Egypt

Friday:

Actually this story starts on Thursday. From Jerusalem, I travelled with my friend Anna (we volunteered together in Ukraine 04) to Eilat, at the Southernest [sic] part of Israel. We had planned to travel to Jordan, where Anna is working for the summer, but by the time we got to Eilat Thurs night the Jordanian border was closed. Lucky for us, the Egyptian border keeps the same hours as 7-11, so we were like "f-it, lets go." The Egyptian side of the border is hilariously lax. There is, quite literally, more security entering an average shopping mall in Israel (fyi, to go to the mall in Israel they search your bag, you gotta go thru a metal detector, and you also have to take off your pants. JK about the pants).

So it's 1 AM, we in Egypt, Sinai to be exact, and we got no plans. I turn to some Israeli's standing next to me and ask, "hey do you guys know where to go?" 5 mins later we're sharing a cab to "Paradise" (that's the name of the beach. Yes, it is scary when a group of Egyptian men are all yelling askin if you want to go to Paradise. I was like, "hell no I don't wanna go to Paradise!").

In reality though, it was. Our Bedouin cab-driver spoke fluent Hebrew, and he spent most of the drive talkin World Cup with our new Israeli friends (is the Cup big back home? Here it's like everyday is the Super Bowl). His fluent Hebrew would turn out to be extremely typical. The Egyptians at Paradise all spoke flawless Aivrit ("Hebrew" in Hebrew) and were totally chill. On Friday night, Anna asked if there was going to be anything for Shabbat. "Of course!" was the response (in Hebrew). In addition to having Stars of David hanging around, the staff arranges a communal Shabbat meal every Friday, provides candles and wine, and are generally the nicest guys ever. I don't know if it was the beach setting, market capitalism, or the Middle Eastern-hippie crowd, but people there REALLY seem to get along. Almost Israeli-Egyptian utopia. Regretably, when I told my Israeli co-workers about it, they told me that "Sinai is not really Egypt." Or so they say.

A really crazy thing I gotta mention is that we actually ran into the crew I had chilled with at the Kibbutz the wknd before! They all just happened to be there. Keep in mind I wasn't even trying to go to that country that night, let alone that beach. And the Israelis that took us there turned out to be AMAZING, amazing people. Iraqi-Algerian, Moroccan-Yemenite newlyweds taking a break before their trip to Thailand and medical school in Hungary. We went snorkeling together (seeing what is in the ocean is wild, yo) and talked politics, religion, you know.

And the food was good. And it was cheap.