familiarity. I sat down and noticed a peculiar box sitting in the middle of the room. After everyone was seated the teacher lifted the box and revealed a pumpkin. He asked us to describe it. I was not sure if he was testing our descriptive skills or just measuring our writing but we all sat down and started describing. The pumpkin was orange, it formed a vase shape: fat at the bottom thin at the top, and it had a pink paper pinned roughly in the middle. Then the teacher asked two students to walk around the pumpkin. The second student then lifted the pumpkin top and looked inside it, chuckled and set the top back on.
After the time was up the teacher asked one of the students who walked around to describe what he saw. “There is a pink piece of paper pinned up on one side, a red balloon pinned up on the other side, and an X mark on the third side.” We all gasped because while concentrating on what we saw, we forgot that the people opposite us saw something else. The teacher then asked the second person who saw the inside of the pumpkin to tell us what he saw, and he said, “A red heart.”
At that moment I realized I was guilty of looking at things in only one perspective. I began looking at my life and realized that there were times when I only saw one side of the story rather than look for all perspectives. When my friends tell me a story, I only hear their side of the story. I never considered another side.
This point is emphasized daily. In Nagiub Mahfouz’s novel, Miramar, this idea is shown explicitly. The book contains seven chapters. Each chapter gives the same story. All the events take place at the same time, with the same people. However, each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character in the book. The only way to understand the entire story and the motives behind each character is to read the seven chapters. This book is stimulating in the sense that it makes you think and analyze your life.
As humans we owe each other the truth, and this can only be achieved by seeing the entire story, in full 360 degrees. I realized that we only see one side of everything, and as humans, we judge. We judge solely on what we see, which is only part of the story. This is a problem because its human nature. To understand the full idea or whole concept we must look at all angles.
I believed that I was a fair and unprejudiced person; however, this exercise showed me that we all need to work on our perception skills. Now, I believe that school is the ideal breeding ground for open mindedness and that all classes should integrate such ideals into their day-to-day learning because not only is limitation of perspective a problem in our school but also in our community, nation, and world.



*Laila Afifi is responding to the topic of the Near East and South Asia (NESA) Call for Papers for the 2007-2008 academic year. Teachers were asked to reflect on the essential things they believe in in their learning/teaching career.

Sleep VS School!

By Tarek Talaat

Students always object to schools for making them wake up early. In fact, some students skip breakfast just to get to school on time. The school schedule works well for some people but a nightmare for others. In average, four people out of twenty would be found sleeping during the first two periods of the day.
Parents usually like the idea of their children leaving home before they do. It has been studied that sleep-deprived children are grouchier, poorer learners, more prone to attention deficit disorders, and are more likely to skip classes. Some schools start early because school buses need to make three full cycles to bring elementary, middle and high school students to school. Starting high school later would mean buying more buses and hiring more drivers or even sending younger students to school earlier.
According to Michael J. Breus, PhD, MD; there are many consequences that result from sleep deprivation. Decreased Performance and Alertness (reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32%), Memory and Cognitive Impairment (decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your ability to think and process information), Stress Relationships (disruption of a bed partner's sleep due to a sleep disorder may cause significant problems for the relationship, examples are sperate bedrooms, many conflicts, etc.), Poor Quality of Life (you might not be unable to participate in certain activities that require sustained attention, like going to the movies, seeing your child in a school play, or watching a favorite TV show), Occupational Injury (excessive sleepiness also contributes to a greater than twofold higher risk of sustaining an occupational injury), and Automobile Injury (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates conservatively that each year drowsy driving is responsible for at least 100,000 automobile crashes, 71,000 injuries, and 1,550 fatalities).
In this regard, parents play a big role in establishing sound sleeping habits. Parents are responsible for getting their children in bed earlier since it has been known that the brain is fresher in the morning, students should not criticize schools by saying that it is too early, instead they should take matters in their own hands and make the right and responsible decision of sleeping earlier.