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.
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!!!!!
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
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