Somewhere Different Adventure Villa Holidays

Very scatterbrained at the moment. I need to get off the computer, but DSL is such a wonderful thing (as opposed to my Tanta dial-in) .

While sorting through ticket stubs, receipts, etc from my Israel/Palestine trip, I found something I'd forgotten about.

On my trip to Siwa Oasis over Easter, I met some Brits with a very interesting business concept called "Somewhere Different Adventure Villa Holidays". The basic idea is for former backpackers who now have lots of money, but not much time to rent villas in cool, out-of-the-way places for a few weeks (and pay a premium price for it). The locations are:

Egypt
Croatia
Romania
Sri Lanka

I like the idea and want to keep tabs on it...

CouchSurfing!

I don't feel inspired to write about my trip right now, but I'll tell you a bit about the people I stayed with and how that all came about.

This fall, I learned about something called CouchSurfing.com through a visitor to Cairo. The basic premise is that if you have an extra bed/couch in your home and want to host a tourist, you register with a profile and people can email you. So, being the adventurous sort that I am, I decided to try it for my Israel/Palestine trip. I already had a place to stay in Palestine, so what I needed to do was find somewhere in Israel. I mostly looked at Jerusalem b/c that's where I was going to spend most of my time.

I found a few people and exchanged emails. The best option looked like Shahar and Roni. I told them my possible dates and then called a couple of times once I got to Israel. They told me that by chance, they were going to have 3 other people there at the same time but said I could still come if I wanted!

Around midnight, after coming back from Tel Aviv and then finding their place, I met Shahar. At first, we were going to bring up an extra mattress from their downstairs neighbors, but then I suggested that I literally "surf their couch", so we moved the couch cushions to the floor of Shahar's room. That's where I slept for a total of 5 nights.

Amazing, amazing guys. Both Israeli, but not practicing Jews. It turned out that one of the other visitors was a Mormon, and the guys didn't have a problem with us having lots of religion-related discussions.

The link I put in before are to pictures of Sharar, Roni, and their friends. We all hung out in one way or another most of the nights I was there. One day, Roni carried the 35" TV downstairs to watch World Cup with his friends b/c people went to sleep early in the place I was staying. Another night, we went to a coffee house with live music, performed by friends of Roni/Shahar.

More soon about my adventures with this crew and the rest of my time around Israel/Palestine.

Made it back!

Well, after many, many hours on buses and in taxis...I've made it back to Cairo.

Mostly it's my fault, but it seems like it all happened for a reason. For fun and for the experience, I tried hitchhiking on Friday morning from Jerusalem to the border (4 hours away). After about 2 hours of waiting and even getting help from security guys, I finally gave up and raced to the bus station for a 10am bus.

I barely made it there in time, but was too late to get a seat so I stood or sat on the floor, along with several others. Crazy!

Unfortunately, this all made me too late to catch a bus to Cairo, or anywhere else in Egypt. So, I gathered together some other tourists who were in the same situation and we got in a mini-van together and headed for Dahab.

As it turns out, on this part of the "journey", I met up with a 70-year old women who I had heard about from an MCC friend in Jerusalem. She is traveling around promoting peace and working on development projects (noble work), but comes across as a bit senile. I'm not sure what her story is, but it seemed like beyond coincidence. So...it seemed like I should help her out as much as possible, so that's what I did! We left her in a small beach town and she's hoping to go into Gaza on Sunday. God be with her!

So, I made it to Dahab, which is my favorite beach spot in Egypt. I was interested to see the changes since my last tri in Jan. 2005 and also since the bombings in April. It seems like things are going better than ever and this was confirmed by a restaurant guy I talked to. But I only had enough time to walk along the promenade and then have a nice dinner while watching a World Cup match before getting a 10pm bus to Cairo.

Uneventful ride and actually quite comfortable. I managed to get quite a bit of sleep! It's 8am as I write this and I want to spend some time online and uploading pics to share, then maybe a short nap and laundry before going to the American University in Cairo for a World Refugee Day celebration at 5pm.

Sunday morning, I'll head for Tanta and get back to teaching in the afternoon.

Memorial for those who died in the attack:

Maybe 4 hours sleep?

Trying to spend as much time awake as I can during my last day in Jerusalem. *sigh* I have to leave around 7am Friday morning for Cairo. It's now 2.40am and I'm packed, showered, and ready for bed. Hungry b/c my Thai food dinner was 6 hours ago, but that's all right...

So much to write about and there just hasn't been time since leaving Bethlehem. I have so much to say/show and I will really try to do that from Tanta this week.

Thanks to those of you who have emailed -- keep it up!