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.

Preparing for Egypt!

The day is almost here, it is almost time for our week and a half in Egypt! I am so excited, ours days are jam packed with things like seeing the pyramids, going to museums, and camel safaris.

Today we had our Egypt orientation, where they pretty much scared us all to death about getting traveler's diarrhea. Seriously, the things they told us....awful. Last semester 60% of the students got diarrhea, other wise known as "Cairo Quickstep", "Luxorbelly", or "Ramsey's Revenge". Since sometimes in the past (and ALWAYS at the most inconvenient time ever) I have been vulnerable to this particular sickness, I have vowed to fast in Egypt. I will only eat what the school feeds us and I will not even give a street vendor the chance to entice me with their food. Sickness is not an option for me. My teachers said a lot of other, funny, questionably inappropriate things that I will leave out of this email, as to not be too graphic. You're welcome.

As for the rest of the day, classes were good and I had my attentive moments and my sleepy moments. Mostly sleepy though. In my Judaism class I could not stay awake for the life of me and I was sitting in the second row dead center. Not the best place to fall asleep. But the good news for me is that it seemed that whenever I was with it he was talking about the same thing as before. So maybe I didn't miss too much?

My Islam teacher is a cute Arabic man who has very sloppy handwriting, always stops the lectures to tell us to listen to him, and snaps his fingers at us when we don't immediately answer a question he asks. Most people don't like him, and while I don't think he's a great teacher he means well and is a good person, or so it seems. Although today he didn't realize that class was over and kept lecturing and whenever someone would raise their hand to tell him he would interupt them and have them read from the book. It was actually really funny, and when he finally realized that he was over he said "We are done, aren't we?" and immediately everyone said "yes!" and got up and left. It was kind of funny, like I said, a lot of people can't stand him but I actually like him.

Beyond that nothing exciting happened today. Just a TON of reading in the Old Testament, we finished Leviticus today, and a paper I want to finish before I leave for Egypt. So with that I must get back to being scholarly, until next time!

Jericho

Today we had a field trip! It has been raining in Jerusalem since last night, which is fun and Israel is in a drought and really needs rain. But what's not fun is that our rooms are in outdoor halls and mine's at the very very end, so I have to run or hustle quickly to my room to not get wet. The trick to that is that the floors here are extremely slippery when wet, so you have to be very careful when you are running to your room. When we were having FHE we were sitting in one of the classrooms which has a huge glass window overlooking the city. We saw a flash of lightning and IMMEDIATELY after was a crash of thunder. It shook the building, I felt like the glass was going to break! Kind of scary, but mostly cool. I don't think the Lord is going to let anything happen to this building...well, I hope not.

For our field trip we went over to what's called the rain shadow (where it's not supposed to rain) into the desert. First we went to the Temptation Monastery where it is believed that Christ as tempted by the devil while he was fasting in the wilderness. The women had to cover up their hair while they were there, that was kind of fun but it got really hot and steamy cause we had to hike up to the Monastery.



The monastery is built right into the cliffs and so when we were there we could go out on the balcony and look out over the modern city of Jericho. It was really pretty, Jericho is an oasis city so even though it's right in the middle of the desert there is actually a lot of agriculture and green. Also, fun fact, Jericho is below sea level. Very below sea level. And from the monastery balcony we could see some of the dead sea, which is the lowest place on earth. Awesome. From the monastery we went to the site of old testament Jericho and looked at the archeology digs there. That was interesting, we could see the original wall.

Then we hiked up to a look out point over the Judaean Wilderness. I think that was my favorite part. We talked about the good Samaritan and about the setting that Christ set up in the story, which was between Jericho and Jerusalem, which is the Judaean Wilderness. I really liked looking out over the vast desert and picturing Jesus fasting there and testing his mortal physical strength and resisting temptation. Makes me feel like I can resist better knowing that He put himself through it to better himself.




So it has been a really good day, I learned a lot and I definitely had some good experiences. Egypt on Thursday, I can't wait!

Holocaust Survivor

Today was a very full and fun day. Free days always are. This morning we went as a big group to a field to have a sports morning. We played ultimate frisbee and some played soccer. Now, the fields here in Israel aren't really fields. They're more like a dirt field with patches of weeds littered with garbage and crushed up glass. We had to take shifts to watch out stuff so it didn't get stolen. When it was my turn I wanted to sit down so bad but there was so much glass in the grass that I couldn't. Someone even found a steering wheel amongst the debri!

A quite note about BYU students and ultimate frisbee- They're crazy! They were so intense and serious about it, I had to laugh because we play Ultimate at BYU-I but it's not really a life and death situation, most of the time. Scary.

When I got back I worked out a little bit. I had planned to go out with a group at noon, so I planned for an hour workout. At the end of my workout someone in the group I was going out with came in and said they were leaving right then, an hour early. So, needless to say, I had to join with another group and change my plans from what I wanted to do today.

My new group was good, though. I went out with Bonnie and Jeff. We went to Jaffa Gate and walked along the ramparts of the city. That was really cool, we could see where soldiers way back when fought their battles and it also gave a really great view of the city. After that we walked in through Dung gate and walked through the Jewish quarters of the Old City. I had never been on that side, I usually stay on the Palestinian side of the city. The Jewish side is a lot cleaner and has a lot of tourists. And a ton of cats! Gross. The people are a lot less friendly and their shops are overpriced and at a fixed rate, no bartering allowed! I guess they can do that when the tourists will pay those prices.


I will not yet state my position or opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, mostly because I know I don't know enough about it yet to make an informed decision, but I have been gathering and seeing a lot of things just from being out and around the people. Such information I will maybe share at a later time.

When we came back I did some homework and then ate dinner. Dinner was good! (For the record, I have not gained any weight yet!) After dinner we were all very honored to have a Holocaust survivor come and speak to us. His story was incredible and I took detailed notes if anyone is interested in them. He is 92 years old, a sister in our branch lives at his house and takes care of him. He speaks Hebrew and Spanish so we had some of our Spanish RMs translate for him. Two RMs translated for him and sometimes it was frustrating because it was like we were watching a power struggle the whole time on who was going to translate for him. But anyway...



His life story is so hard to believe; how did people really get treated like that by other human beings. He told us that he would see dogs, all the time in the streets, that had more food than him. He still had his number tattooed on his arm and he showed us. It was surreal. It makes me sick that that actually happened, but this man was a very happy man and you could tell that he made the best out of his situation. Every day he thought to himself "God will help me. Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow". He went away to work when he was young and when he came back home he found that his dad had died in the ghettos at age 41 from hunger and his mom, five sisters, and little brother were taken to a concentration camp and killed. He was left all alone and the Gestapo got him. He was freed by the Americans and worked at an American camp in the Kitchen where he met his wife. They were married there in the camp and had 3 children. His wife passed away and a year and a half ago; they were married for sixty two years.

**Explanation of the pictures: The first two pictures are of the ramparts around the city. The video is of the Holocaust survivor, what a cute old man!

Happy Sabbath!

So today was our Sabbath day. Once again or Sabbath is on Saturday, it's still weird trying to get used to that.

Of course I have to talk about breakfast and my eating habits, since that has seem to become quite a trend. The problem here is that on Sunday they do not feed us lunch. And we don't have any food beside the food they feed us. And that is a very difficult thing for me. So I eat a decent amount of food at breakfast to hold me over until dinner. But then it's also a problem because they serve dinner early and then I'm hungry later that night. It's quite a dilemma, they're throwing off my eating groove!

Other than being hungry, today has been so wonderful. I got to talk to Kaitlin and Anna Sophia this morning and then after breakfast I went to branch choir practice. Then was our three hour block. Church was great like it always is here (or at least the past two weeks). I love being here with the branch members and the families that are living in Jerusalem and still faithfully attending church. I petitioned to be a teacher in the nursery (which sounds bad, but a girl who lives by me got called into the primary presidency and mentioned that they needed nursery leaders so I offered myself......? Is that bad?) But anyway, I would absolutely love to work in nursery here because I want to serve children in Jerusalem but we have been restricted to working with kids in the community. So that's the closest I can get.



After church we all went down to the Garden Tomb on kind of a mini field trip, we all went and all of my teachers and leaders went too. It was a really cool experience, after we went into the Garden Tomb we all sang hymns about the Savior and the Atonement. It was so beautiful. Other people who were there stopped and listened to us, some people even sat down and listened. The Garden Tomb is very interesting to me. It is located smack dab in the middle of the city but when you go inside the gates it is actually green and beautiful! You don't really find much green in Jerusalem, but it was green there. And there were flowers and trails and benches for people to sit on and think. From the garden you could also see Golgotha where Christ was crucified.



When we got back from the Garden Tomb we ate dinner. It was great. Of course, because I was so hungry. Then we all just kind of hung out and we played Scum and chatted and played other games. It was a good time, we all are starting to bond and get along really well.

Tomorrow we have a free day and I think we're going to go to a park to have a sports morning, and then who knows what will happen after that. Hopefully I can go shopping and barter for some good stuff because I am so sick of my clothes already. Plus there's just a lot of great stuff out there! So until next time...

Bringing in Shabbat

Today we did something really cool. We took a mini "field trip" down to the Western Wall to watch the Jews bring in the Sabbath.

When we got there it was still light so we could take pictures and videos, but once it started getting dark, Shabbat had officially started and we could not take pictures because to the Orthodox Jews it is considered doing work. We also weren't allowed to write or use our phones.

Before the festivities got started I went up to the wall and put my written prayer into a crack. Then I walked backwards up to where the plaza is; apparently it is very disrespectful to turn your back on the wall (someone in my group learned that the hard way). In the plaza we watched all of the Israeli soldiers and Jewish boys start the celebration. They got in a big circle and put their arms around each other and jumped around singing. There were a few men in the middle who were shouting out calls to sings (all in Hebrew) and leading the festivities. A couple of times they all dropped down low and slapped the ground. There was a separate circle for the girls.

Then they walked down to the Wall, where there were desks with I'm assuming Torahs on them. It was cool to see all of the different kinds of Jews. The Orthodox Jews wore round furry hats and black clothes. The best part was their long curl sideburns. Even the little boys had the curly sideburns.



The orthodox women shave their heads and wear wigs. It was fun to stand in the plaza with the service couple and try to point out all of the women wearing wigs. And also look for women with red dyed hair (that seems to be a trend happening around here).

It got kind of chilly towards the end. I wasn't freezing but a lot of girls were. We all huddled in a group and the girls ooooo'd and awww'd over the Israeli soldiers (there's just something about a man in uniform! That's what they say anyway...).

After the celebrations we got in our vans and drove back up to the center, and now it's time for dinner! Tonight we're playing Sardines in the center and then watching the Prince of Egypt. Tomorrow's the Sabbath, Sunday we have a free day, Monday we have a field trip to Jericho, and then Thursday we leave for Egypt! This week will be a piece of cake, I'm excited for it!


**Explanation of pictures. The first one is of the men side of the Western Wall where they have the Torah out on the tables to read. The second picture is of me coming out of the city that night after the celebration. The video is explained. Note that I was sneaking all of these pictures, I don't know if you can hear it in the video or not but I actually got in trouble for taping and was told to put my camera away.

Missing BYU Idaho a little bit

Today was another fairly boring day. Unfortunately I stayed in once again to do homework and do my laundry.

Even though I love Jerusalem, the classes are so weird and different and I am missing BYU-Idaho classes! Everyone who goes to BYU Idaho all agree that the classes and the way the teachers teach here are completely different from Idaho. In Idaho the teachers are very personable and helpful and really want you to succeed. Here the teachers are very, very smart and very intimidating. I'm sure I'll grow to like them but it is a hard adjustment. Our classes are two hour lectures and I get lost sometimes for large amounts of time, or I just black out. I'll adjust eventually, I'm sure, but it'll take some time. The BYU-Idaho learning module, the structure set up for teaching in Idaho, is also something that I appreciate so much more now. And like I said, everyone else who goes to BYU-Idaho agrees with me.

Anyway, the food was really good once again. I don't have much to say on days when I don't go into the city, obviously. But tomorrow we get to go to the Western Wall on a field trip to watch how the Jews bring in the Sabbath. I'm really excited for that, I think I even mentioned in a previous blog how I wanted to see that. So that will be good, and then tomorrow night we're playing sardines in the center and then watching The Prince of Egypt (love that movie!) to get excited to go to Egypt. It should be a good weekend, it'll be nice to get a break from homework!

I'm also starting to really get along with the people here. Which makes things fun but also so distracting and hard to focus on school! But it's all a part of the experience, I suppose.

Tomorrow I will have some more interesting things to say, but until then, Ma as-salaamah!