Sunday, September 23Because there are fewer students here this Fall semester, all 4 service couples were invited to go with the students on their 8-day field trip to Egypt! We left early this morning from Jerusalem on 2 buses, headed for the Yotvata Kibbutz, where we took a very interesting tour of the grounds. Our guide, Rebecca, showed us the date palm plantation (see picture to left), mango forests, the cattle yards (the cows were some of the cleanest we've ever seen - after getting a shower, they dry off by standing in front of huge fans), and their neighborhoods. After eating dinner there, some local band musicians led us in a few Israeli songs and most of us joined hands to dance in a big circle around the food tables. We then drove to the kibbutz in Eilot – the southern most tip of Israel, close to the border with Egypt, where we spent the night.
Monday, September 24
After breakfast, we went through the Taba border crossing into Egypt, got on Egyptian buses with a guide and body guard, and drove 6 hours to the Oasis Pyramid Hotel in Giza, where we spent the night. Cairo is a city of 16 million people situated on the Nile River delta. The poor areas of town stretch for miles down the “freeway”
on both sides - interspersed with lush (mostly hand-worked) farm land in the craziest jumble of red brick tenement buildings, (pictured here) dusty roads, unimaginable amounts of garbage, poverty, people hustling to make a buck, cars, buses, and donkey carts all driving on the same “freeway” together, and squalid irrigation canals that any sane man would avoid for fear of his life – yet young boys were enjoying a swim! It is one of earth's most polluted cities.
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