the first (and LONGEST) account from Egypt

Hello all,

Thanks for caring that I’m still alive and not dying from food poisoning.

Leaving home was a bit rushed when Super Shuttle came to pick me up 15 minutes early from the house. I realized I was officially on my way back to the Middle East when the driver took the bag Michelle was carrying and informed me it was overweight (over 50 lbs) and I now owed him $10. I told him I doubted it could be that much (especially with Michelle carrying it) but I would weigh it at the terminal and IF it was overweight I would be happy to give him the money.

After a rushed goodbye, we were off and ended up picking up a group from the Marriot off 59. Trying to get into friend making mode I asked a woman if they were coming from some sort of convention. She said that they were all parents of children with “specially challenged personalities”. Being thick I just assumed this meant child geniuses and therefore was pretty impressed and asked what school her daughter went to. Wrong idea. I finally started to understand what was going on when the group of them started up a “my teen is so much worse than your teen” debate. The stories were horrifying. When we finally arrived at the airport a guy from their group asked me where I was off to. “Cairo” I said to which he responded, “If you were my daughter I’d never let you get on that plane.” It took everything I had to smile, give a slight shrug and NOT say “That’s because you’ve let your daughter do everything but...” (P.S. my “overweight” hiking bag was 31 lbs…shmuck).

It's funny how even at the very beginning of a trip you can realize it will change you forever just by taking notice of the little things. My seat on the plane was comfortably missing windows. I say comfortably because I was exhausted yet too intrigued by the movie selection to let myself go to sleep. Bleary-eyed half way through watching Penelope, I realized that that attempt was probably the first of many mistakes to come on this journey. The guy next to me must have been 6'5" and was an air force guy who had only been in America for a "short stint". Needless to say none of this made me feel bad enough to hand over my prized aisle seat and switch places with him so I proceeded to pass right out. Next came Michelle's letter...honestly, probably the best laugh I've had in a few weeks. She always knows just what to say.

Heathrow:
The first thing I saw when I got off the plane was the solid gray of London (I actually laughed out loud). I found my way to the connecting flights and got in the "que" with a screaming toddler a few people ahead of me. Next thing I knew I heard a splash. Thinking the kid had peed himself I spun around and thought "phew, no pee, he just vomited everywhere, no biggie". When the line split I quickly took the longer of the two to avoid a re-run (after security I made sure to book it to the bathroom for a scrub down and pop an airborne, you know, just in case). After this I started to notice all the little oddities people tend to miss when rushing through an airport like the guy ahead of me in the security line chugging a bite sized Smirnoff in order to make sure he got his money's worth, the old Indian lady who, upon closer inspection, had neglected to remove the price sticky from her blazing green new sari and, finally, the finale starring my 20 minute bag search and the defilement of my toothbrush. I feel for Cook now after they glanced at all my Arabic stuff and quietly asked me where I was going. "Cairo", I replied which was only followed by a silent nod and a confession that they stopped me because of cuticle clippers that turned out were kosher to bring all along.

A $4 toothbrush and $2.5 water later I finally boarded the plane to "Al Qahira" (Cairo). I think that's when my nerves began to kick in because the minute I saw the characters that were sitting behind me I was convinced they were Muslim Brotherhood operatives who were going to high jack the plane and end my life at the ripe old age of 21. I started to hyperventilate so I whipped out my Tehillim (psalms), whispered the Beirkat Haderech (the prayer for traveling) and stuck it down my shirt to "protect me while I slept" ...I'm ridiculous, none of you have to tell me that, but I will say I've never felt closer to G-d. On the up side, British Airways has AMAZING vegetarian dishes so the minute I got my Aloo Gobi Indian special I knew nothing could go wrong. I love food.

I arrived in Cairo only to find out that when they called my name on the plane it wasn't to herd me into some student group but to alert me that, of course, my baggage was in limbo. After 20 minutes of description and directions I finally found my group and was ready to go. Interestingly, everyone that was waiting for the ride to AUC (American University of Cairo) wasn't actually on the pick up list and the one guy who was, “George”, … well, we never did seem to find him...poor George. After a very long trip I crashed the minute I got to my "temporary room".

The next day I woke up around 11 and was lucky enough to catch the shuttle with a bunch of American guys who were just as lost as I was about where to go and what to do. I still had to take my placement test and get an ID so we walked around the campus for a while to get our bearings. We finally reached the ALI (Arabic Language Institute) office where I proceeded to talk my way out of the placement test. I love Egypt. I ate my first “fool” (pretty much Egypt’s version of Mexican food, spiced re-fried beans in pita) off the street and grabbed a water which came to the grand total of 2.5 LE (about 40 cents). Not bad, I didn't get sick but I'm going to have to figure out something else to live off of. That evening we met some friends of friends and headed out to have the "best Lebanese in Cairo" (since it seems Egypt doesn't know how to cook anything but everyone else's food) in a very white man's burden hotel. After a day of walking in downtown Cairo (which they say is the equivalent to smoking 30 cigarettes) I was sweaty, smelly, had black feet, an attitude and was hungry...in other words I felt like a native. In the end, the restaurant that was dripping with American money and over priced. Then, for the first time, I realized I might actually end up being hungry for two straight months.

At around 3am that morning I got a phone call in my new, permanent, room that my poor roommate, Summer (who I adore, she's my year from Hawaii but goes to school in Oregon), had to answer. It was the reception desk alerting me that my bag had arrived….let me repeat at 3am. I told the guy I was sleeping and I’d get it in the morning. Fifteen minutes later the phone rang again, same guy. “Is your bag black?” “Yes!” I said. Hang up. Thirty minutes later as I was about to finally fall asleep…ring…"I’m sorry but tomorrow morning is too late to pick up bag, you must come now to get it.” “Couldn't I get it at 9?” “No.” “OK, well how about 8?” *whispering with the guards* “Alright that’s fine.” I got back into bed, laid there for 10 then decided that between the jet lag and the fear of the phone ringing yet again there was no hope for sleep…it was time to get the damn bag. I stomped down to the lobby where the reception guy picked up the hiking bag and said “Too heavy!” I just rolled my eyes, mumbled something about the benefits of working out and turned to leave. “Wait, we have to check.” They had decided that, already having had the bag in their possession for 1 ½ hrs, they NOW needed to check my bag. All this entailed was squeezing the top pocket and giving a nod. Right, because after that type of thorough investigation I am obviously not a terrorist.

The next day a guy in our group spontaneously decided he wanted to screw orientation and make his way to Dahab (a small diving town on the Red Sea in Sinai, about a 7-9 hour drive from Cairo) on the 1pm bus…it was 12 when we all decided it sounded like a good idea. We scrambled to get our things together and finally made it to the bus station when we found out the times online were old and the bus actually left at 2. This meant that our four friends who had ended up at the wrong station actually had time to make it to the right one and by 2:30 (punctual by Egyptian standards) and we were on our way.

Well, 10 ½ hours, 9 checkpoints (after number 5 the guards stopped asking “that American group” for IDs and had somehow picked up a body guard) and 10 ticket checks later we were in Dahab. When we got off we were bombarded by four different cab drivers trying to get the nine of us (plus these two Canadians we picked up along the way, but we all know Canadians don’t actually count so really there were just 9 of us (love you Dre)) to take their cab. We ended up going with this guy that said he had air conditioning and could fit all of us. So we shooed the other guys away and followed him to….his flat bed mini truck. It was hysterical, 11 of us were trying to fit into the bed of the truck with all our luggage during which our “taxi” driver almost got into a fist fight with one of the other drivers since he “had stolen all the money for the evening” while I subsequently got a splinter in my ass. Fun. Ten minutes into the drive we realized the guy had no clue where the hotel we wanted was and one of the other cabbies was so pissed he had decided to follow us. So what did we do? We took pictures of him of course! When we got to the supposed hotel, our driver went around asking for directions while the other cabbie got out and tried to convince all of us to go with him. Luckily none of our Arabic was good enough to explain anything to him so he got frustrated and left.

We all ended up at a place called the Bedouin lodge at around 12am. After sufficiently telling our driver I refused to pay him any more and to stop loitering around for more money, we paid the 25LE for our rooms and decided it was already too late to go to bed and had to stay to watch the sunrise. It was beautiful. People from Poland, England and Aussie came to sit with us and we all talked till the morning. Everything was great till one Aussie invited himself into our group by asking which of us believed in G-d. We all raised our hands. The guy then used this to segue into the longest anti-American speech ever saying things like we were all Texan G–d loving idiots and that the entire rest of the world wished America didn’t exist. Yea…and I thought Aussies were fun loving neutrals, kinda like the Swiss, ya? No.

After the sunrise we all got ready to go on a snorkeling, camel riding, Bedouin hospitality trip. So the nine of us crammed into the back of a jeep wrangler and we were off like sardines to the Blue Hole. We arrived 20 minutes later after thoroughly freaking out our driver by singing everything from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to “American Pie” at the top of our lungs for the entire ride. The Blue Hole is an 80 meter deep hole in the coral reef about 5’ away from the shore. I’ve never been so freaked out in my life. One minute you’re swimming with the fish (barracuda, rainbow fish, those yellow and black ones, jellies) around coral, next minute you’re staring into…nothingness. It literally just drops off. Let’s just say I avoided swimming across it.

After our hour in the water it was time for us to get harassed by every 6-15yr old Bedouin girl that lived in the area. Each were selling the same friendship bracelets as the next and were yelling, “You buy from me! You buy form me, not her!” My poor friends, I think three got sucked into buying something like 6 bracelets a piece (including the guys) plus 30 LE kafias (the white clothes arab men wrap around their heads).

A Bedouin then came to pick us up for our camel tour along the shore. He said the camels were just over the mountain, what he meant was over the mountain range. One guy in our group had been unable to shake off this specific Bedouin girl. Still clinging to him as we trudged along she kept repeating, “You promised to you buy from me. You buy more from me, NOW!” It was getting ridiculous. We tried pulling her off him only to find out that Bedouin children, along with camels, have a harsher bite then bark. She literally bit us. What else is there to say?

We got to our camels and I struck up a conversation with the Bedouin guide. “They each have their own personality,” he told me. I asked what sex they all were. “They all masculine, no female…female too much temper, like with people, they no good to work with, just have babies. Masculines are strong, like people, you know?” “Right, right” I said. Naturally, when it came time to mount I asked for the tallest, biggest “masculine” but they just shook their head at me and pointed to the first camel in line. So I ignored him and kept walking to the big one until they came, took me by the arm, took my bags and put me on the one they were pointing to. Fine, I thought, this isn’t so bad. When he stood all I could see were my friends legs and I realized what had happened…I had gotten the dinky camel…his name was then Dinky.

An hour and a half later (after crossing the most beautiful terrain (where Saudi could be seen across the water) we were at the Bedouin camp, sore and hungry. The Bedouin told us it would be about an hour before lunch so we decided to go for a second dip (a few of my friends saw a family of baby hammerheads!). After about two hours and some burning sand later lunch and tea were served. Let me fill you all in. A girl in our group had previously lived with Bedouin for 3 weeks in Jordan and had contracted a parasite that lasted for about 6 months. It is also custom to eat EVERYTHING that is placed before you as to not insult the clan. Altogether, none of us had a good feeling about what was to follow. We slowly ate through some rice and “macaroni” (any type of pasta is called macaroni here) but quickly figured out there was no way we would be able to finish everything (thank G-d for stray dogs). But guess who was there to clean up the left over food, our lovely Bedouin friend Ms. Bitey from the Blue Hole (to be recognized by an extreme set of buck teeth). She had followed us the whole way, but slipped out of the tent quietly and with a sly smile.

It was now something like 120 degrees and we all wanted out. Between the flies and people dropping because of the food the last thing I wanted to think about was going to the restroom…but it had to happen. In Islam, it is “haram” (forbidden) to wash oneself with anything but water. Therefore, there was no toilet paper for us westerners. Bedouin bathrooms = wooden cube + hole in ground + flies the size of toads + water in bucket to wash it all away with. ‘Nough said.

We weren’t allowed to leave till 4 because of the heat, but when we got back on the camels guess who I got…you guessed it, Mr. Dinky. The way back was far less organized. It quickly became obvious that our camels had had a long day because Dinky most definitely no longer wanted to lead, all of them had forgotten what a line was, and they all began packing themselves together into one large camel group while on the cliffs with a twenty foot drop to the ocean, nice (Dinky only almost fell about 3 times). It makes sense now that Egyptian cabbies must learn their driving from camels. As we went on, Dinky finally made his way to the front of the herd but then proceeded to freak out that he was leading and promptly laid down in the middle of the path. He did this twice. I was not impressed. My friends, however, couldn’t have been more amused. Alas, it seems Dinky is just a follower at heart, what a shame.

More on the rest of Dahab and the start of school will come later, but for now stay tuned and I hope you all are doing well. If any of you are still reading this obscenely rambling thing...I love you and if you write me I swear I'll write back...according to Egyptian punctuality of course.