AUC workers' strike!

Yesterday afternoon, as I walked out of class I was greeted by a sea of protesting custodians.
The custodians at AUC are protesting a huge pay cut that they were supposedly unaware of before their last pay checks. Talk had been spreading the past few days about a strike looming, but we were unsure of it's legitimacy. Today though, it is evident the workers are angry, and I think they're going to get what they want.
Apparently all the cleaning ladies and janitors were hired from a company independent of AUC and are in the process of transferring contracts. They were promised a pay of 1200 Egyptian Pounds, which is like $200 dollars a month, but this week each of them received a payment of only 400LE. That's less than 100$... a month. A month.
AUC's justification for this is that now the workers have medical insurance. But medical care in Egypt is so cheep (and so rarely sought after) that it is no consolation to those who now are unable to feed their families this month.

I saw a student written article on an iReport CNN page, for more info.. http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-508913

It's really interesting watching this whole thing play out (its only been two days, but still)
In the last 24 hours, campus has become filthy (almost "the rest of Cairo filthy" if we're only talking about trash). At the food court each table has a pile of trash and today the only "clean" table we could find had cat paw prints all over it. The fountains are overflowing because trash is clogging their canals. The main fountain is running at a different pressure for some reason and flooding the path to classes, all the bathrooms are filthy and water was shut off for a while during the day today... it's gross. I never really noticed how much these workers do around campus, but I'll never take them for granted again.

I think I'm actually going to be politically incorrect here... forgive me:

Ok there's a stretch of hallway we call "Gucci Corridor."
You might be able to take a wild guess and figure out its derivation... Well here is where we find the most beautiful and elite Egyptians in their Ed Hardy t-shirts, holding their designer bags, smoking their Marlboros, texting on their Blackberries, walking slowly, talking about how fly they are in their skinny jeans and how they love to dye their perfectly beautiful dark hair orange (blonde?), complaining that how daaare their teacher not accept their late work... anyway. It's like recruiting for Tool Academy up in there. I hate walking past there. And I'm pretty sure the students here think that the food court is a 5 star restaurant where people bus your table when you're done, because they always leave their entire meals on the table. God forbid we stand up and walk an inch to one of the million trash cans, marked plainly in english and arabic. They'd probably break a nail on the lid or something though. God forbid. Insha'Allah maybe the trash will just blow away. Oh wait, it does, because the school was designed to keep wind on campus to keep it cool. So step 1: you leave your trash on the table. Step 2: It blows away... 3: Now every corner of campus looks like this:

I'm feeling a little discouraged at the idea that THIS is how the elite and educated young people of Egypt treat their campus. However, I do feel it is the general consensus of the foreign students that we feel very blessed to be here.

I hope our janitors can be happy soon and return to us because I doubt the work ethic of the students will change in any way. 

........... errr.... sorry guys, but really...

Anyway, on a happier note. Im going camping tomorrow and Im really excited!

And I had an amazing week!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mom yesterday <33333