Day 1 - May 21, 2009

I woke up today at the bright and early time of 5pm - jetlag is setting in nicely. Peige, Taylor and I spent our layover in Amsterdam yesterday (quite a fun time!), got into Cairo at 2am, and went to bed at around 5am. We had to make up for the 36 hours of little to no sleep.
We had our first group meeting this evening. There are 9 of us in total, and we also met with some of the organizers of the student group, the organizer of the New York group, a Gazan doctor, and a Palestinian man who went with Codepink in March and was not allowed out (despite assurances from the Israeli government that he would be) until just this past week. We've received news that the Egyptian government has informed the bus company not to take us to Rafah (or the 41 students coming 3 days after us, or the 71 strong US Codepink group coming on the 28th) so we are renting a tourist bus. We were then told that there are at least 5 checkpoints between here and Al-Alareesh, and that the Palestinian-Canadian members of our group may come across some difficulties (as it is not uncommon for the authorities to take them off the bus and instruct the bus to continue on). As well, my mom has informed me that the Egypt-Gaza border was bombed 3 days ago, supposedly trying to attack the surrounding tunnels.
Some good news though: there is word of a group having recently been permitted to cross the border, so that gives us hope. As well, there is a British/Belgian medical group currently doing a hunger strike because they were in the midst of building a cardiac centre in Gaza city when they were no longer permitted entry as of May 4th, so I am excited by the possibility of being able to meet up with them. There are almost 200 people arriving at this border within the next 6 days from Codepink alone (including us), and Sandra is working hard to contact the media, so we're hopefully going to make some waves!
Tomorrow is going to be a bit of a nerve-wracking day. I will update as soon as possible. Tonight, Peige, Taylor and I took the edge off by going to a sheesha cafe and being taught how to play dominoes by a local man. What a great start! :)