Pharaoh Egypt Giza

So this year's birthday was better then last year! Mainly because I didn't get left behind at school and wasn't forced to take the late bus to get back to Ma'adi.
My TA, Sally, made me lentil soup for me and that brought up my day right then when she brought out the tupperware container! Lentil soup is something that I'm going to try to make next week. I've been asking Sally how to make lentil ...

... the guards that when the machine beeps you need to do something other than smile and hurry the people through it. Welcome, welcome, let me help me with your bag sir, gosh a bit heavy! Uzi in there? So big these days, room 501 was it?

I am loving Egypt and loving the tour with our little band of people who are whisked away each morning at the crack of dawn to ever more amazing sights. We hit Cairo and of course head off to the ...

... you can imagine that we get pretty sweaty, which mixed with the dirty air of Cairo makes our clothes incredibly unusable. Well that's alright, we have a washer, right? ---Nope! My roommate was trying to do a load of laundry and it got most of the way through the cycle but the water wouldn't drain - not a big deal, really, just means the clothes will be a little wetter and might take more of an effort to dry on the clothesline. So she tries to open the ...

... it because it was 8% alcohol, but they seemed to forget that once they started drinking and drank as much as they usually do, so they were all very…outgoing.

Saturday we had to get up early to go to the pyramids. It was even more entertaining then to see the people who had too much to drink still stumbling around the next morning, trying to walk through the pyramids.

The lady who led the tour was the same lady who teaches Ancient Egypt and ...

... boat's incredibly loud motor was turned on...

It was probably a 15 minute ride from the sleeping spot to the opposite shore where we caught the bus.

As we were departing the boat we paid for our drinks, the few sodas we had had while on the felucca tour. And that's when I noticed it was gone...

See when I had gotten onto the felucca in by bathing suit I had strapped on my waistbelt money wallet. Of course there was really no ...

... even worse than Bolivia, and there are no traffic lights, at least none that I saw. The lines on the roads mean nothing and people switch lanes all willy-nilly wherever they can squeeze in. It's mad. After arriving in the Grand Pyramids Hotel, we were amazed by its decadence. There were huge tapestries of the pyramids and Abu Simbel on the walls, a beautiful courtyard with green grass and a pool and open air restaurant/lounges, and from our rooms, a view of the ...

... driving up the road to the entrance of the complex.



we meet a Canadian couple near the entrance and proceed to walk with them for about 50 percent of our trip. they are on a 6 week journey that starts in Cairo and ends in turkey. both were grad students who were moving to Manhattan to practice law so this was their getaway before taking the next ...

... place is run by a Bedoiun family that extracts the essence from spices and flowers to be used in the making of perfume.  Sultan showed us how the glass bottles were blown and then for "2 Egyptian minutes" we got lessons on how this was done, what each essence could do for you, and then what mixes could be made that smelled like what you buy in the stores.  Yes, I did buy some lavender and some menthe and it's ...

... to look at take pictures, but not enter. We went to the bottom of the smallest of the three pyramids, the one built for Mycerinus (or Menkaure), after patience-testing hassles with touts, salesmen, ticket agents and it seemed, about every other living person on the grounds. There was not that much to see in the shaft or in the burial chamber, but it is still thrilling to go the ...