campus

AUC is a closed campus, so to enter you need to show your ID and go through a metal detector. When I reach the front of the pack, I whip my id out of my pack pocket... ooops, not that pocket. I check the other pocket. Sorry! Not that one either! I must have left it in my wallet. I open my backpack. The crowd behind me starts to push forward. I sift through Arabic worksheets, fishing for my wallet. Not in my wallet?! This is embarrassing. I desperately open every little pocket in my backpack, and find it in the outer pouch. Outer pouch? Who would put it there? Tricky...

AUC is downtown, and all the dorms and apartments are scattered in various neighborhoods around the city with shuttle bus access to the school every half hour. The shuttle is 5-25 min. depending on traffic. I have to leave on the 7:30 shuttle every day, because I have Arabic at 8am. Because the school doesn't have enough space (they're moving out to the desert next year), they have classes starting early (8am) and ending late (like 8pm) to fully utilize the classrooms. The campus is small next to Stanford. I suppose that's why they're moving.

At first I thought the commuter thing would be annoying and hard on the social life, but there are tons of nice coffee shops near the school, and the library is fine, so most people come to school early, and leave late, and spend their day socializing, doing work, etc. The campus has hundreds of wicker chairs in all the courtyards. You just drag them into clusters, and work with friends on homework, eat lunch, or shmoose. It's glorious.

You can also borrow really nice IBM laptops from the library for a few hours at a time. It's great--I can bring my arabic CDs, and work on my homework without lugging my laptop to school.

I also rented a locker at the gym, so I can go there between classes. Most of the girls in the locker room use it to pray. It's an amazing transformation when I walk down the little marble staircase and emerge in the basement locker room to find girls rolling up their prayer mats and reading the Qur'an.