so im in atlanta, but im going to finish writing about israel if it kills me. well, no, not if it kills me. but if its not too inconvenient to finish.

so.
we made it through egyptian customs and then got to the israeli border; they checked passports and then started examining luggage. i figured they were just looking for bombs, so i wasnt really paying attention when they started unpacking my bag. i did notice, though, when the girl, after trying to rip my Bible out of its case, set my Qur'an off to the side. i asked her if it was a problem for a student to bring a book into israel, and she was very reassuring, which was totally a lie. after a couple of minutes, some other girl called me over; she was holding my Qur'an and she asked why i had it. i explained, trying so unbelievably hard not to be sarcastic, that i was a student at auc and that i was studying the Qur'an, along with Islamic philosophy and arabic. this, apparently, is highly suspicious, so she started drilling me on the contents of my Qur'anic studies class. it was seriously like having a test in that class, only way more stupid and with no right answers. i told her about naskh and tafsir and tawil and abrogation and asbab al-nuzur, and she nodded right along but im pretty sure that she had as much an idea of what i was talking about as you do. satisfied that i was actually taking the class i claimed to be taking, she moved on to my other academics, including major and class at tech; she asked about my reasons for coming to egypt; she asked about my religion, and then got mad when i asked her why she needed to know; she asked why i was studying a religion that wasnt my own, and then got mad when i pointed out that only understanding your own religion is a pretty narrow-minded and selfish way to go through life; i explained about studying taoism and buddhism and Christianity, and she asked when i would begin my studies of Judaism and then got offended when i said i didnt know; i explained my desire to be a chaplain, which of course brought the military into the discussion, which wasnt particularly helpful. she asked about my family in the states, about where i was born, about where my parents were born, about where my grandparents were born, about all of their names. she asked who i knew in israel and about who i knew in cairo, and i told her that in cairo i knew muhammad and ahmad (two of the most common names in the world), and she didnt like that much either. she asked what i did in my spare time at school, and then got really ticked when i told her that wasnt any of her business, and then i had to bite my knuckles (literally) to keep from telling her that i host orgies and run a brothel in cairo. and this was all before she found out that i had been to lebanon. in a nutshell, israel doesnt like lebanon. so then she drilled me about my stay there and asked what i did, and i told her mostly i just got drunk in beirut, and then she asked if that was okay since that was a Muslim country, and i was like "have you ever been to beirut?" and she was like "you dont ask questions; i ask questions!" and i was like "i didnt mean any disrespect, i just meant that if you had been to beirut then you would know that its one of the biggest party cities in the world," and she was like "just answer the question!" so i was like "yes, its okay to drink in beirut, you stupid-face."
i didnt really call her a stupid face.
anyway.
eventually she decided that i wasnt a terrorist, so she let me in and i gave my passport to control to get a stamp. but then control saw my lebanese visa... and the fun started again. 75 minutes and two more interrogations, plus two background checks, later, the four of us walked into israel. we hopped a cab to the touristy town of eilat after picking up some russian vodka at the duty free store. we found a hostel, had some drinks, and went out to explore the town. unfortunately, it was pretty late friday night (that is, after sunset), so the Jewish sabbath, called shabot, had already started, meaning that pretty much everything was closed. lauren was tired so she went to sleep, and corina and marcus and i bought bread and hummus at the grocery store and ate in a parking lot, attracting lots of strange looks from the passing Jews who apparently thought we were acting quite suspiciously.
the next day, saturday, marcus left before i even got up. the girls and i eventually found our way to a cafe for breakfast slash lunch, and i texted luke so that we could meet up. we eventually found them, and they expressed stories similar to mine about the lebanese stamps, but they didnt have Qur'ans so they made it through much more quickly. (actually, as a side note, my entry didnt take so long at all; it was only a couple of hours which, when compared to the entry of my iranian and palistinian (sp?) friends is quite quick. and it was about a quarter of the time it took to get into syria.) the four of us shopped and wandered the corniche, and lauren and i did one of those flying bungee rides where you fall and yell a lot, and then we got on the 1930 bus to Jerusalem. i dont really capitalize city names, but i think that Jerusalem should be an exception. you might see why when i start to list all of the holy stuff that we saw. we arrived extremely late, found a hostel in the Muslim quarter, and slept.
on sunday, lauren and i got up early and found a post office so that she could get money, sent by her dad again via a different bank. she naturally forgot her passport, though, so we failed and went to meet the other three at the wailing wall. the spiritually inclined among us prayed there for a while, and i was blessed by a rabbi who then asked for a donation "for the Jewish people," which i interpreted as "for me" and thus refused, and then we walked up the ramp to the temple mount. this is the site of the temple, the big deal one that keeps getting destroyed in the Bible. its currently flat, which is why the place is rather controversial; some radical Jews want to take over the land, destroy the mosques there, and rebuild the temple for the third time. after walking over the mount, we came upon the dome of the rock. sadly we werent allowed inside (not Muslim, doncha know), but we circumnabulated and it was amazing. the ceiling is huge and glitteringly bright, and the walls are so intricately tiled that you discern a new and smaller pattern every few feet as you approach. i played soccer with a little Muslim boy in the courtyard and then made fun of a supremely white family in sparkly red santa hats who were taking their Christmas photo with the dome in the background. i considered throwing a rock, but they had small children so i decided not to.
the lauren and i went back to the post office and she got her money, which was fortunate because i was running low and israel is freaking expensive. (not really, its quite similar to the states, but compared to cairo it is exhorbitant.) then we went to the church of the holy sepulchre, again finding luke and chelsea and corina waiting. lauren and i went inside to see one of the stones from the tomb of Jesus (supposedly), and it was really moving to see supplicants crying and kissing the stone. the scene was only a tiny bit marred by corina, little heathen that she is, making fun of them in the background and telling me to hurry up. the church is gigantic and home to all sects of Christianity except the protestants and coptics (that is, catholics, orthodox, and ethiopian churches). we wandered and explored some beautiful chapels complete with huge mosaics, and then made our way to the sepulchur itself which contains (again supposedly) the stone on which Jesus actually died. even corina deemed it necessary to be respectful as i prayed, probably because there were several monks watching, and then we were herded out of the shrine because, as you can imagine, the line to get in was quite long.

now i have misplaced my notebook, so ill be going off of memory and lauren's pictures...

then we started to leave, but lauren got distracted by some chanting monks so corina and i went back in for her and the three of us followed the line of singers and incense up a little staircase into this unbelievably ornate chapel where we watched a service in latin. i read over the shoulder of a little nun, and i could understand a fair amount of the latin, which was kind of neat, but my pronunciation was atrocious, so i refrained from singing. we left the church and went to the via dolrosa, the road of sorrow (i think), which is, in case you arent aware, the road on which Jesus carried his cross on the way to golgotha. we walked it backwards to the garden of gethsemene, which still contains about a dozen unbelievably old and gnarled olive trees. the garden was closed, but that was nothing a little bribe to the doorman couldnt fix. we also saw the church of the agony, which contains the stone upon which Jesus prayed the night he was betrayed (supposedly). in the Bible, he sweated blood. but, like the rock in the church of the holy sepulchre, they sort of just picked a rock and decided it was holy.
after the church, we climbed the mount of olives and saw my personal favorite scene from the trip. we arrived at the overlook just as the evening call to prayer sounded in the muslim quarter, so we had an amazing view over old Jerusalem, with the dome of the rock only a few hundred yards away, while the call to Allah was resonating through the city. there are pictures, i guess, but they arent really representative.
then we walked (well, i ran because my shoes had no traction and it was unbelievably steep) down the mountain and back up the via dolrosa. we were tired of holy stuff by that time and just wanted to eat, so we started walking toward a promising restaurant found in the lonely planet called village green. it was a vegan restaurant, and it was amazing. it was a giant salad bar with everything that i had been missing in egypt, from tofu and stuffed peppers to quiche and roasted garlic. i ate a ridiculous amount, including one of the heads of garlic... lauren was mad at me about that for like three days. and then we walked the rest of the way to the bus station and got a ride to tel aviv. its only about a 30 minute ride, so we didnt get there terribly late, but we were all really tired so we found a hostel, checked in and crashed.
the next day we got up at a reasonable hour and headed out into the city. tel aviv is supposed to be a great party town, so i was only a little excited about it, but its on the med, and if you have been paying attention to anything i have written this trip then you know that i love the sea. we rented bikes and started riding around, but lauren was feeling sick so she went back to the hostel to sleep. luke and chelsea split off from us because corina isnt a very good bike rider, so thus formed the groups. corina and i rode down to the beach and along the corniche and then walked on some giant rocks right on the shore. we got splashed and watched kite surfers and talked about israeli occupation; quite a lovely day. we wandered over to the fountain of fire and water, i think thats what it was called, which is like the biggest tourist attraction in the new part of tel aviv. it wasnt particularly cool. then corina and i went back to check on lauren after stopping for food at a grocery store- even storebought hummus is amazing in israel. lauren was asleep, so corina and i just jacked some of her dvds and watched for the rest of the day. eventually luke and chelsea came around; they were moving to a cheaper hostel, so they got their stuff and left. i went running... and yeah, that wasnt the most interesting of days.
luke, chelsea, and corina were planning to go to helwan the next day, but lauren had missed tel aviv so i stayed with her. we left the hostel and started looking for a couple vegan places we found in lonely planet, but after wandering for like an hour in the rain and failing to find it we decided that lonely planet had screwed up; neither restaurant existed and we were quite damp. so we just picked a cafe, and i got a vegetable salad, which turned out to be the biggest pile of chopped cucumbers ever eaten by anyone. it was pouring ridiculously by the end of the meal, but that didnt stop us; we walked the corniche all the way up to the old section of the city, a place called jaffa which is filled with windy little alleys. by the time we got there the rain had let up, so we checked out some shops and bought a lot of fruit and then decided to go back to jerusalem instead of finding the others in helwan.
we got back to the hostel only to find that the others had decided the same thing, so we were all reunited in jerusalem. and i dont remember what happened after that- ill have to ask someone or find my notebook or both. anyway, this entry is already far too long.
oh, and i took about 600 pictures from various of my friends on facebook, mostly of israel and palestine. check them out.