It is unusual to see someone that quite to be that much adventurous and fun. She sits in the front row without uttering a single word in class but her mind is in another parallel universe splendored with fun and adventures. She is the type of person who would do anything and everything no matter how risky it could be. Fun for her is what counts the most.
Yasmine Khalid is a 21-year-old student at AUC. She majors in Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and minors in Psychology.
Yasmine used to be an athlete when she was little. She used to do all kinds of sports. Her favorite yet was Aerobics. She used to play squash as well. However, she had to quit doing all these sports when she moved into her new house in Tagamoa. Her parents couldn’t manage to drive her every day to Masr el Gedida where her sports club was.
Consequently, she stopped practicing any of these sports. She dropped all her training classes. Worse, she started putting on weight which didn’t motivate her to attend at any of her trainings.
She recalled that once, she attended an aerobics class which she hadn’t attended for months and her coach told her then that she shouldn’t come anymore because she already had gained weight–one kilo, she noted.
Her coach was superbly mad at her and told her that she had to lose that one kilo or else she would be kicked out. Yasmine didn’t bother with all that, she was very devasted and dropped all her classes.
Ever since then, she did no more sports and never attended to the idea of practicing any or even watching any tutorials on YouTube. She just had no further interest in that field.
Her life, however, did not stop at aerobics because aerobics was not the only fun thing she could do.
Yasmine could seem really quiet, but when it comes to having fun, she makes sure she has fun at her most ultimate ability. She finds her most rejoice in sightseeing. She doesn’t really care about concrete fancy-looking cities, she’d rather visit a poor city than go to a rich city that is nothing but a bunch of concrete buildings and skyscrapers.
She would rather visit places like Budapest because of the natural landscapes there that she found extremely breathtaking. She said she had visited that place once and for a very short time. Yet, she wished she would go back in time to redo that visit.
“The city was very simple and beautiful in its own way with all the marvelous landscapes it had. I felt truly sad that I had to leave this city that fast,” she said.
She would feel incredibly excited as well whenever she went to amusement parks like the ones in Orlando, U.S. She would have absolutely no fears of riding rollercoasters that most people, like myself, would dread to try.
“I have once been to the Universal Studios in Orlando. Disney was nothing compared to it. It was amazing with all the fancy roller coasters there. Disney also had rides but were more for children, unlike those in the Universal Studios,” she said.
“At Universal Studios, there were two roller coasters that were really difficult with the turns and twists they made. My father rode the second and last roller coaster with me and after we got off of it, my father couldn’t walk at all,” she added.
Another time, Yasmine once went with her friends to Porto Cairo mall in First Settlement, Cairo. She said she was ready and felt super excited to try any of the rides which she saw there, but her friends were really discouraging because they were afraid to try. She said they “chickened out” when they saw the rides there.
“These games were the silliest and weren’t spooky at all. There was absolutely no room for fear of these games or rides and that any kid wouldn’t hesitate a second to jump on for a ride,” she said.
Yasmine even turned out to be fearless when it came to plotting for ways to sneak out of the house without her parents knowing about it. Looking incredibly excited, she recalled that she once wanted to travel abroad alone to Germany to see her friends but she also knew that her parents wouldn’t agree that she travelled alone.
She made up a story to her parents that she would travel with the university (American University in Cairo) abroad. She faked brochures for the travel and set up all possible ways by which she would convince her parents that she would travel with the university abroad.
When I asked her whether her parents had eventually found out, her eyebrows rose really high and said: “No, they still haven’t found out..not yet!”
She only had slight fears and rather creeps whenever she saw big flies, she would get shivers if she saw insects near her, “I was once sprayed pyrosol (insecticide) in my room and I rushed out of my bedroom so these insects wouldn’t run after me or come out in my face,” she recounted.
“I won’t say that I don’t have fears at all, because I do and yet, I choose to bury my fears and live my life the way I want to live it, baring its ups and downs…c’est la vie,” she said.
The Adventures of Tintin 