So. The equivalent of Christmas just happened in Egypt (and the Muslim world) mid November. I had 10 glorious days off as 5 million Muslims made hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Eid el Adhr is a time to celebrate with family and friends. Its tradition for a family to slaughter a lamb or a cow ( I saw the end of a cow slaughtering...it was very..interesting) You prepare and eat a third of the animal then share the rest with friends and the poor. My friend here was given a third of a cow to eat. If your curious, a third of a cow can feed about 9 hungry post college age kids. At any rate, it was a chance for us to get off campus and forget about Arabic homework for a little while.
Oh course, I decided it was a great time to get sick, so the beginning of this nice vacation I had a fever and strep throat. The bright side of living in Egypt is nobody really cares if you have a perspiration for anything. You can walk into any pharmacy, ask for a drug, and get it immediately. And very inexpensively too. Three USD for Penicillin and I was good to go. Five of us headed to Dahab, which is about 7 hours away by bus on the Red Sea. It is a very popular diving location and there are tons of different spots you can go to. It is also a very relaxed and layed back atmosphere, which not much to do besides go to the beach everyday and go to dinner at night. It was an hour from Sharm el Sheik, so if you wanted to go wild, you could go there, but this was more relaxing. We would pack our speakers, wine and beer in bags and lay around on the beach and contemplating swimming to Saudi Arabia. There were stray camels that would occasionally walk by, along with the many dogs and cats that inhabit all of Egypt. We spend one day going to various dive holes and snorkeling and seeing some amazing fish and coral and all that snorkeling entails. It went by way too fast, but at least the weather was nice (it was warmer than Cairo, and much prettier)
Two of our friends left early and the three of us decided to go on the "adventure" of a lifetime. The Israeli border is 2 hours by bus from where we were staying, and as Israel is not a particularly large country, we would be able to see some places. So we signed up for this tour that would take care of all the hard details, such as visas, getting into and out of the country, busing from all the places, and lunch etc. It was priced at 160, and the website said that " a Russian tour guide will be with you throughout, and an English tour guide will be available in Israel" When we met with the representatives from the company before we left, they informed us that they forgot to update their website, but for 20$ more, we could get on a full day tour with an English only guide. Probably more useful than the Russians. So we paid up and went on our very merry way.
In typical Egyptian fashion, nobody is on time. In this case, we were supposed to be picked up at 8pm and taken to the bus which would take us to the border. At 815, we called the people and they said (scam!) they forgot to tell us that they pushed the time back to 11pm. So after watching some House and South Park, we tried again. And we were thankfully picked up. We were taken to a rest stop in the middle of no where and we waited for our big bus. By 1130 we were zipping up the coast to Israel and trying to sleep a little. Everything on this trip took about 2 hours, so around 2 am we get to the border and got ourselves in line. A very very long line. There were maybe 5-8 coach buses dropping people off (most of then were Russian). The distance we had to go between to get from Egypt to Israel was about the length of a football field. It took 5 hours to walk 100 yards. At one point, I saw somebody start taking pictures so, since I delight in taking pictures of places I go to, I did to. Until some Egyptian officer walks up to me (speaking very little English) and motions with his wrists locked together. Oh. Boy. Am I getting arrested? I decided quickly that couldn't be the case since he walked past girl number one taking pictures and said nothing to her, or even looked her way. So I just laughed, but said I would delete the pictures (pictures of the people who were with me with Egypt in the background actually). But no. He says, come with me. Oh dear. What is there to do but laugh nervously? So I cut this pretty long line right to the front (as he is still motioning with his wrists together) and tells me to take out my passport. So I dig it out, all the while insisting that I will delete the pictures and I'm really really sorry. I give two Egyptian officers my passport and they look at it and ask "Oh your American?" Not the time to be a smartass and tell than no, I'm not American. So I said yes and they looked at each other and said, "Oh, okay. Go ahead to the next (long) line." I told them I was with some friends so they said "Okay, sit here" And proceeded to take my two friends out of line, and we went along to stand in another line for 4.5 hours.
By 730am and after watching the sun rise and get detained for a very short about of time (and questioned about father and grandfather's names, why we were in Egypt and why we were studying Arabic) we were finally on the bus and very tired and hungry. We tried to sleep a little as we zipped through the surprisingly beautiful Negev Desert and we stopped at a rest stop to get some breakfast. We walked in a la zombies and blindly started looking for something edible. And did I find gold. There, amongst all the fake candy, were Reese's Peanut Butter Cups! After jumping around and shoving a package in my friends face in excitement, I proceeded to buy every single Reese's in the store. Due to some excellent rationing, I ate the first one immediately, and can now enjoy two Reese's a week until I go home and I can get all the Reese's I would like. The trip got infinitely better from then on.
Back on the bus, however, we realized we were slightly scammed. Instead of getting out English only tour we got a German tour. Yes, we toured Israel with a bus full of middle aged Germans and a tour guide who spoke primarily in German for their benefit. Never a dull moment. Anyways, our first stop was the Dead Sea. It is 37% salt, and in about 10 years, it will be all gone, unless a pipeline from the Red Sea is made. So we went and they had us change into our bathing suits. Except it was this really small room and I'm the youngest person in there with all these middle age European women who have absolutely no qualms about getting butt naked in front of each other. We'll leave it at: I hid in a corner. So we went swimming. Or more like floating. You can say yeah you float in the Dead Sea as much as you want, but until you do it... It is by far the weirdest feeling I have ever experienced. I'm guessing its sort of what being weightless must be like. You bob around, and if you flip from your back to your stomach, the momentum keeps going and you can roll/flop around, weightlessly. Incidentally, there are lifeguards on duty because you can drown. Except I'm not really sure how. It has something to do with suction and not being able to get back on your back. But in this scenario, you would have to have your head underwater, and that water is like acid. It is not pleasant. We spent about an hour there and then back to the bus for, yes, another 2 hour drive.
This time, 2 hours took us into Jerusalem. It is an extraordinarily beautiful city, and we drove to the top of the Mount of Olives to see it. It is pretty big and you can see clearly major landmarks, such as the Dome of the Rock. We didn't spend much time there in the afternoon (it was about 1230 or 1 at this point) and we were off to Bethlehem, which is maybe 20 minutes from Jerusalem. The drive was gorgeous, and you could see olive trees everywhere, as well as the infamous settlements that the Israeli government are building in Palestinian land (Bethlehem is in the West Bank, which is Palestinian). One tidbit they fail to tell you in the papers is that the settlements are all on top of hills so the Israelis are in prime defensive position. Another non-related tidbit is that Bethlehem in Arabic means "House of Meat". So we got into Bethlehem with no problems and we went to the Church of the Nativity. It is the place where they believe Jesus was born; there were hundreds of people there of course, so we quickly walked around and also went into the neighboring Catholic Church (the only one I've seen in the Middle East thus far). It was gorgeous. We ate a quick lunch, then spent about 3 hours trying to get back into Jerusalem (Israeli land) from Bethlehem (Palestinian land). It was dark at this point, maybe 6ish. We went directly to the Wailing Wall, or Western Wall. This remaining part of the wall date back to 19 BC from Herod the Great. So its old. It was built encompassing the Temple Mount, which Jews believe is the site God chose the Divine Presence to reside. Its an extremely holy site in Judaism as well as Islam, as it is right next to the Dome of the Rock (third holiest site in Islam). Muslims, however, are forbidden to call it the Wailing Wall. We spent an hour or so there, manged to get lost in the souq, or bazaar and miss the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Figures. I did get to overhear this gem, though.
One of the German ladies in our group was talking to our tour guide. He was a young guy from Egypt but spoke fluent German, but they were speaking in English at this point. So she points to some Orthodox Jews, and asks who they are. Our guide says their Orthodox, you've never seen an Orthodox Jew before?. She goes, No! To which our guide responds, "Oh right, I forgot. That's because they don't like you" She, immediately asked us if we had ever seen Orthodox Jews and my friend replied, "Of course. I live in NYC, there more Jews there then this entire country". It was 10pm, we were ready to go.
Our bus ride back to the border took 4 hours this time, since we were further North and would not be making all the previous stops. We were hoping that walking across the border this time wouldn't take 5 hours. It didn't. It took maybe 3.5 to 4. Such an improvement. Back on another bus we went, for, yup, 2 hours back to Dahab. We finally got back to our hotel at sunrise, aka 530am. So after leaving at 11pm on Wednesday, we got back at 530am on Friday. Quite. An. Adventure.
The next day we had to go back to Cairo. We got on another bus. For 7 hours.
Back in Cairo, I slept a lot. Shocking. Anyways, break was great. It was a short week because we had Thanksgiving off. Thanksgiving in Egypt is a story in itself so that will have to wait for a rainy day. I hope you all had great holidays and until then, enjoy your last day of November :)
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