Egypt was awesome

Here is our airplane...oh my we were on that thing forever!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't get some of my videos to work, so I guess the two that worked might have to do!!!

We had an awesome time in Egypt! It is an amazing and interesting and very historical place!! Sorry for the lengthy description, but I want to write down some memories so I don't forget them!!! It was quite an adventure and it made me realize that there is so much more to this world than the little bubble that I live in in Utah!! (Even though I do love my little bubble!!)

Our adventure started early Tuesday morning we flew to NYC and then to Cairo, Egypt. We were on that stinking airplane for 17 hours and that is not including time sitting around in the airport waiting to get on the plane and get through customs and stuff. We arrived in Cairo on Wednesday about noon. We went with our friends the Rob and Michelle Sturgill and Tyler Anderson.

There are 20 million people that live in Cairo. And I could be wrong but it seems like it is about the size of Cache Valley from the tip of Hyrum to the end of Smithfield and out to Mendon. Imagine 20 million people living here. It is almost double the population of NYC!! WOW!! WE stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel right on the Nile River. It was very nice.

The first evening that we were there we decided to take a taxi to a local park that looked over the city. We thought it would be fun to be there when the sun set. Also Cairo is an extremely Muslim country. 5 times a day they have a call to prayer. It is a weird kind of religious chant that is blasted throughout the huge city. I guess at this time people are supposed to pray. It was very neat to hear it several times a day. I really liked it. We made it to the park and started walking around and looking around. I like to consider myself a pretty conservative and modest dresser, but as I looked around, every woman there was covered from head to toe!!!! Seriously every woman. The men dressed normal, infact pretty stylish but no one wore shorts - even with the hot temps. Some ultra religious women wore the traditional black flowy dress(a galabea) with a black veil and hair cover. And then there was me with my long blonde hair and all of my pure white skin showing. Wow, I have never felt so out of place and so immodest before!! D teased me saying that it was probably like someone from another country walking around in a bikini or something!! Ahhh, I could't believe it. What a different way of life and what a different culture. I had people seriously ask me if they could have their picture taken with me. I was so surprised by this...it was crazy. And the men and women just stared at me. I knew I was different when even the cute little kids stared at me. Oh my goodness. Not only do all of the women there have black hair, but you can't even see it, so I know I really stood out. It was much better in the touristy areas and I felt normal again - even modest again for that matter.

This is the local park that overlooks the city....I love how all the girls dress so modestly
...gee, who is that one showing all the skin????

That mosque in the background was built for Muhammed Ali.

Beautiful sunset

Thursday morning we woke up and got ready for an all day adventure. Actually everyday was an all day adventure. We went to the pyramids and the sphinx. It was so awesome. We had the opportunity to go inside. Our guide told us that it was very hot and a very small opening. I decided to try it. Daryl went in and was just fine. I took 3 steps in and turned right around. My darn clostraphobicness!!! But at least I went in 3 steps, just to say that I went in. They wouldn't let us take cameras inside, but D went in and say the burial chamber and the other rooms for all the stuff.
After this adventure we headed off to ride the camels. D rode it all by himself, but I had an older Egyptian man in his galabea lead mine. (Most of the older Muslim men wear a long flowy dress like outfit with a turbin like thing on their heads.) I asked the man if my camel had one hump or two, because I couldn't tell because of the saddle. He said in his broken English... "Egypt - one hump, Africa- two humps". I got the point...cool. Oh my, I did not realize how high up it would be, the camel had to lay down for us to climb on, then hold on for dear life!!! So off we went riding around the pyramids...so fun and so crazy that there I was riding a camel by the pyramids...
We went to lunch at a cool restaraunt!!! (Mom and dad and Kris, it actually right by the Marriott hotel that you stayed in when you where there. I thought how, cool that you had been in that same area!!)
After that we went to the Egyptian Mueseum. D and I are not museum people and kind of got bored... The coolest part was seeing 8 real mummies. We saw Queen Hatchsput, who was a famous queen who dressed like a man in order to rule Egypt. We also saw King Ramses II. The scholars believe that he was the Pharoah that dealt with Moses. AWESOME!! Which means that I saw the face of someone who was talked about in the Bible and who knew Moses. Wow, cool huh!!! In the museum was also everything that was taken from King Tut's tomb. His is the only one that robbers didn't ever find...darn robbers. Other than that wow I was bored...sorry to all of those museum lovers!!!

Tyler was taking our pic, when a camel walked right in front of him, but I think it turned out cool with the camel head!!! A funny story about this area. Our guide warned us that there were people there trying to sell things just little souvenirs and stuff. She warned us that they would offer to let us take a picture of ourselves on a camel for free (and boy they were very persistent!!!) Anyways you could get on the camel for free for a pic, but then you would have to deal with the man on how much you would have to pay to get down. Our guide said that someone had to pay $100 to get down. Crazy, you would think you could just jump down, but it is pretty high up. So D and I were very good at ignoring them :) :)!!

Me and the Sphinx...funny, right in front of me is a KFC and Pizza Hut.

This is me and D with our armed guards. They seriously have machine guns under their suit coats. We felt safe, but it was very nice to have them with us all of the time!!

This is an Egyptian policeman, you don't want to mess with him.

The traffic in Cairo is CRAZY!! This pic doesn't even do it justice. Our guide was AWESOME, we loved her, her name was Azza. She told us that there are 8 million cars on the road at any given time in Cairo. There are no stop signs, no stop lights and people just go as fast as they want, or where they want. CRAZY, CRAZY. I even took video of our taxi ride, but it just doesn't do it justice. It actually was so dang fun, I couldn't stop laughing, which I think just spurred our taxi driver to be even more crazy. There also were no seat belts!!! D and I said it was better than any ride at Disneyland or Lagoon, but there they make you buckle up. Also people cross the street anywhere. Even little kids would be in the middle of the flippin road. I could not believe it!!!

Ok, we are on a bus going through all of these people, and that is the back of another bus in the pic. It is so crowded there!!

Abu Simbel
Friday morning we woke up at 3:00 am for this adventure. We flew from Cairo to Abu Simbel. It is seriously in the middle of NO WHERE. We are about 30 miles from Sudan. Ramses II built this huge temple to intimidate the Nubians. On the inside are carvings of the Egyptians stepping on Nubian people heads and taking them as prisoners. We couldn't take our camera inside, but the outside was pretty cool. Those statues are carved out of the rock and they are HUGE!! It was really neat. Also
it was 115 degrees!!! Talk about sweating to death!! I don't think I have ever been in that hot of heat before. Wow!!!

This temple was built for Queen Nefatiri.

D in front of Ramses II temple and Nefartari's temple.

This is Lake Aswan. It is 350 miles long. About 50 years ago the government dammed the Nile river and it created this lake. I can't imagine where all of this water comes from. It seriously is nothing but a desert and so hot (seriously 115 degrees) that there are not even any weeds or anything growing, and then all of a sudden this huge lake. It had crocodiles in it. D dared me to hop in and take a swim, I was hot enough to be tempted, but the idea of crocs kept me far away!!

After Abu Simbel we flew to Aswan and got on our little cruise ship. We cruised the Nile for three days. It was fun to see all of the sights along the way. I could just hear the moms that lived along the Nile say to their kids, "Hey run down to the river to take a bath!!" just like I tell my kids to hop in the shower. Along the way we saw a bunch of little bodies and excuse me a couple of bigger bodies bathing and playing in the river. Crazy! They didn't care one bit that we were passing by. And no I didn't touch the water of the Nile. D did stick his finger in it once while we were in a motor boat and I told him that he was crazy!!

There were not many flowers there, because it was so dry, but here are some pretty pink ones...

This is our cruise ship in the background.

We took a little motor boat to a pretty park place to walk around. Can you see the armed guard on the front of the boat.

We had some entertainment on the little motor boat. He is a Nubian. (Nubians are Egyptian that live in southern Egypt and have dark black skin.)

When we got back to our boat, this little tiny lady was sitting in the street selling stuff. We didn't buy anything from her, but we did pay her $1 to take her pic.

That night for dinner we all dressed up like Egyptians. Kind of fun, kind of silly. This is our group.

I felt like I looked like a nurse in scrubs with a pretty scarf around my head :)

This is me and D with the Sturgils and our Awesome guide Azza. She is a muslim and an Egyptologist.

For the next few days, Saturday and Sunday we spent cruising and visiting ancient temples. They were built between 2000 - 600 B.C. The Temples were beautiful and very ancient. I was in awe as I stood and looked at these old buildings. A lot of them were completely buried in sand, that is what helped to preserve them. They have big sand storms over there were the sand blows and buries things. I can't imagine how it would be to discover these temples and dig them out. Ok, it was so neat to learn about what the Egyptians did in these temples. I am simply talking about what we learned that the Egyptians did here. They have a holy of holies in a special place inside the temple that only the pharoah could enter. Also before the priests and pharoah could enter the temple they had to be washed and recieve a new name. We asked our guide, how they now this and she simply said, "It is written all over the walls" Wow.

It was really fun to be on the boat as well. Ed Jones had reserved the whole ship. It was fun to visit with Jones people from all across the country, and it was nice to feel normal again, and modest again for that matter:):) We were able to talk about our church quite a bit on this trip. We always stand out because we don't drink and people know that we are from Utah. We gave out one Book of Mormon and had talks with many people. I love it. Not that we are out to convert the world, but people have so many misconceptions about the church. I love to be able to clear things up.

These are some carvings that we saw, they are all over the walls of the temples!
Ask D about the fertile god sometime, as he was very well depicted on some of the walls in the last temple we went to! hahaha

This is the statue that represents the protector god, the god Horrus.

Finally the ship got some icecream. D loved his chocolate milk shake :):)

These are some houses along the Nile. It is crazy, people live in these tiny little houses made of mud bricks and yet on the top of every one of them is a satelite dish - so they can get TV.



This little boy started to follow our ship and beg for money from us on the boat. He would say, "Hello, give me a present" and would keep repeating it. Then he took a film canister and chucked it at us. It was crazy, he wanted us to put money in it and throw it back. So D put in a few E. pounds, then threw it to him. The canister broke open and the money went everywhere. So the little boy jumped in the Nile and was trying to find it. Poor thing, it really broke my heart. They are so poor over there, and will do anything for money.

Monday morning we were up early again. We went to the Valley of the Kings. This is the place where all of the pharoahs are buried. Robbers stole everything out of every grave that scholars have been able to find. All except one, which was King Tut. All of his stuff is in the Egyptian museum. We couldn't take our camera at all, but it was so fun, we got to go into three tombs. It was amazing ot go inside. There was still color and carving all over the walls. They were very well protected from the elements. We went into Queen Hatchutsput, King Ramses I, and one other. It was very hot, and lots of people and tight quarters, but very neat to go inside. It was fun to see all of the carvings of their life.

This is Queen Hatchutsputs Temple. (down below) It is carved out of the mountain. Wow, it was amazing. This is the queen who dressed like a man to be able to rule. We saw her mummy and her face in the Egyptian museum, and her tomb in the valley of the kings.

These men were clear up on top of the mountain that this temple was carved out of. I found out later that they were security guards. Wow, they were so high up.

These "guards" are right in front of Queen Hatchutsput temple.

When we got back to the bus there was a bunch of camels behind the bus. They were just chilling back there eating a bunch of leaves.

After this we went to the largest and most awesome temple to AmmonRa the sun god. Very awesome!! Our camera died here so we were done taking pics. It really was cool, but once you have seen one temple you have seen them all!! :)

After this we flew back to Cairo for one more night. We got to experience the fun traffic of Cairo for one more time. (It seriously was one of my fav parts of the trip :)) Back to the Four Seasons and a yummy dinner. So sad that I was not able to find an Egyptian dessert that I really liked. Everything is to creamy or soggy or coffee flavored so I settled for a big plate of fresh cucumbers for dessert. -that would so never happen in the states!!

Egypt was awesome. It is by far one of my most favorite places to visit by far!!! It was amazing!!