I cut the time between posts from a week to six days

Yesterday, Samir, the driver, and I drove to Isamali (the spelling is phonetic) which is one of three cities that is next to the Suez Canal. This city is very nice and has a lot of green space compared to most Egyptian cities/towns which I have been to. We then took a car ferry over the canal to the Sinai Peninsula and got to watch a container cargo ship full of 18 wheeler containers go by. The transformation from the (relatively) green area of Isamali to the desert sands of Sinai was incredible. Sinai was completely desert, and I was very surprised that there were even people trying to farm at all in this area, but there were. All the water that they used had to be pumped in. We then went to a former Israeli milatary command base which was used during one of the many wars between the 2 countries. From the top of the out post the entire Suez canal could be surveyed. On the way back to Abbassa we stopped and had lunch at a seafood restaurant. I let Samir order for me. In Egypt nearly every meal has more than one course so first we had salad which was more like salads, there were about 10 different small plates with a variety of cold salads. One of the better ones was the sourkraut (mostly because it tasted familiar I think). We then had seafood soup, which had a whole crab, and two shrimp, mussels, and other seafoood in it. It was pretty good but it felt kinda weird using my hands to eat soup because you had to open the crab and the shrimp but it is apparently normal in Egypt. Then when I was about full they brought out the main course of roasted mullet with a tomatoe paste on it and many herbs, along with shrimp in rice. I was not able to eat it all ( or really even come close). Luckily they had to go boxes and so I had a delicous lunch today. We then drove back to to Abbassa and on ethe way we brought several watermelons and they are delicous.