i really dont like the concept of a glass jar of honey.

im used to honey being in plastic jars. honey here is in glass jars, but i still treat it like plastic, apparently, which is why i have broken a full three jars of honey in the past week. three. thats three liters of honey. what a waste. and i cant even salvage it off the floor like i would if it were only spilled because the remnants are full of glass shards.
but anyway, ill try to remember what i have done since the last entry. i guess we are going like two weeks back- the details are lacking.
katie and sarah came back to cairo and we hung out some; they went on grand adventures and i went to school, but they told me about said grand adventures over dinner, so that was something, at least. and then they left, so thats the end of that.
at some point in time we did another faluca trip; this one was infinitely more successful. we had twenty-some-odd people and the boat was quite exciting. and someone made guacamole.
last weekend i found out just how much sheesha i can hold (although it was sort of a skewed amount since i drank a lot of rum along with it); i smoked until i **almost** got sick, so now i have a limit, and thats always useful to know.
luke and chelsea and i tried to go to this super nice park to play frisbee, but the cab driver took us to the wrong place and we decided to walk the rest of the way but we werent entirely sure where to go and when we found the park it was all fenced off and we couldnt find the gate so we wandered for a while and by the time we got there it was almost time to close, so that was rather sad. but that was last weekend, and we made plans to come again this weekend, along with lots of other plans that quite thoroughly fell through.
i really dont even remember anything else from the past 2 weeks. im sure i did stuff, but ill have to ask around to find out what.
i do remember this weekend, though, which was pretty much the best one ever. the players in these stories are no big surprise: luke and chelsea, and also introducing sarah and kira. huzzah. on thursday night, i dont remember what i intended to do, but it wasnt anything super special. and then sarah called me and asked if i wanted to go to a puppet show, and, naturally, i said heck yeah. so i met up with her and kira and their friend kelbie, and then we somehow found luke and chelsea and wandered around downtown looking for the puppet theater. we had no idea where to go, though, and no one knew the word for "puppet," so kira and i just wandered around making puppet shapes with our hands and saying "fen? fen?" (which means where? where?). we were being completely facetious about seeking directions like that, but it worked; some random egyptian laughed and then said some arabic words including "theater" and told us where to go, which just goes to show you that if you are white, no one cares if you act retarded.
so we found the theater (after a few more puppet imitations and "fen" queries) and went into the show, only an hour late. it was pretty stupendous, as puppet shows go. the stage was huge and filled with excellent neon-glowing props and all of the characters (except for two real people) were cute little marionettes with humans dressed all in black standing behind. and there was a guy in a dinosaur suit, too... and a huge creepy moon-face that looked like a woman but definitely talked like a man. im not sure what the show was about since it was all in arabic, and the only words i understood were 'yes, twenty-seven, big, and thank God.' then we left the puppet show, grabbed some food, and headed to the circus. actually chelsea didnt come because she was protesting the cruel treatment of the animals or something like that, but i figured it would be okay.
so we wandered up to this huge, brightly lit and colorful tent. there was a lioness sitting outside for pictures, but she was all drugged up and hardly even looked alive. we didnt take pictures with her, alas. inside the tent, it was a real circus, and by that i mean the kind of circus you read about in books starring gypsies. there werent any sound or light special effects, but there were acrobats and clowns and a dwarf. and there were knife throwers, and they asked for volunteers from the audience to have knives thrown at them and i tried awfully hard to get their attention but failed, unfortunately. but in retrospect i realized that they probably wouldnt have picked a white person anyway, since if they happened to kill me they would probably start some sort of revolution. and then the lions and tigers came out (after they spent 20 minutes or so constructing a very rickety looking cage). it turns out that chelsea was mostly right in refusing to come based on poor animal treatment. there were two times during the act when a helper outside of the cage held a lion down by his collar while the ringmaster beat it with a stick until it roared, so that was kind of awful. but the egyptians clapped quite a lot, so maybe that is cool here. they did some fun tricks, though, and were in general very cute and scary.
then we left the circus and kelbie wandered off somewhere, so luke and i went with sarah and kira to a birthday party where they had promised to make an appearance. the plan was just to walk in, say hi, and go, but it turned out that i knew a lot of people there, so we went in and left and found the girls a cab home and then luke and i went back upstairs. unfortunately, during that ten minute interlude the party had relocated; everyone was either gone or on their way out to some bar or other. there were a few people staying, though, including one girl who actually lived in the apartment, so i decided to stay, but then (and im not completely sure why all of this happened, but im sure that illicit substances played a part) all of this hostility broke out and these two guys came really close to fighting over what i interpreted as the stupidest reason ever and in the end we all got kicked out.
this was around 130 in the morning, i suppose, so i walked back to the dorm to go to bed. however, my friend heather (who has been sitting outside on the dorm steps every single time i have come home late this semester) was sitting outside on the dorm steps when i got back, so i sat and talked to her for a while and then her ride pulled up, and it turned out that i knew her ride so i went out again with them. we drove around and eventually found some place to smoke sheesha, and then went back to ak (the driver) 's apartment and hung out for a while. heather and the other people from zamalek went home at around 6, but i just went to bed because ak lives super close to sarah and kira, and i had promised to come with them to church.
so i woke up at about 830 (yeah, less than three hours of sleep, huzzah), still buzzed from the sheesha, and got some really shaky directions to the church from ak's friend who is only mostly fluent. i started walking through this strange neighborhood and pretty much just turned when the time felt right, and i eventually found the church. the story of that walk is actually really dramatic and sort of hilarious, but i dont want to put it down in type because its also quite embarrassing and a little disgusting and definitely doesnt need to endure forever on the internet.
i got to church and met kira and sarah; the service that particular friday was african themed, and not egyptian african but actual congo (when there was a congo) africa, so there were lots of really dark people clad in really bright clothing and there was a lot of crying out to Lord Jesus. it was entertaining but not at all what i was expecting when they invited me to english church. then the preacher spoke, and he was surprisingly good. i expected, well, the stereotypical african sermon about Jesus and sin and heaven, but the guy actually spoke about evangelism, and he had some useful things to say about it.
and then church was over and i went back to zamalek. between walking lost through ak's neighborhood looking for the metro station, riding the metro, and walking through zamalek to the dorm (which is on the side of the island opposite the metro station), it took about two hours to get home, and when i got there i took a shower and ate and left again, huzzah! remember, this is on 2.5 hours of sleep. but in the time that it had taken me to get home, kira and sarah had taught their sunday school class and eaten and were ready to go to coptic cairo, so luke and i hopped back on the metro and met them. we went into an abbey and saw an exceptionally beautiful greek orthodox church and then a huge cemetery with tons of broken tombstones and lovely greenery, and then we went into the cave where (supposedly) joseph and mary hid with Jesus when they fled from herod. it wasnt a cave, actually, so much as the basement of a chapel; it was actually quite nice and filled with paintings and shrines and stuff, but i assume that it wasnt like that 2000 years ago. then we went to the so called "hanging church," which apparently is suspended above some waterway, but you cant see the water or any of the suspension apparatus so it wasnt that special. and then we went back home and i took a nap.
and then we had a movie night. the plan was to do a disney movie marathon, but movie marathons never work out, eh? kira, sarah, luke and i went to chelsea's apartment and watched aladin, but by the end of it chelsea (bored) was in the other room doing homework and the other three were asleep. so i relocated, waking kira and sarah, and the three of us started kung-fu-panda, but sarah was asleep like 20 minutes into it and kira had to get up early the next morning, so the two of them left at like one, leaving me to watch the computer animated kung-fu animals by myself. it was a really good movie, though.
the house woke up at around eleven and we started making preparations for our picnic in that super nice park i mentioned earlier. luke and i went out and bought lots of fruit for a salad and chelsea made this rice-peanut-sugar concoction and, after lots of procrastinating, we left. there were seven of us, i believe: chelsea's roommate wolf (thats his real name, too) came, as well as trish, a friend from philosophy, and we met sarah and kira at the park. but then the guards wouldnt let us in because our pots were metal and you arent allowed to bring metal into the park... which i think is really stupid. so we sat outside and ate and luke started a frisbee game with some egyptian kids who were doing the same thing. we left our empty pots by the door and went inside where we played frisbee and hackey sack with more random egpytian kids; a huge swarm of twelve year old boys surrounded luke, wolf and me as we were kicking the hackey sack and they all wanted to play, so that was quite entertaining. language barriers can be really hilarious when they reduce us to pantomiming. and several of the boys got my phone number, i have no clue why, and one just called me a few minutes ago but he didnt speak english and i dont speak arabic so... yeah.
and then luke, chelsea and i went to christiana's with every intention of making a pie out of the pumpkin we bought sometime ago, i dont remember when. but then chelsea, the one who knows how to make pumpkin pie, went to sleep, so christiana and i carved masks from the pumpkin halves instead, and then luke and i went to the mall so that i could buy honey to replace the jar that i broke last week (2 jars for the price of one, what a steal). christiana and i watched grey's anatomy for a while and then went to sleep.
and then this morning, i was taking the jars of honey out of the wrapper that bound them together and somehow both jars ended up on the floor. i almost cried. and now i have no honey, but other than that it was a pretty stellar weekend.
i would proofread this for grammar and general coherence, but i have to go to class.

i havent slept in a bed in four days

this is the syria entry. get excited.
starting on the syria-lebanon border, we finally got visas. we had to find another cab to get to damascus because our first guy gave up after like 3 hours. we got ripped off by both of them, which is typical because, hey, white people are made of money. whatever. we got into damascus at about midnight and called our couchsurfer. much to our dismay, he was busy (who is busy at midnight...?) and he said he would call back in an hour or two, so we, having no idea where we were or where to go, found our way to some park benches and sat down. everyone else fell asleep pretty quickly so i stayed awake to make sure that we didnt get robbed, and then i called caesar (the couch surfing guy) at about 2. he said he was still busy and couldnt come get us and that he would call in an hour, but the girls were loathe to spend the night on a park bench, plus it was really cold so we found a hostel and crashed.
the next morning we met a guy staying in the same hostel who was from baghdad... it was sort of an uncomfortable introduction:
him- "where are you from?"
us- "america. where are you from?"
him- "baghdad."
...pause...
us- "...sorry..."
but he was a cool guy and he showed us a neat little sandwich shop, so no hard feelings. incidentally, eating in syria was just as pleasant as eating in lebanon. the street food is only a touch more expensive than that in cairo, and the restaurants have little pizzas and plates of hummus for like 60 pounds (about 1.20 dollars), and everything is quite tasty. and also, there are these lovely bars filled with hanging baskets of fruit on just about every corner and you can just wander in and pick however many fruits you want and the guy will blend them into a juice for you, or you can just grab a glass from the giant random mix blender, which is basically the dregs of everyone else's juice.
so we ate and got juice and then found our way to old damascus, which is, according to lonely planet and all other sources that i can think of, the only cool thing to see in damascus. it is basically a huge series of tiny alleys and shops and restaurants and baths, plus a huge souq (though not as big as the one in cairo). we went first to the souq, carrying all of our bags through the thronging crowds, and then emerged in front of the huge omayyad mosque. that is probably spelled wrong. christianna happened to be friends with some british guys who were in damascus, so she called them up and we met them at said mosque and tried to get inside, but the thing closed right as we walked up to the door. naturally they had no qualms selling us a ticket immediately before closing time... they said we could come back the next day, but we never did end up getting there in time to go inside. we also tried to get into an oriental bath, but they dont allow women during the eid holiday so that was scratched off the list too. (usually they allow women from like 10 in the morning to 4 and then men the rest of the time, but men only during the holiday.)
finally we hooked up with caesar, who told us that he still could pick us up because we were in the wrong omayyad square and he was super far away, but we gave the phone to a cab driver and finally made it to our hosts' place. we were to stay in his brother's empty apartment, and it was pretty excellent, albeit tiny; there was a living room with a few chairs and a little half-sofa, a bedroom (with one double bed), a bathroom, and a little kitchenette which we didnt really use at all. if you remember, there were five of us, so sleeping arrangements were interesting... ah, and also the apartment was inhabited by a very tiny kitten. everyone else freaked out at the sight of a kitten, naturally, and i put on my headphones so that i wouldnt have to listen to the high-pitched squeals of "youre so cute!" note that these were mostly emitted by luke; the three girls were much less vocal. sorry luke, but its true.
we went back to old damascus for dinner with the brits that night; caesar couldnt come with us because he had to work. he explained that he had been directing a dance troop all the previous night and that he was a writer slash director trying to get all his affairs in order so that he could report to the syrian army in ten days, so we forgave him for being too busy for us. anyway, we did our usual giant spread of stuff you have to eat with pita for dinner, plus some random vodka stuff, plus sheesha, which was all quite pleasant. then the seven of us went to a fair that we had spotted while riding the bus. there were loads of rides all along the highway, but it was about the sketchiest fair i have ever seen. nothing had safety belts or lap bars, and a lot of the rides were straight-up man powered; no engines necessary. we started out on one of those huge pendulum swings, and this one did have a motor, so it was able to swing the entire contraption totally vertical; i flew out of my seat on every apex, regardless of whether or not i held on. naturally i wanted to see what would happen if i didnt hold on, then, and sam (one of the brits) freaked out and grabbed me when i started to leave the seat with my hands up. altogether quite amusing. then i rode a mechanical bull, and, using only one hand, i did much better than most of the syrians who went before me, but that ride is really difficult, i must admit. then there was a ride something akin to the scrambler, the ride in the sandlot wherein all of the kids puke their guts out, only this one had no safety equipment at all so we were sliding everywhere and there were arabs trying to stand and dance and stuff all during the ride. i saw no serious injuries the whole night, though, so maybe all of the safety equipment in america is just crippling us for the real world :)
we stayed up really late reading and writing poetry and just generally being rather bohemian, which i approved of. of course, that meant that we slept ridiculously late; we made it into town for "breakfast" at about 4 pm. then we met up with the brits again (the girls all had super huge crushes on them because, lets face it, they were adorable and had cute accents to boot) and went to this really cute mosque that housed the remains of the niece of some holy imam or other. the whole of the inside was covered with spectacularly arranged, tiny mirrors, so everything was very shiny and sparkly. quite nice. then we went to a cafe just to hang out since we had all eaten quite recently, and we played backgammon and cards and smoked sheesha and ate ice cream for a long, long time until we were hungry again, so then we moved upstairs and ate dinner and... thats pretty much it. i guess mostly all we did in damascus was eat and hang out...
so yeah, thats about what we did on the next day as well. caesar came to town with us that day, but he couldnt hang out because he had to shop and have some time with his girlfriend. but he did take us to a bath that would accept girls, so luke and i dropped them off and headed to the men-only one. conferring afterward, the girls' and our experiences were very similar, but luke and i thought the whole process was remarkably cooler than they did. basically it went like this: you trade your clothes for a "towel," which is really just half a sheet, and go into a big, tiled room with faucets and basins all along the walls. you fill a basin with water and then take a little tin bowl and splash said water on yourself. then you take the soap and loofa (that smelled like it must have been made of horse hair) that they give you and scrub off all of your skin. then you go to the steam room, basically just a sauna, and then to another, smaller room with more basins where you pretty much just repeat the process. so luke and i washed each other and chilled with lots of naked arab dudes, and every time i tell this story it sounds more homo-erotic, but it was quite platonic and entertaining.
when we finished the bath part, we got full body massages which, for me, were the highlight of damascus. i just wanted to take a nap, f'sho. then we wrapped up in some dry sheets and sat in their lobby on these nifty raised couches and drank tea and imagined how cool it would be to live in a room like the one we were in. then we left and bought some pastries and went to pick up the girls. they told their story, and, like i said, it was basically the same as ours, except they didnt enjoy it at all. then we bought pastries since the girls hadnt eaten all day, and then we met up with sam who took us to the home of a friend of his. this girl, valeria, lived in about the most amazing house i have ever seen. fortunately she was about five feet tall because the front door was about the size of the door to a hobbit-hold, but inside it was all artistic tile and stone and super old wood with lots of random niches in the walls and lots of creaky staircases. the center of the house was a huge open garden slash patio where we sat and ate sunflower seeds, and then we went onto the roof and did gymnastics and played (lakeshore) games.
then we (the five from auc, 2 brits, valeria and one of her roommates) wandered around for a while looking for food. we ended up just getting street food by the omayyad mosque since we were almost totally out of money and we still had to get to the airport. so we ate next to the mosque and then, to kill some time before the flight, played mafia in the square for like 2 hours.
then a cab, a plane, and cairo.
and, to top off this hugely awesome and relaxing trip, i left my ipod on the plane. so dang.
we got back at like 6 in the morning and then off to school. katie (strickland) is visiting cairo from ghana at the moment, so i had dinner with her and her travel buddy on tuesday and then on wednesday i went to christiana's and cooked dinner and studied physics. stupid physics...
then on thursday, luke chelsea, christiana, katie, sarah (katie's friend) and i got on the midnight bus to dahab, a town on the sinai penninsula very near the saudi arabian coast. we arrived at around 9 in the morning (after sleeping very little on quite a loud bus; egyptians tend to play music and movies at obnoxious volumes) and walked across some stretches of desert, encountering a random roving camel, to the boardwalk. we walked toward the cheapest hostel, all along the way fending off egyptians trying to sell us scarves or get us to eat at their restaurants. luke, chelsea and christiana wandered off somehow, so katie, sarah and i stopped to wait for them (it turned out they had randomly decided to sit down for milkshakes, go figure) and were quickly surrounded by adorable little girls selling these really lovely bracelets, so we bought some, found the others, and dropped off our stuff at the hostel. i dont know specific timetables because i didnt write anything down since we didnt really do anything spectacularly interesting; mostly we just relaxed in the wonderful breeze.
there were tons of restaurants right on the water, but we easily found our favorite, that is, the cheapest one, and after eating we sat and talked with the owner, this 21 year old bedouin guy named, of all things, muhammad. he was super cool, though, and we spent quite a bit of time chilling at his place, which was basically a big pile of blankets and pillows right on the beach, so you can probably understand the appeal.
friday night we climbed mount sinai. this is quite a complicated process, we quickly found out, because you have to arrange for a bus to take you out to the monastery, then you have to buy a ticket to get in, then you have to hire a guide (as dictated by law, actually), but we got through all that jazz and started up. it was a really easy walk since 1) the monks built stairs on all of the steep parts and 2) about seven million people go up every night so its quite a well-worn trail. it was incredibly beautiful, too; the night was totally clear and, when some stupid european wasnt shining his l.e.d. headlamp in your face, you could see an inordinate number of stars. the view was, like i said, occasionally spoiled by the insane crowds and by people insisting on using flashlights, but it was without question lovely nonetheless.
our guide's name was muhammad, too, and he did a pretty good job of keeping the 13 of us together; my group was joined by some germans and norwegians and a couple of australians. so we made it to the top and, as the sweat from the trek up evaporated, understood why everyone tells you to bring warm clothes to the peak. it was quite freezing and, since we didnt want to pay for blankets, we made a big pile of people and huddled for a while to wait for the sun to rise.
and then it rose.
and it was really cloudy, so you couldnt actually see the sun. but the morning light spreading over the mountains was supremely beautiful, and the monks in the background singing hymns in coptic added mightily to the ambiance. the random koreans crying and singing their own hymns was sort of obnoxious, i though, but to each his own. and then we hiked down, the faster way this time, down a set of three thousand some-odd stairs made single handedly by some monk or other. and then we went back to the beach. we spent sunday in pretty much the same way, sitting by the beach and eating and smoking.
oh hey, i forgot; we did go snorkeling, which was quite excellent. there were loads of scuba divers right off the coast, which i thought was exceedingly silly because most of the reefs were only about 3 meters down, and some i could touch from the surface just by stretching out my hand. actually there were several times when i was floating on a receding wave and seriously feared that it was going to drop me straight onto a reef. but yeah, lots of fish and coral, very pretty, hooray. luke and i are definitely going back sometime in the not too distant future to do some real dives.
and then katie, sarah and i left; the other three stayed to celebrate chelsea's birthday, which was today, but i didnt want to skip more school, alas. so i got back at like 7 this morning and then to the new campus, which i why i havent slept in a bed in four days. i have either been dozing on buses or climbing mountains every night, and im tired.
thats all.

its rather late; ill try to get through lebanon tonight and tackle syria later

picking up where i left off:
i forgot my passport because im an idiot. luckily we left like 2 and a half hours early, so i darted outside to get in a cab to drive back to zamalek to pick it up. i called one of my roommates and he got my pass and gave it to another friend because i had the (brilliant) idea of meeting her halfway to save time, but alas, the language barrier impeded this plan; neither cab driver understood that i wanted to go halfway to zamalek and she wanted to go halfway to the airport, so i just went all the way and... yeah. i got back to the airport with like 40 minutes to spare, huzzah, and i went through security and went up to get my boarding pass (the others had already gone through, and actually i think they were on the plane at this point). unfortunately, the policy with egypt air requires you to pick up your boarding pass 45 minutes before the flight, so the guy was pretty adamant about not letting me on the plane. naturally that was unacceptable, so i (very uncharacteristically) politely and calmly bitched him out until his boss came over and told him to let the stupid tourist on the plane. then the dude got all hung up about the fact that i only had a one-way ticket; apparently you arent supposed to go to beirut to stay. so i whined and moaned about that for a while and again his boss let me in, so now i had about 25 minutes to get through passport control, find the gate and get on the plane (on which the rest of my party was already waiting). so they had a security person escort me to the front of all the lines and rush me through all of the paperwork and then take me to the gate and in the end i made it, yay.
quite a stressful way to start a trip.
ill take a moment now to introduce the key players in these stories: christiana, chelsea, christine, luke and myself. we also interacted with a smattering of lebanese and syrians (obviously), a few brits, some greeks, a german, a couple of italians, and one guy from baghdad.
anyhoo, christiana had some experience with something called "couch surfing," which isnt exactly what it sounds like; there is no water and in fact no standing on couches at all. but there is a website where you can put in your trip information and basically request a couch/bed/floor upon which to crash and people look at your profile and invite you to stay with them. so we had a connection in lebanon, which was ultra convenient; he picked us up and the airport and drove us out to his house in the mountains. his name was walid, and he was quite an excellent character.
walid is, for lack of a better term, an alcohol dealer, and he provides (in addition to various other brands) all of the bacardi to all of the bars and clubs in beirut. that might be a slight exaggeration, but he does sell a lot of alcohol and beirut drinks a lot, so he knows many club slash bar owners and has tons of connections.
we started at his house; first we just wandered around looking at his amazing setup, which included 2 and a half bedrooms, 2 and a half bathrooms, a den, a living room/dining room, a kitchen, and a huge balcony overlooking all of beirut and the med. it was all quite lovely and we took lots of pictures and said "wow" a lot. and then he opened his liquor cabinet and we said "wow" some more, and then we got drunk and had a dance party in his living room. then we went out on the town. he took us to bar after bar, just giving us the gist of beirut's nightlife (which is spectacular), and after a few minutes at every place he would say "shall we go?" and we would move on. but eventually we found a bar with a dance floor and salsa music, so we stayed and danced for a while. eventually we left and went to a rather exclusive club called "basement," which was reasonably small and included a tiny raised marble dance floor onto which we crowded. and then we went to the "hottest" club in beirut, a place called bo18, which is also underground, but the roof opens and its pretty amazing. unfortunately he couldnt get us in for free because the owner was gone (this was like 5 in the morning) and we didnt want to pay the ridiculous cover, so we just looked in the top and then went to eat. the saj restaurant was astonishingly lively considering the time and we had some utterly delicious saj, which is, in case you dont know, a sort of middle eastern version of pizza made with thin, extremely doughy bread and sometimes rolled into wraps. then we went back to his apartment for a nightcap and another brief dance party and we were asleep by eight. yeah, a.m.
we woke up at about eleven and slowly got moving again; we debated about plans but eventually decided to hit the beach. on the way we got some fresh lebanese bananas from a roadside cart, which was an excellent decision, and then we swam in the med. amazing water, gigantic (and slightly terrifying) waves, lots of rocks; all in all a spectacular experience. luke and chelsea and i went out like 100 meters and just treat water and chatted, which was quite pleasant, but then when we tried to swim to shore we were rather crushed by waves and pounded against the rock shore; chelsea tried her hardest to drown and my feet kept getting cut on the silly rocks, but we made it back and went to a lovely little cafe about 10 feet from the waterline. this cafe was probably the highlight of the trip for me, quite honestly; all lebanese food is amazing, but this place was particularly good, and having the sea and the salt breeze so near after spending a month in the tangible smog of cairo was hugely relieving.
then we went to the corniche (sp?), which is basically a huge boardwalk all along the med; its a great place to people-watch, and it also grants access to a place called, if i remember correctly, pigeon rock. this is just a random, towering island in the middle of the sea, but you can walk out onto a peninsula and peer down over the cliffs and see the surf crashing. chelsea and christiana and i sang disney songs as we watched the sun set, and luke found a random rainbow kite in a pile of debris so he darted around compiling pieces of string and ended up flying it fairly well. and then, for some inexplicable reason, the grass behind us caught on fire... but we made it back to the street and went to some art gallery in this dude's house.
walid is some sort of underground art connoisseur, so the "gallery" was quite modern, which im usually not interested in, but this was mostly photography of lebanon so it was quite original (to me, at least) and moderately fascinating. some guy was playing guitar in the background, only he was playing it with a file and he wasnt pushing any frets, so it was mostly just this eerie screeching, which sounds unpleasant, but it sort of improved the ambiance.
then we went to a random sandwich shop and got awesome lebanese falafel and french fry sandwiches, and then we went to walid's apartment and looked at picture books of pacific islands and played with his cat, and then we came home and watched a documentary about the 2006 war between israel and lebanon, which was altogether disturbing and made me question america's relationship with israel, but ill hold off on that judgment, i think.
the next day we went to a tiny town called byblos (sp?), which is extremely old and quaint and cute. we went through their little suq (market) and bought random stuff and then had another amazing lebanese lunch on another beautiful veranda. the owner of the place ate with us too (when he wasnt hurrying around serving the other tables) and he told us about lebanese history and culture and in general gave me an extremely good impression of lebanese people. then we explored a ruined castle complete with a small amphitheater overlooking the med; it was altogether lovely, despite the fact that christiana and christine wandered off and we seriously thought they had been abducted... then we visited this huge vaulted cathedral, and then we went to the caves. i have completely forgotten the name of the place, though i think it starts with a "j," if that is useful, but it was an enormous cavern filled with the usual gorgeous cave formations. we wandered for a while and then, since we were the only tourists inside and the place was about to close, we had a sing along slash dance party with some of the attendants there, and then we went down into the lower caverns and took a boat ride along the underground river; it was very eerie and a bit phantom-of-the-opera-esque, but the guy let us take pictures (usually forbidden), which was quite excellent. as soon as i get around to stealing them, ill put them on facebook, but luke posted his on that site i gave earlier so you can get a preview if you want.
the next day (i believe we are on tuesday now, the 30th of september, though my timetable may be skewed) we wandered in beirut, mostly along the corniche, and explored the american university in beirut, which is markedly more beautiful and appealing than auc. actually, everything in beirut was markedly more beautiful than its cairene equivalent, but lets not go there, eh? then we ate more delicious lebanese food and then we got crepes from a street vendor; they were so good that i have to mention them above and apart from the other delicious food. everyone got something different, so they were filled with combinations of cookies and cream, bananas, dark and light chocolate, and crushed snickers, but i think mine was the best- bananas and nutella.
my whole mouth seriously just filled with saliva...
anyway, then we went to an internet cafe to find out how we were going to get home; therein i discovered that a ridiculous number of middle easterners are addicted to world of warcraft, and also a fairly appreciable portion of them still play warcraft three. surely no one cares about this but me, but i thought it was neat; i used to love that game.
then we went to a cafe in a neighborhood inhabited by hezbollah, which sounds more exciting than it was. the cafe was rather like a castle, which was lovely and extremely impressive, but, contrary to the media-induced american stereotype, the streets were not rampant with wanton violence and the children were not armed to the teeth with automatic rifles and bombs. they were pretty ordinary people; the only thing that differentiated them as hezbollah was the t-shirts. you could have your picture taken and then scanned onto a shirt with a "lebanese patriot," aka "america's most wanted." no, i didnt get one.
the next day we had a lovely breakfast made by walid and luke; we ate lots of bread and raw stuff (olives, hummus, lebnah, random vegetables) on walid's huge patio. then we took a bus to balbek (sp?) and the other four went into some huge ruined temples, but i didnt feel like paying because they didnt look as impressive as the ruins in rome, so i wandered around this tiny town by myself for a while. i meandered into a field and was accosted by a kid with a rifle (a real one) and he told me to give him money, but i laughed at him and walked away because im very brave. actually that story comes across as much scarier than it was in real life; its just more interesting to tell it like that because the accurately detailed version is longer and less exciting.
then we hopped a cab to damascus.
we ended up waiting at syrian immigration for 7 and a half hours. here are the highlights:
-christiana showed a huge crowd of lebanese people a very impressive card trick and they all applauded her until the guards told them to leave the americans alone; apparently they prefer to keep people like us in isolation
-the only bathroom was in the duty-free shop in lebanon, so we had to re-cross the border every time; by the end of it, the lebanese guards didnt even demand an explanation, they just waved the stupid americans through
-after about 5 hours we bought a bottle of gin at the aforementioned duty free store and christiana, christine and i proceeded to get rather drunk in the syrian immigration building. needless to say, luke held me back from talking to the border guards when they finally issued the visas :)
and then we got a new cab and headed for damascus.
and that was lebanon. enough for now; im sleepy.

was this castle built? no, it was downloaded.

i have missed like 2 weeks of updating stuff, so this entry promises to be extremely long. however, i have been awake since about 11 am yesterday so im pretty tired (it is about 3 pm now), so i probably wont be able to get it all out in one go. im back from the lebanon slash syria trip, but i have some stories from the week before as well so we shall start there and see how far we get, how does that sound? jolly good.
lets see, today is sunday i think, which means that my first story takes place thirteen days ago. i went to the scuba shop with luke and eric and some new friends, chelsea and ron; the latter two started their open water certification that night, luke just wanted to check out the facilities, and eric and i were finishing up our course. i took the test and, despite lots of ridicule from the instructor, i got a 98%, so apparently im quite incredible at scuba diving.
the wednesday after that, luke and i had a date with ashraf (the guy who saved our lives the first day in cairo, if you remember); it was almost his last night before going back to germany and he wanted to spend it with us, such a sweetie. so he promised to pick us up and make us koshary at his house, so it was all set up that our whole room would have dinner with ashraf and i was very excited. or at least a little bit excited. but then like an hour beforehand the other two roomies bailed out, so it was just luke and me who walked out to meet ashraf and he was like, "i made so much koshary, we must fill up the car or i will be eating koshary for a week!" so i started calling people and luke went inside the dorm to recruit; ironic enough, the only person we managed to scrounge up at such short notice was this little romanian girl named corina, so we still did in fact have massive amounts of leftovers. but we had a really good night and ash made us milkshakes even though he is a vegan (on wednesdays and fridays only, religious reasons doncha know) and then let us have some of his licorice flavored vodka even though he doesnt drink, and then we hooked him up with facebook and made friends with him and it was all super duper. im cutting that story short because it is getting rather long and isnt so interesting. anyway, at the end of the night we made plans to meet up the next evening for dinner and a faluca ride.
so. luke and corina and i were quite thrilled about the prospect of cooking and bringing food out onto a boat to eat in the middle of the nile, and we assumed that everyone else would be as well. i invited like 30 people, which in hindsight sounds rather pathetic because we ended up with i think six including me, luke, corina and ashraf, but in my defense we gave extremely short notice and there were at least 3 other big auc parties that night. anyway, luke and i hauled our cooking stuff over to corinas building and started to make this giant dinner based on the number of people we hoped would come, which was about twenty. we made two huge pots of rice and another even more huge pot of potatoes and then some stir-fried vegetables and mushrooms and a salad and it was awesome. and then we realized that everyone who had said that they wanted to come was in fact going to another auc party instead, but we dedided to make the best of it anyway, so we took off with our little posse and our gross amount of food and met ashraf and sailed off onto the nile and had a lovely dinner. and we also finished the rest of the licorice vodka. by this time it was probably about eleven, but i wasnt tired so corina and i went to one of the auc parties. we bummed a cab ride off of a couple of her friends and ended up at auc's club rugby team's house (random, i know). i have never been to a frat party, but it was what i imagine one must be like; it was filled, standing room only, with white kids with very little rhythm all trying to drink and find someone of the oppose sex to "mack" on. needless to say, it was not at all my kind of party, and corina agreed with me so we left rather quickly. i just happened to know an egyptian who lived in the same neighborhood, though (which was super-fortunate since i had zero pounds on me, literally), so i called him and he came and picked us up and brought us to his party, which was much more my style, it was very laid back and rather quiet and we just talked and smoked stuff and played guitar and ate the delicious little honey dessert things. i got back to my room at like 3 in the morning and was very proud at my social butterfly-ness.
the next night, luke and i planned yet another social gathering; this time we only invited a few people, but all of those people said yes and then invited their own friends so we ended up with a group of almost 20. funny how things like that work out. anyway, the twenty of us sqeezed variously into several cabs and headed to islamic cairo to find the infamous egyptian pancake restaurant. we succeeded in finding it, but i dont think i will ever go back because as soon as a huge group of white people sat down they busted out the english menus and claimed that they didnt have any arabic ones. (some egyptian restaurants like to charge more for tourists so they print different prices on the different menus assuming that no white people can read arabic... but what the heck kind of egyptian restaurant wouldnt have any arabic menus at all??) we got various dessert pancakes, and they were all very delicious and covered with butter and filled with chocolate or sugar or jam or other delicacies, but like i said they were sort of jerks so no. and then we were right next to the giant market so everyone wanted to walk around, but luke and i sort of insisted that we break up into smaller groups to avoid further scams. so he and i and our friend heather wandered the market for a while and eventually got a bit lost and asked directions from a random old man who tooks us on this crazy ride on a mini-bus and eventually invited us to come have dinner at his house (even though he spoke no english and i speak no arabic... luke is getting to be a pretty good translator though). so we told the old guy that we would call him later and we came home, but once again i wasnt terribly tired and the debates were on, if you recall, at four am, so heather and i (luke isnt really a night owl, alas) went to a debate party. mostly people just smoked and drank and laughed at how silly those two guys are, but i did get bitched out by a girl because i scoffed at some military policies and her boyfriend is enlisted and yada yada... i didnt have the heart to tell her to stuff it, in going to be in that war too... anyway, not the point. and then i was in bed by five.
the main players in the stories over the next few days are as follows: myself, luke, chelsea, christiana, and christine. we also have various small parts played by some lebanese, some syrians, some half brit half egyptians, some italians, a german, and i think a greek, though im not positive. anyway, the next day we flew to beirut. i forgot my passport because im retarded and i always forget my passport, and yes, dad, im completely serious. i know. and right this second i have to clear off because im literally falling asleep on my keys. tootes for now.