My One Question

~~~~ Happy

Friday - Woke up bright and early at 5:45 to meet Katie to go to the bus stop to get tickets to Sinai. Took the Metro (I love the women's car... it's so much fun) and then grabbed a cab the rest of the way. Unfortunatley, everything we read didn't bother to mention that we needed out passports to buy our tickets so we couldn't buy any tickets for anyone else... the entire reason we went so early. So we spent the next three hours trying to get everyone organized over the phone and get people there as fast as possible! Stress! But everyone else showed up a lot faster then it took us because apparently it's only 2 pounds more to just take a cab and it's only a 10 minute cab ride... ooops. That's okay though, we all got our tickets and hung out to wait for the bus. Katie and I took off for a while to get some food since we were starving at this point. I got Koshari and Katie got feteer. The bus finally came and we settled back for a seven hour bus ride. There were lots of stops along the way so we got to stretch a lot but poor Nick and Dan didn't have their passports back from the university visa department so every time we got stopped at a checkpoint and they had to explain, in arabic, why they just had photocopies. The best one? When they got taken off the bus to talk to someone else ("Dan, just tell them your religion. You'll be fine!"). But finally we made it. We wandered around the village for a while and found this restaurant with outside picnic tables. Some people ate there but me, Katie, and Duncan went and got.. Koshari. Took our Koshari back to the picnic tables and after we ate played card games... I lost some more. Then we were pretty tired so we followed Nick and Chris to this camp ground. They charged seven pounds for a fire, tent, and all the tea we could drink. It was pretty nice. Got some sleep and met the owner who told us jokes (Why don't Koreans use this finger to drink their tea *points to his own finger* ... because it's my thumb!) and this wonderful Chinese man named Choeng who works in Maadi and decided to travel to Sinai for the weekend and he seemed very lost and confused. But he was fun and he taught us some Chinese!

Saturday - Around 2am we set out to climb the mountain. We decided to go up the camel path because the stairs seemed a little too much... the camel path was almost too much! It took three hours and a couple stops but finally we made it just when the sun was beginning to rise. We grabbed a spot on the top and huddled together for warmth. I mean, we heard it would be cold but we didn't believe them... it's Egypt after all! But it was freezing! After about two hours the sun came up and it was amazing! I was suprised how fast the sun came up once it started but it was so beautiful. We explored the rest of the mountain top and then started our descent. We went for the stairs of redemption for the way down and that was pretty cool but I'm glad we didn't take them up. 3000 stairs is alot to take but the view was great and not falling was even better :) Once we got down we headed over to Saint Katherine's Monastery. There were a lot of people which kinda took away from the beauty of the monastery but I'm glad I could say I was there. Saw the "ancestor" of the burning bush and after that we all felt like we were crashing hardcore so we set off for the bus stop again. Got a ticket to Suez and ate... once more... Koshari! Got on the bus and headed to Suez. Four hours later we were back in Suez with little trouble. Got a ticket back to Cairo and were back around 9pm. All said and done it was about a 39 hour weekend but it was totally worth it. Got home, ate some dinner, took the best shower of my life, and I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

Sunday - Woke up feeling terrible! My entire body ached but I forced myself out of bed and went to class. I'm so glad I did because I actually felt much better. Except, in the words of Allison "I will never take flat ground for granted again!" Got work done in the library, had a cheese feteer (my love was there!), then went to Egyptology. Talked about the military. Wooo. Went to the Rare Books Library and got my reading, went to visit my fruit vendor friend (got two oranges in baksheesh!) and gave my form to Bakry. Went back to the apartment. Did a little more work and then watched a Smallville and Lost episode (Charlie's not dead yet!). Ate feteer for dinner... again (maybe my trend is to eat a ton of the same food for a while and then move on to another food). Then Allison and I took a trip to AlfaMart. What an adventure! The driver took us to Metro (the exact opposite of our previous experience) and then we got lost on the way to Alfa. Took a wrong turn and ended up where we started :( But it's okay... we called Random Dan and he helped us out. Went to Alfa. Bought entirely too much. And got into a cab back to Garden City. The driver didn't understand my arabic so we had to back up on the road (because you can do that here) and finally got back to the flat. I bought sooo much but now I can make salad instead of paying 14 pounds at McDonalds! Now I've done some traveling research ($400 for a flight to Greece!) called my parents, my cousin Alex, and Lindsay and now I should shower. Did I ever mention I love my life?