Last week of classes

Luxor-the ancient city of Thebes. Home of the ancient pharaohs, think Exodus. It was a 12 hour ride by train at night. Relatively uneventful except for my window getting shattered by a thrown rock at 2:00AM, a great welcome to Upper Egypt. We went straight to the Temple at Karnak. You may have seen this in “The Mummy”. Just think enormous obelisks and a large columned temple. Amazing how they built this stuff back then. Apparently they would lay the stones and then fill it with sand and drag stones up to the next level. Continue these steps until you build a 100ft temple, then remove all the sand. No wonder they took 1000 years to construct. In the following days we visited other amazing temples, but they were pretty similar. Another treat was our visit to the valley of the kings, where they discovered the pharaohs underground tombs. These were amazing and vast. Carved into limestone, they went deep into mountains, like in some cases probably 100 yards, with all the walls covered in painted and carved hieroglyphics that still have vivid coloring.

Our accommodations were amazing in my opinion, mainly because we had a pool and lounge chairs on the roof where I spend half the time. I went swimming 7 times the last full day we spent there, with the rest of the time dedicated to soaking up the sun. One problem is that it is a very touristy place and the locals there are just aggressive. Ultra rude and expect us to be idiots who don’t know the prices like we were on day one. But by now we’ve got it wired. They were also a little more pestering to the girls in our group which was infuriating. Egyptian men have no respect for women, that’s a pretty sweeping statement-in a normal situation I’d avoid using it, but it’s true.

Since coming back to Cairo we are in our last week of class before our travel component. This means finals and papers. I just finished my last paper for a while-8 pages on the effects of Western influence on the Middle East-politically, economically, and ideologically (fun fun fun). Also had an Islam paper and final, so done with that class, and my Arabic final is on Monday.

I spent some time with Muhammad from the Muslim homestay family. Went with him and his friend before they went to work in Suez. We went out to a traditional Egyptian café where his friend smoked shisha and we battled it out on the chess board. People in the café kept coming over and giving Muhammad some Egyptian support since international chess games don’t happen to often at that place I guess. He didn’t need much moral support, because he handed me my king pretty swiftly and has forced me to play a game of chess titans on my laptop every night in preparation for our next meeting.

Yesterday we threw a big birthday bash for a girl in the program. We went on a boat in the Nile and had some dinner. I was able to bargain the faluca (boat) from 600LE to 125LE, which was nice. Then we went to the world famous (?) Cairo Circus in Agouza, walking distance from where we live. I will say, for 4 dollars I got my money’s worth. While waiting for the circus to start I was able to pet a LION! The show was awesome, with classic acts such as knife throwing, the token chick who uses a whip to extinguish flames from a candle, and a lion/tiger show with 9 of the beasts jumping over one another and the trainer in the most rickety cage I have ever seen. I could have broken through it if I rammed it I think. All in all, glorious.

This Wednesday we are leaving Cairo and heading to Turkey by plane. We won’t be back for a month. I should still get internet every once in a while. We are going from Turkey, to Syria, then Jordan, and finally Israel before returning. Road trip by bus throughout the Middle East. Sorry about my laziness in pictures. My new policy is that I don’t even bring my camera places because everyone else brings theirs and they have better cameras and like to use them. So, there are a bunch on facebook by kids on the program and Joel’s site, again, is a good resource for LOTS of pictures. Lighayit il mara tenya! Until next time!