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.