this was written a while ago, but i didnt have internet... trying hard to catch up

Picking up again; I figure that I should finish thanksgiving weekend before I go off to Israel, because otherwise it will just be overwhelming and you wont get the full picture. Of course, lots of interesting stuff happened in dahab and most of it I wont be sharing, so you wont get the full picture anyway, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. And also, im writing this entry on word because im bored at the mall and they don’t have wireless. I only mention that to explain why this one entry out of all the others has (almost) correct capitalization and punctuation. I haven’t had a change of heart; word just auto-corrects.
Anyway, I believe that we left off after I got back from the desert. I probably did some stuff that week, I don’t really remember, but mostly I just read books for the paper that I had to write. I read a total of four books, more or less cover to cover, so about 400 pages of sufi mysticism, and at the moment I am a huge fan of that spirituality stuff. It all makes a lot of sense. But theology isn’t what this blog is about, so moving on… it was incredibly difficult for me to get work done at home, unfortunately, so I hid away in the library at school a couple of times and I went home with christianna once because for some reason her apartment is really conducive to getting work done. But anyway, by the time Wednesday night rolled around I had 15 (count them, FIFTEEN) pages, single spaced, of quotes for my paper. The paper only had to be 10 pages, double spaced, so obviously I had way the freak too many quotes, and I hadn’t even started writing at all. whatever.
Enter kira and sarah; I don’t know if I have mentioned them before, but theyre two of my favorite people here. The two of them, luke, Chelsea, Lauren and I had made plans to go to dahab on Wednesday night, but then luke and Chelsea decided to stay until Thursday night for whatever reason (they said they were doing homework, but they are both grossly irresponsible so I doubt that happened), so I went with Lauren and sarah and kira and got on the bus to dahab. We arrived at like ten in the morning and got a room at the same place we stayed last time, which I decided I really like because the people were super helpful, as you will soon see. Then we ate and I had to buckle down and start working on that stupid mysticism paper. I sat on the beach and typed and Lauren sunbathed and sarah and kira wandered, and that’s how we spent most of the day. In case you have forgotten, or in case I have never explained this, the beach at dahab is not a beach by any standard definition. Its mostly a rock and mortar wall about 3 feet high and then a rock floor at the bottom, plus water. And coral. And at some places there are “easy entry points” for divers, but those don’t count as beach. That wasn’t particularly relevant.
Eventually Lauren and I got tired of doing work (she had a paper to write in between sunning as well), so we went back to the room and found sarah and kira asleep, which was lame, so we wandered for a while and then woke the puppies up and went to dinner. I saw Muhammad, the guy I met last time with the really cheap restaurant; he was super excited to see me, but he was way more excited to see sarah, whom he hit on outrageously despite the fact that she told him she has a boyfriend. That’s Egypt for you. And then we went back to the room. Lauren went to skype with her family and the puppies and I had a Disney sing along because no one felt like sleeping. And then Lauren and I wandered for a while and smoked sheesha (you will see that this a recurring theme; see a few entries ago when we walked all the way across cairo at four in the morning…), but she was super tired and so we went back to the hostel, but then we decided to go on a walk because she couldn’t sleep, so we wandered some more and swang on swings and smoked more sheesha and played with kittens- there are literally hundreds of stray animals in dahab and theyre all super cute, just wash your hands. We went to a particular restaurant wherein one of the cats had recently birthed a litter, and the kittens were mewing around and they were so incredibly tiny… very cute. And then we slept. At like 4 in the morning. Not very responsible divers.
The next morning we woke up to luke and Chelsea knocking on our door, and then a few minutes later sawwan, our dive instructor from cairo, arrived, so the four of us (luke, Chelsea, Lauren and I, since kira and sarah weren’t diving) headed to the water. We suited up and did three offshore dives, which was sort of disappointing because I was expecting to go boating (I think boating is way more fun than diving, personally), but it was still quite beautiful and we saw tons of lionfish and various other types, and I saw two eels that no one else saw, so that was pretty special.
That night everyone ate together- I guess that would make our number seven. And we played never have I ever. If you don’t know what this game is, go ask someone because I don’t feel like explaining it, but, in short, I usually win (I haven’t done very much of the stuff that generally comes up in that game). But this time I came in second; in the end it was just sawwan and I with fingers up, and he kept pulling out things like “I have never eaten Chinese food,” and “I have never ridden a roller coaster,” and I was like, geeze, you are amazing at this game; you haven’t done anything that an average American has done. So he won that.
As a little side note, we weren’t the only auc people in dahab. Actually, the Wednesday night bus over was totally packed with auc people; I would guess that there were about sixty floating around at the height of the weekend. Our group of six was pretty nice- we fit at all the tables and we could shop without being overwhelming and all that jazz. But there was a group that we saw every night at dinner that was literally pushing forty. they would fill an entire side of a given restaurant with loud white people. I really didn’t understand why they didn’t branch off and go their separate ways, but I guess no one wants to walk away from the cool group. I knew a lot of the people in the giant gaggle, but we tended to avoid them.
Last time I came to dahab I met a man on the bus; his name was… well, I actually don’t remember his name, but he goes by “sheesha man,” and he asked me to come to his shop to smoke with him several times. My hostel last time (and this time too) was right next to his shop, so I passed him standing outside all the time, and every time he would ask, when are you coming to see me? And every time I would say, tonight, later, soon. And I never went, and I felt really bad, so this time when I saw him I said hi and I was like, this time im definitely coming to smoke with you.
Everyone else went to bed after dinner, but I wanted to go to sheesha man, so I called trish, who was also in dahab, and she and Lauren and I went to his shop and smoked the best sheesha I have had thus far in Egypt, which would therefore be the best sheesha I have ever had. This guy had a plaque (from germany) on his wall that awarded him the best sheesha in the world. It was really good. Apple mixed with mint, if I remember correctly. And then we slept, I think. Actually we probably wandered, but we slept eventually.
Then we woke up. And sawwan was calling me telling me that we were late, so we hustled to the dive center and hopped in the car to get to the next dive site, a place called “the canyon.” It is so named because it is, well… a rocket ship. Not really, it’s a canyon. It starts about 16 meters deep and goes down to about 52 meters, so we weren’t actually allowed to go inside (luke and I are only certified to 18 meters and at that time Lauren and Chelsea weren’t certified at all), but we went into some caves and peered down into the gorge; it was really amazing. And then there was coral too. Huzzah for coral. And fish.
Then we came back and I was a crazy emo kid for a little while and I really wanted to write some poetry, and then Lauren and I sat on the roof of the hostel and looked out over the corniche at the red sea and it was awesome. Man, I like the sea. I want to live there. And then we hung out at a random restaurant until it was time for luke and Chelsea to leave. Those two and sarah and kira were taking the afternoon bus back to cairo, but I wanted to stay in dahab to work on my paper, because its nicer to write on the beach than in a dorm, and Lauren decided to stay to work on hers too, so the other four left and she and I went back to the beach to type.
Then at 430 we took a study break to go to this bar to watch the new Zealand all-blacks trounce England in rugby. And then we went back and took a nap, and that’s where the fun began. Our bus left at ten at night, so I set an alarm for nine to give us time to pack and get to the station. But, since im awesome at all things military, I set the alarm for 2300. in case you are slow on the uptake, that is eleven pm, not nine. So at 2202, Lauren woke up and said, hey andy, its ten. And I was like, hmm, I feel like we had something to do at ten, but that cant be right because my alarm would have gone off… ooooooooh. So we missed the bus. For which we had already bought tickets. I went to the office. When is the next bus? Nine tomorrow morning. I went back to the room. Can you ask about a microbus? I went back to the office. What about a microbus? The one to cairo left at eight, another one for just two people costs 600 pounds. I went back to the room. Its crazy expensive. Well I have to be back for my theater class, can you ask him to set it up anyway? Um, yeah, I guess so. I went back to the office. We need the microbus. So Lauren and I, at like 1130 at night, boarded a microbus, just the two of us, and drove back to cairo. So there was a random 275 pounds I hadn’t expected to spend (they gave us a discount just because they were nice. I don’t think that this rendition portrayed the guys at the desk particularly spectacularly, but they were really helpful and understanding and didn’t at all call me an idiot for missing my bus. In case you wanted to know.), but we made it back in time for school.
Hmm. This week wasn’t too exciting, just super busy. I had a physics test, a physics lab practicum, 2 physics homeworks due, an Arabic exam, an Arabic essay due, a philosophy paper due, a Qur’anic studies paper due, and a philosophy test. I think that’s it. Oh, I forgot about the papers… so I had written about seven pages by the time I got back to cairo, and then I found out that, hey! The philosophy paper isn’t due until Wednesday, hooray! So I relaxed on that a bit. Here is how clever I am, though: I had a 7 page paper for philosophy and a 10 page paper for theology, but I got one topic approved for both papers- I wrote them both on Sufism and the mysticism of ibn ‘arabi. That topic really does cover a lot of philosophy and theology both. So I finished the ten page one and turned it in, and then all I had to do was cut out three pages and I was finished with the seven page one. Let me tell you, writing a paper by cutting out three pages is way easier than writing one by adding pages as necessary. And that’s about it. This entry is super long. And tomorrow im going to Israel.