Exodus

Wow. It's still pretty crazy to me that I am in Israel. I'm sorry that I have not been more active on the blog, but things have been moving pretty quickly. I have been updating my twitter almost daily to keep you guys in-the-know between my posts and there should be several more up here before I get back to the States. Speaking of the old U.S. of A., I just bought my plane ticket home. I should be getting in June 23rd in the early evening, just ahead of Independence Day, after four solid months abroad. Feeling that I have a somewhat limited timetable here I have been frantically trying to do as much as possible. All of that recent traveling (to Akko, Jerusalem, and Haifa) and going out (in Tel Aviv) has left my laundry unwashed, my fridge empty, and my blog unwritten in in two weeks [those things got done today]. Things are getting busier at work, as well, as we get pushed for an important grant deadline May 31 for our MedTales project. As if that wasn't enough I am also planning my life post-Israel. Graduate school, GREs, going abroad again (hopefully) are all on the agenda.

This is the final Egypt post, but I have many more cool trips to share with you. Barring laziness, busy-ness, and bad internet-i-ness (sp?) I will keep cranking out posts until I'm back in the America.

Now, onto the post:

On our first day in Luxor our handler picked us up from the train station, dropped us off at the hostel, and agreed to pick us up at a designated time in the afternoon for our first tour. Having spent the morning sleeping, we were famished and decided to eat an hour or so before our tour time. When we realized we would be late for the tour we asked the restaurant manager to make a phone call to our handler. After the manager assured us that he would make the call we sat down to lunch. What we didn't know was that he never ended up making the phone call and Muhammed (our handler) waited on us for half an hour (very pissed even after apologies). Fast forward two days--Muhammed picks us up to take us to our overnight train back to Cairo and says, "You don't have the tickets?!" We felt thoroughly flustered and slightly pissed knowing that he was supposed to have gotten the money to purchase our tickets. After more confusion and something about a flight being arranged for us from Luxor to Cairo he revealed that he was messing with us--to get back at us for our first day lateness. Justin wasn't happy, Sam though it was comedic genius (wanting to give a big tip for the joke), and I was somewhere in between.

Our train ride was, obviously, uncomfortable and tiring, and upon arrival to our hostel we found that we did not have a room. We walked to the Canadian hostel which had been reserved for us instead and crashed for an hour. This was supposed to be our day in authentic Cairo. We were going to visit the Arab Suq (bazzar) and a bunch of mosques, but this was our last day in Egypt and we were exhausted. Somehow mustering the strength to move we got into a cab and got to the Suq. The area of the market was large and we wandered in and out of the crooked, winding streets. Like often happens, we met an Egyptian who showed us to an authentic (only Egyptians) hookah cafe and then to a spice shop where we spent somewhere around an hour bargaining with the shop keeper (it's a cultural thing). [Trip Advice: Don't leave the spices you just negotiated an hour for in the cab on the way back to the hostel] We also went into a 500-year-old mosque, which in a country where every mosque is a historical treasure, is not such a big deal.

Justin and Sam and the middle of the Suq.

Me, somewhere where I don't know where I am.

An honest [not sarcastic] picture with our Egyptian Suq "guide"--an interesting fellow.

Some historic mosque--big whoop, whatever.

The next morning we began what seemed like an endless journey. It began before 5 AM to catch the 6 AM bus to Taba (Egypt's border town). Sleeping soundly, we were woken up because our bus had broken down and our replacement was less than adequate (seeing as how it was missing half the seats--seen below). I won't even get into the ripoff lunch and snacks we got (probably four times the actual price). At the lunch place we switched onto another bus and a few hours later we were back in Taba! Our enthusiasm for leaving a dirty, polluted, and challenging country to a "Western" one quickly waned as the Israelis held the line on the border for about an hour (took two hours to get through) for what amounted to something like a bunch of change in a backup and a laptop battery (details are fuzzy). This would have been fine had the hundred Egyptian tourists been searched as thoroughly, but seeing as how the line stalled at three Americans and an Israeli family of four you have to wonder about the efficacy of the Israeli border control.

Riding Dirty.

Upon crossing the border we got a bus ride (one hour in vacation traffic--Eilat is a hotspot during Passover) to the bus station. When the bus arrived, people who had bought tickets in advance got on first and sat in their assigned seats. The bus driver then proceeded to oversell the remaining tickets on the bus and we ended up sitting/standing in the aisle for about four hours of the bus ride. All said, the trip took an estimated 20 hours from the 6 AM bus to the 1 AM cab ride back to Ra'anana. I never though I'd miss my bed [cot] at the absorption center as much as I did.