the last entry from egypt

im in the cairo airport right now, but im like an hour and a half early for my flight (who would have figured that the airport could be the most efficient system in the country??) and i have free internet, so its either write this or go browse the wide selection of cheap alcohol at the duty-free store. ill probably do that later anyway. and plus, it seems like i should write the last egypt entry while still in egypt. it would be a little unauthentic to deliver it from romania or home.
im not sure who reads this; actually to my knowledge, its only mom and dad and luke and lauren (maybe katie and margaret still do?), but anyway, in case you didnt know, im going to romania. and if everyone already knew that then sorry for being redundant.
i left off last entry during one of the busiest weeks of the semester. interestingly enough, the week after proved busier, though in a different way. this last week has been so incredibly jam packed with stuff, and very little of that stuff has been sleep, so ive been hectically bustling about trying to enjoy my last few days in cairo while refraining from failing classes. however! i still havent written about israel, so ill do that first and see what happens from there.
it all started on thursday, the fourth of december. the players are regulars in these tales: luke and chelsea, corina and lauren, and, naturally, me. we planned to leave for taba (the border town between egypt and israel) on thursday night, thus arriving friday morning, but luke and chelsea decided that they needed an extra day in cairo, so we just piddled around on thursday. we went to citystars (the big, hugely westernized mall) with the intention of getting pedicures, but apparently no men are allowed, which i found sexist until i remembered that i was in egypt. so luke and i sat in a coffee shop while lauren and chelsea got pretty, and then we all went to this ridiculous pseudo-amusement park inside the mall. its a really ridiculous place called magic galaxy, and it is filled with janky kids rides that look like they are made entirely of plastic. but everything was supremely colorful, and they have this ridiculous roller coaster so we rode it and yeah. that was that. we slept at chelsea's that night, if i remember correctly, which i usually dont, with plans to leave on the nine o'clock bus on friday.
luke and chelsea were taking the evening bus so that they could do work all day friday (but of course they didnt do any work at all for reasons that i have mentioned before), so lauren and i left without them. first thing, we had to return to citystars to go to the bank; i may have mentioned that the atm in dahab ate her debit card so she had no money, so her dad wired her some and we had to go pick it up. unfortunately, the address that she had led us to a cafe- the bank closed two years ago. then we were wandering and this random nice egyptian picked us up (i know it sounds sketchy, but dont forget that im a highly trained assassin) and drove us back to citystars where the main branch of the bank was located. we finally found the office and knocked and some guy in workout clothes answered the door; we soon found out that this office was only a representative and that they do no actual money exchanges and, in fact, this branch was totally removed from egypt in 2006. bummer. i dont even remember the name of the bank, but i kind of think it was amex. not important. the point was that lauren still had no money, it was 0922 and we were supposed to meet corina at the bus station to catch the 0930 bus on the other side of town. once again, this random egyptian was super nice and told us where a nearby bus station was, so we could wait there for corina, she could get off, give us tickets, and we could go. so thats what we did. on the bus we met marcus, an austrian who liked to talk philosophy (my kind of guy). thats pretty much the most interesting thing that happened on the bus. we arrived in taba and proceeded through customs.
in case you were wondering, in case there was any doubt whatever in your mind, yes, it is in fact difficult to get into israel, especially from a muslim country, and extra especially if you: 1) have a lebanese stamp in your passport, 2) are wearing a bracelet covered with lebanese flags, and 3) are carrying in your bag a Qur'an.

um... they have started boarding. i guess ill go get on the plane; so much for catching up on my blog. i guess i can type it out and then post from germany; ill still be in egyptian air for like the next hour :)