Jerusalem

On our first full day in Jerusalem, we went to a nice cafe for breakfast and discussed what we wanted to see. We all agreed that we definitely wanted to see the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall (also called the Wailing Wall), the Dome of the Rock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. We also wanted to visit the Mount of Olives and King David's Tomb, which is in the same place as the establishment thought to have hosted the Last Supper.

We began at the Western Wall. Men and women are separated to observe and pray at the wall. We were there early in the morning, so neither the men's side or the women's side was very crowded. It was interesting to watch the Jewish women praying at the wall. We watched them for a while and then wrote prayers on small pieces of paper that we put in the wall. The Jewish women who were praying at the wall backed away from it in a way so as to not turn their backs on the wall. We were not sure if this was something only Jewish people were supposed to do, so we too backed away from the wall. We may have looked silly, but if nothing else, it was a sign of respect. Our visit to the wall was powerful. While there, I think we all had the shocking realization about how important Jerusalem is to history and to religion. It was definitely a humbling moment.

After spending some time at the wall, we walked into a marketplace, where some of us bought some Rosary Beads. It is still unbelievable to me that I can say I have Rosaries from Jerusalem (and that these Rosaries traveled with me around the Stations of the Cross (Via Dolorosa) and into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher). Unfortunately, after we bought out Rosaries, the entrance to the Dome of the Rock was closed and we were informed that it would not be opening until the next day, so we planned to do that as our first priority the next day.

At this point we decided to walk the Via Dolorosa path, which eventually leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The stations start at a place where there are two chapels. Both were beautiful. The first station is inside a contemporary Muslim school, so there's not much commemoration of the station, but is was interesting to enter the school and look around a little. The building was very old and the rooms seemed very small. On a positive note however, it seemed that every classroom was packed with students, as we saw them leaving for the day. The next stations are found along the marketplace. At first, I was confused because as we got to each new station, there was a circular black stone on the wall with the appropriate Roman numeral inside. I have only done the stations of the cross several times before, and each time, each station has had a pictorial representation. I guess this is what I was expecting, so when I questioned where these were and someone told me there were not going to be any, I was a little taken aback. I was even more taken aback when I realized that there was no need for pictures representing the stations because the markers were marking the places where the actual events had happened. This was an incredible realization. I still get chills thinking about it.

There are several chapels along the path of the stations, and we visited these as we made our way along. We also visited the Prison of the Christ, which was very interesting. After station IX, we arrived at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's a gorgeous Church outside and inside. The first thing you see upon entering the Church is the Anointing Stone, where Jesus was laid when he was taken down from the cross. Behind this is a huge picture of the last supper, which was beautiful. After viewing this, we headed upstairs and eventually made our way to the place where Jesus was crucified. There is a Crucifix there and an alter, under which you can pray. Each of us said a short prayer there. It was a vert moving experience. Back downstairs, we say the place where the base of the cross stood. It was a huge cross, which makes the story of Jesus carrying it along the Via Dolorosa (which we had just walked ourselves) even more incredible, humbling, and heart-breaking, all at the same time. We also saw but did not enter the Tomb of the Christ, which is also downstairs in the Church. On our way out of the Church, we stopped again at the Anointing Stone and laid our Rosaries on it.

It had been an incredible but fairly draining day by the time we left the Church, so we walked to the Tomb of King David and stayed for a while in the room where the Last Supper was held. Both of these were also amazing sights.

After our full day of touring, we headed to Ben Yehuda street, where we had a very nice dinner. (All of us loved the food in Jerusalem and also the atmosphere. There's a lot of great restaurants and stores on Ben Yehuda street and it is a great place to walk around at night). After dinner (and after a stop for ice cream actually), we sat for a while in another bar/restaurant. It was a great day and night and we were glad that we also had the next day to see the sights. There is just so much to see, it's unbelievable! We headed back relatively early to the hostel because we were planning to get up early to see the Dome of the Rock as soon as we possibly could. Majoring in Arabic and taking classes for the past two years in Middle Eastern Studies, I had learned about the Dome of the Rock numerous times. Seeing it from a distance as we toured this day was exciting. I couldn't wait to actually put the famous and revered place to the name. Like everything else, it would definitely be an unforgettable experience.

Road to Jerusalem: The Border, The Embassy, and An Interesting Welcome

We crossed the border from Acqaba to Eilat on foot without serious problems, and all of us who hadn't been stamped thus far managed to get through without stamps again. (The agent who questioned me at the Israeli border asked me, no doubt because I was wearing a neon orange shirt (thank you Lewis Hall 3 South West shirt) repeatedly what Church group I was a part of. Apparently, neon shirts are a common thing for large groups to wear. Thank goodness I had my backpack on. The "Dangerous Levels of Fun" quote on the back of my neon orange shirt probably would have brought on even more questioning)!

We then continued to the Egyptian Embassy in Eilat to get our visa situation sorted out, and of course we had problems there ("This is Egypt," abbreviated T.I.E. is a phrase all the study abroad students have adopted and say to each other often when things run less than smoothly because of Egyptian disorganization). First, there was confusion about what exactly the three of us who needed new visas needed. Then, because the rest of us thought it would be smart to check on the status of our visas while we were there (rather than run into an ugly problem at a border), there was immense confusion about what we were asking and what the visa procedure was (although you would kind of expect that to be common knowledge at an embassy). The whole thing was compacted by the fact that in the middle of all the confusion, it was apparently tea time, so with about 10 Americans waiting in a lobby area (with a clear view of the office area) all the employees of the Embassy took a leisurely break and had tea. After tea, everything was finally sorted out. Those who needed new visas got them, those who did not (the other four of us) were informed that our visas were valid and would be successful at getting us back into Cairo. However, one of the four of us was told that because his visa lacked a stamp from the NY consulate his visa had never been valid, he should not have been let into Egypt, and no there was absolutely nothing that could be done about this because only the NY consulate had the authority to use this stamp. This was a bit daunting, but we figured since there was nothing we could do and because he had obviously been let into Egypt before (when we first arrived), it was something that probably would not be a problem and, if it was, we would deal with it when it happened. (It ended up not being an issue at any border.)

After the exasperating experience at the embassy, which made us glad we still had a few days away from Egypt, we took a taxi to the bus station and bought out tickets for the 2:15PM bus to Jerusalem. We were pleased with the non-pita selection of food in the bus station (and this would only get better as we spent more time in Israel). We arrived to Jerusalem on schedule and took a taxi to the Old City, where we planned to find a hostel. We looked at a few of them before settling on the Youth Citadel Hostel, which was very nice, probably the nicest hostel we stayed in. It resembled a cave somewhat, as the rooms walls and ceiling were made of stone, but it had a very nice, comfortable feeling. The three girls had one room and the four boys had another.

We dropped off our bags in our rooms and headed to a small pizza restaurant in the Old City, called Jacob's pizza. The pizza was very good and we were lucky enough to speak with the owner Jacob, who was a very opinionated and enlightening Israeli in his early thirties. He told us about mandatory service in the Israeli military for 18 months between the ages of 17 and 22, which he had been jailed for avoiding/escaping from. From what he said, it seems most offenses in Israel are punishable by jail time. It's definitely a very justice and military driven society. He also told us a little about Israel's politics, or at least his version of Israel's politics. He said Israelis hated Palestinians. He also said the whole of the Middle East hated Egyptians. He said Israelis hated Lebanese, but that the two groups were similar by the fact that they were hardworking, so their societies respected each other. The same went for Syria. It was interesting that he was so open and definite in what he said. It was eye-opening that political opinions penetrate society so heavily and are expressed by citizens not as politics but as fact. At the same time, Jacob did tell us that he thought, despite what he said, what he believed to be the facts he had said, that each person has the right to be evaluated on an individual level. This seemed somewhat contradictory, but it was encouraging to hear.

After our long day of travel and our interesting exchange with Jacob, we were very tired and decided to head back to our hostel to shower (which we had not done since our last night in Petra, as there was not much of an opportunity to shower in the desert) and go to bed early. The next day we planned to wake up early, have a nice pita-free breakfast, and spend the full day sight-seeing in Jerusalem.

Sleeping in the Desert

The next day, we woke up early to catch a 6:30AM bus to Wadi Rum, where we planned to spend the day and the night in a Beduin camp. We arrived at base camp around 8:00AM and were set out on our jeep tour of the desert by 10:00AM.

Wadi Rum is famous as being a place Lawrence of Arabia visited. During out tour, we saw the Lawrence spring, a stream of running water high in a mountain (which we climbed) and the Lawrence House, where Lawrence was said to have lived. We also saw various other structures and formations (an arch, a canyon), etc, most of which we climbed. (At least today I was in sneakers and shorts. I had more than learned my lesson from Petra!)

Our tour of the desert ended at the Beduin camp where we would sleep. The camp was about 10 kilometers from base camp, so we had been instructed to bring with us everything we would need. It was recommended to us to bring warm clothes because it does actually get cold in the desert at night. We arrived to the Beduin camp at around 3:00PM and we given some time to lounge in the shade (where we, being very, very American at this point and not really caring, played hearts with a deck of cards one of us had brought. It was my first time playing, and I didn't lose. We played so that the first person to 100 points ended the game, and then obviously the person with the lowest score was the winner. So I didn't win, but I didn't lose. That should make my Dad proud because apparently Hearts is a lot like Spades, his most favorite game of all time, I think. See Dad, it only took me being stuck in the Jordanian desert with nothing to do to learn Hearts/Spades)! We watched the sun set over the mountains around 6:30PM, and it was breath-taking. (This trip was amazing in many ways, but I think I will remember most of the places I went by the sunsets I saw there).

We then had dinner, which was chicken, vegetables, and potatoes cooked using the traditional Bedouin method of cooking underground. It was a good meal. After dinner, we played some drums and other Beduin instruments, danced a little with out Bedouin guides, and then turned in for the night. And by turned in, I mean we drug out mattresses and blankets and pillows out of our tents and slept under the stars in the desert. It was chilly, but it was definitely worth it. The stars are actually their brightest in the early hours of the morning. For once, I was glad that I woke up several times during the night and was able to look at the stars.

The sun rose around 6:00AM and by 6:30AM we were having breakfast, pita (which we had been eating non-stop since arriving in Jordan), cheese, jam, honey, a peanut-butter-like substance and some type of cookies, and of course tea, which was sweetened and very good (we had it several times while we were in Jordan). We made it back to base camp by 8AM, and loaded ourselves and our bags into two taxis headed to Acqaba, about an hour away. There, the plan was to re-cross the border into Eilat, Israel, sort out our visa issues at the Egyptian Embassy there, and then board a bus for Jerusalem at 2:15PM. If all went according to plan (and again, thank goodness it did) we were scheduled to be in Jerusalem by around 7:00PM on the night of September 29th. We would be there until October 2nd, when we would travel back to Cairo. Most of us would have preferred to spend more time in Jerusalem (we only had two full days), but because Yom Kippur began on the evening of the 27th and ended the evening of the 28th, we knew we would run into some problems with both borders and sights being closed and we preferred not to risk it. That meant we knew we had two very busy and very full days of sight-seeing ahead of us!

I Now Understand Why Indiana Jones Did Not Wear Flip Flops and a Skirt

Our first and full day in Jordan, we spent at Petra which is an ancient city built into a mountain and filled with tomb after tomb after tomb. It was made famous by one of the Indiana Jones movies.

Before going to Petra, I knew very little about it and was not aware that it was an ancient city in a mountain. I thought it was just an ancient city, so I deemed flip flops and a skirt an appropriate exploring outfit. So keep my attire in mind as I describe our day (from 9AM to 6PM) in Petra.

Petra is entered by walking through a sort of canyon. At the end of the canyon, there is a structure built into the rock. It is massive and magnificent, and it is a common misconception that this is all there is to see of Petra. There is actually so, so much more. We spent most of the morning hiking up to what we thought was the top of the mountain and then back down again, exploring and climbing on various tombs and structures as we went along. When we reached the bottom of the mountain after a full day of climbing, we were informed that we hadn't technically made it to the top of Petra or to see the Petra chapel, which is very near to the top. We decided we couldn't pass up these opportunities, so we set out again. After seeing the chapel, we hiked to the highest point and relaxed there for a bit before finally heading down a final time to catch a bus back to the Valentine Inn.

The fact that Petra is so vast is amazing. It cannot have been easy to build, yet each structure and tomb is magnificent and there is such a abundance of them. It goes on forever. We spent a nine hour day there, and I would guess that we only saw about 70% percent of the city. The structures are also interesting because of the Byzantine influence. One of the tombs is actually called the Tomb of the Roman soldier.

Two funny things worth mentioning happened while hiking through Petra (and I am not referring to the several hundred times I almost fell, only during one of which did I actually almost, ALMOST fall, as in down, on my face). The first happened at a small shop on one of our trips down the mountain. There were many of these shops selling jewelry, pottery, etc. The woman running this shop was an older Jordanian. As we approached her, she came up to me and began to fix my shirt. I was wearing a tank top and a three-quarter length sleeve V-neck sweater, which I thought, given the extreme heat was definitely appropriate by cultural standards. Throughout climbing, I guess my tank top was a little low on my chest and the V in my sweater had fallen open a little. The woman pulled up my tank top and pulled closed my sweater. I was a little embarrassed and apologized to her, but I came to realize that she was not offended, but was only trying to be helpful to me. She said something about it being hot, and then showed me all the clothing she was wearing. She had on pants, a long sleeve shirt, a dress to below her knees and then a black robe covering her whole body and head. We agreed with her about how hot it must have been for her and I thanked her for her help. We talked a little more with her about it getting cooler when the sun went down and assured her that the day was almost over. I am glad we met this woman. The way she treated me was almost motherly and it was an interesting and enlightening experience, as we don't feel much of the cultural stigmatism that Muslim societies place on women in Cairo. It was definitely something I am glad I experienced first hand. It was also a funny foreshadowing to something that would happen in Jerusalem, but I'll describe that in another post.

The other incident was not as much educational as just solely funny, and it is possible that it was so funny just because it happened at the end of the day and we were utterly exhausted at that point. On our final trip down the mountain, we saw a donkey running down ahead of us with a Jordanian running after him. This was a bit odd. We had seen donkeys and camels (and even a herd of goats, which actually do make the exact noise 'Baaa') all day being offered to climbers, but none had been leading the men with them on any kind of chase. When we reached the bottom of the mountain, we saw that the donkey had been caught by the man chasing him. This man was now standing on a ledge above the donkey holding a large rock. The three of us walking together at this point were alarmed and stopped to tell the man not to hit the donkey. He told us he would not, but we were skeptical at best of his answer considering that he watched us until we were out of his view. A little further along the path, we saw some other men with donkeys and we told them the story and asked whether the man had hit the donkey with the rock. The answer was an absolute yes. One of the men provided some more enlightening information when he told us, direct quote, "Sometimes donkey doesn't walk. Then you will hit it in head. Then it walk." That's sad and awful I know, but at that point I could not help but become hysterical. As I said, most of that was probably related to exhaustion, or heat exhaustion, or a combination of the two. The other man then began to explain in half-English, half-Arabic something about feeding the donkeys. We didn't know if he was angry about tourists feeding the donkeys or if he was advocating withholding food from the donkeys for their misbehavior. Considering what we had just witnessed and heard, we figured it was anyone's guess.

After all the excitement, it was definitely nice to be back to the Valentine Inn for dinner and a good night sleep before the Bedouin adventure we had planned in Wadi Rum the following day!

Travel Day: From Egypt to Jordan By Way of Israel

We were all a little sad to leave the beach at Dahab, especially considering before we did anything else we had a long day of traveling ahead of us. The next stop on our trip was Petra, an ancient town in Jordan, and it is apparently easily accessible from the Sinai by a ferry from Nuweiba across the Red Sea. However, we heard horror stories about the ferry. Not about the actual ride itself, because it is apparently a very nice, large ferry that makes the trip quickly, but about the waiting at the points of embarkation and debarkation. Apparently, what should be about an hour ride can take up to eight hours. Not wanting to lose time in this way, we decided we would bypass the ferry. The only way to do this is to travel from Dahab to Taba (about a two hour drive north) and then cross the border on foot between Taba and Eilat, a city in Israel. After arriving in Eilat, we planned to take a Taxi to the border between Eilat and Acqaba, Jordan. Then a taxi ride for Acqaba to the town just outside Petra is another hour and a half to two hours.

I'm happy to say our plan went off with only some minor glitches, which actually turned out to be for the better. When leaving from Taba, there was some confusion about visas. Egypt does not issue a student visa, and all of us are in the process of getting our visas validated through AUC. Up until the point we were leaving Egypt, our visas were valid for six months but only good for a one month stay in Egypt. For those of us with multiple entry visas, this was fine because it meant that even though our duration of stay was technically expiring, we were leaving and re-entering the country within the granted two week grace period. We would simply have to be sure to continue with the renewal process once we were back in Cairo. For those of us with single entry visas, there was a bigger problem. Even if the visa was changed from a single to a multiple entry visa at Taba (where they offer that service), the new visa granted would only be good to enter the Sinai, of which Cairo is not a part. They recommended to everyone with us with a single entry visa that we go to the Egyptian embassy in Eilat to have new visas issued. Of course, it was a Friday, so the Egyptian embassy in Eilat was closed. This was not a problem because we would be crossing back into Eilat on September 29, and we were assured the embassy would be open then. So we had added another task to our list of things to do on the trip!

Crossing into Israel gave us less problems than expected, though two people with us were submitted to fairly rigorous security checks. And most of us were successful in receiving stamps on separate sheets of paper. In my passport, there is actually no record of my leaving of Egypt. It probably would not have been a problem if there were because I do not plan to go to Lebanon or Syria before I return home, but for those who do it is important to not have any record of being in Israel, as Lebanon in particular reserves the right to ban you from entering the country with such documentation in your passport. After successfully crossing the border and not so successfully trying to pay a visit to the Egyptian embassy, we were successful again in crossing into Jordan (where again most of us did not receive stamps on our passport).

In Acqaba, the seven of us loaded into two taxis for the two hour ride to just outside of Petra. Our cab driver was one of the most interesting and helpful people we met on our trip. We told him what hostel we were planning to use and he said alright but then brought us to a different hostel, telling us it was cheaper and better. We never saw the other hostel, but the Valentine Inn (where he brought us) was very nice. For nineteen Jordanian pounds (which translates to about thirty US dollars, we stayed for two nights and received four meals, two of which were excellent dinner buffets. The exchange rate in Jordan was definitely an adjustment after being so used to the unbelievably good exchange rate in Egypt. Thank goodness we would only be in Jordan for three days before heading back to Israel where the exchange rate is almost as good as it is in Egypt (though the cost of things is somewhat higher).

At the Valentine Inn, we stayed in dorm style rooms, so we were sleeping in seven beds in a fourteen bed room. That was definitely a little weird, but the beds were comfortable, the bathrooms and showers (two for the fourteen of us) were decent, and our dorm mates seemed nice. It was a bit odd that the man who slept underneath my top bunk on the second night was burning incense from a stick that he lodged into the bed, but it did make the room smell nice, so no one complained. And we really didn't spend too much time in the room. We basically only slept there, and not for very long periods of time on either night. Our first night in Jordan, we went to sleep early after dinner because we had had a long day traveling and we wanted to be up and out early because we heard Petra was definitely worth exploring for an entire day!

"And he probably wasn't wearing shoes!"

The ride to Dahab was about 7 and a half hours long (and it was quite a ride through the winding mountains of the desert), so we arrived at our hostel, Seven Heaven at around 8AM. Well, most of us did. Because we had overbooked the mini-bus, we called another at the last minute, and as luck would have it, that bus ran out of gas about an hour outside of Dahab (where there is literally nothing but desert). I was not on that bus, thank goodness. Our bus debated turning around to pick up the people from that bus, but after driving a few miles and not finding the broken down bus, it was decided that we should just continue onto Dahab because we, too, were starting to run low on gas.

Everyone arrived by 10AM and we had a nice breakfast in the semi-outdoor lobby of our hostel, which was only interrupted by wild cats (a common thing in Egypt) a few times. After that, those that we becoming SCUBA certified needed to immediately begin their class. I and five others were not becoming SCUBA certified, so we had some free time, during which we took nice, long naps. We didn't go to sleep however before we decided that that night was our only chance to climb Mt. Sinai, which is about a two hour trip from Dahab. St. Katherine's Monastery at the base of the mountain is only open on certain mornings, so unless you climb on specific nights, you will not be able to visit the monastery, which was something we all wanted to do. And the way our schedule was planned, unless we climbed that night, the monastery would be closed.

So we had dinner on the boardwalk overlooking the ocean and then, at 11PM we met downstairs and began out two hour drive to Mt. Sinai. The drive seemed short in comparison to the trip to Dahab, but it was made interesting by a woman who yelled at our driver about how fast he was driving and, we think possibly to make herself feel safer, decided to wear a plastic bag on her head over her hat for the majority of the drive. This, of course, led to us calling her "Bag Lady" for the remainder of the night and next morning.

We arrived to Mt. Sinai a little after 1AM and began climbing at 1:30AM. Mt. Sinai is climbed at night for two reasons. First, if you climb at night, you see the sunset at the summit. And also, climbing during the day, especially now, would be entirely too hot.

The climb was harder than we had expected. The first part was mostly paths, but the incline was steep and because everyone climbs together at first, there are men selling camel rides everywhere. This makes things crowded and more complicated in the dark. After a certain point, camel-riders must remain on one path up the mountain, and those climbing on foot can take a different route (this is about mid-way up the mountain). It was nice to get away from the camels, but our route because a little more rocky at this point. The last fourth or so of the climb has everyone converging again to walk up the last 350 steps. These steps were steep and rocky and definitely the hardest part of the climb. Because we really hadn't planned much for the trip, none of us had lights and we resorted to using out Vodafone lights to see the steps. We also resorted to telling people after the climb that because of this Vodafone had saved our lives! We reached the top at around 4:30AM (ahead of the rest of our group, under the command of our guide, Tiger. We decided to leave the group behind when, early in the hike, Bag Lady began complaining to Tiger that he was going to fast and allowing himself to be pushed faster by 'these young people.' I don't know if Bag Lady made it up the last 350 steps. That would have been quite a feat. Though she did have a walking stick...)

The sun rose at around 5:30AM, and it was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. We stayed at the summit taking pictures, observing (many groups have prayer sessions at the top, which is very interesting. I think we saw a Korean group and also an African (Kenyan?) group singing and praying) and talking (all of us felt a little giddy from the high altitude, although it was only about 2200 meters. What can I say, I'm a sea level kind of girl!) The summit was cold, so we were sitting on camel blankets that we had rented, and I, of course had my pink blanket with me. We began hiking down a little after 6AM, and we decided to take the step route down. This route is not recommended for the climb up because even on the way down it is very difficult, as the steps are uneven and rocky. They are called the Steps of Repentance because they were built by a monk in repentance. We were surprised about how difficult the climb both up and down was. We actually wondered how Moses did it, considering, as one of my friends pointed out, "he probably wasn't even wearing shoes!"

We arrived at the bottom a little after 8AM, shopped around at some of the shops at the base of the mountain, and then went into the monastery when it opens at 9AM. The monastery is the oldest operating monastery in the world. I think it is home to 20 or so monks. It also holds over 2,000 icons. We were able to see some of these in the chapel there. We also saw the Burning Bush. It's not the actual bush, but it is from the same roots/seeds. It was almost surreal that we were seeing such historical things that are so central to our faith. It was definitely a worthwhile trip and hike that I will remember for the rest of my life.

By noon, we were back in Dahab. We had breakfast and slept for a while before going to the beach to watch the sun set over the water. That was gorgeous. Sunrise at Mt. Sinai. Sunset on the Red Sea. You really can't beat that. We then had dinner and walked around the boardwalk a bit (which can be annoying between all the vendors and restaurant owners trying to sell their products). The next day, we went snorkeling (when I say we I mean the non-divers. Those getting certified were busy with dives and classes all day, every day) at Blue Hole, an area of the Red Sea. It was beautiful! The reef was amazing and there were so many fish! Also, the color of the water is just unbelievable. It is so clean and so bright and very, very blue. It is also incredibly salty. When we returned to Seven Heaven, we took showers, which were also interestingly salty (but that opens up a whole other discussion on hostel quality, which I may get into in another post), had dinner, and then went to another restaurant for drinks. It was a really nice night and all of us, divers and non-divers, had a very nice time in Dahab overall.

Seven of us left the next morning to continue on with the next leg of our trip (which was still mostly in the stages of being planned as we went). It was a long and interesting travel day, which I will talk about in my next post, but it was well worth it. By that evening, the evening of September 26th, we were staying at a nice hostel in a town outside Petra, Jordan, where we planned to explore the next day!

Where to Begin?

Really, I'm not sure how to begin to describe what I have been doing for the last three weeks. The last time I posted, AUC had canceled classes for two and a half weeks, and we were about to embark on a previously scheduled Nile cruise to Luxor and Aswan before attempting to make good use of our previously unscheduled time off.

I will dedicate this post to the cruise, and then continue from there because it was quite a trip.

The Nile cruise started off in a typical Egyptian fashion. Our flight from Cairo to Luxor was at 5:20AM, but because there were students from both campuses going, they scheduled a bus leaving from Zamalek (my campus) at 2:00AM. The bus went to New Campus to pick up the students there and then continued onto the airport, which is, in a way (a very liberal way) on the way to the airport. Needless to say, transportation took longer than expected and the 60-70 of us arrived to the airport around 4:45AM. We had missed our boarding time, needed to be "checked in as a group" (which I think is something that only occurs in Egyptian airports) and then minimally if at all scanned at security before we boarded our flights. (I was on the 5:20AM flight. There was another flight at 5:25AM and another at 6:45AM. Although all the planes were large, it was apparently not possible to book all of us on the same flight). Of course, I was on the flight that lost power immediately before take-off. Thank goodness I was seated in the back of the plane and did not, when this happened, witness the pilot run from the cock-pit wildly waving his arms in a "what is going on" manner. Power eventually came back on and an announcement was made that there was a problem loading baggage, so we would be delayed. Because I was so tired (we decided it wasn't worth sleeping before leaving at 2:00AM), I just took this to be the truth. The rest of the 40 minute flight was fine and we were in Luxor (after the 5:25AM flight had landed ahead of us) about a half hour before the 6:45AM flight landed. When it did, we were taken by bus to our cruise ship, the MS Miss World. This is where Day One really started to get interesting.

We were seated in a lounge on the ship for about an hour. Most of us wanted to either eat or sleep, or some combination of the two and we were waiting for instructions about how to do this when we were informed at around 9:15AM that we were beginning our tour of Luxor at 9:30AM. With our guide, Muhammad English-speaking tour guide #1 (as he introduced himself) we toured the Tombs of Ramses IV, VII, and IX, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (the only female pharaoh), a local market, and the Statues of Mennon. All were interesting, particularly the Temple, but being outside in 100+ degree desert heat having not eaten, drank, or slept was probably not the greatest planning. In any case, we arrived back to the ship at 3:30PM, had a nice buffet lunch, spent some time sleeping on deck by the on-board pool, and then had dinner at 8:00PM.

We were docked all night, and left from Luxor the next afternoon. From Luxor we sailed to Kom Ombo, where we toured temples the next day. From there, we sailed to Esna, where we passed a lock. That was very interesting actually. We then went onto Edfu, where we again toured temples. Upon arriving in Edfu, we went into the town for a bit because it was Eid El-Fitr (or the holiday at the end of Ramadan). There were huge parties in the streets, and it was an interesting sight. It definitely was different than Cairo though. There were not any women in the streets and there were comments made by the men that would not have been made in Cairo, especially not Zamalek. It actually made me appreciate how advanced Cairo is in that respect. After touring Edfu, we sailed to Aswan. We spent the next morning touring a temple, which was on a small island, so we had to take a boat to it, and then visiting the High Dam, which was huge and also interesting.

For our flight home, we made it to the airport with a little more time to spare. Unfortunately, the hour flight from Aswan was a bit more nerve-wrecking because I was seated in the emergency exit row next to the boy from the cruise who had been hospitalized earlier that morning with food poisoning. All thing considered, I was very glad when the plane touched down in Cairo, though I experienced first hand the truth to the statement, "flying is safer than driving" when our cab from the airport got into an accident-not a big one, there was no stopping or exchanging of information-but there was definite contact between the cars, which is more rare than one would think considering the traffic and traffic patterns, or lack there-of, in Cairo.

In an case, we made it back to the dormitory. We had about 6 hours to unpack and re-pack for our next trip. So we threw in some laundry and ran some errands before boarding a bus at midnight for Dahab, a coastal city in the Sinai. If all went according to plan, we should have been in Dahab by the next morning, the morning of September 23, and so would begin our ten day tour of the Middle East, which I will write about in great detail in the next few entries. (As you read these entries, it might be helpful to keep in mind that, despite what I am describing, I am now safe and sound back in Cairo)!