maybe this will be the last one

its really time to finish this journal.
so.
back from israel, back to cairo, hooray. the next two weeks were super busy with school and exams and stuff; i had a couple of papers, one for Qur'anic studies and one for philosophy, plus homeworks and essays in physics and arabic, respectively, plus tests in all of the above except Qur'an, plus exams in all of the above except Qur'an (we never took tests in Qur'anic studies, we only had a midterm paper and a final paper). so i spent lots of time studying and writing, all the while trying to savor the last few weeks in egypt.
the wednesday after we came back from israel, ben and travis (my roommates from last year) plus joe (the guy who took my room), all delta brats with free tickets to spare, flew over to visit, so i had to try to entertain them while doing all this work. on thursday night of that week, we spontaneously decided to go to dahab since cairo is gross and smoggy and i didnt want to spend my last days there, so we got on the night bus and went to the coast. it was a pretty standard weekend, except that i was working on a paper, but then again that wasnt too unusual for dahab. we climbed mount sinai, my second time, and it was unbelievably cold, it being december and all. the boys did lots of snorkeling, and you can see ben's pictures; he brought his underwater camera. they also went 4-wheeling, but i say "they" for all of this because lauren and i spent most of our time chilling in beachside restaurants doing homework. we had a slightly tricky time getting home, mostly because we were sleepy and really slow in packing, and i really thought we were going to miss the bus (again), but we made it, so i got to my morning physics exam on time, and i ended up getting a b in the class, so hooray for auc.
exams ended, i got a's in everything except physics, and then school was over. this is obviously the abbreviated version, but most of the events of the last few days were just me talking to people and saying goodbye to everyone, which sucked, but its not really good narration. folk left on different days and lived in different places, so i had to track some people down, and lots of them i never found so i just had to say bye electronically, which was unfortunate. but anyway, eventually the 23rd came and i had to pack, and then i called a cab because i heard a rumor that that is cheaper than getting one off the street, but then he took me on this ridiculous roundabout way and it ended up costing like 15 pounds more, but i actually had only saved 60 pounds because i knew that would be more than enough to pay the driver, only it wasnt, so i ended up just walking away after giving him what i had.
then a flight, then a night in germany, then another flight to romania.
corina met me at the airport and we went to her house where her non-english-speaking mom presented me with almost a dozen random romanian vegetarian dishes. the thing about romanian cooking, especially around Christmas, is that there arent actually any vegetarian dishes; everything is pork based. when corina told her mom and aunt that her friend didnt eat meat, they both freaked out and went on a vegetarian-cooking binge, and, since they also cooked the usual stuff for the meat-eaters, i was the only person eating most of the vegetarian stuff. that meant, as corina explained to me, that in order to be polite i had to stuff myself with as much of everything as possible. it was all pretty delicious, though, so i acquiesced with gusto.
corina and i walked around downtown bucharest that night. it was more modern than i thought, with lots of western advertisements and new looking buildings. but there were random classic parts, too, in particular a little club slash restaurant that we visited. the place was this twisted collection of hallways filled with little nooks hiding tables; i liked it a lot. and then, of course, there were decorations all over town. they were pretty gaudy, and the best example was probably the giant neon evergreen in the middle of some random square.
that night we went to an egyptian restaurant, of all places, to celebrate the birth of corina's mother. unfortunately, once again, she didnt speak english, so i kind of felt like a jerk because corina spent most of her time talking to me and her random egyptian friends who owned the restaurant rather than talking to her mom. but we had sheesha, which was cool because i expected never to have it again after leaving cairo, and we had amazing hummus, which gave away the fact that even though the owners were egyptian, the food was lebanese. egypt, in case i havent mentioned this, has no good hummus, except in lebanese restaurants. and then this random gypsy band started playing, and, despite corina's rampant accusations of the horrible hygene and cultural depravity of the gypsies, they played their violins and clarinets extremely well. the only problem was that the volume was painfully high, so i politely asked to leave.
the next morning was Christmas day, hooray. time for my first ever romanian Christmas! ah, first a sidenote. i neglected to mention that the first thing that corina's mom said to me after heaping food onto my plate was, "something to drink? water? beer? wine? vodka? whiskey?" so i had vodka with lunch the first day. upon arriving at the aunt's house, basically the same scenario unfolded; they set out lots of appetizers, most of which were meat-free for my benefit, and then started pouring drinks. i had some of their home-made vodka, made by corina's second cousin or something like that and bottled in empty water bottles. not too bad. then we took lots of pictures, and then we sat down to eat. the people at the table (i know mom likes to know this sort of thing) were as follows: me, corina's cousin, aunt, uncle, mom, grandmother, grandfather, and corina, naturally. and lots of dead pig. and i ate a ridiculous amount of veggie food and drank a surprisingly small amount of homemade alcohol, and then they gave me random romania-themed presents and then corina and i left.
we went to the train station where we got a train to some town, i cant remember the name, where the other aunt and uncle have a spare apartment. apparently theyre rich; anyway, corina and i stayed there for four nights, i think, and it was nice, for me at least, not to have to deal with her family; i was too exhausted from the semester and too sad at leaving everyone to keep up a friendly american pretense for a whole week. im not going to give the play-by-play for every day for several reasons. first off, i dont remember the names of any of the little towns, so i couldnt describe anything well anyway. also, the days were all pretty similar, so that explanation would be really long and not too interesting. and mostly because i dont feel like it. its late.
so, for the next five days, we:
--hiked up a mountain and drank tea at the top and played in SUPER DEEP (as in thigh deep) snow on the way down
--rode lots of trains and buses
--saw a ridiculous car accident involving an suv driving off of a bridge onto the train tracks
--met 2 random romanian boys on a train; they subsequently followed us around and crashed in our apartment
--smoked sheesha and talked about life, love, religion and God every night with aforementioned romanian boys, plus corina
--saw the castle of VLAD THE IMPALER, also known as dracula's castle (vlad, a former ruler of romania, was the inspiration for stoker's dracula)
--saw another random castle after bribing a guard to let us onto the grounds
--drank tea and watched movies
--had snowball fights
--went bowling
--toured lots of cute little romanian towns
--slipped and fell on ice at least once every hour, sometimes more; that was the slipperiest country i have ever visited
--climbed another mountain with one of the random romanians and looked at a mind-bogglingly beautiful view of the carpatians from the top
--slid down aforementioned mountain on my butt. yeah, i know. it was crazy
--ate a chocolate and strawberry waffle
--drank tea and watched movies
--got really malnourished because of eating only cookies and bread for a week
thats all i can think of.
im so tired. but im going to finish this trip. only a couple of days to go.
eventually corina and i made it back to bucharest. we got back the night before my flight, so instead of sleeping i just stayed up all night talking on the phone and packing. and then i got on the plane, back to germany, back to chicago, back to memphis and home.
hey, that was easier than i thought.
and thus ended my trip and my semester.
thanks for sticking with my ramblings.