Egypt (part 1)

We rolled back into Jerusalem last night around 11:30 after our six-day excursion to the hellish heat of Egypt. Despite that, the trip was absolutely wonderful! I loved it. Here are my highlights, pictures included:

We started our trip last Sunday around 6 am and headed down to hit up some Old Testament sites before spending the night at a Kibbutz. The best places were an old fortress which I unfortunately cannot remember the name of and I don't have my notebook with me, but there was an old Byzantine era ruined church there that I really liked. It was totally ruined, so I don’t know why I liked it so much but I thought it was really cool.

This is me with Sister Thomas, the doctor's wife in the chapel.

We also went to Ben Guron's grave where there was a great overlook of the wilderness that the Israelites had to wander in for 40 years. It was desolate and nothing. I don't think I could have handled it.

The Kibbutz was cool. The idea of Kibbutzin stems from socialism. In the 50's groups of Jewish people moved down to Israel and formed communities that a pretty self sufficient. We took a tour of one and had dinner that night there. Their main products are dates and chocolate milk. Here is a picture of the date trees. I thought they were really pretty:

The drive across the Sinai was super long and I just kept thinking about having to traipse around that for 40 years. It did not sound appealing to me in the slightest. We stopped a few times driving across. I tried to do homework, I tried to sleep but the bus ride was so bouncy I couldn't really do anything. We learned that the bus driver was driving about 50 kilometers above the speed limit which helped us make the best time across the desert that the teachers had ever made. We all got really excited whenever we saw camels too.

As we pulled up into Cairo, our hotel was in Giza (which is where the Pyramids are) and I was so excited to see the Pyramids in the distance when we came into the city. Apparently Cairo has 18 million people living there and there are estimated 2 million cars. The most entertaining part was the cars weaving in and out all over. Our tour guide told us that the lines in the middle of the road are more decoration than actual traffic lines. There were people all over. That night we went to a sound and light show at the Pyramids that was entirely overrated and over priced. I was skeptical to go remembering the Malbork show in Poland of last summer, but there were only three or four people not going so I went. The show was pretty bad and I ended up talking to my "date" Meg the entire time. But we got our date picture:

Yes that's the Sphinx right above Meg's head.

The next day we went to the pyramids. It was unbearably hot by 8:00 and I'm pretty sure I have never sweated so profusely in my entire life, until I went inside the pyramid (the one on the left of this picture) and I felt like I had just dowsed my body in wet. The inside smelled and was thick with humidity (humidity from everyone's body heat) and it was not entirely pleasant. It was so hot and disgusting inside that when I got outside it felt cool. My back was covered with sweat and I had it dripping off my earrings it was so gross. It was really cool to be there though. I was surprised at how big the stones were and I just wanted to climb up the Pyramid.

I took a sweet Sphinx picture that everyone thought was so great, but I couldn't take credit for the idea since Cami had done it months ago, but it was the most clever picture so I did it too.

After the Pyramids we went to the Step Pyramid of Zoser which was the precursor to the pyramids now.

By the end of the day, we were so hot and miserable and had to go get on a plane to go down to Luxor for a few days, which I will write about later.