Meaningful Moments

With a title like that I almost feel like I should share some gushy sappy moment that would tug on the old heart strings. Well, if you are expecting Rich's Middle Eastern version of Chicken Soup for the Soul it isn't going to happen. However, I wanted to not talk so much about places that I went in Egypt, but things that I experienced. This may be my last post on Egypt, because there is always so much else to tell, but we will see how I feel about that later.

First a moment specifically for Mom (don't worry it will be short). On our way down to Egypt we made a couple of stops. To completely understand this let me give you a little background on the geography. We came from Jerusalem, which is located in the hills. The area isn't really all the fertile, but it is green and not desert like. As we moved south we entered some lowlands that were similar to the midwest--very green and lots of farms. A little further south things get ugly. This area is known as the Negev. You look around and pretty much all you see are rocks and I am not joking. There is nothing. Ok, moving on. Here we visited the grave of David Ben-Gurion.


Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of Israel and is referred to as the George Washington of Israel--hence is inclusion in my post today. He was very popular and easily could have maintained power for himself, but after a time he decided to retire and become a farmer in, of all places, the Negev. He devoted the rest of his life to developing methods for people to farm and live in that part of the country. I placed a stone on his grave, because it is a sign of respect. I suppose it has to do with how they used to bury people in that time by piling stones on them and to care of the grave you place a stone on it to prevent animals from getting to the body.


Now to Egypt. Here is just a quick snippet. Below is a picture of some authentic food in the area. It was a really cool restaurant that instead of wall had hanging carpet. All the pitas were cooked in a wood burning stove by an old lady who likes to make that noise that is usually associated with "Kill the infidels!" Luckily, she didn't say that--she just tossed us a pita.



On to Luxor. This was a rather exciting place. First of all, the city thrives on tourism (I think that is what every person is geared towards there). On the street there are hundreds of carriages that we used to see some of the sights as a group. The organized trips were great (as you can tell by the smiling faces in the picture). They are really nice to you, they even let me drive. This wasn't a good idea, because I was really driving, not just holding the reins.


Ok, so the carriages are good right? Wrong. They are evil--pure evil. Later in the evening we wanted to do some shopping in an open air market. We left the hotel and were immediately offered a ride in the carriages to where ever we wanted to go. It was pretty cheap so we decided to go. We all hoped on (there were about twenty of us, so five carriages) and headed off. We when arrived, the open air market didn't look like an open air market, in fact it looked like a seedy tourist shop located on a dimly lit street. This was of course not the open air market. Naively, we got out and investigated. The carriage drivers ushered us in--apparently they had some stake in what was going on because they were all buddy buddy with the shop owners. We quickly realized that this was not where we wanted to go so we all left and started walking away. This was a problem, because apparently we didn't buy anything and we were supposed to. We tried to pay our drivers and leave (even though we didn't know where we were, but they wouldn't have it. Pretty soon all the Egyptians started arguing with each other. It as possibly one of the scariest moments in my life to find myself surrounded by about fifty Egyptians screaming at each other in Arabic--obviously arguing over us. We wanted to leave, but found it really difficult. Eventually we got the drivers to take us away, but they refused to take us back or to the market. They just took us from one shady store to the next. Our American patience quickly ran thin and we began yelling in English (not nearly as scary). Eventually we just got off in an area that we knew and decided to walk home. After we got off we found out that the first place we stopped at was part of the Egyptian mafia. The whole thing is a big con to rip off the tourists. They get you to buy stuff to see where your money is and then little kids (who are everywhere) steal all your money. So, rule to the wise--the carriages are evil.

The thing you should do in Luxor is go on the boats. We got out on the Nile and had an awesome dance party. The teachers were in a constant state of worry because many were hanging off the boat and dancing on the top level or aka roof. I defiantly recommend doing that when you are in Luxor.



The last thing that I will write about is Mt. Sinai, but because it was so awesome. We woke up around 2 a.m. so that we could make it up to the top for the sunrise. This was one of the most anticipated events, for me, of this whole trip. The hike wasn't all that bad. The area is pretty harsh though. There isn't much of anything except rocks there, I can't imagine how the it must have looked to the Israelites. I feel a certain amount of pity for them. Egypt really did look a lot better than the waste land that we were walking through, and once you were on top, that was all you really could see. I was glad to have some time to sit and ponder and enjoy the beauty of the moment.