Preview of the Soon-to-Come Egypt Journals

Seeing as how I have 16 minutes of internet time left and I've done all the e-mail, news and facebook checking I need to do before our return to Cairo, I'd like to share a quick story from the Jackie and Eunice Egypt Journals.

Monday, in Aswan, we hopped on a ferry across the Nile (1 Eyptian Pound apiece = less than 20 cents) to Elephantine Island. Elephantine Island is home to two Nubian villages, which total 5,000 residents. It's a small island of narrow dirt paths, shabby shacks and clusters of cement homes. Herds of sheep wander freely about the paths, there are no motorized vehicles, and there are no street signs (I don't even know if their streets have names).

Wandering about the dirt paths, we ran into a young Nubian guy named Ahmed. He asked us if we would like him to show us around, to which we agreed for lack of reason to decline. Ahmed, 22 years of age, just finished his 1.5 years in the army and is now "free." While he's hoping to go to New Zealand or Australia soon, he's been enjoying his newfound freedom partying in Aswan (pop. ~380,000) as he did the evening before until 6am.

He took us on a nice tour of his quiet village, taking us to his favorite spot on the west bank cliffs of the island overlooking the Nile. Here, he we were invited to smoke some really "dangerous Maria." We respectfully declined, not wanting to invite any obstacles to our search for the train to Luxor later that evening. Ahmed persisted for a while, trying to persuade us to change our train tickets, our hostel reservations-- even our return flight to Tel Aviv.

Anyways, I'm almost out of internet minutes so I've got to wrap things up. We leave for Cairo in a couple hours, will have the afternoon and evening in Cairo, and then it's back home to Tel Aviv via Amman. Exciting and fun as Egypt has been, we're both really excited to get back to TLV-- fleas and all. Have I shared that story yet? I have flea bites all over my lower limbs, feet and ankles. For a while I had a cluster of about 6 bites on my neck, which made me the unfortunate focus of widespread speculation at school.

Damn. Now I'm over on time. Blog readers beware-- Eunice has taken almost 2 Gigs of pictures and I have enough tales (Egypt and otherwise) to last until early spring. Just to whet your appetites, here is a non-extensive list of themes/topics that will be covered: mysterious infestation of fleas, flash flood in the Dead Sea, dodging puddles of sheep's blood in Islamic Cairo, invitation to dinner in the veritable slums of Cairo, journey to Abu Simbel in a police convoy, buying train tickets (this bland heading is misleading), narrowly avoiding a waterfall of shit-filled water flowing onto my bare feet.