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Okay, moving on. A is writing a paper about Dahab, this beautiful, somewhat forgotten outpost on the middle of the eastern coast of the Sinai, frequented not by out-of-country tourists but moreso by Egyptians and expats living in Egypt and a few Israelis. Dahab's got little hotels on the beach with tents and carpets set up right by the water. It's relaxing...and incredible. Amazing fresh fish dinners to be had on those carpets. There's also snorkeling and horseriding and bedouin treks into the inland desert. It's paradise and it's cheap. You should go. But back to A. Tonight, I was helping him with his final draft since he's ailing in bed and I take a look at what the guy at the writing lab did, which was basically just add a few commas and some sort of fancy sentences, but really miss a lot of other pretty basic grammar stuff and A tells me that his teacher read only the first few broken sentences of his first draft and then the guy went off on how he wants to see! and feel! and hear! and smell! and taste! the place! How he doesn't even care if it exists like that, how he wants a picture of this foreign paradise. So, I'm like, damn, A, let's give this guy his Orientalist wet dream. And we do. We give him bedouin boys on horses and camels frolicking in the sand and men smoking sheeshas under palm trees and the calm waters of the Red Sea. And all those things exist in Dahab...but so many other things exist in Dahab, too. Oh well. Maybe A can write something more interesting and true for his next story. I hope he gets a good grade.
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