Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Greece in a paragraph

We are still in Greece for a couple more days.

It's been a while since I've posted. Mostly because I forgot my password and I'm too lazy to look it up. Don't judge. The rest of Israel we did our obligatory float in the Dead Sea, went to Eilat, and crossed over in to Jordan. This whole part of my trip I like to call "let's get out of here". Mainly because every place we went we would get frustrated and overwhelmed. Egypt, I have to be honest, was a very stressful place for me. I stick out like a sore thumb. And having a 5'10'' half asian as my traveling partner didn't help. Although I did enjoy when people would yell "NE HOW" at Sumi. Either that, or they would say "You look Egyptian!" like it was a compliment (it wasn't). And also enjoyed seeing weird things like 3 year old children buying balloons on the street, no parent in sight. But in general, I felt like a walking dollar sign. Hence, let's get out of here.

So in Jordan we went to see Petra which is like an ancient theme park. I was like...wow, this where Indian Jones was...even though I've never actually seen the movie. Lame. I bought a bracelet from a lady who lives in a cave. And we met Bedouin boys who tried to woo us with their donkeys and camels. Got out of that sitation and headed to Dahab Egypt. I have to say, Arab culture is VERY different from what I know and understand. Some of the most polite people and rudest people I met on my trip, I met in Egypt. The problem is, you can never tell who you are going to get when you meet someone. In Cairo we would ask for directions and get led in the complete opposite direction. I think we were led to three, maybe four perfume stores when all we wanted was a cup of coffee. The worst offense was if we refused to have tea with someone. Egyptians would get so mad at us if we didn't want their stupid tea.

Dahab was a nice little hippie town. We just rested a couple days there, I went scuba diving in the famous blue hole. We met some guys we THOUGHT were gay, but turned out they weren't. Look guys, if you wear a pink button down shirt and do feminine hand gestures, I'm gonna think you are gay. Sorry. Got out of there, and took a 20 hour bus ride to Luxor. I enjoyed Luxor a lot actually. Sumi and I rented bikes and went to the valley of the kings. Sumi almost got married to a 17 year old who sells postcards. We met his family and everything. This is how it happened. We rode all the way up to the valley of the kings where this kid tried to sell us postcards. Later, we found out that my bike had a flat tire...and we were about 20-30 km away from our hotel. Luckily, this kid sees us and decides he will help us out. He takes us back to his home where we meet his family, have dinner and he fixes our bikes. All this without any of us being able to speak to each other. He gave Sumi his addidas ring, a photo, and promised his love for her always. Then we got out of there.

Cairo I think is the biggest city I've ever been to. 8 million people. It's such a congested, chaotic city too. Crossing the street takes some serious guts. We spent most of our time there doing the usual tourist things: the Egyptian museum, the pyramids, warding off child beggars and strange men, etc. The Egyptian museum was kind of a disppointment for me. It was so antiquated but there were so many people there so you would think they had money to keep it updated. But it looked like the descriptions of the artifacts were written on kleenex. And some didn't have descriptions at all. The pyramids though were amazing. So incredible. Sumi and I got horses and just galloped around for an hour. Our guide was like...uh, do you want to touch the pyramids or go inside one? We were like, nope, we just want to go fast. The only bad part was that my camera fell out of my pocket, lost somewhere among the pyramids. Then we got out of there.

Greece was such a sigh of relief after Egypt. We flew in to Athens Mar.3. Our first couple days was just traveling: train, other train, bus, ferry boat. Our destination was Corfu. We arrived in Corfu and met Madalena and Spiro. I told her we were looking for jobs, and right away she said she was looking for volunteers. So Sumi and I decided to work for accommodation while we looked for jobs....little did we know...The hostel, Sunrock, is located on Pelekas beach. It's probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's on the beach with mountains behind and a gorgeous sunset. This is where we spent our first month in Greece. Adventures were had. More later...