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!