So, yesterday I'm crossing the Taba border from Egypt, into Israel.
Not fun.
Yesterday they held me there for almost three hours for security reasons. I was traveling with my friend, and I let her go first (for obvious reasons I'll describe below). Then I go and little miss Israeli army girl didn't like the look of me, but more importantly, didn't like my name. She asks me to say it, then asks me my religion. At this point I knew I was done for, and so did my girl. We had already crossed the Egyptian side and entered the Israeli side at 6:15. We ended up making the 9:30 bus :disgust:
Now, for all the reasons I'm about to list, this drove me crazy:
- I crossed the very same border, from Israel, two weeks prior.
- The girl I was traveling with, is Jewish.
- Her father, is Israeli, and served in the Israeli army.
- I had been, and currently am, staying with her (obviously) Israeli family for the previous month, and am doing so now.
- I'd been to Israel in 2003.
- I'm American, born and bred.
It was fun to give them my fathers name, grandfathers name (guess why they never asked my mothers or grandmothers ), his job (a director of a division within the Federal Government), my jobs, any numbers associated with me, home addresses, what schools I've been to, etc. Hell, I wonder if they can tell me my cumulative GPA at UCLA.
I can't tell you how smugly I wanted to just tell them that my U.S. passport helps fund their existence. Somehow I don't think that would have expedited my (very) long trip Nor have been particularly nice. I was polite and kinda gave them a 'come on' and in the end, told them thank you.
So it goes.
Not fun.
Yesterday they held me there for almost three hours for security reasons. I was traveling with my friend, and I let her go first (for obvious reasons I'll describe below). Then I go and little miss Israeli army girl didn't like the look of me, but more importantly, didn't like my name. She asks me to say it, then asks me my religion. At this point I knew I was done for, and so did my girl. We had already crossed the Egyptian side and entered the Israeli side at 6:15. We ended up making the 9:30 bus :disgust:
Now, for all the reasons I'm about to list, this drove me crazy:
- I crossed the very same border, from Israel, two weeks prior.
- The girl I was traveling with, is Jewish.
- Her father, is Israeli, and served in the Israeli army.
- I had been, and currently am, staying with her (obviously) Israeli family for the previous month, and am doing so now.
- I'd been to Israel in 2003.
- I'm American, born and bred.
It was fun to give them my fathers name, grandfathers name (guess why they never asked my mothers or grandmothers ), his job (a director of a division within the Federal Government), my jobs, any numbers associated with me, home addresses, what schools I've been to, etc. Hell, I wonder if they can tell me my cumulative GPA at UCLA.
I can't tell you how smugly I wanted to just tell them that my U.S. passport helps fund their existence. Somehow I don't think that would have expedited my (very) long trip Nor have been particularly nice. I was polite and kinda gave them a 'come on' and in the end, told them thank you.
So it goes.