Do I *have* to be creative with this tonight??

You wouldn't think I'd be old enough to be losing my memory, but I sat down to write this post and could not for the life of me remember anything I did this week after girl's night. Luckily for you, though, I've told Chris what I've been up to throughout the week and he was able to refresh my memory, so I *think* I remember it all. No promises for the quality of this post, though--my brain is definitely not running at full capacity right now!

On Monday, I'm pretty sure I did service. Yep, I think that was it. I was planning on going into the city (or maybe I was planning on staying inside to write an essay and take a nap--it seems to be a moot point, anyway), but there was supposed to be a group of 4 people going out to serve at the Princess Basma Center for Disabled Children that day, and only 1 person had signed up. Being the chairman/coordinator of this whole thing, that left me running around for 30 minutes trying to get people to sign up so we wouldn't have to cancel last minute, and in the end I could only find 2 other people to go, so I went myself. It really was a lot of fun! You go there, and it's a group of about 10 children with their moms. The ages probably range from 2-6 or so, and they all have some sort of disability (mental, physical, etc.). For the first 15-30 minutes we weren't completely sure what to do: they started out throwing balls to each other, and then they sang some Arabic children's songs together, and neither of those activities seemed to require our help (especially since they all had their moms with them). For the last 30-45 minutes, though, they pulled out Legos, and it was fun building things with the kids. :) I mostly played with a little girl named Shema who was probably about 4 years old and who couldn't walk. She had these long curly pigtails that were so cute, and she knew all her body parts in English (as her mom had her demonstrate to me). She talked almost completely in Arabic, though, so mostly I just smiled and agreed with her when she said things.

There was one little boy who was hilarious, though! Well... in a way. We dumped out the Legos in front of the kids, and this cute, chubby little cross-eyed boy with glasses who was probably about 3 years old immediately started making guns and shooting us. He kept marching like a soldier, too, and sometimes he'd march so enthusiastically that he'd lose his balance and fall down. At first I wasn't really sure what to make of it, but then I thought of my brother Jordan who didn't have weapon toys when he was little, so he'd make guns out of hockey sticks and bow and arrows out of clothes hangers, and decided that it's probably just something that all little boys do. His story is a little sadder than most little boys, though, because he came from Gaza, and I guess he and his mother are refugees. He kept shouting things at us in Arabic, and though his mom said that most of it was just little-kid gibberish, there was one point when she told us he was saying, "Hold up your hands above your head and ask for peace!" ...So I guess I really don't know what to make of it all, but he was very cute.

On Tuesday I went to the Church of the Flagellation and the Sisters of Zion convent. Umm... the church was very pretty. Actually, the courtyard was beautiful. There's not much else to say, though. We were going to go out for pizza in West Jerusalem, but one of the girls in our group was expecting a call from her boyfriend, so we had to go back instead (and let's face it, I really can't begrudge her that!).

Today we had a field trip to Hezekiah's Tunnel, which was a lot of fun! Hezekiah's Tunnel was built to give Jerusalem a water source during a military siege because its main spring was located outside the city walls, and there's still water running through, so we got to wade through it. It was another one of those activities that are probably not good for the claustrophobic, though, because my height's pretty average and I still had to duck through a lot of it, but we enjoyed it. :) We even turned off our lights during parts of it just because it was a lot more exciting to try and navigate it through the dark (though in hindsight that may not have been the best plan--I think I bruised my hand when it suddenly decided to make a 90 degree turn. It was worth it, though!). The tunnel leads to the Pool of Siloam, which has been excavated out so you can see the actual steps that Jesus and his disciples would have walked on. It's one of the few places where you can actually say that you walked where Jesus walked, which was really quite incredible.

After the field trip I went with a group who was going to the Dome of the Rock, though we stopped by Schindler's grave first (the one from Schindler's List). His grave was pretty easy to recognize--it was the one *covered* with stones. Tradition here is to put a rock on a grave instead of a flower, though I'm not sure why. I've heard it's because flowers wilt while rocks pretty much stay the same over time, but I think there might be a deeper meaning to it than that. I might be wrong, though. Yeah, so after the cemetery we hit the Dome. The Dome is only open to visitors from 12:30-1:30, and you're not allowed inside the building itself. It was cool to walk around and take pictures, though. Really, what I thought was the coolest part was knowing that we were walking on the Temple Mount. Sometimes I really wish I could see the temple there instead of the Dome. Apparently the Temple built in Herod's days was 1/3 higher than the Dome is today, and it probably would've been a really impressive sight. Darn those Romans...

Once we'd been kicked out of the Dome, we mostly meandered around the Old City. I got some pizza (finally!), and a wicked sweet t-shirt with six Coca-Cola bottles done Andy Warhol-style (with Hebrew writing, of course!). I'm wearing it right now, in fact, and I have to say that I am stylin'. I'll have to show you a picture sometime. :)

Speaking of pictures, I still need to go through the obnoxious process of borrowing somebody's computer to move pictures from my memory card to my USB drive so I can then post them to the blog... so I don't have pictures right now. They're coming, though! Hopefully this weekend before Jordan (oh, P.S., we leave for Jordan next Monday).

That's it from me. Good night!

G.N.O.

Girl's nights rock. Period.

So a rather large group of us decided to go see a movie in West Jerusalem tonight. Most people wanted to see Valkyrie, but a small group of girls decided to go see Bride Wars instead, and after some internal debate I decided to join them. I do want to see Valkyrie at some point, but I was kind of in the mood for a chick flick, and I thought that it was more likely that I'll be watching Valkyrie on Chris's couch at some point when I get back than it is that I'll be watching Bride Wars. It somehow seemed like an appropriate choice, too.

Anyway.

We watched Bride Wars (which was pretty cute, if a little cheesy, and was actually relatively clean). The way it works is that the movie is in English, but there are Hebrew subtitles at the bottom. They also have an intermission, which was a little bit different. I mean, I can see the logic behind it--it would've been nice to have a little bathroom break in the middle of Harry Potter, for instance, or Lord of the Rings. There doesn't seem to be much logic in where they place the intermission, though. They cut us off mid-sentence in a really interesting part of the movie, and I heard that Valkyrie was cut off at a crucial plot point, so either it's done automatically, or some vindictive person with a grudge against the world is in charge of cutting it off and makes sure to do it in the worst place possible. It could be either one, I suppose. The movie was fun, though, and we split the cost of a large popcorn, so I finally satisfied the popcorn craving that I've had for the past few weeks.

Since Valkyrie was sizably longer than Bride Wars and we were all planning on riding back in the same taxi-bus, we had some time to kill once the movie was over, and we ended up going to this pastry shop a couple blocks away from the theater. We all bought this pastry called a Hot Chocolate Cake, and I couldn't possibly even begin to describe its absolute amazingness! It's kind of like a cup of chocolate brownie-cake goodness with chunks of milk and white chocolate in the middle, and they warm it up so that all of the chocolate in the middle melts, and you mix the chocolate brownie siding with the chocolate in the middle and eat it. Sooooo good! I split mine with another girl, but it was so rich that I still felt like I got plenty. I wish I'd thought to bring my camera, but luckily the other girls remembered, so I'll have to see if I can get some pictures from them.

I think the best thing about tonight was how "American" it all seemed. As cool as it is to be experiencing a foreign culture and doing new and exotic things, sometimes you just need to do something in your comfort zone, and a girl's night out with chick flick, popcorn, and chocolate was absolutely perfect :)

Oh, and this post is proof that I actually am capable of posting on two consecutive days. Three might be pushing it... but we'll see what happens ;)

When it rains, it pours

"When it rains, it pours." I think this phrase was first said by somebody in Jerusalem, because I've never known it to drizzle lightly here. In fact, it started thunderstorming last night, and has been going strong for the past 24 hours, even occasionally hailing at some points. I don't mind too much, though, because they really need the water here, and it definitely made for a cool Sacrament meeting--the congregation faces wall-to-ceiling windows with a view of the city, and we could see every fork of lightning cut across the sky over Jerusalem. We even sang "Master, The Tempest Is Raging" in choir this morning. How perfect is that??


I've been trying to think of what I haven't covered so far that you might want to know about. We've been on a couple of field trips since we got back: one to Jericho, and one to the Shephelah, or the lowlands, where a lot of the fighting during the Old Testament took place (including the battle of David and Goliath in the Elah Valley). We also went to the Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust museum here in Israel. Then, there's the little daily adventures I've been on to places like the Knesset (the Israeli parliament building) and Me'a She'arim. So, let's start with Jericho.

Jericho is actually in the West Bank, though I didn't feel any less safe there than normal. There was a man who owned a fruit stand there, and he was really nice to us. Of course, that might be because we bought so much fruit and sycamore nuts from him. Jericho's supposed to be known for their fruit, and I believe it--the pomelos there were amazing! And the oranges, and the bananas... and you probably get the picture. While we were there we saw the tree that Zacchaeus the short publican might've climbed to see Jesus over the crowd, and we discussed the story of Elijah and Elisha, who traveled through Jericho together before Elijah ascended into heaven. We also hiked up to a monastery that's supposed to be located on the Mount of Temptation, where Jesus was tempted by the devil to change rocks into bread. We had a great lookout from there, and Jericho is really a beautiful place. It's also known as the City of Palm Trees, which is a very apt name for it, and as Amanda could tell you, anywhere with palm trees is good by me! :)

The Shephelah was a pretty long field trip, though it was a good one, as well. We visited a couple of the ancient cities, including Lachish and Beth Shemesh, and we went to the Valley of Elah were we used slings to shoot stones at "Goliath", who was basically a bunch of cardboard boxes with a face drawn on. I've never feared for my life as much as I did that day. Seriously, you give a bunch of slings to untrained college students and just let 'em loose?? Slings are pretty hard to use. In fact, my respect for David has increased exponentially since realizing exactly how hard slings are to use. When you're first learning how to use a sling, the direction that the rock is going to fly can be pretty much unpredictable. All I can say is that it's a miracle that nobody was hit by a rock as we made our pathetic attempts to slay Goliath. I think somebody did manage to knock him down eventually, though I didn't see it happen--I was "safely" in the back (though it wasn't really "safe," since rocks actually flew backwards alarmingly often) with a couple other girls having contests to see which of us could fling our rock the furthest. I didn't win, but I didn't die either when Eliza's rock went sideways and straight towards me, and for that I'm grateful. Oh, I we also went through a couple of caves which had no historical significance, but were pretty fun to climb in. One of these we affectionately dubbed "the Birth Canal" because of how tough it was to squeeze through--there wasn't even room enough to crawl in parts of it, so you kind of had to push yourself through inch-worm style to get out. I think somebody out there has a picture of me being "born" at the end, so I'll have to see if I can track it down. We got so filthy, but we had a lot of fun (or at least, those of us who weren't claustrophobic did). We also saw a pretty cool ancient oil press. And that was that.

Yad Vashem... Well, it's really kind of hard to come up with a good adjective to describe Yad Vashem. What can you really say about a Holocaust museum? That it was "fun"? I suppose I can say that it was very well-organized, and definitely worth the visit. I remember going to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., and though they had some very good exhibits, it didn't seem effectively organized to me. Yad Vashem was very sequential, though, and you got a sense of how anti-Semitism built up over the years until Hitler finally released it in one torrential wave. ...That's really all I have to say about that. To me, Yad Vashem is kind of a personal experience that's difficult to share effectively, but if you ever find yourself in Israel, I highly recommend going.

A group of us took a taxi down to the Knesset during freetime the other day, and that was pretty interesting, especially since I finally have some sort of limited grasp on how Israeli politics work. Not that I would consider myself and expert by any means, but we spent a class period in Jewish history talking about it, and vague terms such as "list proportional representation," "majority," and "plurality" started to float up from the abyss in my mind where everything I learned from Professor Jacoby during Comparative Politics my freshman year has ended up (hey, Katalin, out of curiosity, does Liz read this thing?). At least the Israeli government is less complicated than the French government, though that's not saying much. It was really interesting to see how interconnected religion is with politics, though--even the seats of the Knesset are arranged in the shape of a menorah. I'm still in the process of forming my own opinion on Israel and its government, especially since I've been exposed to the Arab/Islamic point of view so much recently, but it was good to at least go and see where everything takes place. I have decided that it doesn't seem to be a very effective governmental system, though. Not that I would EVER want to mess with Middle Eastern politics! *shudder*

Hmm... what else is there? Me'a She'arim was fairly interesting. It's a street in West Jerusalem where ultra-orthodox Jews have shops set up, so we kind of went window-shopping and people-watching (because this is where the guys with the huge beards, curly sideburn-type things, long black coats, and big funny hats hang out) for a little while. We had to wear skirts and long-sleeve shirts to go down that street (well, we didn't exactly have to, but I think we'd have gotten some pretty dirty looks if we hadn't), and unfortunately it was a fairly windy day so our skirts didn't really like to stay down, if you know what I mean :P We made it through okay, though. We were going to go to dinner with the JC Diner's Club that night, but that turned into kind of a fiasco because apparently the restaurant we were planning on going to didn't exist (don't ask me, I didn't plan it!), and the restaurant they ended up picking instead was a little out of my budget, so I taxied home with some other people to eat dinner at the JC instead. Which was fine with me--they had my favorite beef stroganoff that doesn't really taste like beef stroganoff, but tastes like something better, so I was totally fine with JC cooking. Oh yeah, we met a really creepy man in West Jerusalem while we were out, but that happens so often that I'm not sure if it's even news anymore :P Seriously, though, this guy scared me a little. He must have been 60 or something, but he saw me and Whitney (who is also blonde) and he started following us, shouting things like, "Oh, beautiful angels! Blonde beauties! Come to me, my white angels!" Creeper! We started walking really fast and eventually he gave up following us, though it was a little scary how desperate he sounded near the end. Maybe his mind wasn't all there or something.

Geez, well I can't end on that story! I have to end on something happier! Umm... I finally got service groups set up! Since I'm the chairman of the Humanitarian and Community Service committee, it's been my job to make service opportunities available to students here, and I've felt like a slacker since it's taken me the longest time to get it all set up. I finally have things going, though! We're sending out 16-20 people a week to the Princess Basma Center for Disabled Children and the Domari Society for the Gypsies, plus we're putting together hygiene kits for the Church here so they don't have to pay a ton of money to ship them from the states, PLUS we're working on designing a wall mural to paint as a group project in the Princess Basma Center. I am also now known as the "taxi lady" by the security guards because I'm up there almost every day arranging a paid taxi for a service group going out. So, I no longer feel like a slacker :) Oh, and my application portfolio for the illustration program is finally in, too (which is the excuse I'm using for how long it took me to post). Hopefully I'll have heard by the end of April whether I made it into the program or not.

The end.

The Real Deal (Part 2)

Let's see, where was I?

Thursday, January 29

Today was basically temple day. First thing in the morning we took a little boat ride down the Nile to get to the Karnak Temple, and afterwards we took a carriage ride to Luxor Temple. Honestly, most of the temples have blurred together in my mind as an indistinguishable mass of hieroglyphs, statues, and columns. I do remember that the really cool obelisk built by Hatshepsut was in the Karnak Temple, though. It was one of the only monuments of Hatshepsut's to survive--Thutmoses III kind of resented being kept from the throne for so many years by his mother, and did his best to erase all memories of her after her death. He didn't dare knock down the obelisk, though, because it was in the temple and dedicated to Amon-Ra, so instead he built this kind of wall around it. I think part of the wall might have been knocked down, though, because you can still see it.

That night we took a... rather questionable overnight train back to Cairo. We slept in little fold-out bunk bed-type things in tiny compartments, and were given a lovely dinner of dry bread, rice, and two types of mystery meat. I'm pretty sure that most trains are like that wherever you go, though, so we just kind of accepted it as an interesting life experience and ran with it. I actually did manage to get at least six hours of sleep that night, despite the fact that the radio was on and we could not for the life of us get it to turn off. It was playing oldies music, of all things, and in English, too. So, in the morning...

Friday, January 30

...We had an amazing breakfast of five varieties of dry bread (seriously), and made our way back to the Oasis Hotel, where we had a marginally better breakfast and sacrament meeting. A couple of hours later (when we finally got the chance to change and shower) we went to the Egyptian Museum. Cameras weren't allowed in here, either, probably to encourage you to buy their lovely book of pictures featuring most of the museum's highlights. :P I really loved this place, though. This is where all of the artifacts from King Tut's tomb are kept, so we got to look through those, and there were all sorts of statues, papyrii, and other interesting things there. I got really excited over a couple of things, like the Narmer Palette, because I'd learned about them in art history before. I felt kind of like Po from Kung Fu Panda: "I've only seen paintings of this painting!" :)

For lunch we had Hard Rock Cafe, which was a little piece of heaven--a hamburger and fries taste incredible after spending so long in a foreign country with foreign food. We also had a rockin' flash dance when "YMCA" and "We Will Rock You" came on. Yep, it was pretty much a party.

That afternoon we went to the Khan al-Khalili Bazaar, which, as I've mentioned before, I enjoyed much more than the Luxor bazaar. I mean, merchants still tried to rip you off as much as possible here, but I'd learned most of their bargaining techniques by this point and had learned some counter-techniques of my own, so I basically got a fair price on everything I bought, I think. Not that I spent much here--way too much of my money went to those Luxor merchants. :P

Then I ate dinner. And then I went to bed.

Saturday, January 31

Not much happened today. We did stop at the Mosque of Muhammad Ali at the Cairo Citadel, so I guess that was kind of interesting. Mostly we just drove, though, and tried to sleep on the bus in anticipation of our morning hike up Mt. Sinai the next day (and when I say morning, I mean 2 am in the morning :P). I won't lie, though--I was so nervous about the hotel outside Mt. Sinai! Before we left, one of our professors told that it was "the very best hotel in the area... but it's out in the middle of nowhere, so it's like a step up from scout's camp." Well, I've heard stories about scout's camp, and was understandably worried. Well, in reality, it was perfectly okay! Sure, it wasn't 5 stars like I think the Sheraton might have been, but it wasn't dirty or full of bugs or anything. I guess the shower didn't work, though I was so exhausted from the hike the next day that I really didn't care--I completely crashed on the bed when we got back, and slept the whole way back on the bus. That's tomorrow's story, though.

Sunday, February 1

So, we were woken up at 2 in the morning to leave for our hike up Sinai to see the sunrise. We'd been warned that it would be cold, so we all packed extra layers in our backpacks. What we weren't told was that it would be ABSOLUTELY FRIGID (did I emphasize that enough?)!!!I had an undershirt, a shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, a sweatshirt, a windbreaker, two pairs of socks, and 4-5 scarves on, and when we got to the top I was still shivering like crazy! The hike up was warm enough, though, just because it was pretty difficult. I mean, we all made it okay, though I think one of the service couples that came with us had to stop about halfway up and a couple of sick people had to take camels to get to the top, but it still kept you warm enough. It was cool to look at the stars every now and then, because there's absolutely no light pollution there. The sunrise was beautiful, too, even though my hands were too numb to hold a camera and take pictures of it. The one thing that got a little annoying after awhile was the constant stream of Bedouins trying to sell us camel rides, but they had died down by the time we reached the summit, and it was such an amazing experience to sit at the top of Mt. Sinai, watch the sun come up, and sing hymns together.

Once the sun was up, we hurried back down the mountain (did I mention it was really cold??) and went back to the hotel for a few hours before leaving to go back to Israel. The border crossing took quite awhile (for some reason they checked everybody's scriptures--I don't know what they looked like on the little scanner-thing that our luggage went through, but apparently they looked suspicious), but I did get some cool sunset pictures as we were driving past the red sea. We finally made it back to the JC late that night, and as fun and interesting as Egypt was, we were all so glad to be back--if there's anywhere that feels like home in the Middle East, it's Jerusalem.

The end. I'll try to put it another post tomorrow and the next day to get you up to date with what's happened in Jerusalem the past couple of weeks, but aside from that I should be back on schedule :) However, for now I'm up way past my bedtime, so good night!

Intermission

I just thought I'd let you know that the rest of Egypt is coming on Friday. I was planning to do it tonight, but midterms, papers, and my visual arts application have crept up on me, and just barely pounced on me tonight when I realized how much time I spent looking at wedding stuff today, and how little time I spent on homework. I did picture-ify the rest of my blog, though, so you can check that out if you'd like. If you click on the image, it should bring it up full-size for you (you might already know that, but it was news to me!).

Also, since I spent SO much time looking at wedding colors and candy and such today, I figure I might as well post what I've done:

See? It's an inspiration board! Ha ha, it's not exactly what I should've been doing today, but I've been meaning to make one for awhile, so it's not like I completely wasted my time, right?

Anyway, enjoy the pictures :)

The Real Deal (part 1)

Yes, this is me, for real, posting. You may not have noticed (though I'm guessing you probably did), but I've been avoiding this post like the plague. Do you know how much went on during that week?? It occurred to me, though, that as I avoided Egypt week, life at Jerusalem kept going, and if I put it off for too much longer catching up would be hopeless. So... here we go. On the plus side, I have pictures! Forgive me? :)

So! Egypt! Well, Egypt was pretty cool. :) We left on Sunday, January 25, and got back the next Sunday, so it really was a fairly long trip. I've been thinking this over, and I think the best way to do this is to try to hit at least the highlights of each day. So, here we go!

Sunday, January 25

We didn't actually make it to Egypt this day. Instead, we kind of took our time, stopping at several sites in Israel and staying overnight at a kibbutz. One of our first stops was at Tel Beersheba, which is actually only about 12 miles from Gaza! Ha ha, we all wanted to take pictures of it (imagine having that photo on your blog! So cool!), but the main city of Beersheba was in the way, and they sure weren't taking us any closer! Oh well, at least I can say I've been to the West Bank. :)

The coolest place we stopped today was definitely Tel Avdat. Tel Avdat made me decide that, as wonderful as America is, its distinct lack of ancient ruins is rather tragic. Seriously, it was like a giant playground for adults! Actually, I think we probably weren't supposed to climb on some of those arches, but nobody stopped us, so that makes it okay, right?

We also stopped at a place with a desert outlook. It looked... really deserty. That's all I have to say about that.

We eventually made it to Kibbutz Yotvata, which gave us a tour. Kibbutzim actually are pretty interesting--anybody ever heard of them? I guess you would describe them as little socialist communities: everybody works, and everybody's paid the same amount of money, and all things are supposed to be owned by everyone. Or at least, that's how it started out. I'm not sure if they're quite so extreme anymore, though I do know that the pay for everybody is still the same, whether they teach, hold elected office, or work in the cafeteria. It's an interesting, yet simple, way of life. I probably couldn't handle it, but they seem to be getting by just fine. After dinner at the kibbutz, we went to another kibbutz outside of Eilat where we stayed the night.

Monday, January 26

We finally got to Egypt! ...Not that we did much. Most of the day was spent driving through such desolate terrain that I'll probably never complain about the drive through Nevada again. By the time we got to Gaza, it was definitely dinnertime, and we ate at the hotel. Thus began a long succession of horribly depressing meals, consisting mainly of meat, bread, and longing looks cast toward the produce table. It's not even that I like salad all that much, but by the time I got back to Israel I was craving it!

This was also the first day that we experienced having to brush our teeth with a water bottle, pay to use smelly bathrooms, and obsessively pull out hand sanitizer every 30 minutes. I also discovered that, compared to Cairo traffic, Jerusalem traffic is absolutely nothing. After analyzing Cairo traffic for about an hour, I came up with one rule of the road: if your car fits, put it there. I have to wonder why they even bothered to paint lines on the road when they're so blatantly ignored. However, as big, dirty, and insane as Cairo is, I infinitely prefer it to Luxor, for reasons I'll explain later.

We did have a small adventure this night--a group of about four of us decided to take a taxi to Pyramid Street (which was an adventure in and of itself), and we wandered about for a bit looking at shops. We spent most of our time at this perfume shop, where I bought a little bottle of this scent call "Aida." The merchant was really nice, too, completely misrepresenting most merchants in Egypt. :P Lol, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's not much of one! I'll never call Jerusalem merchants pushy again!

Tuesday, January 27

Life from this point on was extremely scheduled and hectic, though it was a good kind of hectic. Today we hit the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, a papyrus factory, Saqqara, and Memphis, and then we took an evening flight to Luxor. Unfortunately, my eye chose this day to become red and puffy and cry continuously, so I hate almost all of my pictures from this day. It was still really fun, though, and luckily I remembered my eye drops, so it wasn't an issue for the rest of the week.

We actually got to go inside pyramid Khafre, which is the second largest one, and that was a pretty cool experience. Being a bunch of college students, we decided it would be cool to do the hokey pokey in there... so that's what we did. :P We also had random dance parties in the hotel lobby, at the Hard Rock Cafe, at a rest stop near Sinai... and we wonder why people think that all Americans do is party!

Wednesday, January 28

Today we went to the Valley of the Kings. Tragically, cameras weren't allowed inside the tombs, for obscure reasons that I can't comprehend. All I can say is that the tombs were fascinating. There's so many symbols involved with the funerary art of ancient Egypt, and even though I know a little bit, I could barely comprehend most of what was going on. The ceilings were always pretty cool, though--they were painted blue with hundreds of white stars, symbolizing the sky goddess, Nut. Also, apparently there was an Ancient Egyptian belief that pharaohs would become stars after death, so it's significant in that respect, as well.

This was also the day when we rode camels. :) Meet Ali Baba, my faithful steed who steadfastly carried me through a small Egyptian town on the edge of the Nile. My guide's name was Muhammad, an 11-year old boy who was pretty funny when he wasn't trying to barter for his tip. I'm pretty sure somebody has a picture of me on the camel, but I can't remember who, so I'll have to find out later. By the way, camels are my new favorite animal. I can't even imagine a more awkward creature! They're hilarious!

After watching sunset on the Nile (which was beautiful), a group of us decided to walk to the bazaar in Luxor and take a look around. This is when I decided that I could never, ever live in Luxor. Luxor's a pretty small city, especially compared to Cairo's 17 million people, and it's much cleaner and much less crowded. However, the men there were so much more forward! Some of the comments were kind of funny, like, "Oh, you are so beautiful! I cannot believe my eyes! Eighty-million camels would not be enough!" (my self-esteem rose at that one!) or, "You have five wives? Lucky man! Share one with me!" (directed to the boy who was walking with us, obviously). Some of them were disturbing, though, and I could never get over the way that the men just seemed to stare. As opposed to Cairo, which has thousands of shops and even more tourists, there's only one street of bazaars in Luxor, and merchants there are like hawks. Sometimes it felt almost nightmarish trying to get down that street with merchants coming at you from both sides, making comments and sometimes trying to physically pull you into their shops (one actually dumped a scarf on my head to force me to stop). I think I've never been ripped off so much in my life, either, because I really didn't get the hang of the whole bartering-thing until we went back to Cairo. It was still pretty fun at times, though, and even though the scarf-man ripped me off BIG time, he also showed me a couple of new ways to tie my scarfs, so I've forgiven him. :P

I had intended to cover all of Egypt tonight, but it's past midnight here and I still have to study for a quiz tomorrow, so I'm calling it quits. I'll be back tomorrow, though, so hopefully this'll last you until then!

To be continued...

I'm Alive

Just thought I'd let you know :) A post is coming, as soon as I can find a spare minute in the day! Hopefully by tomorrow!

And to make it up to you... there'll probably be pictures :)

P.S. Egypt was cool.