The past two weeks of revolts in Egypt kept Rehab Morsi and her husband, Yasser Mohamed, awake day and night, taking turns to watch news channels to stay up to date with what is going on in their home country.
"We are so excited, we feel like we want to do anything, whatever it is," she said. "It's really hard when you are here, especially during the revolution and the crisis in Egypt. You are here and you can't do anything but watch CNN and Al-Jazeera 24/7."
The series of events that developed in Egypt put the couple in an emotional roller-coaster, starting with some messages Mohamed saw on Facebook. The message was a video of a woman calling for men and women to march peacefully on Jan. 25 to change Egypt. Jan. 25 is a national holiday in Egypt commemorating the police forces.
"I was scared, I thought something would happen," Mohamed said. "I saw some of the people on the protests, these are brilliant young kids that were killed. It was terrible and it takes a lot of guts to do it."
The couple was even more disappointed when Egypt turned off the Internet for a few days.
"We were so frustrated. We were so sad because this had not happened ever before. You just don't cut off the Internet in these times," Morsi said. "The government was trying whatever they could do stop people from communicating."
Though Morsi and Mohamed have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, they still keep in touch with their family and friends. They make sure to visit Egypt once a year to have their children exposed to the culture.
The couple traveled to the U.S. 12 years ago to finish their higher education studies. They lived in New York for several years before coming and settling down in Indiana. Mohamed now works at St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital while Morsi teaches at the Intensive English Institute at Ball State.
Morsi said students and other faculty showed their sympathy and support every day she went to work.
"Everybody in Ball State that knew me, but specially my students, they were so supportive," she said. "They would send me e-mails every day, send me text messages every day. They would stop by my office every day to see how I was doing."
The revolution in Egypt was something neither Morsi nor Mohamed expected at the time. While they expected a national figure to step up and lead the revolution, they were surprised to see the people behind the movement.
"We were expecting something like this to happen at anytime but it happened when you wouldn't expect it from these people," Mohamed said. "It came through the youth, through social media."
Morsi and Mohamed's family lives in Cairo, the revolution's epicenter. Alaa Morsi, Rehab's bother who currently lives in Cairo, said he participated in one of the demonstrations outside the presidential palace.
"[Hosni Mubarak] kept disappointing us. He was very slow in reacting. The crowd was everywhere and you saw they all wanted to change Egypt somehow," he said. "Everything changed when the vice president announced that the ex-president was stepping down."
Morsi kept in touch with her brother, calling once a day to hear about the latest events. While the development of the issue had Morsi and Mohamed unsure of the outcome, Mohamed said he had the feeling the events were going in the right way.
"They owned this movement, I tasted freedom here [in the U.S.] but I wanted them to taste freedom over there," he said. "They are my brothers, my family, my friends. They did everything, I just watched TV and prayed for them."
Alaa said the change in Cairo was immediate when he stepped out of his home to work.
"Right now I go to my office every day, and I see is everyone out on the streets. Their eyes say, ‘This is a new Egypt,'" he said.
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