Back in Cairo

It's amazing how much you can get to like slightly familiar places when you're in an unfamiliar place.
The most familiar place to me in Egypt is definitely the Sun Hotel in central Cairo, and the second most familiar place is probably the internet cafe nearby, called "Virus." I asked the owner (who speaks English quite well) why it's called "virus," and he just laughed.
The Sun Hotel costs $5 to $6.00 a night including breakfast, a towel, semi-decent water, and English-speaking staff. The Virus cafe costs about $1.00 an hour and it has headphones with microphones for skype. In Egypt, all of the place's qualities - price, fast internet, and skype capability - are not easy to find.
I hope to stay in Cairo long enough tomorrow that I won't be sad to leave, and I hope to leave soon enough that I will not be sick of it. After Alex, Matruh, Siwa, Alex again, and then the disappointing Port Said, Cairo is surprisingly refreshing. I never thought a city that started out as exciting and then became annoying could have such a calming effect on me.
When I first arrived here, my travel buddy Jay and I took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi zoomed in and out of traffic, over highways that winded around minarets. We got so close to other cars, it felt like bumper cars, only more fun, because in bumper cars, you sort of end up staying in the same place, getting banged around. Riding in a Cairo taxi for the first time, with a massive, exotic city zipping by, was one of the most fun experiences I ever had in a car.
When I returned to Cairo, I decided to take the now-familiar Cairo Metro instead without hesitation. It was a much more efficient way to get from the bus station to the Sun Hotel.
I think I'll be heading back to Israel soon. I reckon I'd like to work at Kibbutz Neot Smadar in the Arava. It doesn't require the registration fee from the Kibbutz Program Center. It's also not far from the Red Sea, so it'll be easy to get to from here. Lonely Planet describes it, in a very brief recommendation of their restaurant, as "very alternative." According to one travel blogger (http://www.createdestroyenjoy.net/mideast.html), the people there have a "twinkle in their eye." It's in the middle of a desert full of colorful rocks and it has a lake. It also has colorful, playful architecture, as can be seen in the wikipedia article.
If I pay registration and go all the way to the program center in Tel Aviv, and then make another trip all the way to the Lebanese border, I can work on Bar'am, the classic kibbutz, with lots of volunteers, trees, organized excursions, a pub, lots of history attached to it, and all that sort of thing. But at the moment I feel like going to the Arava - and saving the money I'd pay for registration and insurance, as well.
I've been in the Virus Netcafe for about 2 hours . I'm going to pay the owner the 10 Egyptian Pounds I owe him and call it a night, internet-wise.