This weekend, we visited the Irbid Arabic branch on Friday.Afterwards, me and a group of the BYU kids who went to the Irbid branch, and 2 of the guys from the branch went with us to Umm Qais. There we explored the ruins, climbed through an tunnel behind an un-excavated amphitheater, saw a water tunnel, and found a Roman mausoleum. It was really awesome. On Saturday, we went to Jerash, the largest Roman preserved city in the world. I talked to some members of a Jordanian military bagpipe and drum band. I petted one of the horses used in the gladiator show at Jerash and talked to one of the guys in charge of it. We climbed some of the temples in Jerash. We had an amazing experience there. But, we are getting somewhat tired of seeing ruins. I think we are more in the hiking mood and so the future trips will involve experiencing Jordan's nature reserves.
After Jerash, we went to the Irbid branch's YSA activity, were President Cotton cooked us a fine American style BBQ.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Aqaba
This is Bre. After Israel, we felt pretty exhausted. We thought Israel was going to be a vacation, but it ended up being a pretty rigorous, whirl-wind tour of the Holy Land. So, we headed to Aqaba for a relaxing 3 day weekend at the beach.
I headed to down to the port town of Aqaba with a group of friends. My roommate Lauren got us a good deal on some pretty nice hotel rooms (we had to squeeze seven girls into one room to make it a good deal...). I went snorkeling at a hippie beach called Bedouin Garden Village, an interesting camp where most of the back-packing crowd stays. I spent most of the time hyperventilating and gagging due to my inability to NOT breathe through my nose, but it was a lot of fun.
This is Nacia. I went to the Royal Diving Club in Aqaba and i had a blast. I snorkeled for the first time and I thought that it was amazing. Seeing all the fish and the coral was amazing! I did get pretty sunburned though but I feel better now. I also meant a South African and a Hungarian who were helping the Jordanian government train Arab pilots for tourist planes in Wadi Rum. They were really cool to talk to.
I headed to down to the port town of Aqaba with a group of friends. My roommate Lauren got us a good deal on some pretty nice hotel rooms (we had to squeeze seven girls into one room to make it a good deal...). I went snorkeling at a hippie beach called Bedouin Garden Village, an interesting camp where most of the back-packing crowd stays. I spent most of the time hyperventilating and gagging due to my inability to NOT breathe through my nose, but it was a lot of fun.
This is Nacia. I went to the Royal Diving Club in Aqaba and i had a blast. I snorkeled for the first time and I thought that it was amazing. Seeing all the fish and the coral was amazing! I did get pretty sunburned though but I feel better now. I also meant a South African and a Hungarian who were helping the Jordanian government train Arab pilots for tourist planes in Wadi Rum. They were really cool to talk to.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Wadi Mukheirus
Sorry, about the late updates to the blog.Between the Israel trip, midterms, homework, hanging out with our host families, speaking Arabic, and eating it has been hard to keep everything updated.
Wadi Mukheirus
We took a bus early in the morning to Wadi Mukheirus, one of Jordan's spectacular wadis whose river flows into the Dead Sea. This wadi is actually right across the street from the Movenpick: Dead sea resort. We had heard amazing things about this wadi from the other American students at the Language Center at the University of Jordan. This wadi was supposed to be more amazing than Wadi Mujib: the waterfalls were supposedly more intense, the trip was longer, and the scenery was amazing. So we decided to go after Wadi Mujib, because we figured the water levels should still be pretty high.
Well, the Wadi Mukheirus we experienced included the following: a long, wide rocky canyon with a little creek running down the middle. From the pictures you will be able to tell that during the rainy season this little creek would be a huge intense river with amazing waterfalls, but unfortunately we were mostly climbing over rocky waterfalls and sloshing through the little creek. We had alot of fun climbing over this challenging terrain. We saw a beautiful 60 foot waterfall, shepherds herding their sheep, CRABS!, and amazing coloring on the canyon walls. We finished our hike at a pretty little waterfall/oasis area were there was a cool cave with stalactites.
After this intense hike, we went to Fuddruckers! probably the best place in Jordan.
We would also like to thank Nate for his pictures.
Wadi Mukheirus
We took a bus early in the morning to Wadi Mukheirus, one of Jordan's spectacular wadis whose river flows into the Dead Sea. This wadi is actually right across the street from the Movenpick: Dead sea resort. We had heard amazing things about this wadi from the other American students at the Language Center at the University of Jordan. This wadi was supposed to be more amazing than Wadi Mujib: the waterfalls were supposedly more intense, the trip was longer, and the scenery was amazing. So we decided to go after Wadi Mujib, because we figured the water levels should still be pretty high.
Well, the Wadi Mukheirus we experienced included the following: a long, wide rocky canyon with a little creek running down the middle. From the pictures you will be able to tell that during the rainy season this little creek would be a huge intense river with amazing waterfalls, but unfortunately we were mostly climbing over rocky waterfalls and sloshing through the little creek. We had alot of fun climbing over this challenging terrain. We saw a beautiful 60 foot waterfall, shepherds herding their sheep, CRABS!, and amazing coloring on the canyon walls. We finished our hike at a pretty little waterfall/oasis area were there was a cool cave with stalactites.
After this intense hike, we went to Fuddruckers! probably the best place in Jordan.
We would also like to thank Nate for his pictures.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Israel, the Zionist entity, Palestine, occupied Palestine, the Holy Land, Judea-Samaria
All of these titles can sum up our experience this time I went to Israel. Three years ago when I first went to Israel, I was so naive and ignorant of the Middle East. This time I felt like I understood Israelis and Arabs more. In addition I felt so much more comfortable moving around in Israel. I will give a list of things we saw and than I will tell some highlights from the trip.
Places we went (in the rough order that we experienced them)
Qumran
Masada
Jericho
Wailing Wall-to see Jews welcome Shabbat
Bethpage
The Wall
Church at Jerusalem Center
Rabbinical Tunnel
Temple Mount: Dome of Rock, Al-Aqsa
Via Dolorosa
Church of St. Anne (pool of Bethsaida)
other multiple churches along the Via Dolorosa
Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Church of Peter in Gallicantu
Mount of Olives
Traditional Garden of Gethsemane
Hezekiah's Tunnel
Bethlehem
Church of the Nativity
Shepherds Fields
Wailing Wall
Jewish Quarter
The Cardo
Armenian Quarter
City Wall walk
The Upper Room
King David's epitaph
West Jerusalem
Acco/Acre
Haifa/Bahai Gardens
Megiddo
Nazareth
Church of the Nativity
Tremor Hill
Nazareth Synagogue
Mount of the Beatitudes
Sea of Galilee
Tiberias
Chorazim
All of these churches on the Sea of Galilee
Tel Dan Nature Reserve
Ceasarea Philippi
Places we slept at:
The Holy Land Hotel in East Jerusalem, just outside Herod's gate
The Sister's Convent in Nazareth, right across from the Church of the Nativity
Ron something Hotel in Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
We went to church at the Jerusalem Center and at the branch in Tiberias.
We also had almost daily lectures from experts in certain areas involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My favorite speaker was an Israeli (Dan ?) who is an Israeli major/lawyer who is an expert on the Wall.
I know that was a long list, but I am sure you wanted to know everywhere we went. Bre and I are going to each share an experience from Israel, which we hope entertains you.
Bre's story
She is thinking of a story. We will update this post.
Nacia's story
Almost every night we were in Israel, me and some of my friends who love soccer would go out and find were the Euro Cup (Europe's soccer championship) was being shown. It was so much fun watching soccer with Arabs. I watched soccer in Nazareth, Tiberias, but I loved watching it especially in Jerusalem. Me and some of the people in my group would go down to the corner of our street that was right across from the old city of Jerusalem. One of the store owners had a projector and would project the soccer game on the closed doors of a neighboring shop. It was blast to watch the soccer games with the Arabs. It was so neat to be able to talk to Arabs, bond with them as we cheered for the same team, talk to them about politics, family, and religion in their own language.
All of these titles can sum up our experience this time I went to Israel. Three years ago when I first went to Israel, I was so naive and ignorant of the Middle East. This time I felt like I understood Israelis and Arabs more. In addition I felt so much more comfortable moving around in Israel. I will give a list of things we saw and than I will tell some highlights from the trip.
Places we went (in the rough order that we experienced them)
Qumran
Masada
Jericho
Wailing Wall-to see Jews welcome Shabbat
Bethpage
The Wall
Church at Jerusalem Center
Rabbinical Tunnel
Temple Mount: Dome of Rock, Al-Aqsa
Via Dolorosa
Church of St. Anne (pool of Bethsaida)
other multiple churches along the Via Dolorosa
Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Church of Peter in Gallicantu
Mount of Olives
Traditional Garden of Gethsemane
Hezekiah's Tunnel
Bethlehem
Church of the Nativity
Shepherds Fields
Wailing Wall
Jewish Quarter
The Cardo
Armenian Quarter
City Wall walk
The Upper Room
King David's epitaph
West Jerusalem
Acco/Acre
Haifa/Bahai Gardens
Megiddo
Nazareth
Church of the Nativity
Tremor Hill
Nazareth Synagogue
Mount of the Beatitudes
Sea of Galilee
Tiberias
Chorazim
All of these churches on the Sea of Galilee
Tel Dan Nature Reserve
Ceasarea Philippi
Places we slept at:
The Holy Land Hotel in East Jerusalem, just outside Herod's gate
The Sister's Convent in Nazareth, right across from the Church of the Nativity
Ron something Hotel in Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
We went to church at the Jerusalem Center and at the branch in Tiberias.
We also had almost daily lectures from experts in certain areas involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My favorite speaker was an Israeli (Dan ?) who is an Israeli major/lawyer who is an expert on the Wall.
I know that was a long list, but I am sure you wanted to know everywhere we went. Bre and I are going to each share an experience from Israel, which we hope entertains you.
Bre's story
She is thinking of a story. We will update this post.
Nacia's story
Almost every night we were in Israel, me and some of my friends who love soccer would go out and find were the Euro Cup (Europe's soccer championship) was being shown. It was so much fun watching soccer with Arabs. I watched soccer in Nazareth, Tiberias, but I loved watching it especially in Jerusalem. Me and some of the people in my group would go down to the corner of our street that was right across from the old city of Jerusalem. One of the store owners had a projector and would project the soccer game on the closed doors of a neighboring shop. It was blast to watch the soccer games with the Arabs. It was so neat to be able to talk to Arabs, bond with them as we cheered for the same team, talk to them about politics, family, and religion in their own language.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Wadi Mujib
Wadi Mujib! It's only a half day trip from Amman, right along the southeastern end of the Dead Sea. But, we had a trip just getting there. First, we arranged for a bus driver to take us to Wadi Mujib from Amman. On the desert road to down to the Dead Sea, our bus driver had to swerve off the road to avoid being hit by a car making a u-turn ahead of us. Yeah, that was crazy. Wadi Mujib was great though.
Breanne did some major climbing at the mouth of the Wadi (she climbed with another guy in our group, Joey, about 70 feet above the river) and I did some waterfall jumping. It was a blast!
Breanne did some major climbing at the mouth of the Wadi (she climbed with another guy in our group, Joey, about 70 feet above the river) and I did some waterfall jumping. It was a blast!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Mother of the Camels, Dead Sea, Pleasure Palaces, and Ancient stuff
Hello all,
This is Nacia again. Breanne will get the captions done eventually, but we are having so much fun experiencing life here that we haven't had much time to keep the blog updated. So here's a sum-up of what we have done the last few weeks here in Jordan
Our First Weekend:
We took a trip down to the Baths of Ma'an, which are some hot springs down by the Dead Sea. After making connections from Amman to Madaba, and some hitchhiking in between we finally made it to the Baths of Ma'an. However, due to some misunderstandings we left the Baths way earlier than we expected. We ended up walking about 5 km to the Dead Sea across the beautiful Jordanian wilderness. Breanne ended up going all the way down to the Dead Sea with some of the group, I hiked with another person in the group to the Dead Sea Panorama , which is a restaruant/museum/shop complex that is roughly at Sea level and overlooks the Dead Sea valley.
Our Second Weekend:
We traveled up north to a ruined city called Um Jumaal (Mother of the Camels). This city had no tourists, just a few Arab guys helping to restore some buildings in this site. The entrance was free and we were allowed to just hike all over the ruins. This city is really unique because is made of primarily besalt, and a majority of the buidings have a special constructtion: some of the stones on the buildings stick out so that one could use them as stairs. This was an ancient Roman military fort, and at one time had 15 Christian churches! We had so much fun climbing all over them! So things we climbed were a good 20 feet off the ground: which is alot considering these buildlings are thousands of years old! We had something to drink with the Arabs who were in the city and we talked to them for alittle while.
Afterwards, we traveled to the Qasr (castle/palace) Halabaat (also in the northern Jordan) which evolved from a Roman fort, to a Byzantine monastary, to a Umayyad pleasure palace. The view from this qasr was amazing.
Our Third Weekend:
This is the weekend that we went into our host families. We stayed in Amman with our families for this weekend. Breanne hung out with her host family. I went to the Citadel (where ancient Amman is located) and hung out downtown where I found an awesome juice bar, with my favorite drink, tamar hindi.
This next weekend we are traveling to Wadi Mujib and the Dead Sea. This plan is still in the works, but we are really excited.
This is Nacia again. Breanne will get the captions done eventually, but we are having so much fun experiencing life here that we haven't had much time to keep the blog updated. So here's a sum-up of what we have done the last few weeks here in Jordan
Our First Weekend:
We took a trip down to the Baths of Ma'an, which are some hot springs down by the Dead Sea. After making connections from Amman to Madaba, and some hitchhiking in between we finally made it to the Baths of Ma'an. However, due to some misunderstandings we left the Baths way earlier than we expected. We ended up walking about 5 km to the Dead Sea across the beautiful Jordanian wilderness. Breanne ended up going all the way down to the Dead Sea with some of the group, I hiked with another person in the group to the Dead Sea Panorama , which is a restaruant/museum/shop complex that is roughly at Sea level and overlooks the Dead Sea valley.
Our Second Weekend:
We traveled up north to a ruined city called Um Jumaal (Mother of the Camels). This city had no tourists, just a few Arab guys helping to restore some buildings in this site. The entrance was free and we were allowed to just hike all over the ruins. This city is really unique because is made of primarily besalt, and a majority of the buidings have a special constructtion: some of the stones on the buildings stick out so that one could use them as stairs. This was an ancient Roman military fort, and at one time had 15 Christian churches! We had so much fun climbing all over them! So things we climbed were a good 20 feet off the ground: which is alot considering these buildlings are thousands of years old! We had something to drink with the Arabs who were in the city and we talked to them for alittle while.
Afterwards, we traveled to the Qasr (castle/palace) Halabaat (also in the northern Jordan) which evolved from a Roman fort, to a Byzantine monastary, to a Umayyad pleasure palace. The view from this qasr was amazing.
Our Third Weekend:
This is the weekend that we went into our host families. We stayed in Amman with our families for this weekend. Breanne hung out with her host family. I went to the Citadel (where ancient Amman is located) and hung out downtown where I found an awesome juice bar, with my favorite drink, tamar hindi.
This next weekend we are traveling to Wadi Mujib and the Dead Sea. This plan is still in the works, but we are really excited.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Egypt!
Egypt! I have wanted to travel here all my life. This is Nacia and I will be doing the first post. Breanne is doing all the captions on the picture albums for this week. Without further ado, here is a quick sum-up of our exciting Egypt trip, but DISCLAIMER I have never had a blog before so this will be a learning experience for me.
After flying from SLC to Chicago to Vienna we finally arrive in Cairo in the mid-afternoon. We arrived in Cairo when the Orthodox celebrate Easter in the Middle East, so the traffic in Cairo was very light. For the first few days in Egypt, we stayed at the Pyramisa Hotel, a five star hotel in downtown Cairo. During our stay in Cairo, we visited the pyramids and a bunch of beautiful mosques in Islamic Cairo, including al-Azhar (the oldest Islamic university) and the famous Sultan Hassan mosque, as a group. The rest was on our own.
The pyramids were really neat but there were alot of tourists and alot of pushy Arabs around. But, I still got to ride my camel by the pyramids and my fellow BYU student actually "drove the camel" and we "raced" it back up the dunes towards the tourists buses. Riding a camel was so much fun that my experiences riding donkeys in the Middle East. We also hiked into the center room of one of the pyramids. It was so exciting! You had to bend over as you hiked through this small tunnel which went down for a while, leveled out for a moment, then shot back up to the center room. It was great! We stopped at a "papyrus factory" where I had two interesting conversations in Arabic. This man approached me (I don't know why) and started talking to me about American politics in America, mostly about President Bush and the upcoming election. I am so glad we have read alot of political vocabulary, because I had a pretty good and long conversation with him about politics in Arabic But, he would randomly switch the conversation to something else when his boss came by because he didn't his boss to know. I also talked with a young girl about papyrus and eventually got on the subject of Islam. That was an interesting conversation too.
The Mosque Trip
I loved walking through Islamic Cairo and seeing the the old mosques and old traditional homes there (now donated museums). We also climbed one of the towers overlooking one of the ancient gates into old Cairo. The view from the top was amazing!
Our Free Day
On my free day, we went to the Egyptian Museum where we saw amazing artifacts from Ancient Egypt. I paid extra to see the royal mummy room, where I was inches away from the mummy face of Ramses II and Hapshepsut, and other royal mummies. I also saw the whole King Tut exhibit.
Afterwards, I went to Trash City, a part of Cairo where mostly Christians live. These Christians are the trash collectors of Cairo. They are the ones (not the government) who go around Cairo collecting trash and then they recycle that trash. They make huge profits from selling the trash they recycle!
In order to get to Trash City, we told our taxi driver to take us to a certain church that close to Trash City. Our taxi driver took us to the wrong church. But, we went inside this church, which was actually a monastery and was given a tour of the place. It was a cool little monastery. We finally got to Trash City. Before proceeding through the city, we looked through the beautiful church had was by a rock cliff that had huge Christian carvings all over the cliffface. The reason why this church is so prevalent is because back when the Arab Muslim armies where taking over Egypt, they decided to kill all the Christians in Egypt. A Christian man, named Simeon the Tanner (compeled by the bishop of Christians in this area because of a dream the bishop had) prayed for help. A mountain by Cairo lifted up and shocked the Arabs and so the Arabs spared them. The mountain is now the huge cliffface with all the Christian carvings on it. After looking through this church, we walked through Trash City. Isn't this awesome! In Trash city, there is literally trash everywhere!
After this we went to the Cairo Zoo, which was really sad because the animals were in horrible habitats, abused by the zoo keepers, and treated horribly. Some of the people in my group bribed one of the zoo keepers to pet the lions! The elephants are chained very close to a fence to that people can pet them. There was alot of trash in every animal's cage. It was so sad. I even saw a kid climb over the fence of a gazelle's cage to get his toy that was inside! BUT, the most interesting part of the zoo was that we were probably stared at more than the animals were. I am serious. Egyptians (and Arabs in general) are fascinated by Westerners and those Egyptians in the zoo were suprised that some white people were actually visiting their zoo.
Southern Egypt
We took the night train down to Luxor. We rode first class and it was so much fun! There were two people to a cabin, and there was 2 chairs that changed into 2 bunks. We had "Egyptian tacitos" and fish and another type of unidentifiable meat with some vegetables. By this time in the trip I had been sick for 24 hours with severe diarrhea and I was just trying to survive. We arrived at Luxor the next morning and immediately traveled to the Valley of the Kings, where we walked through some of the tombs. They were so amazing! Much of the tombs still had their original painting and heiroglyphs still in them! One day I want to come back and do some more hiking in the area. After the Valley of the Kings, we traveled to the Temple of Queen Hapshepsut, the famous woman pharoah of Egypt. The ruins present in the area were amazing! Bathrooms in Egypt are pretty sketchy. Most you have to pay to get toilet paper. I saw this because at the restaraunt we ate lunch at the bathrooms were amazing! It smelled good, and the toilets worked, and you didn't have to pay to use the restroom, and there was toilet paper, and there were flowers arranged all over the countertop! For someone who had to visit the restroom alot, this looked like heaven and I didn't want to leave.
After lunch, we saw the amazing ruins of the temples of Karnak and Luxor. There are so many interesting symbolisms between ancient temple worship and doctrines within the LDS religion. It was really interesting to learn about this when we visited these temples.
We then took a felluka (sailboat) ride on the Nile. It was so calm and peaceful. The breeze was amazing! I sat on the front of the boat for most of the trip because that place had the best view. I saw another felluka boat full of older tourists hit a random pole sticking up out of the water by the shore--that was pretty funny to see the older people' reactions.
After this long single day, we took a night train back to Cairo, eating the exact same mystery food that we had eaten on the way to Luxor and I still was sick. Breanne still hadn't gotten sick yet.
Alexandria/Cairo
We took a train to Alex during which I played Phase 10 with some other members in the small BYU group. In Alex, we saw the new Library of Alexandria, the medieval Arab fortress that stands where the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria stood, and the beautiful Mediteranean coast. We had lunch at the best Eygptian restaraunt, Muhammed Ahmed's, where we tried all different kinds of Egyptian food. It was so delicious! On the train ride back to Alex, I sat next to this rich Arab guy who owned his own travel company. He had a laptop, which had alot of American music on it, like Eye of the Tiger, which he played for us. But, he also had some dirty music. We talked politics mostly. Later this evening, some of us went to Al-Azhar park, which is a beautiful clean park which overlooks Islamic Cairo, at sunset. At sunset, all the mosques of Islamic broadcast the call to prayer. The sound of all the calls to prayer were amazing!
What a Culture!
Here are some cultural aspects of the Egypt trip that I would like to share (don't be offended at my generalizations, I LOVE EGYPT!):
1-Already mentioned, most Egyptians love to stare non-discreetly at foreigners.
2-The food was amazing. Koshari with hot sauce, kirkideh, fool iskandri, sobia, sakalance, tamar hindi, Fateer, and the list goes on are amazing! I wish I had pictures for all of these. Look them up!
3-There is trash everywhere! But because of the Christians in Trash City, Cairo is one of the world's biggest recyclers
4-Nothing in the Middle East is free, and Egypt is no exception. Everyone wants ba'asheesh ( a tip) for something, even if they didn't do anything. You can also lie your way out of anything. You can also bribe your way out of anything. (I have experience in both of these arenas)
5-I have Jason to thank for this next part (inside joke). Once you become friends with Egyptians, they want something to remember you by. I was in the market place with another guy in the group. An Egyptian was trying to sell him an Egyptian robe called a gallabiya for way too much. Nate (the other guy) finally got the guy down to a reasonable price. This man began to call Nate a friend and wanted a gift to remember him (Nate) by and proceeds to take Nate's pen out of Nate's front backpack pocket. I then told the guy (a lie) in Arabic that Nate's dad gave him the pen and his dad died last year. The Egyptian said "oh" sadly and gave the pen back. It was awesome!
6-Jaywalking is allowed and encouraged.
7-Bargaining in Egypt is a skill and makes life more exciting!
8-Because you are not Egyptian, you get charged way more for everything
After flying from SLC to Chicago to Vienna we finally arrive in Cairo in the mid-afternoon. We arrived in Cairo when the Orthodox celebrate Easter in the Middle East, so the traffic in Cairo was very light. For the first few days in Egypt, we stayed at the Pyramisa Hotel, a five star hotel in downtown Cairo. During our stay in Cairo, we visited the pyramids and a bunch of beautiful mosques in Islamic Cairo, including al-Azhar (the oldest Islamic university) and the famous Sultan Hassan mosque, as a group. The rest was on our own.
I will be getting the full photo albums up in the next few days.
The pyramids were really neat but there were alot of tourists and alot of pushy Arabs around. But, I still got to ride my camel by the pyramids and my fellow BYU student actually "drove the camel" and we "raced" it back up the dunes towards the tourists buses. Riding a camel was so much fun that my experiences riding donkeys in the Middle East. We also hiked into the center room of one of the pyramids. It was so exciting! You had to bend over as you hiked through this small tunnel which went down for a while, leveled out for a moment, then shot back up to the center room. It was great! We stopped at a "papyrus factory" where I had two interesting conversations in Arabic. This man approached me (I don't know why) and started talking to me about American politics in America, mostly about President Bush and the upcoming election. I am so glad we have read alot of political vocabulary, because I had a pretty good and long conversation with him about politics in Arabic But, he would randomly switch the conversation to something else when his boss came by because he didn't his boss to know. I also talked with a young girl about papyrus and eventually got on the subject of Islam. That was an interesting conversation too.
The Mosque Trip
I loved walking through Islamic Cairo and seeing the the old mosques and old traditional homes there (now donated museums). We also climbed one of the towers overlooking one of the ancient gates into old Cairo. The view from the top was amazing!
Our Free Day
On my free day, we went to the Egyptian Museum where we saw amazing artifacts from Ancient Egypt. I paid extra to see the royal mummy room, where I was inches away from the mummy face of Ramses II and Hapshepsut, and other royal mummies. I also saw the whole King Tut exhibit.
Afterwards, I went to Trash City, a part of Cairo where mostly Christians live. These Christians are the trash collectors of Cairo. They are the ones (not the government) who go around Cairo collecting trash and then they recycle that trash. They make huge profits from selling the trash they recycle!
In order to get to Trash City, we told our taxi driver to take us to a certain church that close to Trash City. Our taxi driver took us to the wrong church. But, we went inside this church, which was actually a monastery and was given a tour of the place. It was a cool little monastery. We finally got to Trash City. Before proceeding through the city, we looked through the beautiful church had was by a rock cliff that had huge Christian carvings all over the cliffface. The reason why this church is so prevalent is because back when the Arab Muslim armies where taking over Egypt, they decided to kill all the Christians in Egypt. A Christian man, named Simeon the Tanner (compeled by the bishop of Christians in this area because of a dream the bishop had) prayed for help. A mountain by Cairo lifted up and shocked the Arabs and so the Arabs spared them. The mountain is now the huge cliffface with all the Christian carvings on it. After looking through this church, we walked through Trash City. Isn't this awesome! In Trash city, there is literally trash everywhere!
After this we went to the Cairo Zoo, which was really sad because the animals were in horrible habitats, abused by the zoo keepers, and treated horribly. Some of the people in my group bribed one of the zoo keepers to pet the lions! The elephants are chained very close to a fence to that people can pet them. There was alot of trash in every animal's cage. It was so sad. I even saw a kid climb over the fence of a gazelle's cage to get his toy that was inside! BUT, the most interesting part of the zoo was that we were probably stared at more than the animals were. I am serious. Egyptians (and Arabs in general) are fascinated by Westerners and those Egyptians in the zoo were suprised that some white people were actually visiting their zoo.
Southern Egypt
We took the night train down to Luxor. We rode first class and it was so much fun! There were two people to a cabin, and there was 2 chairs that changed into 2 bunks. We had "Egyptian tacitos" and fish and another type of unidentifiable meat with some vegetables. By this time in the trip I had been sick for 24 hours with severe diarrhea and I was just trying to survive. We arrived at Luxor the next morning and immediately traveled to the Valley of the Kings, where we walked through some of the tombs. They were so amazing! Much of the tombs still had their original painting and heiroglyphs still in them! One day I want to come back and do some more hiking in the area. After the Valley of the Kings, we traveled to the Temple of Queen Hapshepsut, the famous woman pharoah of Egypt. The ruins present in the area were amazing! Bathrooms in Egypt are pretty sketchy. Most you have to pay to get toilet paper. I saw this because at the restaraunt we ate lunch at the bathrooms were amazing! It smelled good, and the toilets worked, and you didn't have to pay to use the restroom, and there was toilet paper, and there were flowers arranged all over the countertop! For someone who had to visit the restroom alot, this looked like heaven and I didn't want to leave.
After lunch, we saw the amazing ruins of the temples of Karnak and Luxor. There are so many interesting symbolisms between ancient temple worship and doctrines within the LDS religion. It was really interesting to learn about this when we visited these temples.
We then took a felluka (sailboat) ride on the Nile. It was so calm and peaceful. The breeze was amazing! I sat on the front of the boat for most of the trip because that place had the best view. I saw another felluka boat full of older tourists hit a random pole sticking up out of the water by the shore--that was pretty funny to see the older people' reactions.
After this long single day, we took a night train back to Cairo, eating the exact same mystery food that we had eaten on the way to Luxor and I still was sick. Breanne still hadn't gotten sick yet.
Alexandria/Cairo
We took a train to Alex during which I played Phase 10 with some other members in the small BYU group. In Alex, we saw the new Library of Alexandria, the medieval Arab fortress that stands where the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria stood, and the beautiful Mediteranean coast. We had lunch at the best Eygptian restaraunt, Muhammed Ahmed's, where we tried all different kinds of Egyptian food. It was so delicious! On the train ride back to Alex, I sat next to this rich Arab guy who owned his own travel company. He had a laptop, which had alot of American music on it, like Eye of the Tiger, which he played for us. But, he also had some dirty music. We talked politics mostly. Later this evening, some of us went to Al-Azhar park, which is a beautiful clean park which overlooks Islamic Cairo, at sunset. At sunset, all the mosques of Islamic broadcast the call to prayer. The sound of all the calls to prayer were amazing!
What a Culture!
Here are some cultural aspects of the Egypt trip that I would like to share (don't be offended at my generalizations, I LOVE EGYPT!):
1-Already mentioned, most Egyptians love to stare non-discreetly at foreigners.
2-The food was amazing. Koshari with hot sauce, kirkideh, fool iskandri, sobia, sakalance, tamar hindi, Fateer, and the list goes on are amazing! I wish I had pictures for all of these. Look them up!
3-There is trash everywhere! But because of the Christians in Trash City, Cairo is one of the world's biggest recyclers
4-Nothing in the Middle East is free, and Egypt is no exception. Everyone wants ba'asheesh ( a tip) for something, even if they didn't do anything. You can also lie your way out of anything. You can also bribe your way out of anything. (I have experience in both of these arenas)
5-I have Jason to thank for this next part (inside joke). Once you become friends with Egyptians, they want something to remember you by. I was in the market place with another guy in the group. An Egyptian was trying to sell him an Egyptian robe called a gallabiya for way too much. Nate (the other guy) finally got the guy down to a reasonable price. This man began to call Nate a friend and wanted a gift to remember him (Nate) by and proceeds to take Nate's pen out of Nate's front backpack pocket. I then told the guy (a lie) in Arabic that Nate's dad gave him the pen and his dad died last year. The Egyptian said "oh" sadly and gave the pen back. It was awesome!
6-Jaywalking is allowed and encouraged.
7-Bargaining in Egypt is a skill and makes life more exciting!
8-Because you are not Egyptian, you get charged way more for everything
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