Food

Ok so I thought I would leave you guys with a little info. The food here is WAY different! You won't find any cheetos or Jolly ranchers! I have been missing my usual American food a LOT but I am getting used to the Egyptian food and now I am craving it! So, I started out by trying a Felafel, my mom loves them and said i would too. She did not tell me what it was made of for she feared I would not try it if I knew. It was DELICIOUS, a Felafel is chick peas ground up and deep fried in little patties and served with pita bread dipped in hummus! Ok, so then I tried shawerma which was also very good but a little sweet for my taste. Next I was going to try Egyptian pancakes but didn't have enough meals in the day.

Relaxation

Well, the train ride was kinda fun. We took a sleeper train over night to Aswan and it was pretty cool. The food on the train was TERRRIBLE! We arrived in at our hotel at 10:20, in the morning. It is WAY hotter here then in Cairo. We then took a Felluca ride on the Nile with two funny guys who liked to say, "No Problem" a lot. There was barely any wind so we went REALLY slow, but it was still nice. You know I didn't see one crocodile or hippo at all, and when we asked if there was any the two guys said no. The ride took about 2 hours. It was really nice to sit there and just think about what a wonderful place your in looking out on the nile. We got back too our hotel which by the way is so big it has it's own island! It, in my opinion, was really hot and I needed a swim. So we went to the pool and it was FREEZING! I couldn't stand it, so we walked around the island a little and found a second pool! One that was heated a little, the perfect temperature. I had a great time relaxing and swimming in the pool.

P.S. Sadly you won't be hearing from me until Monday because I will be CRUISING DOWN THE NIIIIIILLLLLEEEE!!!!

Papyrus

It is then that we went to the Papyrus making museum and had a wonderful time learning how to make Papyrus. I have made a video in which i will show you all when I get back, for it will take much too long to download, it is very long. My mom bought me a beutiful painting on Papyrus that had King Tutankamun and his Wife. His wife is giving him an oil massage in his famous chair. At first it looks sort of boring but then you notice that the couple are sharing a single pair of sandles, they each have one on. This was a sign of great affection. A lovely story isn't it?

The Sphinx

It was so much fun to see the Sphinx. I could go on and on about all of the theories of the Sphinx, but that really would take all night! All I can say is it is breath taking! Sadly it's nose got blown off and so did the fake beard. Here are a few pictures I took.

The Giza Pyramids

OMG! That was definatly the BEST DAY EVER! We started out with going to the Giza pyramids, which i will tell you about in this post.
We drove up to the parking lot and only at first did the first pyramid of Giza seem very small. But as we got closer, and closer it got bigger, and bigger. It was so beutiful, it really takes your breath away! I was afraid it would be windy like when we went to Saqqara but it was the perfect weather, it started out a little breeze and got warmer and warmer untile it was just enough to take off your sweater. The insides of pyramids make me claustruphobic so i didn't go in because you walk on your knees for a REALLY long time! But i did climb up to the entrance, it makes me cry to think again of how beutiful it was.
Then we move on too the second pyramid of Giza, my favourite. It is my favourite for two reasons, one it still has some of the outer soft layer on the tip, and two it looks bigger than the first but really it is just on a hill. You see, the kings, would always make they're pyramid smaller than their fathers as a kind of respect.
Afterwards we took a twenty minute camel ride around a hill and our camel just happened to be a super model! When the little boy says cheese, the camel turns his head to the side so you can see his face! he says "get my good side"! I absolutely loved the camel ride it was deffinatly one of my absolute favuorite parts of the whole trip.

The Wedding

Hey! One more thing, while i was posting yesterday there was a HUGE wedding in the hotel and it was sooooooooooooooooo loud i could barely hear myself type! Here is a picture of it my mom took.
P.S We thought you would like this lily, pps we bought you a present lily!

For Mr.Leister

O.K, you are going to be so happy when I tell you this Mr. Leister. I went to Muhammad Ali's Mosque in Cairo Egypt, I got to stand next to his grave! Isn't that so awesome, I took pictures so you could see, it is very beautiful. Our tour guide even taught us the five pillars of faith and I told her that I knew ALL about it. Well, that's about it for today, three things.

Bazaar

Then we went to the marketplace, or bazaar, where we bought quite a few things. You see in Egypt they don't put prices on things, you are supposed to ask how much it cost and then you bargain. Here is an example:
" Ummmm.. 90 Egyptian pounds"
us: "oh that is too expensive"
" 70?"
And it just keeps going and going until he lets you walk out the door or you agree on a price. By the way too Mr. Siem, I bought you a present, I saw it and had to get it for you, it is a sponge from the Red Sea! Anyways, this bargaining is called haggling, it made me nervous.
YEAH JET LAG IS GONZO!
P.S Ava, we went to the airport bookstore and all they had was, inkdeath in paperback and stop in the name of pants in paperback.

First activity for the day

Ooooohhhh! My goodness. I just had a very wonderful tiring day.
It started out at the Egyptian museum, our tour guide picked us up and took us there. It is huge, and very beautiful, it was amazing how many artifacts there were. It would take a month just to look at every detail, we learned a great deal of things there. Like the museum wasn't big enough to hold all the artifacts they had and only 1/4 of it was on display! Anyway we looked around with our tour guide taking long amounts of time describing the very important artifacts and then we had free time to wander. We went to the mummy part of the museum where you had to pay 20 and 10 extra dollars to get in, it was cool but they didn't have Ramses II or Seti I, even though they said they did. Oh and then we went to the animal mummies, I am sorry to John Sasso and to everyone else who wanted pictures of mummified cats, sadly you weren't allowed to take pictures in the museum, sorry. I did see five mummified cats though. And a whole variety of things, so I couldn't take pictures of a single thing I saw in the museum. My favourite thing i saw in the museum was King Tutunkamun's mask and Sarcaughagus, made of solid gold. I know what you are thinking Mark, but sadly you will not be seeing these artifacts on your fieldtrip because they are to priceless to travel. No one will insure them.

Ripped off

Oh my gosh! My mom and i took a walk today and guess what happened? ok we were going to go to a museum place and on the way this guy started talking to us. we wanted to say "oh sorry we really must be going" but we didn't want to be rude. So we let him walk us all over town until we figured out we were going the wrong way and he said, "oh well you shouldn't go to the museum because it opens at 1pm, why don't i take you to the market place i can walk you there." So he walks us all the way there and then when we get to the main street he forces us into a shop. It is there we are manipulated into buying some papyrus for much too high a cost! it is only later we found out that the museum really opens at eight, we could have gone!

P.s to lily, we went to the Hello Kitty store and thought of you because the whole room was PINK!

Saqqara & Memphis

Today was my first full day in Cairo. My mother and I went to Saqqara & Memphis. Our tour guide took us first to Memphis where we saw a huge limestone statue of Ramses II and the smaller model Sphinx. It was so amazing, his thumb was as big as my face! Afterwards we went to Saqqara, Saqqara is a burial ground where the very first pyramid was built. Since it was the first it was not as advanced as the Giza pyramids, this was known as the step pyramid.
Later we went to the pyramid of TeTi and nearby tombs. There were tons of drawings on the walls explaining daily life and the underworld. I learned from our tour guide that the lotus flower was a sign of strong affection, and was given to a woman if she was proposed to.

Arriving in Cairo (at midnight)

Wow Egypt is way coooooolllllll!!!!!! Where shall i start....... so the flight was excruciatingly long, but then we got to our hotel and that's when I noticed it was a 5 star hotel! It is so nice here. It's so different from America because everyone here is sooooooooooooooooo nice. Like the bell hop guy, he asked me my name and then when I told him I came from California he told me he LOVES Nicolas Cage, hahahahaha!
P.s I have total jet lag.