Ma’ is-salaama Masr (Goodbye Egypt)

Well, I am finally home after almost 4 months in the Middle East. Sorry about the last months lack of updates. Once I got behind in Israel, it was too overwhelming to catch you all up on everything that had gone on. Here I will write some highlights.

The time spent in Israel was intense. The first week, we didn’t really have any time to explore and tour the many ancient sites and ruins. The reason for this was that we had multiple speakers everyday who represented various views and discussed different aspects and complications within the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Two speakers a day for two hours each, plus a thick reader of articles and to brief ourselves before meetings so that we could ask informed questions to the experts took up nearly all of our time. One bright spot in the business of that week was walking back to our hostel in the Old City from hearing a speaker and on one of the many busy shopping streets I happened to see Roland and Donna Elkins (a couple from my church in Jamul). It was refreshing to see some familiar faces from home, and my roommate Joel and I took our afternoon to go take a walk on the walls of Jerusalem and reconnect a bit.

After the intense academic portion was over, we had time to do some touring. If you ever go to Jerusalem, I’ll let you know the highlights, the “don’t miss this!” in my opinion. First day, we went up to the Golan Heights in the north, and on the way back stopped in Capernaum, which is right on the sea of Galilee. Just sitting alongside the sea, with the mountains in the distance blanketed by dark clouds and the sound of thunder coming over the water was breathtaking. A good place to stop and reflect.

Next day we went around the Old City. I would say that the highlight was Hezekiah’s Tunnel, which is an old channel that was chiseled through the mountain of stone to bring water into Jerusalem. You can actually walk through this tunnel today, and it still has cool water running through it at about knee height. It is pitch black, and I somehow ended up in the front of large portion of our group without a flashlight, just feeling my way through this tunnel (not for the claustrophobic). It takes about a half hour to go through, it’s the real deal!

Last day (best), we went to Masada and En Gedi. Someone told me that Masada is like, the feature story of national geographic this week, so that tells you it’s awesome. Basically it is a fortress/palace on the top of a mountain right along the Dead Sea. Herod built it as a winter retreat for himself and it ended up becoming the last remaining stronghold of the Jews in the 3^rd Century. We hiked up to the top, rather than taking the gondola-because we are hardcore, and it has an incredible view from the top. By the way, the end of the story of the Jews that were being besieged there was, the night before they knew the Romans would take the city and enslave them, they decided that it would be better to die freemen then live as slaves and killed each other. They actually found the lots that the cast for who would be the last person to kill himself after killing his comrades. The Romans entered and found everyone dead, my memory sucks right now off no sleep, but my gut says it was about 500+ people.

En Gedi is where David hid when he was fleeing from Saul. There’s a good chance I was chilling by the cave where David cut part of Saul’s robe while he was hiding. This was a little paradise! It was full of critters! Ibex were abundant as were these weird rodent like creatures (not gross). It also has multiple waterfalls and pools where you can swim, and this is all in the desert! You just find this little canyon and it is a lush treasure. The sign said they even have leopards there, but alas, I didn’t see any.

We also got to go to Tel Aviv in Israel, which felt more like California than the Middle East. I went body surfing and chilled on the beach most of the time, which is always a favorite activity of mine. And the next day we drove to Cairo. A good border crossing story can be found on my roommate Joel’s blog if you get a chance to cruise over there (link at the bottom of the page).

Last weeks in Cairo were grand. Had to write about 40 pages worth of assignments, but got it all done in a timely manner, so I’d rather not talk about that and put it behind me. One afternoon a few of us went to the Cairo Zoo, and let me tell you that this was well worth the 20 cent admission. They had all the important stuff-lions, tigers, hyenas, elephants, sea lions, falcons, monkeys, zebras…but one cool thing is that you could just go feed most of them. They had zookeeper dudes out by the cages who would give you some food on a stick or something to pass off to the hungry animals. Another thing about the zoo in Cairo is that things happen there that don’t at our zoos. Three examples:

1. When we arrived, we went straight to the lion exhibit because…obviously. And what we found was a little shocking. They were feeding, and it was the real deal. Cairo zoo doesn’t want you to ignore the fact that these are real ferocious beasts, so they just throw some fat hunks of raw meat on the bone in these cages and the lions go for it. So they were all roaring and growling and ripping and tearing and breaking bone, blood dripping down their faces on their paws. All taking place 6 feet in front of us.

2. Hyena house. Think about a prison cell. Think about the bars that are containing the inmates. Can you get your arm through those bars? OK, perfect, that’s the hyena house. My flat mate, Thomas, touched one.

3. Back to the lions. Yeah…we were walking to leave and some shady zoo keeper asks me if I want a picture with a baby lion-I am not really feeling it, because I know this guy is trying to scam me somehow. I ended up having a change of heart and bribing him for $2 to let us hold the baby lion and take pictures. It was one of the sketchiest things ever when he had to go get the key and take us to this back room which is like, the reserve lion storage place, and pull a decent sized “baby lion” from out of the cage and place it in my hands.

There were plenty of other good times to be had, as well as bad times, considering my last day in Cairo was spent in bed/bathroom with one of the worst illnesses I’ve had in my life. But all in all, it’s hard to believe that this semester was school. Not because I didn’t learn a lot, because I definitely learned WAY more than I learn in school, and I worked hard as well. But because it was so fun on top of it all, being able to see so many new places, have crazy experiences, hear from experts on important topics, and make incredible friends. It was sad parting ways with everyone in the airport in DC, but, I’m sure I will see some of them again. Now that I am home, it will be good to see you and talk to you. I got pictures from friends and now have over 2000, so I guess I could put some of them up on the site as well. Thanks for journeying with me! It’s good to be home.