The Break is Ending

I just made an amazing discovery, it turns out I actually get the Daily Show here in Egypt! It comes on some nights at 12:30 AM, and it’s on the same channel that CNN comes on. So finally CNN has realized what we’ve known for years, everyone gets their news from Jon Stewart. I’m just glad that the Egyptians get to experience the joy of indecision 2008.

So the break is coming to an end, and it was a long one. I ran around Egypt with friends, visiting all the places I missed during the semester. Down in Upper Egypt (down because it’s south, upper because it’s up the Nile), I got to visit Aswan and Luxor. Aswan is the most southern tourist city in Egypt, it’s around there that all the Nubians are. Nubia used to be a separate empire, to the south of Egypt, but now a days Egypt and Sudan have swallowed up what was Nubia. The ethnic Nubians have a harder time too, since in the 1950’s Egypt built a dam, which created Lake Naser, where it used to be just the Nile. Since for 5,000 years everyone lived right next to the Nile, this new lake flooded over all the villages and ancient monuments that were once there. So, no more Nubia. But there are still Nubians, and what was considered the best of the ancient monuments were moved, beyond the flood zone. Moving a 70 thousand ton rock isn’t exactly easy, but they managed.

The best thing I saw was Abu Simble, which is a temple with four giant statues sitting at the entrance. They are massive, especially when you see them in person. I continued north to Luxor, which has the temple of Karnak, next to the ocean, which the modern city is literally built around. It’s odd seeing on one side of the street an ancient temple to the god Isis, then on the other, a strip of fast food restaurants and Internet cafes. There were more hieroglyphics and pillar and statues and rocks. In all actuality, by the end of it, hieroglyphics were kind of like stars, each one is magical, mystical, inspiring and all that, but unless you know what you're looking at, they are all kind of the same.

I ended my break trying to get to the border between Gaza and Egypt, after Al-Jazeera was reporting that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were flooding into the country. I went with friends, not really knowing what we were looking for, we just wanted to be where the action was. Well, it turns out the trains were on strike over a price increase. The train company wanted to fine the driver an extra 10 pounds ($2) every time the train was late. The drivers thought that sometimes the trains were late and it wasn’t their fault. Then hundreds of Egyptians came out because they just love to support the little guy, without really understanding the issue, or even bothering to find out if this might actually make the trains run on time.

Anyway, they were probably right, but we didn’t find out. We wound up taking a bus, and after a few unnecessary transfers to squeeze all the money out of us possible, we were finally being taking across the bridge over the Suez Canal. All the Egyptians wanted to get across, so that they could sell their goods to the incoming Palestinians and make some money, but the Egyptians government didn’t want that. They wanted the Palestinians to go home. As we proceeded we saw the police dumping out loads of items like chips and tires and other goodies that were being seized by police. I saw a huge pile of Marlboro Cigarettes and I though it would be nifty to take a picture. Bad Idea. Not in Egypt, not at a military check point. Long story short, we were detained for hours because taking pictures is forbidden, my pictures got deleted, which bothers me because I had this great video of a guy during the train protest ripping his shirt off (Censorship!), and they let us go, each with a pack of contraband cigarettes, and I don’t even smoke. We made it back 24 hours after we left without being shot or kidnapped or sent to jail or anything. We didn’t make it to the border, but we had an adventure and it was a great start to the semester.