Wrapping Up (...All of December...)

Sooooo it has been a little while since my last update (*guilty face*).  The last month of school was busy, and January was... busy... yaa, busy...  anyway even though I am home now (obviously) here is a run through of how I closed out the semester.

Anna left on Sunday November 28th, so a couple days rest, then the evening of Wednesday January 1st, it was off to Cairo!!

Upon arriving in Cairo, our whole traveling party quickly realized that Cairo was pretty different from any of the places we had been during the rest of the semester.  Cairo is veerrrryyyyy crowded.  That much was clear just riding from the airport to our hostel in downtown Cairo.  It isn't just crowded though.  It's verrryyyy crowded.  Veeerrryyyyy.  I think there are some 18 million people in Cairo proper, 25 million maybe in greater Cairo.  One of the more crowded cities in the world.

It's also very dirty.  The night we arrived we walked around downtown Cairo near our hostel and there are some nasty streets and dirty places, people on the street, all kinds of yucky.  Also the air quality there is like smoking a pack of cigarettes every day you are there apparently.

But, don't let me give you the wrong idea.  Cairo is a cool place.  It's got some charm and it's a new experience, sometimes you feel like a celebrity (kids seem prone to running up to you to shake your hand or take pictures with you since you're American), and it has got some awesome history... plus the Nile.

Obviously, as a tourist, Cairo = Pyramids.  You have to go to the pyramids, it's a no-brainer, or else you fail.  So, we took care of that on the first day.  We arranged transportation and guidance at our hostel, and first they took us to the Step Pyramid, which I believe was the oldest of the bunch.  Cool.  Then an oil fragrance shop (present for Anna), then a place where they make papyrus art (they showed us how they make papyrus paper!), and then finally... the Giza pyramid complex!!

At 4500 years old these things are... old.  And big.  Very big.  We drove around to a few different viewing points, climbed on the Great Pyramid a little, snapped some tourist pictures, but we restrained ourselves from buying the ticket to go inside, or taking a camel ride.

The Sphinx is nearby too, on the other side.  We thought it was some weird sort of curse that Egyptians can't pronounce their own main attraction (they all say Sphingus or Sphinkus instead of Sphinx... I don't get it).

We were able to meet up with somebody we knew from Williams who was studying in Cairo, and he showed us around in the evening, took us too a restaurant, and taught us how not to get hit by cars when crossing the street.

The next day he took us to Old Cairo and Islamic Cairo to do some more classic sightseeing.  The Citadel was pretty cool, complete with the Muhammad Ali Mosque (which has a clock tower gifted from Napoleon... which has never worked), and the military museum.

The military museum is awesome.  It is a very interesting take on history, and everything inside is paintings and models.  The panels are written in pretty bad English, and the propaganda runs rampant.  Here is the statue outside.  Best Soldiers On Earth!!!!!

The next day we got up early and took the train to Alexandria.  Just Kidding.  That was the plan.  Instead we all got food poisoning from dinner the night before and were up all night and couldn't get out of bed on Saturday.  Oh joy.  At least we got the full, genuine Cairo experience.

Despite being only partially recovered, most of us were able to make it out to the Egypt Museum on Sunday, which was good because it is something you shouldn't miss.  Although it is somewhat cluttered and disorganized (reflective of Cairo as a whole??), it is pretty cool.  There are some great King Tut artifacts, including this guy, which everyone has seen at some point, some old mummies, sarcophagi, everything you would want to see in Egypt.

So we left Egypt, making it out safely long before the current riots, although the elections were already happening around the time we were there.  Exhausted from traveling and recovering from violent food poisoning, most of us pretty much just took it easy for the next week / weekend.  

Luckily, I did recover enough, just in time to meet Moranne and Ziv that Sunday (the 12th), for dinner.  Moranne and Ziv are cousins that live in Israel, and as chance would have it, live in Hadera which is pretty close to Haifa, only a few train stops away (although I did manage to miss the stop and have to backtrack one stop... it wasn't my fault the train was reading out the stops wrong!!).  

They met me coming off the train, and took me to Caesarea for dinner at the Koya restaurant.  Especially after cooking for myself for weeks and eating cheap food when I wasn't cooking, this was AWEsome.  I got a delicious steak and a yummy chocolate cake desert, and I then proceeded to try and capture that taste in my mouth and preserve it as I anticipated the mediocre food that I would soon again be feeding myself.  MMmmmm steak.

We had a great time at dinner and back at their house where we hung out for a little while before my return train.  Moranne and Ziv are both very funny and hospitable.  They didn't allow me to look at the prices on the menu when I was choosing a dinner, they gave me a tour of their new house, and we watched some soccer on their shiny HDTV.  Moranne showed me pictures of their family and their wedding, and she even sent me a couple to include in the blog, so enjoy!  Also: Ziv's English is better than he gives himself credit for.

Friday December 17th, Dan and I took a trip up to the northernmost coastal city in Israel, Rosh Hanikra.  It is a very beautiful little town area and strip of coast that is hard to recognize as Israel.  The cliffs here go straight into the sea, but have been carved out by the ocean so that there is a whole complex of caves that you can walk through with the ocean flowing all around you.

You can basically get within 100 feet or so (I'm awful at distance estimates) of the boarder with Lebanon which was pretty exciting as well.  Unfortunately you can't cross the border, and there were patrol boats to make sure you don't take a little afternoon swim across.  They've got it figured out I guess.

I was very proud of how close we got, until the field trip on Sunday.  I wasn't actually enrolled in the class that was going, but I hopped on anyway just for fun.  The trip was to the Lebanese boarder, and this time we went to a more militarized area, and got about as close as you can get to the border (see road below).

That is the patrol road (we saw two Israeli Humvees) and right on the other side is Lebanon.  The border is complete with barbed wire and mine fields, so no disappointments here.  We even saw saw UN cars on the other side (broke out the telephoto lens to snap those).

The field trip also took us into the Golan Heights where we could see onto the Syrian side of the border, and then concluded with a trip to the Golan Heights Winery.  A bit of a contrast there with the stops on our trip.

The following weekend was Christmas, and not wanting to avoid our typical flow of excitement, Jon and I joined some other people in the International School and went down to Jerusalem for Friday and Saturday.  Friday night, Christmas Eve, we went with some other people into Bethlehem to see some of the Christmas Eve festivities.  Bethlehem is in the West Bank, so you have to cross the checkpoints as you enter the Palestinian Territories.  It is an interesting contrast once you arrive there, as you no longer see the familiar Israeli authorities, but instead the Fatah policemen who tote AK-47s rather than the advanced Israeli machine guns.

Everything went smoothly though, and the area was abuzz with Christmas spirit.  Manger square was hoppin'.

Probably the coolest aspect of this trip was that we bussed in with an Anglican Christian group who took us to a service in the Church of the Nativity.  Christmas Eve in the Church of the Nativity, I'm such a good Jew...

Notable attendees at our service: The President and the Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority.  I didn't really realize it was them until they left halfway through, but a sliver of Abbas' head is visible in this picture.  If you look immediately to the right of this balding guy in the foreground, Abbas is the gray-haired guy who is just emerging from behind some more of the heads on the right side.  If you click on the picture to blow it up, you might be able to see what I'm talking about.  Anyway he was there and it was cool.

Obviously the following weekend was New Years, which isn't as big of a deal in Israel as it is in America, but people still celebrate it and they sent the International School students to a club on a kibbutz which was fun.

The semester finished off with exams, and all sorts of related fun academics.  Our (Mike and myself) awesome roommates threw us a going away party the evening of January 6th, because of course January 7th, it was time for me to finally come home!!

I definitely had mixed feelings upon my departure.  I had grown used to life in Israel and there were a lot of fun people (both Israeli and other internationals) that I had met and would miss, and also it was fun being a part of life in a different culture.  At the same time, I was certainly ready to be home again and see all my friends there.

My family was awaiting my return... Dad prepared my room...

... and at the airport I had a great welcoming committee!!  I've always wanted signs when I am coming off a plane, but not only did I get signs, I got a balloon!

At home there was a lot of catching up to do, including Christmas with the family, where I got lots of present (yay!)...

... and I also got to give the presents that I had bought for everyone in Israel (and that Anna had brought home for me).

I even got a full welcoming luncheon with lots of relatives and friends who came over on Sunday to see me, I'm so special :)

Rachael asked me what I liked on cakes, and then somehow put everything I said into one cake, producing some sort of crazy delicious, multi-layered chocolate, vanilla, marble, coffee, allsortsofthings uber cake.  It would be unwise to bet AGAINST her opening a bakery some day.

And back to the usual... napping in the comfy living room chairs while watching TV.

That should pretty much put the wraps on an AWESOME semester abroad.  I had such an amazing time.  Israel was incredible and I was lucky enough to be able to travel to many places within and outside of Israel, meet a lot of great people, and basically do everything I wanted to do.  It's such a hard life.  I'm glad people found it interesting to read through my accounts of some of my exploits, and I appreciate your tolerance when the stories got lengthy at times... I was in part using this blog as a way to keep a travel journal for myself, so I tried to create a middle ground of stuff I wanted to remember, and something that was reasonably readable.  I am safely back at school now and already back in the swing of things.  I have already had a couple classes, and even traveled down to Alabama to play some frisbee in warm weather (I am noticing that the weather of Alabama and Israel is strangely different from the weather here at school... I think it's called... cold?).  Everything is going well, and it is great to be back, but I miss Israel too... it's a tough life I guess.

Thanks for reading, and if anyone is thinking about going to Israel or wants to know about anything else, just contact me!!  Unless you want a quick answer.

stephenmw90@gmail.com

A Garden & A Bunch of Rocks

Part 2 of filling in the gap.

After getting back from Istanbul LATE Monday night (Tuesday morning class was productive...), we took it easy the next weekend.  Friday (November 5th) we took a little daytime outing to the Baha'i Gardens!!!!!!

Againnn, siiigh.  Actually remember this was actually the first time, my visit with Anna was the second time, so this one was much more exciting.  JK, I don't want to get in trouble...

Since I already touched on the Baha'i Gardens I'll be brief, although one thing that was cool about this was that we showed up during an actual tour, which allows you to walk down the top 9 terraces, in the actual Gardens.  You can see the top 9 terraces here...  (the somewhat hard to see, canvas covered structure in the middle of the picture is where the gold dome is supposed to be... closed for rennovation, booooooo.  The other 9 terraces continue after the dome, you can't see them in the picture).

The tour was free, as is entrance, because the Baha'i faith is run completely on donations, but only donations from Baha'i, so we aren't even ALLOWED TO PAY... awesome!!!  I love the Baha'i.

The Baha'i is a very nice faith actually... the are very peaceful and they love everybody.  Actually that's pretty much true, they believe in all the prophets from all the religions, so nobody is really "wrong", and they actively try to avoid conflict.  Baha'is from all over the world come to volunteer at the gardens, but none actually live here because they do not want to stir the pot by adding another religion to the tense mixture... I think that was pretty much the explanation.  Anyway it all sounded very nice, and I can see why they are so peaceful if they all just come to these Gardens and listen to the running water and look at the pretty plants, I know I just wanted to take a nap on the grass.

We are not allowed in the archives, but they still look cool.

Does this scene look familiar??  It's almost like deja vu... I can't put my finger on it... it's almost like... 2 posts ago... or something... ahh I can't put my finger on it.

Anyway if you want more pretty gardens, the rest of these aren't up yet but all of the pictures from when Anna and I went are in the album of her visit.

Mooooovin on.

The rest of the weekend was quiet.  If you don't really plan ahead it is easy to get stuck around campus / nearby because the busses stop from Friday mid afternoon until Saturday night / Sunday.  Shabbat.  The cruelest trick in Israel, you wait all week for the weekend, then weekend comes... and you can't get anywhere!!!  I guess we manage... but still...

So one weekend of rest was enough we decided, so next Thursday (the 11th), Dan and I hopped on a bus from Haifa to Eilat, just for kicks.

I won't include a map, but Haifa is almost as far north on the coast as you can get, and Eilat is in the southernmost tip on the gulf.  6 hours on the bus.  Good weekend plan right?

Upon arriving we took a short taxi to the Yitzhak Rabin crossing and walked into Jordan!!  The border crossing is a peculiar experience.  It seems like it should be a tense experience, and in some ways it is.  Barbed wire.  Machine guns.  A weird walk through purgatory as you cross in between the two countries on foot with nobody around and just a fenced in path.  At the same time it is strangely casual though.  One of the guys with a machine gun was wearing a striped polo shirt (was he supposed to be there??).  The Jordanians joked with us and made fun of us etc.  The checkin seemed kind of haphazard... I don't really know what to think.  All I can say is that it makes a big difference that the two countries have a formal peace between them... cause it's either that experience or the one you get on the other borders (Lebanon, Syria) where, you know, you get arrested / sent back.  I take my wins where I get them.

From the border we took a 2 hour taxi to Petra, which was our ultimate destination for the weekend.  Petra is a popular destination from Israel, even more so after it was put on the new list of the 7 wonders of the world.  Very exciting.

Basically it is the remains of an ancient city that used to be a big trade hub back in the day... but the cool part is, the city was naturally hidden by a giant, long, narrow split in a mountain, and the city consists of facades and rooms carved out of the side of the cliffs.  Soooo cool.

Dan and I went down on Thursday, but Mike and Jon had to meet us the next day because of their classes.  The benefit of going down on Thursday was that we got to catch the last showing of the weekend of Petra By Night.  Petra By Night is when they set up little bag candles all along the walk through the canyon and into the opening at the end in front of one of the main buildings, called the Treasury.

Walk in.

This was the scene when we arrived at the Treasury.

Once here everyone sits down, gets really quiet, and the Bedouins bring you tea and play some music on their traditional instruments, and sing a song or two.  Did I mention... sooo cooooll???

Plus, also included in this trip is the

You look around, see the sand, candle lit stone facade, Bedouin music, eerie silence, stone cliffs, look up to the night sky, back to the sand, Holy &$%! I'm sitting in the middle of the desert in the middle of Jordan!!!!!!

moment.

Friday, we returned.. this time, Petra By Day.  I just made that up.  It's just normal Petra.

Here is the very same Treasury, by day.  If anyone has seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will recognize it from about 45 seconds of footage in the ending scenes.  The people here LOVE THAT. They are obsessed.  I hadn't seen the movie but our hostel showed it at night.  They have a "vote" every evening on what to watch.  Guess what is always watched.

We found Jordanians to be very nice.  Every night our hostel made us an all you can eat buffet.... um... favorite hostel ever?  Quite possible.  They know the way to my heart.

Roman theater... but carved out of a cliff!

Urn tomb... carved out of a cliff!

These things are everywhereee.  Hundreds.  Dan and I took a little side hike, detour thing.  We asked some guide for directions, and he told us where to go, and mentioned we could take the side hike as an alternate way back.

Guide: Ya you can check it out if you want.  Just make sure you have plenty of water... tourists tend to get lost up there, but you guys look young and fit.


As Dan likes to point out, we focused more on the "young and fit" and less on the, "people get lost up there".

We also had about a liter of water between us.

Hmmm..

Of course we went.  We were having trouble finding the entrance, and I jokingly pointed out some sort of rocky ledge.  We tried it out and it actually kind of worked... which should have been a bad sign, but at the time, it seemed ok...

I wouldn't say we got lost per say... but we did scramble all over rocks without much idea of where we were going, with the constant, "well we can just check over here", mentality digging us further and further into our hole of doom.  For over an hour...

On the plus side, we saw all sorts of cool formations off the beaten path from where all the tourists go... those little carved houses in the side of the mountains are eeeeverywhere!!!

So obviously we didn't die, but we almost did.  Totally.  It was intense.  We made it out on our last sips of water and drops of hope.  Enough drama.

Besides the Treasury, the other highlight is to do the 800 (time consuming) steps up to the Monastery, which is enormous and also awesome.

And we went to the "Best View in Petra" sign to look out over Wadi Arabia.

The next day we did a little more Petra stuff, but not too much, the one full long day took care of most of it, and you can only hear / see so many rocks in one blog entry.

Another highlight was the election of a political candidate in Wadi Musa (the town you stay in when you visit Petra) while we were there.  Dan and I were very disappointed that we missed the celebration, but Jon and Mike were able to stop by while we were doing some additional sightseeing.  To celebrate, they killed 10 camels and a lot more goats and made a feast.  Yahoooo!!!  My kind of party.

We all went back together on Saturday night into Eilat, walked the boardwalk a bit, then rested up for our marvelous 6 hour bus home.  This was one of those vacations that you need a vacation from when you get back... but totally worth it, very beautiful and unique.  Everyone should go!  (Stephen's Travel Agency).

For everyone doing the math, you already know that the next weekend was November 20th... which is when Anna arrived!!!  Therefore, the gap is filled, and blogging will henceforth resume in December.  Chilling I know.  (that one is for Mom)

Not Constantinople...

After my last update, which took place at the then present time, I will now naturally jump back in time to fill in some of the material between where I had previously left off, and Anna's visit.  Bear with me.

Speaking of the visit, another day's worth of pictures are now up... our trip to the Baha'i Gardens!

http://picasaweb.google.com/stephenmw90

Before Anna's visit, my last update had been me just arriving and settling into school, so let us pick up from there and I will try to move pretty quickly to get back to the present.

SO, I settled in the weekend of October 8th - 10th, toured the city a bit, yada yada, and then I had my first week of classes.  The next weekend (10/15 - 10/17), many of the international kids took a trip down to the Carmel beach on Friday.  I will spare you another picture of my "bronzed Mediterranean skin" for now.  Saturday / Sunday, there was a short school trip to Jerusalem, but having just came from Jerusalem, Mike and I instead took a day trip to Caesarea.  Caesarea is a town with a harbor that was renovated by King Herod (same guy who did Masada... it's old...) to make a big trading port and impress the Romans or something.  So, there are a lot of cool Roman ruins here and it is a very pretty area.

One thing that I found pretty cool here was that the harbor was not actually originally well suited for a deep water port, so Herod had the area dug deeper, and dropped a bunch of concrete crates (or something like that) into the water to create a seawall, and voila, deep water port.

Also, I made time to lounge in a roman bathtub.

It looks like a hot tub to me... mmm...

Further activities included exploring the various ancient temples, houses, the big Roman-style theater, and racing some horses around the giant Hippodrome.

I won.

Another highlight / signature landmark of Caesarea are the extensive aqueducts there, of which we visited a portion.  I think there were more farther down, but we had to do a fair bit of walking just to get to this chunk, and it was just a day trip soo.. you know.

After another enchanting week of class, I hopped on another school organized trip, this time up north for some hiking in the Golan Heights.

This is an interesting area, not just because it is very pretty, and has notable landmarks like the Sea of Galilee, but also because in recent history it has been a point of... tension... between Israel and Syria.  Syria was kind of upset when Israel took it from them some 40 odd years ago... Israel was upset that rockets were being shot from there into Israel... something along those lines.  No matter, we avoided any military skirmishes and enjoyed ourselves, and I myself am happy that Israel has the land since that means I can hike there.  Also so rockets don't come into Haifa and hit my blast room.

On the first day of hiking, I don't think we were technically in the heights, just the general area, Mt. Meron I believe.  Some nice views were seen by all, and I learned that Lebanon also borders Israel in this region.

I can see Lebanon from my house!  (Where all those green trees end in the distance and the rocks begin, that's the border.) 

Despite our ideas of taking a nice day trip to Lebanon since the border was soooo cloooseeee, no such detour was made.  We thought it might be perceived as a border raid or something.  Again, no military engagement on this trip.

To finish off the day we visited the recently rehabilitated Hulu Valley reserve for some bird watching, seen heaaare.

The next day it was on to the Yehudia trail in the Golan Heights.  This was the harder of the two options, and it proved to be a very beautiful walk through this rift thingy.

The hike was mostly along a stream, and we got to stop at multiple waterfalls for a little swimming, but the real challenge of the hike proved to be the deep pools that we had to cross in order to continue on the trail.

I know I know I was a swimmer, no problem crossing a pool right?  Well funnily enough, when I swam in high school I didn't have a backpack with my camera inside.  I double bagged that sucker, and jumped in with it held as high above my head as possible...

mmffttplahahhhgarglegarglegargle

Ya I don't float that well in the first place so I'm pretty sure all other people saw was my wrists sticking out of the water with my bag, and the rest of me completely under.  I managed to come up for air luckily, but this was much more strenuous than I expected.  I was very relieved to make it across... not as much to find out we had to do it twice.

Break for some tanned guys.

Final destination of the hike was a scenic cove area that was known as "Heaven".  Dramatic.  Very nice though.

Moving on.

classes classes... classes...

Next weekend!  Man those classes just fly by (For those keeping track this is weekend of 10/29 - 10/31 now).

At the beginning of this week, I didn't really have much planned.  On Monday or Tuesday, some very impulsive flights were booked, and suddenly I had plans.  For anyone paying attention to the titles of these posts, you have probably deduced that I must be talking about...

Question:  Not Constantinople?

Answer:  Istanbul!!

Sorry I couldn't resist... the song was stuck in my head for a week.  Don't feel badly if you missed it.

We flew out Thursday night and got 4 full days there, which was awesome because we got to see a ton of stuff.  Let's do the play-by-play and I'll describe everything we did in detail.  Or would you prefer the quick highlights?  Maybe quick highlights for now...

First day was cloudy and a little drizzly, so we did the big museum complex...

(The Alexander Sarcophagus, now believed not to have actually contained Alexander the Great, but still awesome.)

... and then the mosque colloquially known as the Blue Mosque.  This mosque is quite impressive from the outside, and it was made to rival / outdo the Hagia Sofia, which sits right across the square, although the general consensus is it failed to do that.  The inside is very beautiful too... my first time in a mosque!

We finished the day with the Basilica Cistern, a surprisingly large underground ancient water storage area with a Lord of the Rings esque feel to it.

Day 2 was none other than Istanbul's iconic gem, the Hagia Sofia.  Although we decided it was less picturesque from the outside, as compared with the Blue Mosque, the inside, plus the history, whole package, etc, is no contest.  The East meets West, Christianity meets Islam atmosphere and artwork (yay Art History 102!!), not to mention the amazing structure (yay Art History 101!!) makes this baby stand out.  It is especially cool to see the Christian art that is being revealed and restored after it was covered up when the building was converted from a basilica to a mosque.

After some walking around the city, general sightseeing and exploring type stuff, I believe this is the day that we punctuated with a visit to a Turkish Bath.  This is the one we went to.  Basically some big Turkish guy takes you into a sauna with a giant warm marble slab and all these guys lying all over it, scrubs you, suds you, washes you up, and then you have the option to follow this up with an oil massage (I chose to do this...).  AWEsome!!

Day 3 was a cruise on the Bosphorus, the river that splits the European side of Istanbul and the Asian side.

Bridge from one side to other.  I wanted to run back and forth (I'm in Europe!  I'm in Asia!  I'm in Europe!...) alas... no time.

Second half of the day was the expansive Tokapi Palace complex.  It was here that we heard about the suicide bombing in the main square (which we had spent our last 2 nights in), which was eerie, but as our roommates later excitedly observed, we now had the full Middle Eastern experience... sweet...

We also got to compare our parents' reactions... I won!!  Decisively won, with Dad calling the Turkish foreign minister.  Yay they doo love me!

Lot of interesting stuff in the palace.  Worth mentioning is the museum here in which they have Muhammad's footprint, Moses' staff, and Abraham's cooking pan.

...

Yaa...

...

With most of our major tourist sites out of the way, the last day we tried to get off the beaten path a bit, walked the streets, saw the massive aqueducts that span one of the main highways, a beautiful church, climbed up on some of the old city walls...

... and even managed to find a synagogue!  Just in time for a service!  Such good Jews.  We sat in and were blown away by the guy leading the service, who never stopped talking or opened his book.  Freakish.

Thus concluded an awesome trip to Istanbul, we all had a great great time and I would absolutely recommend the city.  It is tres beautiful, has a great atmosphere, and a ton of history, plus it is cool to be in the juncture between Europe and Asia.  If you have more time, the countryside of Turkey is supposed to be unbelievable as well... I am thinking of opening a travel agency, how's my pitch doing?

I hope nobody got any whiplash there, we were moving pretty quickly but the holes are almost all filled in, so hang in there.