Easter, Egypt and Simleau

Ok, these last two weeks have been really busy so here comes monster update.

So, school ended for me on April 5^th at 9 AM. That was a Thursday, and on Thursdays I only have a first hour. So that day I just chilled around Zalău; cleaned my apartment and basically did nothing but enjoy the warm weather we’ve been having. On Friday I went to the near by town of Oradea to spend the Easter weekend with some of my Peace Corps friends; David Bruce and John.

I spent a few days in Oradea just hanging out with my boys. For Easter itself we made a nice dinner, but ran out of gas for the oven. Here ovens are hooked up to a gas tank like an outdoor bbq back home. And that was the day John’s tank decided to empty itself. So we went knocking on his neighbor’s doors, asking if we could borrow their stove for about half an hour. It was really funny. We ended up meeting a really cool neighbor, Octavian, and his parents.

I tried to leave Oradea on that Monday so I could have all day Tuesday to putz around and get packed, but when we went to the bus station I was informed that no more busses were going to Zalău that day. I could have taken a train to Cluj and then spent the night at some other PCV’s, but I decided just to hang around Oradea for one more day. In the end I had to take a train to Cluj and then a Maxi-taxi to Zalău-taking an extra 2 hours and 30 RON (10 USD).

Very early Wednesday morning (5 AM) I met up with the group of people I was going to Egypt with. We were supposed to meet at this parking lot/tiny amusement park place behind city hall. Well, I got there about 30 minutes early and was the only one there. It was really creepy. I was a lone American chilling out at a deserted amusement park in Romania. Totally a set-up for a horror story. But thankfully, nothing happened to me.

Eventually all the other kids and chaperon’s showed up and by 6 AM we were driving to Bucharest. From Zalău to Buc in a train is about 12 hours, and in a car it wasn’t much faster. It didn’t help that we kept stopping for various reasons. On one of the busses we rented the brakes didn’t work, so we had to stop and get that fixed. And then when we got to the mountains around Predeal we stopped for about 45 minutes. Most of the kids on the trip haven’t traveled around Romania much, so some of them were seeing the mountains for the first time.

We finally got to the airport and after all the hassle of checking in 40 students (about 30 of whom have never flown before) we took off. The rest of the day was just a jumble of flying, driving, checking into our hotel and sleeping.

The next morning, Thursday, I got up early and went to the beach. Yes that’s right; it was about 30 C (85 F I would guess) and I was out on the beach reading. When I got too hot, I’d just go swimming in the Red Sea. At about noon it was just too hot to stay at the beach any more so the other teachers and I went shopping. We met up with our tour guide, an Egyptian guy named Alex (that’s not his real name, but he told us to just call him that) who became a friend who we hung out with every day.

Friday morning the whole group met up with Alex at 8:30 to go snorkeling. I guess I didn’t realize how much I missed Michigan until I got back on the water. We all piled onto a boat that would take us to some coral reefs that we could go snorkeling around. Because of where we live in Romania, most of these kids have never been on a boat before, or have gone swimming in open water. They were kind of freaked out. After about 30 minutes I was just about the only one left in the water. I stayed out until they called me back to the boat so we could leave. After snorkeling we went to this island, Giftun Island. It’s a beautiful white sand beach. As we were pulling up there was a giant Hollywood-esque sign that said “Paradise.” I spent the afternoon sun bathing, snorkeling and reading.

The next day, Friday, was a free day. I spent it at the beach and shopping. I really like walking around with Attila, Zoli and Sosci (the other chaperons) because they would always speak in Hungarian (Oh yeah, side note, I was the only non-Hungarian on the whole trip.) Nobody could figure out where we came from because it’s such an unusual language. I learned some words, mostly numbers, so when we were bargaining with vendors it was like having our own secret language.

Saturday we went into Cairo. Once in Cairo we went to the Cairo Museum and saw all of King Tut’s stuff. And we went to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, which was simply surreal. I still can hardly believe that I saw them, and got to go inside a pyramid. At one point we went into a store and when we came out I saw the sun setting behind the Sphinx and I was just in awe. However spectacular they were, seeing them was also a bit of a disappointment. In my mind the pyramids were out in the middle of the desert, and the only way to get to them was to ride a camel for several hours. In fact our tour bus pulled up to a gate and we walked the 100 yards between the road and the pyramids. This was also the day that the camera I had borrowed for the week decided to stop working. So apart from a few pictures taken the first day at the beach, I don’t have any of me in Egypt. I’m waiting for the people who took some of me to email them to me. Hopefully it will be soon.

Sunday was a free day, and again I spent it at the beach and shopping (I got a wonderful tan). Monday we went to Luxor. We went to the Valley of the Queens and saw some tombs. We went to the Luxor Temple, which was my favorite place in the entire trip. In some places you could still see the original color of the hieroglyphics, over 4,000 years old! We had some free time, so I just wandered around the temple, trying to picture what life was like back then.

Also in Luxor we took a boat ride down the Nile, and went to an island called Banana Island where we ate fresh oranges and bananas off the trees there. Then we loaded the bus and came back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

Tuesday was a free day, and again I spent it at the beach and shopping. It’s illegal to exchange Egyptian currency into any other currency, so I ran around trying to spend all my LE (Egyptian Pound) that I had left. I got my friends some beautiful silk scarves that cost about 15 LE each, which is about $2.50. When we were out shopping, I wasn’t allowed to talk much because my accent is so very American. If they knew that I was American they would have charged me three or four times the amount they charged the Romanians, so if I wanted something I told Attila in Romanian and he bargained for me. Sometimes when I would talk, my English was so good that the sellers couldn’t understand me! I had to say stuff like “How many pound is this?” rather than “How much does this cost?”

We left Wednesday at noon, and started the long trek back to Zalău. The trip was pretty uneventful, except on the bus ride from the airport home the students sang traditional Hungarian folk songs for about three hours. I didn’t understand a single word, but it was a lot fun. I got back to my apartment around 4 AM on Thursday-still in time to go to my 8 AM class.

Also throughout the trip really the only people I could talk to were the other chaperon’s-in either German or English. So, Attila being a history teacher, gave me a crash course in Transylvanian history that was really interesting. I learned a lot. And once we were on the beach and a guy who was selling henna tattoos to some of our students made the mistake of saying he was a geography student in university. Zoli is a geography teacher, so he decided to give the “student” a pop quiz right there on the beach. We gave up after he said the capital of Canada was Argentina.

Then on Friday I hopped on a bus after school and went to Simleau, a neighboring town, to visit my friend Lauren. We hadn’t seen each other since break started, and we both went on trips. So she told me about her vacation in Sarajevo and I talked about mine in Egypt. We also met the new Peace Corps Volunteers who will be living in Simleau, and they’re from Michigan!

So, that’s the highlight of my past few weeks.