My “relaxing” four day cruise down to Upper Egypt began with less sleep than planned due to Thursday night’s endeavours. I knew we had to be on the bus to the airport by 4am, but I didn’t want to miss a nice Thursday night meal out and on top of that my friends agreed on Lebanese food!

We were suppose to meet around 10pm, and I assumed we’d be done with dinner by 12:30am when some of them would go out and others (myself in this group) would head back to the dorm so I could sleep for three hours before the journey which began at 4am. Nothing happens as planned in Cairo though. . . .:). . .however, I’ve grown accustomed to this laid back attitude and may have a hard time reassimiliating back to U.S. culture!

At about 11pm we ended up at the Lebanese resteraunt, and I ordered appetizers for everyone—kibbeh, spinach fatyeer, hummos, and calamari—to show everyone how good Lebanese food is. .esp. compared to Egyptian! Ivan and I ordered more kibbeh and lentil soup (because everyone knows that second to icecream and chocolate they have to go with me to get lentil soup when I’m crabby—funny how people can get to know each other so well in such short tim!) and the others ordered lamb and rabbit.

Now, FYI, Sarah happens to be allergic to chicken and its byproducts and a bunch of different vegetables—basically a ton of good stuff she is allergic to—but she had never tried rabbit and despite being allergic to so many things was willing to try it once. Needless to say, we all headed home when she was feeling ill at around 1am, only after two great quotes that are a must from the dinner conversation:

Me: “Indians don’t eat eggs because they come from a cow.” Yup I’m a genius!

Anthony telling me random facts about the late-pope. . .
Me: “Anthony you shoulg go on Jepoardy!”
Ivan: (He’s always saying s/thing good!) “The pope was on Jepoardy?”

Anyways, back to rushing home cuz Sarah felt sick!

I always have to be the girl that sits on people’s laps when we can’t all fit in a taxi and for some reason I protested that night and made Elizabeth be that girl—I was lucky not to be that girl this time!

As we were driving down S. 26th of July Sarah shouted to stop, before we could tell the driver she proceeded to purge all over Elizabeth. We shoved her on the sidewalk, paid the cabby an exhorbinant fee, and I pointed towards an “alley” for her to finish in. Apparenlty the “alley” was a set back, beautiful, marble entrance to an upscale Zamalek apt. building.

No one really cared at this point about anything but making sure she was okay. We got her hair back, bought some water, Sprite, and t.p. and prayed she wouldn’t go into shock—as she apparently does if she eats chicken and we all knew this in case it ever happened. Luckily she was okay after that!

After a long walk back I got to bed around 2:30ish with Sarah safe in her bed and rabbit added to her already long allergic list. I woke up an hour later mad that I had even tried to sleep and made it worse. Melanie and I excitedly chatted on the bus all the way to the airport gate where I bored EgyptAir to Luxor and slep for the hour—only to wake up for the orange juice.

As soon as we arrived in Upper/Southern Egypt (so named Upper because the Nile River flows North so South Egypt is the Upper part of the Nile) we bored another bus and loaded up on our cruise boat where AUC students were occupying 70/100 people on board! By 8:30am we were back in the bus and heading to the Valley of the Kings.

Walking through 120 degree heat from 9am to 1pm we saw a huge expanse where Egyptians hid the pharaoh’s tombs once they realized that the pyramid tombs were easily spotted and raided. All though out the “sand” mountain are entrances to tombs that number over twenty. A whole community lives on top of the tomb—many of their ancestors built their houses over alternated entrances to the tombs and made their livelihood from raiding them.

We entered three different tombs (no pictures were allowed, sorry!) and saw elaborate paintings and chamber ways. Most of the inside relics have been put in museums or looted at one point in time.

After the HOT experience we found our way to the temple of Hatshepsut—a woman pharaoh. Much was destroyed by a pharaoh after her, but it was awesome to see the sculptures that brought her her legitimacy. There were sculptures of her mother giving birth to her with her father as the god.

As we were on the West Bank of the Nile in Luxor and our cruise ship was on the East Bank and it took us a long time to bus it to the one side, all 70 of us hopped into three flatboats and took a boat back to our ship for lunch. We were all over the Nile this weekend!

The ride was cool and refreshing, but as I’ve mentioned before the Nile water is disgusting and full of parasites. To add to that the cruise boats just empty their “tanks” into the river. It is so sad to see how behind this country is in every aspect environmentally.

Quick lunch was followed by a much needed siesta for a couple hours to be out of the sun in the hottest part of the day. Our cruise was an Egyptian Five Star which is about equivalent to a modest but clean Holiday Inn type hotel. The foyer had all the beauty of a nice cruise but the rooms were simple but clean and there was a small pool and chairs on the top deck. However, I did enjoy that each of our rooms had a balcony so I could stare at the Nile each morning!

At 4ish we headed to the Karmak Temple and to the Luxor Temple. Karnak is on a 60-acre plot tha once held 34 temples—it’s the main temple and the only surviving one as well. It is the largest archeological site and the most beautiful site I’ve ever seen. There are two obelisks (originally many more but they are in various locations now such as in the Metro Art Museum in NYC) still standing and hundreds of over 300-600 pound pillars that once helf up a roof. This temple lasted through many dynasties—from Ramses to Tue to Hatsheptut to Akenahten. Our tour guide was fantastic (Egyptology profs from AUC come and explain it all to us—we are so dang spoiled!), but I surprised myself at how much I remember from Babyon’s People’s of the Middle East drama and Seymour 6th grade—yup he was that good of a teacher!

It’s so breathtaking to see all the sites that one reads about their whole life in school, and this weekend we saw more temples and tombs and archeologists sites that I feel as if I’ve conquered Egypt!

Noteworthy about Karnak is that this is the site that archeologists learned how the ancient Egyptians built such high temple walls with such large bricks in a time with no machinery. During the building of a wall the Persians came to Egypt and all the builders had to leave the job site and go to fight. In such haste, they left a wall half done with ramps of mud leading up the next level to be built! The mud is still in the exact spot today as evidence of how the ancient Egyptians rolled the bricks right up the ramps to the top layer!

Next was the smaller Luxor Tmeple that was covered for a number of years after a Nile flood of salt and sand that covered the entire temple so deeply that the city had roads built on top and a mosque still stands today—one part in the hillside they left and the other side completely exposed and held up by the temple (see pictures to understand what I mean!). You can see the remains of a road between the top of a temple pillar and the mosque. This temple was fascinating because it was converted for a period of time to a Greek temple—complete with half Corinthian columns—and for a period of time it was used as refuge for Christians in Egypt. So there is a wall knocked out and an altar put in and the vauge remains of an old painting of the last supper. It strikes me as so ironic that Christians still need refuge today in Egypt; they are “permitted” to practice, but it is illegal for anyone to convert to Christianity.

After Luxor we went to see how alabaster is carved and papyrus made. Fun to see, but not cool enough for my tired hands to explain. I did think alabaster was like a cement type material poured into a shape before this weekend, so I guess it was exciting to find out is is a rock found high in the desert mountains. And seeing the papyrus being made made the Egyptians even prouder than they already are, but it was cool to see how the first forms of communication began.

A little drama because I “left” Chris and Melanie behind occurred! I actually told my bus that they were missing (because they are always so busy taking pictures like fiends), but the person in charge said the other bus would wait for them. Chris was not happy with me when they ended up walking a mile in the wrong direction then taking a cab back to the cruise ship, but everyone vouched for my attempts so I got out of the blame!

That night I needed a little down time so I showered and got dressed up while some people went to look at the temples lit up before our ship departed, but after that I was quite cranky then very zen. See we only had one room key and I didn’t want to leave because Mel didn’t have a key and I didn’t want her to be locked out. However, she didn’t come back until 1am so I sat there all night waiting for her. By midnight I gave up, put my pajamas on, and read all night; which ended up to be a good thing so that the next day I was totally well rested and ready to go after the previous night of no sleep. I was annoyed though that I had to wait up until she got back so I could hear her knocking. I felt bad because she came in going off about how great her night was and I shut her up and said I needed to sleep and I’d talk to her in the morning. However, as I looked back the next day it was great to have a night by myself (first time since being in Egypt) and to have some real down time.

Yes Egypt is always very laid back with a lot of “downtime” in cafes and resteraunts and beaches (when we are lucky!), but one is still always on their guard here and it is going to be nice to be able to really relaz in August. In fact, this might be the best summer yet—two months in Egypt and two months at home, no job, tons of travel, and tons of fun! I’ve had awesome summers in the past but this is relaxing, educational, culturally and spiritually aware, and invigorating!

Saturday morning we woke up in Edfu (south of Luxor, we traveled through the night, I love cruise ships!) and headed down for breakfast before taking horse drawn carriages to the Edfu Temple. A beautiful, massive temple for the god Horus built at the Ptolemic Period. We saw parts of the Old Kingdom temple that was in that site, but much was built during the Greek inspired period.

After the tempke, Chris, Mel, and I hopped back into Carriage Nimra thamayneen (80) and tried to explain to our “driver” Ahmed’s plees that even if he had kids to feed we were not allowed to give him baksheesh since our ALI organizer Madame Nadia takes care of every little detail. It was tough explaining that in Arabic, but I did my best. And this time I didn’t leave Chris and Melanie behind !

Saturday afternoon we laid out by the pool until we fried. It was so glamourous to be on the top deck of a cruise ship looking out over the fertile banks of the Nile and the desert in the backdrop while seeing small farms, sand huts, and small mosques along the edges. There were children swimming along many of the river banks, and they would excitingly wave as the ship cruised by them.

When I was exhausted from the sun I read and slept in my cabin as we cruised towards KomOmbo—obvi life in Egypt has been pretty rough this summer ! I’m now a certifiable spoiled brat!

At sundown we docked at KomOmbo and saw the temple erected there in honor of Horus and of a local crocodile god. They worshipped the croc—an evil god—because they needed to please it so that it would not attack the Egyptians as they crossed the Nile. This temple was relatively newly built (right before the turn to AD), but it is one of the least preserved because the French stole blocks from it for buildings. It holds three interesting things: 1) a tax-o-meter which is a hole which measures the level of water in the Nile and based on the water depth (an underground canal to this hole) the taxes got raised or lowered for the year 2) the first calendar ever written 3) mummified crocs.

After the temple I hurried up and showered and got ready for dinner—it is so exciting when one feels clean in Egypt! Cleanliness is such a novelty here! After day six of no junk food, I had some jello! (Just keeping you updated at how proud of myself I am!!)

Saturday night a group of ids went out to find a bar in KomOmbo. Ironically since Egypt is such a strict authoritarian Islamic rule, the truth to Cairo is that there are more bars that one can count and no drinking age is ever enforced. Similarily when you enter the Cairo airport there is a sign that drug use is death by hanging, but even I know what stores you can get weed at. I guess the Bob Marley playing in the background of convenience stores is usually a good giveaway!

Aight Saturday night, Melanie slept and Chris and I had a great plan to sleep on the deck of the boat as we cruised down the Nile to Aswan; everything changed when we realized he brought his laptop on the cruise! From 11 to about one we sat on his balcony and looked at his thousands of pictures from the trip—beautiful pictures from every angle with every ray of light, black and whites, temples, animals, children! He knows how to capture them all, and my terrible photography skills were impressed! He is always skipping the tours and taking pictures for hour.

After discussing for the 1000 time the 1000 new discoveries of how we were raised in worlds apart (Detroit versus the UP) and our lives at the same college where our paths never crossed, we agreed to skip the deck because the mosquitos were out (West Nile virus/typhoid anyone?) and watch a movie! How big of tools were we by matching a movie on a Nile cruise? It was so nice to do a “normal life” thing though! I got to bed after 3am and getting up for our Sunday morning tour of Aswan was awful—totally exacerbated by the 120 F degree heat!

The morning was spent in a backwards fashion—we visitied the air conditioned Nubin Museum first then the temple at noon in the high heat. I was annoyed by our poor planning and tired of seeing the temples but a few things were really cool. Upper Egypt—close to Sudan—has a group of people called Nubians who are sort of a mix between Arab and African. They speak their own language—not Arabic—are not as dark as other tribal Africans but their territory extrends from Egypt into south African nations. They were once ruled under Pharaohnic rule, once Ottoman, once Christian, and are now Muslims so their heritage is closer to Arabs than African tribes.

The temple we visited on Sunday, Philae, was actually moved after a Nile River flood threatened to destroy it. UNESCO and the US had an extensive campaign to move it to an island in the Nile, and we had to take a boat to get to the temple.

It was not strikingly exciting for me after seeing so many temples and Karmak clearly being the first and best, but there was much evidence of Christians turning it into a church back in history.

Lunch, nap, then we hopped off our ship right into another motorboat up the Nile to a Nubian village where we had tea, a dancing party, looked at their items for sale, and played with the children. I “got down” with Fatima—a girl about ten years old who loved to dance, play pat-a-cake (I know kids every corner of the earth are the same!), and shake her hips! She was adorableand of course I had to buy a broken wooden Nubian doll from her. It was difficult because they don’t speak Arabic, but it was well worth seeing where they live and playing with the children.

After we took the motorboats back to the ship, showered, and had dinner, a ton of us headed to the souk. All this only after the guy at the water stand tried to sell me weed! I love shopping in markets (if you haven’t noticed yet!!), but this was especially great because I went with Femi and Chris, who don’t speak Arabic, so I got to practice Arabic the whole time while feeling safe. It was hilarious how excited everyone in the market was to see them as well since Femi is Nigerian and Chris is a black American so they all thought that they were Nubian and were so excited they shared a skin color! It was great bartering for them and helped them pick out masks. I really wanted to pick up a Nubian mask for my father who collects them and who doesn’t have any African masks, but they were all too scary and reminded me of the one that we actually had to burn because it freaked too many people out and my dad didn’t want “evil” in our house.

It definitely wasn’t Cairo because the souk closed down so early—by 11pm—and we had to come back to the ship and chill until 3am when we were heading by bus to Abu Simble. I just planned on sleeping on the bus for the six hours it would take us total (and still be back from the site by noon!) and then sleep all day on the cruise ship before flying back to Cairo from Aswan late Monday night. Sadly, I forgot about homework. . long week ahead with finals tomorrow and Thursday!

I should be studying right now for my poli sci final, but I wanted to finish this blog entry tonight for a variety of reasons:
1) won’t have any time to blog this week when I’m studying like crazy
2) don’t want emails asking if I’m okay
3) don’t want to forget it if I don’t have time to write until I’m back in the states

So it continues. . .

Yesterday I did end up taking a 20 minute catnap before heading to the lounge at 3am for shai (tea) and then boarding our bus for Abu Simble. We sat on the bus for about 45 minutes and it was super hot and smelled like exhaust; finally, we switched busses and got going to Abu Simble before 4am after we had to wait for our police escort (we roll in style at AUC!!). We arrived at the temple at 7am, and it was already well over 100 degrees.

I had mixed emotions when they said to be back on the bus by 9am. I was glad that it wouldn’t get to the average temperature of 120 F degrees while we were there and that we would get back in order to have plenty of free time on the docked cruise ship before flying home, but that we drove three hours each way to see two temples in two hours!

However, by 9am I was exhausted and was so ready to head back to the cruise ship! Abu Simble is an amazing temple that was constructed for Ramses because he was from Upper Egypt before being made a Pharoah in Memphis. Next to it is a temple dedicated for one of his wives, Nefertiti. He actually had over 40 wives and mistresses plus over 100 children, but Nefertiti was the major wife.

The most impressive part about Abu Simble is that they also moved this temple from a spot a few hundreds yards away and about a 100 yards lower than it is now because when the High Dam was built is started to flood the temple. Most impressive is that twice a year the sun shines on just Horus and Ramses, but the archeologists did such an amazing town moving the temple that the sun event only occurs a day late.

We hopped back in the bus and had another three hours of disasterous sleep—feet on my chair, people’s head flailing everywhere, and a quick stop to see the Aswan Dam. The Dam was relatively unexciting. It is the largest dam in the world and it did create the world’s largest man-made lake, and the dam is shaped like a pyramid, but it is still just a dam ! And right now a larger dam is being built in China since the Chinese keep trying to outdo the rest of the world!

The rest of the events go as follows: back to the ship, lunch, shower, homework, chilling out as we wait for our flight back to Cairo, staying up super late last night to get Arabic in order for today, and waking up this morning to get my room cleaned one last time and to do a little homework.

About two weeks ago until the weekend I was so ready to go home, but this weekend rejuvenated me (as do all weekends I spend outside of the dirty city of Cairo), got me semi-rested/relaxed, and made me appreciate the vastness of Egypt and their diversity of history outside of the strict culture of Cairo. Spending four days on a boat made me closer to a lot of the students at AUC (this wasn’t a “study abroad” trip like some of the others) and making those bonds tighter will make it harder to leave. It always happens for all the programs or things I’m involved in—everyone gets close right before it’s time to leave!! In short, this weekend was just what I needed to get me through my American blues! I just hate it always happens at the end. . .although I’m sure the pollution of Cairo for five days and finals will help me leave this town ! Time flies when you are seeing new sites (haha however thousands of years old they are!), meeting new people, studying, and basically traveling around the world like a high-class brat! Time flies when you are having fun !

Today Arabic class was exhausting but fun! We learned and sang a Nancy Ajram song (basically Lebanon’s Brittany Spears) and went over words for Doctor’s appointments which only made us laugh forever that we didn’t learn all of them during the first week we were here! I did my Arabic homework today already. All I have left is to study all my poli sci (since I missed a three hour class yesterday!), to go to my last Arabic class tomorrow, to take my poli sci exam, and then to spend all of tomorrow night studying Arabic.

Not sure when I’ll write again or when my 200 pictures from this weekend will be up, but I will do them when I have time (probably this weekend!) Miss you all!