Tehran

Made it to Tehran, sans problems a few weeks ago. Things have been going well and the weather is great…I’ve been doing a lot of swimming lately, and my favorite place is the Simorgh hotel. They have the four nicest ladies working there…always asking if I need anything and making sure I can make it back home ok. There isn’t hardly anyone there during the week and I pretty much have the place to myself. Which is sweet, cuz once you get one other Persian in the pool, the order goes to the sky;) The other day I was swimming laps, and this one girl comes in and starts swimming perpendicular to me…unawares, I ended up running into her. Then a third girl came in, and the genius started swimming diagonally across the pool. Mumbling wonderful words under my breadth, I started swimming in circles;)

Went to school with my aunt one day..she teaches chemistry to high schoolers. The girls were adorable and absolutely went crazy when I came…I spent the morning in the gym talking and playing badminton and ping pong. As soon as I’d walk out into the courtyard, the girls in the classrooms would see me and start screaming and run out, grab my arm and shove me into their room…at which point the teacher would shoo me out. It was pretty crazy…I couldn’t stop them they literally shoved me along. Nice girls though and we had a long conversation where they questioned me about the US and what I thought about Iran. It’s an all girls school where they have to wear chadors to school, and even though there are no men in the place, they still have to wear scarves in class (I was told to get them used to it??) They told me it wasn’t a big deal for them at all though and they were really used to it. They were very curious about school and hw in the US, how much make up girls wear, what movies/music I like, and which place I thought was better. I had a lovely Eman moment while playing badminton where I did a skillful fall flat on my face after going after the birdie and tripping over some box on the ground and crashing into the wall. Not bragging or anything but I think it would have earned me a 10 at the Olympics. They were pretty worried about me after that and didn’t leave me alone much;) After one of the other chem. teachers found out I was also a chem. major, she went off on a 10 min speal really fast in farsi about chem. in Iran, and then she asked me if it was the same in the US, and I was like “uhh…ozmikham?” she was a little annoyed, so I just said “are are, chemie tuye amrika mesle injust”…she wasn’t very satisfied. She then asked me to read some chemistry paper in English, and then had me sit and listen to her try to read it, which was hilarious and I was biting my lip very hard trying not to laugh. Another hilarious thing is how they pronounce IBprofen….I made my aunt say it about 20 times the other day and I was rolling on the floor crying my eyes out….”ibb booo pruuuu feeeeen”said really fast and with a thick accent. I have to capture it on video for yall. Ridiculously hilarious. My aunt then said, “eman jan, man sarma khordam, maghkse man kar mikone uncorrectly” which sent me back rolling on the floor. I can’t be too harsh though, my Persian is nowhere near to perfect. I’ll leave the details out=)

Today is the first day of Nowruz, or Persian New Year and I’ve never seen Tehran like this before. It’s amazing….a city of roughly 15 million with horrible traffic/drivers, is deadly silent. The streets are empty and it’s so peaceful. The weather is beautiful sunny and in the 60-70s, and you can look up the tree lined vali-e-asr street by my aunt’s house and see the snowcapped mountains. Gorgeous. The past week has been full of people scrambling around shopping like during xmas. Wednesday night was chahar shambe souri which is where people out in the streets explode fireworks and jump over bonfires in the streets. A few days before I saw a boy no more than 5 warming up with one that shot fireworks about 20 ft….he was kheyli shaytoon and instead of shooting them into the air, started shooting them off horizontally and almost hit two girls walking farther down the sidewalk.

After the past month and half of horrid nescafes, I am spoiled with one of the best coffee shops I’ve ever been to. Amazing espresso that without fail keeps me up to 4 am. It’s soo good, and those of you who know me will be shocked to know that its so good I can drink it without adding sugar;) yes, it’s quite a feat;) anyhoo, my dad comes in a few days, and it’ll great to have my laptop finally…and see him of course=) hope yall are doing well…send me some emails…and for those of you wondering why I’m ignoring your facebook messages, facebook is blocked in Iran, sorry;(

Cairo

After arriving in Cairo, Louise and I headed to a koshary place…it’s a popular dish here that isn’t too bad. Rice and lentils on the bottom with some macaroni noodles added on top, covered with a tomato sauce and fried onions. You can add hot sauce or a garlicky vinegar to it. Interesting combo that is actually quite tasty. Our hostel is on the roof of this old building and there are chairs/tables right outside our room to sit outside and enjoy. It’s nice to get away from the crowded, noisy streets below. Like Tehran, car horns are an essential for driving here;) We’re right in the center of town and have lots of fun crowded streets to walk around at night. Tons of coffee shops, cheap restaurants, pastry shops, and Louise’s favorite-yummy ice creamJ

Headed to Giza and the pyramids one day….amazing. A guy named Mohammed (surprise;) helped us get there and back super cheap. He invited us to the tourist shop where he works at after we were done at the pyramids. The pyramids were huge…it was crazy how the city just sprawled out all the way to the foot of the pyramids practically. The sphinx was cool also, though not as big as I had envisioned…at the base of the pyramids it looked rather puny. Considering they were built around 2000 bc though, they were incredible. There were lots of locals there when we went, and surprisingly we had tons of people coming up asking if they could take their picture with usJ weird…we even had girls taking their boyfriend’s picture with us, which was just downright creepy. I credit it to Louise’s beautiful blond hair, and kept telling her we asked for a small fee, we would be rich=) Met this absolutely adorable little girl selling souvenirs, and it turns out her name is Eman also!! I told her we had the same name, which she got a kick out of….she got a huge surprised face, then a ginormous smile and then started giggling. Cutest little girl….her friends came up too and started talking and they were super cute kids….took some pics with them and ended up buying some stuff from them. Cute as a button;)

Kept getting asked if we wanted a camel/donkey/horse ride…finally I started joking with one of the guys and told him I was just a poor university student. He cut the price in half, and I told him sorry but I have no money expecting that he would leave us alone. He then told me he would give me a ride as a gift. After I ditched all my stuff off on Louise and ensured that it was a free gift, I hopped on the horse. Started galloping pretty fast and I got freaked….he then offered to take me over the hills to get some drinks and make me happy….yeah, pretty much flipped out at this point and was like “crap, what did I do?!” I kept rejecting this idea profusely and finally he took me back to the road. He then asked what gift I would give him….I literally had nothing on me and told him I had nothing. He pointed to the ring on my finger and said, “what about that?” The guy had balls….I lied and told him it was my wedding ring and my husband would kill me if I gave it away...he laughed at this and after trying a few more times he finally gave up and rode off dejectedly. Man, it’s gonna suck traveling when I’m older and can’t pull off the poor little student thing;)

Went over to Mohammed’s shop afterwards and had some tea. Turned out to be a really nice kid and told us a lot about Egypt and his life and such. Told us not to buy anything in the store as it was extremely over priced;) He helped us get on a local bus back to our hotel. The next day we went to the Egyptian Museum which is absolutely packed full of stuff….and tourists;) pretty cool to see all the stuff they have…the cute little knick knacks were my favorite, and they even had cloth that was preserved pretty well. They had a room full of animal mummies which was pretty crazy as well. Egyptian script is sooo cool. At night we met up with Nathan (who we had met in Petra) and Mohammed. We tried to get into the Cairo Jazz Club, but found probably the only place in Egypt that has rules that they actually stick to…apparently you have to be 25 to get in. Took a felucca ride along the Nile, then headed to an excellent restaurant for dinner and walked back near to our hotel and had some shisha and an amazing yogurt/honey/milk drink called Zabadi. Talked a lot to Mohammed about life in Egypt and it was cool to hear his views on life…..he got a degree in mechanical engineering but can make more money working in the tourist craft shop. He told me about how most Egyptians didn’t support the government and wished it would be more like Iran in terms of sticking up to the west. He also told me that most Egyptians were aware of a lot of corruption in the government, but didn’t want to do anything drastic so they didn’t do anything about it. We walked by the building where an Egyptian writer wrote the books that he won the Nobel Prize for. He also told me about how he wouldn’t drink any alcohol but he had tried drugs “because the Holy Quran doesn’t say anything about not doing drugs.” I love his logic…of course Allah would approve of us getting wasted; it’s soo much better than drinking a glass of wine.

The next day we walked, and we walked, and we walked…saw Abdeen palace, the citadel, al-azara park, and khan-el-khalili market. You could see the pyramids at giza from the citadel which was pretty cool. Al azara park was beautiful…it was like a little mini US park in the middle of Cairo. It was clean, (with garbage cans!!), lots of plants and well groomed, quiet and clean air with a few restaurants with good food. Had a young guy as our waiter who was really nice at first and was trying to teach me Arabic and wanted to learn English. Things got pretty bad though after he kept trying to get us to hang out with him after work and we (as in Louise bc I played the “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say role) kept refusing as politely as possible. He came back about 4 times and kept saying “so I’ll see you at 5 when I get done?”..the kid would not take a hint. Finally we had to flatly refuse him, at which point he got pissed and was really rude to us. The kid had it coming.

There is one thing in Egypt that I find absolutely appalling/intriguing. They get people’s attention (whether it be a waiter, or a girl passing by) by hissing. It is extremely and amazingly effective…I have no clue how it came to be so prominent. But it infuriated me after a few days bc walking by guys and getting hissed at isn’t necessarily the best feeling. Walking the streets in tiring, as you have to pay attention to the crazy drivers, uneven side walks, and avoid eye contact with guys. Louise and I had fun roaming the streets and laughing at the horrible fashion sense. The girls were wearing the most hideous outfits known to man. Lots of ugly patterns with pinks and purples and sparkles and fuzzy fringes and weird triangular cut shirts….as Louise put it, any one item of their clothing was way over the top, but they made it 100 times worse by have crazy shoes, pants, shirts, scarf and purse at the same time. We’re talking like striped bright colored shirt, with leopard print pants, huge silvery shiny purse, bright pink patterned scarf and funky shoes….hideous. It was good though, because at least it kept us from spending money on clothes;)

My last day in Egypt we went to Ma’adi and met Nathan and he showed us around town. Ma’adi is a nice suburb of Cairo where most of the expats live. The place was full of French people. There was a little grocery store that had tons of stuff from home like Nature Valley bars, gushers, and cereal. Louise and I were amazed. Gave Uncle Abby a call and he had his driver pick us up and we met him at his office. He then took us out for an amazing dinner in a restaurant on the Nile, where we ate tons of delicious appetizers and he sneaked in a few crazy ones like liver and friend brain….He was kind enough to let us crash the night at his place. It was great seeing him after so long…had me thinking of the good old days of driving around parking lots in my saab and *somehow* busting the engine, Arman “driving” Gina’s stick shift golf and looking like a fool in front of the police, sleeping from 5 am to 11 am and playing sims, going to the grocery store and making chocolate dipped strawberries at 1 am, driving crazy uturns in florida, the “bouncy ball” breaking the glass oven and walking through the drive in at Taco Bell at 2 am. Ahhh, good times.

Alexandria

Alex seems to be the favorite destination of Egyptians, but Louise and I weren’t too impressed. Not much to do besides shopping and walking along the Mediterranean (which isn’t nearly as nice as it sounds since the path is right by a busy street). Maybe it was the wrong time of year though….too cold for swimming and the public beaches were rather dismal anyways. We did meander our way into the famous Bibliotecha (a ginormous library), which you have to pay to get into and has a surprising dearth of books. It was right by the university though so it was cool to see all the college kids. The nightlife, aka walking along the streets and shopping, seemed to be the thing to do in Alex. Although my personal favorite was going into the little fruit juice shops and getting fresh squeezed juice for amazingly cheap (strawberry-lemon was the best). We kept going every day, although I think it was the cause of some stomach unrest. We went for a run one morning along the water….got a lot of looks from the locals, a cute old grandpa told us “hurry, hurry, faster, faster,” and a young boy snapped a pic of us on his cameraphone as we were passing, which was…awkward.

Ate THE MOST AMAZING schawerma in Alex at a fast food chain called Gad. Chicken with sautéed onion, green pepper and tomatoes, with tahina in a pita bread for a whopping $1. Egypt is amazing…Louise and I were eating like kings for a few bucks a meal. We managed to get away with pretending to not know what “bakshish” is (a term basically meaning they want you to pay them a tip)….we learned that a confused, innocent face with an added “huh?” did the trick…they were either too polite or didn’t know enough English to accurately describe what they wanted. It’s not that we were against giving them some money (after all it was so cheap) but it was more that they wanted bakshish for doing absolutely nothing. This cute little old man showed us to our hotel room in Alex (which was literally 10 feet away from where we were), and then he just hung around the door moping around obviously expecting some bakshish…

Oh…forgot something funny that happened in Petra. We were walking up the steep path in the middle of nowhere to the monastery, and this cute little Bedouin boy, probably about 4 years old, was playing on the stairs with a broom. He had a cute smile and was looking at the chips in my hand longingly. I offered him a few which he quickly grabbed, and then proceeded to grab the entire bag…I just started laughing, and next thing I knew, he was trying to grab my camera off my neck. At this point, I was like “nooooo! Sorry you can’t have that” and he started pouting. I started to walk past him, when he whipped out his broom and blocked the path so I couldn’t get by! I tried to walk around it, and he kept moving to block my path…..finally managed to sneak my way around him…yes, I’m proud of the fact that I got around a 4 year old…after all, his broom was pretty big and ferocious;)

Mt. Sinai

Took a little mini tour bus to Mt. Sinai along with some other tourists. John came along with us and we met an amazing couple....Adel and Rose. Rose is Spanish, Adel Syrian and they are probably in their upper 50s but are some of the most worldly and best travelers I've met thus far. They research and know a lot about the places they go, and aren't worried or fazed by unclean and unplanned circumstances. They were so kind and interesting and we spent most of the day chatting with them. I hope when I get older I'll be as open minded, easy going, and enjoy life as much as them. We went to St. Katherine's monastery, which was unfortunatley jamm packed with tourists. Ate lunch at Fox camp, a bedouin camp where Louise and I spend the night. A cat ended up stealing most of my chicken....there are cats and dogs everywhere and they have gotten to be quite sneaky. (most restaurants in Dahab gave you a spray bottle filled with water to fend them off;) Climbed up Mt. Sinai tonight and watched the sunset...it wasn't a spectacular sunset and the best part was getting back down;) It was cold and extremely windy at the top. We took refuge in the mosque at the top though, which helped. Ran out, watched the sunset, then booked it back down. I gave Rose and Adel my flashlight as they didn't have one and Rose has vertigo and had a bit of trouble. Louise and I pretty much went down the rocky path mostly in the dark....John had a flashlight that helped a bit, but it wasn't so bright. Luckily we managed to make it down without any sprained ankles. Had a bit of a fiasco at the bottom as two young supposedly security guards wouldn't let us go back to the bus, and made us sit by the monastery. They almost didn't let us go to the bathroom, argued for a bit then let us, then asked for $ for the bathroom, then said nevermind, then the electricity went out, they took John's flashlight and we were stranded in the dark, then we finally got upset, grabbed the flashlight and told them we were leaving which they reluctantly let us do. Crazy but we finally made it ok. Spent a cold night fending off the crazy bedouin camp guy and woke up at 5:30 am to take the bus to cairo. Made it to Cairo around 1 pm, and we immediately boarded a train to Alexandria, with the help of a very kind, older army guy who helped us get the tickets and showed us to the train. I think he enjoyed it and kept teasing us about getting an extra ticket for him too;)

Dahab

So....I'm officially a certified open water scuba diver! yup, Louise and I took a scuba course at Big Blue and learned how to scuba in the Red Sea;) Pretty much the sweetest thing ever. We took the course with a fellow traveler (30 some year old John-there is a creepy trend of 30 year old males clinging to us) and had a great young Scottish instructor named Vivienne. Managed to finish the course in 3 days packed with dives, skills, reading/movies, wksts, quizes and tests. But we did it and boy was it worth it. Today we dived two of the best spots in the world...canyon and Blue Hole. We went with an instructor and a couple from Arizona, down to 30 m for both of them and it was pretty crazy. The first 10 m are the worst and really affect your ears, but by the time you get down to 30 it's not bad at all. Blue Hole was amazing...the coral was huge and gorgeous, and the aquatic life was numerous and beautiful. Our guide, an awesome guy named Emad, opened his mouth and let a wrasse fish in to clean his teeth....better watch out mom, I hear it's the new thing and you might be losing your job soon;) Emad is an amazing diver, and has done 6,000 dives in 8 years. He plays around so much and has a blast underwater...it was quite fun going with him. We saw a bunch of fish and it was just like out of a documentary or something. Amazing...y'all have to try it sometime.

Dahab is a sweet town....very relaxed and cool atmosphere. It's only a few blocks long along the coast and has many restaurants serving the same things, but their fairly cheap and have decent food. One of my favorite places serves some amazing thick pudding like sahleb, topped with strawberries and bananas. We're paying a whopping $3.50 a night for a place at Jimmy's which is decent. Breakfasts are amazing and only $2. The last night in Dahab we strolled along the main street and did some shopping. Ran into some little local girls selling bracelets and started talking to one named Noora. She was a really sweet girl and we talked for awhile and bought some bracelets. Some others then came up and initially started intensely questioning why we didn't by from them but all but one obnoxious girl quit after a few minutes and sat down to talk. She kept throwing a little fit, thrusting her bracelets on me and being quite mean about it and I really wanted to smack her, but I refrained. The guy at the nearby Caravan restaurant was trying hard to get us to come for dinner, so he brought us some fresh lemon juice which pretty much sealed the deal. For 25 EG (less than $5), we got an amazing meal of tabouli, tahini, bean salad, eggplant sauteed, baba ghanoush, cucumber yoghurt, and freshly made pita bread for starters, along with grilled chicken, rice, veggies, tea and crepe with ice cream for dessert. Yeah, it was quite a feast. Noora came by and sat with us for awhile and then we played backgammon for a bit...her friends soon followed and eventually the restaurant guys told us they were bad for business and had to go....

Dahab was over all a blast and thawed us out from Turkey and Jordan. We both sport a pretty nice tan now. And now, I will probably start planning vacations around diving;)

Petra

the treasury

If there is one place you see before you die, forget about the eiffel tower, forget about the colisseum, forget about minnesota (I know you were debating this one;)....and make it Petra. First walking down the siq (a rock canyon) towards the stunning treasury was an unforgettable and indescribable experience. The Nabateans were skillfull carvers that way back around 300 or so bc carved tons of tombs out of the rocks. However, the impressive thing about it was the geological landscape. The rocks were incredible...pictures are unable to capture the beauty of them...the various shades and concavity of the rocks were beyond words. In different sunlight, the rocks were different colors....reds, tans, browns all in different layers and patterns. Pretty sweet place. We spent two days exploring Petra, although I'm convinced that it could be done in one. The first day we went along the main path and saw all the big sites, including a trek up a hill to the monastery. The second we spent hiking along one of the many paths. Trekked around with two 30-some year old aussies named Hulgar and Nathan, which pretty much describes itself...I mean, how can you beat hiking with Hulgar?! Well, I guess we kinda did, by grabbing beers afterwards in a 2000 some year old cave bar...which was, well cold and dark, but the company was fun. Dinners at valentines were amazing....for 4 JD, we got a buffet style dinner with around 20 amazing vegetarian dishes of homemade Jordanian food. It was pretty great.

petra

Took a bus to Aqaba where we got tickets for the ferry to Nuweiba, Egypt. It was pretty hilarious how unorganized and lack of directions there were....we first went up to the second floor of this building to buy tickets, where we had to go across the hall to the bank to pay for it, and then go down to the first floor to pay a departure tax, and then go back to the second floor to get our passports stamped...there were no directions or signs to this all so it was figured out by wandering around and showing up to windows where they would point us in the right direction, along with a few fairly confusing english words. We finally made it though and grabbed a bite to eat, and wondered where we would get on the ferry until I found out we had to take another bus to the ferry, so we took off so we could catch the ferry before it left. The ferry was fairly uneventful and longer than expected although apparently in the opposite direction in can be delayed (and often is) by as much as 12 hours! We ran into a tour guide who basically got kicked out of Jordan for bureacratic reasons, so she gave us the downlow on what to do (since the officials seem to let you do whatever-they are great at telling you what not to do, but tend to fail when it comes to telling you what you should do;).

From Nuweiba we immediately jumped on a bus to Dahab, which is basically a backpackers/diving central and heaven for sore eyes;) More to come....

Dead Sea!!

Louise and I enjoying dinner in Olympos, Turkey

Amman is not a terrifically spectacular city, but I think it will live forever in Louise and my mind's as an amazing place, simply because of the generosity of the Ibbini family. They were some of the kindest people we met. They invited us over for a family lunch at their home on Friday, where they made a traditional Jordanian meal called mensaf. It was absolutely delicious...rice with pine nuts and boiled lamb (intact head and all;) placed on top, and then a yummy warm yoghurt sauce on top. It was sooo good. We also had some cardammon tea afterwards along with some delicious kanafa. We chatted with their family for awhile and got to know some of Ahmed's brothers and sisters (12 kids in all) and their families.

Ahmed and mensaf

After lunch, Moayad, one of Ahmed's nephews, offered to show us around town. We spent til midnight driving around with him and his friend Yanal. It was great and we got to see much more of Amman, since you really need a car to get around town. He took us to Mecca Mall, a huge shopping mall pretty comparable to the states, and one of his friends took pictures of us in the mall, which was pretty crazy and a bit odd. (you get some odd looks when you're taking a bunch of pictures of yourself in a mall;) He then drove us to his university and we grabbed coffee while he met with some of his friends for a club he's in. Shopping seems to be the thing to do in Amman, at least this time of year, because we stopped at another outdoor pedestrian street lined with shops and then headed to yet another huge shopping mall to watch a movie (Enchanted). We then tasted some popular food called zataar (?) which is a thin bread wrap filled with different things....I had it filled with yoghurt and some smushed eggplant and it was really good. Amman is not the prettiest town, nor the best layout, but they certainly have a lot of things for entertainment and you can get pretty much everything you can in the states. I think the thing that I disliked the most about it was simply the climate....its so dry there that there is little to no greenery and instead of plants around buildings, there is just clumps of rocks and dirt. However, the people are super nice though and more than make up for what the surroundings lack. A funny thing we found out is that Jordanians tend to have more than one cell phone....and we're not talking two or three....some of them have as many as 8 different cell phones! they have to have the newest and best model and often times they have cell phones with different providers to talk to different friends. And it's not like its cheap...apparently, on average, they spend an outrageous amount of money on cell phones.

Louise and Noor floating in the Dead Sea

salt in the dead sea

The next day the Ibbini family generously invited us to go to the Dead Sea with them. It was a spectacular day....even the weather was terrific..in the 70s and sunny plus the sea was pretty warm. Ahmed is the director in charge of the Dead Sea area, so I think we got a bit of special treatment;) There was a nice beach, with an area with two swimming pools, tables and chairs if you didn't want to swim in the sea. Headed straight away to the sea though, which was pretty wicked. It is downright ridiculous how much salt is in it....salt ppt floating at the surface, salt crystals on rocks on the bottom, and layers of separated salt and sand composing the bottom. It stung like crazy if you got it in your eyes and tasted nasty. You float so high in it that it is difficult to swim. We went way out without hardly any effort. We also put some of the mud from the bottom all over us, let it dried, and then rubbed it off. It is supposed to be amazing for your skin, and indeed it felt amazing. My skin was so soft and clean afterwards, felt almost like leaving a hammum. Looked pretty funny probably though with all this brown dirt dried on me;)

We ate pretty well in Amman, which was probably good for us after all the street vendors in Turkey;) My personal favorite though was the juice stands in Amman which gave delicious fresh squeezed juices. mmmm, wish we had that back in mn;) We also bought some super cheap and pretty good quality movies...1 lyra each (~$1.20). Spent a few hours waiting around for a bus to wadi musa (petra) and had quite an experience there. We were sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the bus when a group of little 10 year old hooligans came buy and one got shoved into me. They walked off laughing and then came back a few min later and they were showing me that they were playfully beating the kid up. They then commenced with saying the few english words they know, which primarily consisted of "fuck you." Louise did a good job and told them off, with the addition of a strict finger wave. Their mothers would be proud;) Anyhoo, getting on the bus was a fiasco....we had a bunch of men trying to drive us down in their taxis, for an exhorbitant price and finally the bus driver came by and kicked some guys out so we would have a spot. It was a crazy ride down in the packed minivan with horribly arabic music playing. Finally made it to wadi musa and ended up in valentin inn packed with fellow backpackers which was pretty crazy. There were a bunch of cool people and it seemed to be especially full of young jewish kids going to israel on birthright program (basically they all went for the free all expense paid trip) and it was cool to hear their view of things and refreshing to see that they could even sympathize with the palestinians and didn't agree with all that israel does. Anyhoo, tomorrow we're off to explore Petra!