Hello all,
I hope this email finds you doing something that you wouldn’t normally be doing – I am having a fantastic time here in Israel. Since my last email, a lot has happened on the northern hemisphere, but I am only going to enlighten you on what has been happening in my world. I may be slightly superficial on some topics – but consider it incentive to ask me about it! I left you all in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, a grand city once known as Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt – adorned by two magnificent temples (Luxor and Karnak). I went on a great hike between the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Kings, in the hot hot sun and was determined to find an undiscovered tomb with many riches. I failed miserably, only to have found a pit with hundreds of empty water bottles. How disappointing. Towards the Sudanese border lies the city of Aswan, were I visited Abu Simbel (see photo) with 500 other tourists. It was busy, but still impressive.
The following day, I got on a Felluca (see photo) which happened to have my mates which I met the day before on the Abu Simbel tour on. This was great. 2 days mindlessly sailing down the Nile on a traditional sailing boat. We all had a fantastic time, until the last night, when our captian and crew hand gotten very drunk and had been smoking marijuana all night. It wasnt quite funny in the morning, a groggy kid (he must be 13-14, although he said 17) gets up and climbs the mast to untie the sail. One other person was up, hears a giant THUD, and i hear a mate yell ‘OH SHIT what do we do?’. At that moment i was well out of my bed with my med pack in hand. I knew just what had happened. The kid fell a good 8-9m from the mast and landed on his face on the deck. It wasn’t pretty – 2 teeth through the bottom lip and who knows what else…
The Captian woke up, and whilst we were giving him the available first aid, he started making us breakfast and didn’t care about the boy. Typical egyptian…To make things worse, there was no wind so we couldnt sail very fast – ended up using the oars. Oh man… we tried to wave a cruise ship, but the stupid tourists just took photos of us. Then at the shore the captain told us not to do anything, it would make things worse (for him), but i didnt care and found some help. It was good to give it to somebody else to deal with. More interesting detail happened, but i’ll wait for the face-to-face story.
Then arrived back in Luxor, and travelled to Hurghada, caught a disgusting ferry to Sharm el Shiek (everyone was sea sick), and a bus up to Dahab. Dahab is a sea side bedouin town where everyone sits on the side of the beach eating excellent food very cheaply. I was there for 4 days, climbed Mount Sinai (photos) and saw a truly brilliant sunset. Went snorkelling at the blue hole, which was a little disappointing (barrier reef is too good!), and a couple of days laying about.
Moved over into Jordan for 2 days, where I went to the incredible rock city of Petra, featured in the Indian Jones movie!! I have been desperate to see that movie for weeks now 
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More importantly, after Jordan I returned to Israel, spending about 90 minutes at the check point watching the security empty my bag etc etc…. Missed the first bus to Jerusalem, then the next one because I forgot to buy my ticket and it sold out. Arrived quite late at night, and went to a newly made friend’s (from the bus) house, where he made me tea! He walked me to the old city and showed me free accomodation (woo!). I have been in Jerusalem for the last week (with a 2 day side trip to Tel Aviv), with Beck mainly, exploring the old city, eating food from the Novotel for free (thanks Academy), and meeting up with people who we havent seen since we finished school. It’s great to be in a place which I feel so at home in so instantly. My hebrew is improving, still understanding a lot more than I can speak, but hopefully it will get much better soon.
My MDA program starts on Jan 02, which both Beck and I are looking forward to immensely. It should be nothing short of an incredible experience allowing us to see the not so touristy side of the promised land.
Keep well, and stay in touch
Seb