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1. lost

a/n: alright, people! Quick geography lesson!

the sinai peninsula lies below the mediterranean sea and between two gulfs of the red sea (suez and aqaba but that's not important) which is to the east of Egypt. the very south of the sinai peninsula is sharm el-sheikh (the word sharm actually means a tip of land into the sea). a little above it, to the west of sinai there's tur sinai. right in the middle of sinai, there is saint catherine, and there are two mountains there: st. catherine (highestt mountain in egypt) and mount sinai a little below it. in the very east and a little up north, there is nuweiba, where the colored canyon is. remember this bc you're gonna need it, i couldn't fit all of it into scott's thoughts. there's a map of Sinai attached to the chapter, so check it out if you need to.

also, fun fact about me: i got too bored in grammar classes and never bothered to memorize the rules, but somehow i still scored well. however, that doesn't mean i'm good at grammar, so please point out any mistakes. grammar or anything else. and specifically point out run-on sentences bc they give me anxiety. just generally comment on everything please.

chapter dedicated to the amazing kat @penkatonix bc she is one of the sweetest, smartest and kindest people ever, and bc she's one of the first friends i made in the fandom! gotta love her! 

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Much to Scott's disappointment, Suez wasn't a land of mystery or adventure. He realized this the moment he landed there, immediately cursing at himself for expecting it to be Agrabah. Surely enough, he had known that Suez was a city and that it had civilization – because 1. He had seen pictures and 2. More importantly, his father came here for business, for God's sake – yet still, some small, delusional part of him had expected a mystical, magical place, and he felt guilty to admit that it was subconscious. He didn't let this idea haunt him too much, though, in fear he would get too invested in it, deciding he should accept the city as it is and enjoy it to change his inevitable, primitive idea of it.

His father's plan was to stay in Suez for 3 days as his shipment issues could take no more than this. The first two days, Scott's father spent most of his time at the port, and if he wasn't there, he would be somewhere else finishing some papers to take them back to the port; Scott had intended to ask what exactly was his father doing, but he kept forgetting when his father finally came back to the hotel and they went out in the evening. Fortunately, and to his father's surprise, it took only 2 days; he had said the pace things were going at were too slow. That made their last day free for them to take a larger tour around the city. Scott was surprised to know that the city had more to it than just the few streets he and his father walked down in the evenings of the past two days, realizing the land he was walking was once a land of war, not a long time ago, and once again, Scott felt a tinge of guilt to have underestimated it.

Of all the things that he and his father saw in Suez, the sea was the most amusing to Scott. He stared at it for too long, and for a brief moment, he wondered how much this very specific place of the red sea was polluted, considering the huge amount of ferries that passed through it every day, yet still, somehow, it was still this enchantingly beautiful. However, he knew that it was probably his immense love for the sea that made it seem this beautiful to him and that it may not really have been beautiful at all. He and his father spent the rest of day being stereotypical tourists, buying way too many souvenirs, and getting fascinated by things that were probably not at all fascinating to locals, and travelling to nearby cities to repeat the same actions.

The next day, they went to Sharm El-Sheikh, where Scott found himself a little less guilty than in Suez, and a little more disappointed. He couldn't see where his great adventure would be now. This was their last destination in the country, and it was merely a beautiful vacation destination for cute couples. Thinking of it then, he didn't know what he had expected to be adventurous in Egypt, and he found that it was not the place that had excited him – it was the fact that he was leaving the country. Though fairly rich, Scott had never been out of the United States. It made him feel stupid that merely leaving the country enthralled him this much, but he, once more, swallowed it anyway. This was his only chance, by all means, so he might as well let himself enjoy it and call it an adventure somehow, spending the following 3 days snorkeling, eating nice food, chatting to Egyptians, going on a tour around Sharm El-Sheikh, eating some more nice food, and buying some more souvenirs.