Egypt '08

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February 3rd 2009

Published: February 4th 2009

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Lauren RF

Welcome to Egypt

We had to cross the border from Eilat, Israel to Taba, Egypt by foot

Hey everyone! So after I finished my first blog page... I thought it was really cool, so I figured it would be a good way to summarize what I did in the fall too since I never ended up sending any of the emails I promised I would. So after a week of building houses just outside of Braga, Portugal for Habitat for Humanity, Vivian and I flew over to Tel Aviv and then headed straight down to Eilat, Israel to leave for Egypt at 5am the next morning. We drove to the border crossing in Taba, then got in a van for a 5-7 hour drive through the Sinai all the way to Cairo. The Sinai is beautiful. The scenery changes between huge desert rock formations to absolutely nothing but the desert sand and maybe some shrubbery, to Bedouin campsites, to the occasional gas station or rest area, to military check points every so often.

Eventually we arrived into Cairo by around 12 noon- it is an extremely bustling, chaotic, smoggy city. You can easily detect the extreme poverty just by driving around the streets while at the same time see the extensive wealth of others who have pent

Giza

riding camels in the desert near the pyramids

houses on the top of the ritz carlton hotel and get their car lifted to their garage in their pent houses daily. There are also NO rules of the road in Cairo (and Giza for that matter- Cairo and Giza are both cities split by the Nile River... in Giza is where the pyramids are). Traffic lights are open to interpretation- Red lights may mean go, Green may mean stop, and yellow is a free for all...

So our first stop was the Ancient Egyptian history museum (I forget the actual name of it). It was really cool; I love ancient Egyptian history. Learned a lot about ancient egyptian technology... at least what the egyptologists have been able to figure out; the ancient egyptians were extremely advanced and intelligent. After the museum we went to a papyrus factory to see how papyrus is made. Later that night we went to the Pyramid light show- really cool to see, and the show tells the story of ancient Egypt. then went and had dinner on the Nile River... Vivian and I both danced with belly dancers... that was comical.

The next day, we we went to see the pyramids and

Giza

pushing the HUGE blocks that the pyramids are made out of like we are slaves during the times of the ancient egyptians... can you imagine how the slaves hauled those blocks to the tops of the pyramids?

the sphynx in Giza. They are incredible, especially after hearing about them and seeing pictures of them in textbooks for so long. We also rode camels through the desert... which was really fun. After than we drove around Cairo a bit... it's a really interesting city. Eventually I'll put the rest of my pictures of Cairo up, but right now I don't have any of them here in Argentina. By 2 pm we had to head back to Eilat though, because the drive back takes 7 hours. For the last 3 hours of our drive it was dark out. If you ever have the chance, drive through the desert at night. I have never seen a night sky anything like it; within the first 30 seconds of looking out the window I saw a shooting star... pretty cool.

Oh- something cool to end on that I learned while I was in Egypt- Adoni, which is Hebrew for god, spells Allah in arabic when it's Hebrew letters are read upside down...

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