SiMPLE | Forum

I thought you were asking something else.  Ok, here it goes:

My university (Walla Walla University) sends 50-100 students out each year all around the world as volunteers.  I decided that I wanted to do this for a year.  This spring I decided to go to Egypt to work at an English school (Nile Union Academy) just outside of Cairo.  I am here with 13 other Americans (2 from my school) and a number of local Egyptian staff.  This school depends on volunteer teachers each year to function.

The students spend 5 years at this high school. The first year focuses mostly on learning English.  After graduation, some of the students travel to other countries to continue their education: USA, Philippines, Lebanon, Australia, etc.

After arranging everything over the summer I left for Egypt the end of August.  School started the first of September and gets out in early June.  I am teaching several math classes to the first and second year students.  This is definitely interesting because many of them didn’t speak any English when the first arrived and I didn’t speak any Arabic.  I have mostly been focusing on basic math concepts because they don’t seem to have much of a foundation in math yet.

The school is on about 30 acres of land.  The rest of the land that isn’t used for the buildings is farmed.  I am working with the farm manager and helping to supervise students.  This too has proved to be a difficult task.  Many of the students have no work ethic and the farm manager is a very stubborn guy.  In the States I have lived on an orchard for the past 12 years.  My father trained me well in areas of hard work and perseverance.  I have also learned a lot about farming.  Here in Egypt I have tried to pass some of this knowledge on to the farm here.  I’m still working but I feel like we are using farming techniques for the 18th century.   

Sometimes I feel like my brain is wasting away because I don’t have anything to study.  I am studying mechanical engineering and taking a year off makes me miss studying (only a little bit though).  If I don’t learn anything else here it is definitely teaching me patience, self-control, and perseverance.  I am also building some great friendships with the students and staff members here.  It will be sad to leave them all in June as I may never see many of them again. 

Although I have visited many countries around the world I have never lived long term in another country besides the US.  It is definitely a new experience.  Every day is an adventure.  I miss the efficiency of transportation in the US.  It takes a few hours just to travel 20 km here.  I am also amazed by the amount of trash everywhere.  There is no such thing as a garbage collecting service here.  Just throw it out in the streets and push it into piles and burn it when it gets to be too big.  On the campus we make a distinct effort to keep the place clean and trash free.  It is a very nice relief to come from outside the campus through the gate inside.  The air is much cleaner and it is a nice quiet atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, shortly after the president made his announcement that he had the ultimate decision in everything, a friend and I were down in Heliopolis near the presidential palace.  Besides seeing a number of military everything seemed normal.  I hadn’t been back to the area until Sunday.  We were getting our visas renewed and on the way back we drove past the palace.  Given everything that was in the news about it I figured it would look pretty crazy.  Nope, I couldn’t even tell that anything had happened.  There were no tanks, no barb wire, just some graffiti on the walls.  They must have worked pretty fast to clean the place up.  The school is about an hour from Heliopolis.  It used to be away from the city but towns have sprung up around it.  It is located in a poor town called Gabal Asfar.  I have never felt unsafe out here and the people don’t bother to waste their time protesting here.

Well, that’s about all I have to say right now.  I’m sure that by the time I leave I will have many more stories and experiences to keep with me for a lifetime.

Write an article about what??

Yeah, next time I head up there I'll let you know

I have given Bunny the !wspam command several times.  I think a little chat is fine but he/she/it definitely takes it to another level.  I have had little success getting he/she to shut up.  Bunny usually apologizes and stays quiet for a minute before starting back up again.  I do agree, this is not a chatroom and it would be nice if there was something we could do about it.  It is true, Bunny rarely plays, but mostly just talks and gets less than 5 kills all game.

A ping of 180 means that you have a delay from your computer to the server of 180 milliseconds. That is equivalent to 0.18 seconds.  You cannot blame your tking on your ping.  180 ms is not that bad, although it will be difficult to get good kills.  A very very high ping of 300-500 ms could cause some serious lag but I have played at 180 and it is playable.

Agreed

Your link is broken
Anyways, I use DownThemAll for Firefox and it usually works flawlessly.  I'm not really sure. I guess I'll try again.  Maybe my connection is too slow and the download link expires before it finishes downloading...

I'm with Buckshot on this one. You can't kick someone for basecamp on a ctf map.  It's simply ridiculous.  Jamming the airfield is basically the only way to get the flag back to your base.  And if you had actually been playing you would have noticed that someone else stole the flag and was almost back to the base when the time ran out on the map.  If you are so worried about him sitting with a tank on the airfield, why don't you get out your zooka and shoot him! 

This makes absolutely no sense and I have no idea what you are trying to say. (Oh, and this was on Gazala, not Guadalcanal.)

I saw you get kicked too and was wondering why. But I was on the other team so I didn't know what was happening.

I was just playing with this guy a while ago on Iwo Jima.  I didn't notice anything unusual about him but I also wasn't following him.  He was getting a lot of kills in the battleship but I don't think that proves anything. I think he may have beached the ship but I could not prove it.  I'll watch him more closely next time I see him. But in the mean time it sounds like we should ban brigg for hacking

OK, so you are all talking about how you can get tanks all over any map, but how on earth do you get a tank to the island with 1 flag only? Can you get the tank on a boat, because I've tried that lol... !wnoob

Will the stats be posted somewhere?

I totally agree with this thread.  Today in Omaha Beach (about 30 mins ago) Dynamite kicked Luke for "disrespecting the admin".  Someone asked what -=TL=- meant and Luke, who had the top score at the time, replied in a joking manner: "Totally Lame?".  The Dynamite got mad at him and kicked him (leaving himself with the high score).  Then Dynamite started using the excuse that he didn't understand English and that he was confused.  He speaks and understands English just fine; I have chatted with him before.  There was quite a discussion that followed if you would like to read the logs.  I really don't think this guy should be an admin...

-Sloop