me: 1, airlines: 0

After lengthy fights with half a dozen airlines this week, I have emerged victorious. Things I had to do included:

1. re-booking my return flight to America while attempting to avoid re-paying for the flight (I win);
2.fighting with Orbitz for a refund on my trip to Israel after they rebooked me on a flight that would have caused to miss half the Seder (I win); and
3. re-booking myself on the return flights from Israel back to Cairo (win again).

I will now be going to Israel via seven-hour bus ride to Taba, but on the bright side at least it's all over and I am done fighting with various airlines and travel sites.

the future freaks me out

Firstly, a special blog shout-out to my amazing roommate Adrienne (previously referred to as A1) for getting into grad school. SAIS (school for international affairs at Johns Hopkins) is lucky to have her -- congrats!

Seeing my friends plan for their futures makes me think a lot about what's going to happen when I leave Egypt this summer. It's a challenge for sure, because I know that if I were to stay in Cairo with my journalism background I could have my pick of jobs, even in this rotten economy. In fact, I kind of already have received two informal offers, or at least had people express interest if I chose to stick around. But the problem is that if I accepted either of those jobs I would have to plan to commit to Cairo for another year or so, and I am pretty sure that's something I am not willing to do right now.

I have, as some of you know, been thinking a lot about law school. It's always been something I considered, though I pretty much put it on the back-burner in college to concentrate on journalism. Well, the journalism industry now...makes me really sad. That will be another post for another time. But suffice it to say that law school is looking better and better. Anyway, I have been thinking a lot recently about life post-Cairo (right now it's a pretty scary thought), and so that's kind of what those thoughts are looking like right now. But it's months away, so who knows!

Anyway, I realized I never really posted anything about last week either - sorry about that! I had a good weekend here. On Thursday night we went to a party at the American Embassy thrown by the U.S. Marines who work at/guard the embassy, this one a belated St. Patrick's Day party. We've gone to several of these parties before, and they're always a good time. Still no green beer, but at least we got to celebrate St. Patrick's Day a little. Otherwise, earlier in the week we went to a bar called After 8, where a man sang Irish folk songs for an hour before an Egyptian band called Wust el Balad took over. Although there was a huge bar fight at the end of the evening that night, and that felt very Irish. Overall, though, compared to festivities I have seen in Chicago, where the Chicago River is dyed green, Cairo seems pretty underrepresented when it comes to authentic Irish culture. And also actual Irish people.

Instead of a museum on Saturday, I went to the Ezbekiyya Gardens in Ataba, which contain a well-known book market. Though I currently have a good deal of reading material, I went just to browse. The offerings, though disorganized, are so much more diverse than what you would find at a regular used book store in America. In addition to your standard worn copies of American paperbacks (old copies of Stephen King, Jonathan Kellerman and other types of typical airport bookstore finds), there are Mickey Mouse comics in Arabic, ancient copies of travel guides to countries all over the world, stacks of back issues of some truly random magazines (hello, scary fashion trends in Cosmo circa 1991), and, obviously, many copies of the Qu'ran. These are all on display in about 100 stalls, so it's best to just go wander. I quite enjoyed it; as someone who has been a lifelong book lover, sometimes it's nice just to wander and browse.

paint fight

One of the great things about having friends from such diverse backgrounds means the chance to enjoy many different holidays and celebrations. On Friday, my friends and I went to the Indian Embassy to celebrate Holi, the Hindu festival of color. They were giving out packets of colored powder, which are smeared on others for maximum color effect. The powder can also be combined with water to make a paste, which is used to continue to paint your friends. We also "borrowed" boxes of water to use in a large water fight on the lawn, so that after about an hour we looked like clowns in a sprinkler. But not scary ones! There was also a bar, delicious Indian food for sale, and plenty of Bollywood dance music. (Photo above, more on Facebook.)

Also, later on Friday (after a shower to wash the paint off, though in retrospect it would have been hilarious to walk around Zamalek splattered in paint for the facial expressions alone), I went to an AIESEC event called Global Village. This is the event that most AIESEC chapters will host eventually, and it's kind of AIESEC's signature thing. I am a pretty bad AIESECer -- I have not been to an event in ages -- but I thought this one sounded pretty cool.

Basically, there are booths for different countries, and each one is manned by a trainee (what I am) from that country, who is supposed to bring along things that represent their country: posters, food, music, etc. The America booth (other AIESECers represented, I just stopped by as a visitor) featured some Obama paraphenalia, peanut butter sandwiches, etc. The Morocco booth had what were possibly the best cookies ever. The girls manning the Japan booth spent the entire day in full-length kimonos.

This happened to be a good time for Global Village since Egypt is currently hosting an international AIESEC conference in Sharm this week, so they had loads of extra people from more countries to be at the booths. It was held in these gardens along the Nile, and they had a few local bands playing music also. I stopped by with a few other trainees I am friends with, we browsed the booths, enjoyed the weather, and then left together to get dinner. Many of the Egyptian AIESECers I am friends with asked why I never go to events and made me feel sufficiently guilty, so maybe I will try to go to more things this spring. Does it count as a New Year's Resolution in March?

the chicken and the mushroom

I think we all know that I am not really the outdoorsy type, years spent at Eisner notwithstanding, but I did, in fact, willingly go camping this weekend. And it was fun! This weekend is potentially a long weekend: Monday is Mohammad's birthday and an official day off, so many people also took off Sunday and made it a four-day weekend. Since I just took off to go to Amsterdam with Michelle, I chose to work today (Sunday), though I was still up for a little desert excursion.

Since Cairo is so crowded, it can be a bit of a shock sometimes to remember how startlingly empty the rest of the country can be. Our base was the Bahariyya Oasis in the Western Desert (of which the Black and White Deserts are just a small part), and on the 4-hour drive from Cairo to Bahariyya we passed...nothing. Just vast open expanses of desert as far as the eye could see, punctuated by brief spottings of camels or a few reststops. I suppose beach is still my favorite, but there is something I really love about the innate peacefulness of the desert, and this trip didn't disappoint.

We departed Cairo at 4 a.m. Friday morning packed into a minibus, drove to the Bahariyya Oasis, where we ate breakfast and repacked our bags into two 4x4 vehicles for the desert trip. There were nine of us, plus three guides. They drove the cars, made the food, tea and fire, set up the camp, and even played some awesome drum music around the campfire. We first drove through the Black Desert, which is black because of a former volcano in the area. We continued on through some really beautiful scenery, and eventually ended up in the White Desert, where we camped for the night.

The Black Desert was not necessarily my favorite, though the volcano was cool. On the other hand, the White Desert was really freaking awesome. Everything is very lunar looking, and you really feel like you are walking around on the surface of the moon. There are these strange white shapes kind of rising out of nothing, all in this white, chalky rock. It looked to me like it had been snowing on a Dr. Seuss book or something like that. And at night, the moon was so bright and reflecting off the rocks, you could see perfectly even without a flashlight.

In the morning, we stopped at a few noteworthy formations on our way back to Bahariyya. This included The Mushroom (not pictured), and The Chicken, which is the photo on the top of this post. It looks like the chicken is facing a tree. Pretty awesome.

And a sidenote: I didn't even realize it, but this weekend at Northwestern was Dance Marathon, a popular NU fundraiser that I have participated in for the last three years. Hundreds of student dancers dance for 30 hours to raise money for a chosen charity, with even more students volunteering their time to take care of the dancers, raise money with alumni, organize within the university, count all the money, set the dancing area, be in charge of music, lighting and more. It's an incredible undertaking that, I think, really brings together the student body. I missed it this year.

Former volcano in the black desert

Pretty desert photo

This is the awesome place we stopped for lunch. Note the very zen-like stream flowing through the middle.

Our campsite in the White Desert, set up by our awesome Bedouin guides. This was the chill-out area, though we also had a campfire and tents for sleeping off to the side.

Ooooh, wide-lens! Fancy! White desert at sunset. You can see another jeep out there as well.

Another view of the desert in the morning.

leaving on a jet plane...or am i?

On this blog, I have previously complained about forms of transportation, like the microbus from Taba or the taxis in Cairo. But I still felt pretty good about planes, until this week. Last night (well, I suppose it was early morning, actually) I was attempting to book airfare to Israel for Passover. What a struggle.

I should note that figuring all of this out (below) took a few days, as I waited to hear back from various people and rearranged the days I was going to travel. I originally wanted to go on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, but that didn't work out at all so I settled on Tuesday during the day (which means I need to take an extra day off work). Better to be there early than to miss the seder. Throughout this whole thing, I was speaking with my family in Israel to make sure someone was available to pick me up at the airport and that I will have a place to stay if I arrive a night early. I was also coordinating with two different travel agents, since some Web sites don't list flights to Israel, and others don't exist at all (Air Sinai, I'm looking at you). I was also e-mailing with my dad to keep my parents updated on the situation. So I was juggling many options at the same time. But of course, there were several problems.

First, no one flies from Cairo to Israel in the middle of the week, apparently. There is Air Sinai, Egypt Air's "secret" offshoot which has no Web site; there are flights to Israel but you need to book them through a travel agent or in person, and they only operates a few flights a week and none of them are when I wanted to go. There's El Al, which, in addition to only having a few flights each week, mostly on weekends, is also much more expensive than you'd think (though I suppose Passover is one of their busiest times, so maybe that's fair). I finally resorted to Royal Jordanian, where I could connect via Amman. It just seems to silly to need a connection for a flight that is under two hours. Comparison-wise, this is like having a flight from New York to Boston with a layover in Westchester. But RJ does fly to Israel every day, so that's fine, and I have flown the airline before and it's all good.

But of course, it can't be that easy. The RJ Web site makes it possible for a customer to book a flight from Tel Aviv to Cairo, but not from Cairo to Tel Aviv. Why? You've obviously got flights to Israel. Why not make it possible to book these flights? So I turned to Orbitz, where they are currently acknowledging the Cairo-Tel Aviv flights, but not at the proper times. It looked like my options were: pay about $1300 for a flight that connects through Germany or France (completely ridiculous), or have an overnight layover that would give me a sleepover in the Amman airport. I eventually chose the second option, but will try and go standby on an earlier flight. If that doesn't work, I will stay overnight in an airport hotel and be in Israel really freaking early on Wednesday morning.

Anyway, it's all settled now and I have airfare, and I am really looking forward to going to Israel for Passover. I am not sure if it's for the joke potential (it's Exodus, people! Leaving Egypt for Israel on Passover? Too perfect!), or because it's just been a while since I was last there (Jerusalem in November). In any event, Passover is pretty much my favorite Jewish holiday (yes, more than Hanukkah), and I am excited. To be on the lookout for plagues and attempt to part the Red Sea. Just kidding. I really am excited!

Still, Egypt and Israel are neighbors. I've crossed the land border and it's open and fine. There is peace now. So why is still so freaking hard to get from one country to the other?! I know, I know, you all want to give me world's littlest violin right now. If finding airfare is my biggest worry, I should count myself lucky. But you know what, it's still insanely frustrating. OK, I feel better now. Rant over.

dam

Last night I got back from Amsterdam, which was excellent. I met Michelle there for four days -- she first went to Prague to see a friend studying abroad, and then we chose Amsterdam as something of a midpoint for us to meet up. We met in the airport Wednesday midday and took the train to our hotel. We had a great few days to explore the city, and only got lost a little (this was probably my fault... it usually is).

Some highlights included: a canal cruise to see the city (I really enjoyed the adorable canal houses), walking on many bridges (Michelle, the future civil engineer, has a thing for bridges), the Rijksmuseum (which had lots of artifacts and art, with many by Renoir, Vermeer and Rembrandt, including his famous The Night Watch), the Van Gogh Museum (including dozens of famous ones, like self-portraits, sunflowers and Starry Night), the Heineken Factory (no explanation necessary here!), the Anne Frank House, and plenty of walking and exploring. The above "iamsterdam" sign is outside the Museumplein, which is where the museums live. We thought it was cool and played in it for a while, in one of the sunnier parts of our long weekend (as you will see below, it was pretty cloudy most of the time and rained a bit on Friday).

There were some things we wanted to do but were not in season, like a nearby windmill village which is supposed to have like seven or eights windmills and other cute village-y things, but only one is open during the winter so it didn't really seem worth it to go out there. It's OK, I'll see the windmills next time -- it just gives me a good excuse to go back. We also saw tulips, but not to the extent I imagine we would have seen them during the spring.

Michelle turning the gears at the Heineken factory. This was before the beer taste-testing.

Outside of the Anne Frank House (the building on the left with the windows). They are pretty strict about no photos inside, but this is the street she looked out on every day for two years.

Canals and bridges all lit up at night. Pretty!

Michelle and I outside the Royal Palace in Dam Square.

Royal Palace (not open when the family is in residence, and it was closed to tourists when we were there)

More canal and houses, as seen from our canal cruise.

This is the Old Church as seen from our canal cruise. As you can see, it was a rather overcast day, which I think makes it look rather gothic.

I know it's a bit blurry, but here we are sitting in a giant wooden clog. It was about as awesome as you'd expect.