Home from Egypt!

(To see a lot more pictures that I couldn't put on my blog and would explain a lot better all the things I did in my week in Egypt, go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2155090&id=193306962&l=266a5ad76a)


First off, I think I can summarize a lot of Egypt in terms of numbers:
-8 days, 7 nights
-7 Arab Egyptian Call to Prayer mornings, which Egyptian Arab calls to prayer are much more rowdy and loud than Palestinian calls to prayers. Fun fact for you.
-5 modes of transportation: bus, plane, over night train, boat, and horse carriage
-4 different hotels
-About 25 Egyptial sites
-10 hour drive
-used one whole roll of toilet paper in Egypt, including half a bottle of hand sanitizer
-Two boarder crossings
-Zero sickness!!! (for me, anyway)

I don't even know where to start, I'm a little overwhelmed at the task of updating my blog from the past eight days of completely packed days in Egypt. So I'm going to talk about the highlights and my favorite parts of Egypt. I absolutely loved Egypt. During our orientation before we came they kind of scared us about Egypt and the people and the food and so on and so forth. But actually going was incredible, I loved Egypt so much. My favorite parts were shopping and just mingling with the people. I loved talking to the people there and getting to know them and their city. Our tour guides and security officers were awesome and I was sad to leave them when we crossed the border back into Israel. The shopping was fun too, I loved bartering with the merchants.



Cairo was so crowded and busy! About 17 million people live in that city and it shows. The apartment buildings are so high, about 30 stories each, and they are
run down and dirty. I think my teacher said that 98% of the population of Egypt lives in Cairo because it is on the Delta. Which, by the way, I remember always learning about the Nile River Delta, but there's no way to really comprehend what it is until you can actually see the stark difference of the lush green agriculture area against the desert. You can literally stand in the desert and farmland at the same time. It's crazy how fruitful that area is, right there in the middle of the desert, with the Sahara desert surrounding it.



It was incredible to see the pyramids, which once again are something that I always learned about growing up but you can't really comprehend how incredible they are until you are standing right next to them, looking at the millions and millions of small blocks that are used to make them. Our tour guide taught us that if they were to take all of the blocks that make the largest pyramid, you would be able to build a three foot wall all the way around France. That's mind boggling! What I also found interesting is that our tour guide kept insisting that slaves were not used to build the pyramids, and that the people were willing servants. Interesting how they change their history and the story a little bit.

We stayed in Cairo for one day and then flew to Luxor to stay for two. I loved Luxor, it was much much cleaner than Cairo and the hotel we stayed at was nice. In Luxor we saw the Valley of the Kings which houses tombs of many Pharaohs including King Tut. King Tut was my favorite tomb, of course, because they still had his golden coffin and mummy in it, which was so cool! I can't believe that mummification preserved his body so well, and I once again encountered this amazement when I went in the mummy room in the Egyptian Museum later that week in Cairo where I saw about 20 other mummies, including Rameses II who is believed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I also saw a lot of other mummies that I have been learning about, such as Queen Hatshepsut.



One of my favorite parts of being in Luxor was our free afternoon. My friends and I laid by the pool in the Egyptian sun right by the Nile river and talked and relaxed. It felt so good just to have some time when we weren't being pushed to the next Egyptial site and we could just sit and relax and get to know each other.

As mentioned above I loved meeting the people of Egypt. I especially loved talking to the horse carriage driver that we were with, I sat next to him and he taught me about Luxor and we talked about Obama and horses and other things. He openly laughed and rejected me when I asked if I could drive the carriage (everyone else was able to!) but it was actually really funny because he thought it was a hilarious request.



I also loved and had a great experience hiking Mt. Sinai the last day we were in Egypt. The hike was hard and everywhere you tried to walk there were camels blocking your way and trying to lick you, but it was really neat to finally get to the top after such a hard hike and see the sunlight starting to come over the horizon. The sunrise was beautiful and the view was spectacular.







In all of the fun and glamour of Egypt,after eight days I was ready to come home where I could eat fresh fruits and vegetables, brush my teeth with the tap water, and not feel like I had to wear my sandals in the shower. The best part was actually feeling like I was home when I got back to Jerusalem. It's weird to think that this place is naturally my home, that I feel comfortable being in this city where I know the streets and the people. It's a great feeling.