Egypt Day 2 (9-18-09)

Hello again all!

Now I'm going to write about today and Egypt, on the 18th of September.

The morning of the 18th we woke up in the Kibbutz we were staying in and had breakfast. Waking up was a little crazy because we all left our cell phones at the center upon instruction, and so not many people had alarms to wake up by. We were a little rushed when we finally woke up, to say the least.

We had devotional on the bus when we all finally got on there. It's always fun to be able to sing as a group and have a prayer and a thought. Interesting, right? We also have spotlights and stuff and play games. I'll try to tell you all about those as they happened. Basically the spotlights are just papers we filled out with our most embarrassing moments, why we decided to come to Jerusalem, etc. But they added the thrill of having the person whose spotlight they read to come to the front of the bus and everyone on the bus can ask them whatever questions they want to. We are a hilarious group, if I do say so myself, and so we ask some really funny questions, and we get some extremely funny answers back. It's been really fun to do that for group unity and everything, I really like it.

Anyway, the first thing we did after we got on the bus was to go through the Israeli/Egyptian border. They told us that we were not allowed to take photos, to be sure to say we're tourists while passing through, and to not let anyone cut us in line. The last piece of advice kind of confused us a little until we got to the border and realized that people in the middle east have no idea what a line is. They just walk to the front and put their stuff on the x-ray machine or what not. It's actually pretty effective for them, but not effective for 82-90 people who are all trying to get through the border and stay as a group on the other side. So, what you have to do is push forward until you are packed in so tightly that nobody can get in. That was fun.
Anyway, I was a little nervous about the Egyptian border after going through customs (?) when we landed in Tel Aviv on the 2nd of September. The woman who was looking at my passport had so many questions for me and asked all of them two or three times, as if she was unsatisfied with my answers. She gave me a pretty hard time, and I was worried they wouldn't let me into the country. Finally she did though. It was kind of intense. Anyway, nothing like that happened on the Egyptian border. It may or may not have helped that the person who talked to me was a man and that I'm a blond. I noticed immediately the difference in attention I was getting as soon as I passed into Egypt. It was a little unnerving, but nothing really happened that was scary or anything. We had a very safe trip. I will tell you on each day the little bits of attention that I got because of my hair and skin, and my eyes. Some of them are pretty funny.

After crossing the Egyptian border I got to practice my Arabic a little bit. "Marhaba" means hello, and I used it all the time! Mom and Dad, it's kind of like how you found if you said "Bonjour" to French people in France and then started talking in English afterward, that they would be so much nicer than if you just started talking in English to begin with. So true. Oh, one more interesting thing about the border was that we left our busses and had to get on new busses on the other side of the border, so we had to take all our stuff with us and walk across. When we got to our new busses they came equipped with two guards for each, with guns, and I think two bus drivers. It was a full bus, but still very fun.

This picture is super anti-climatic....but after we crossed the border and drove for forever, this is basically what we saw...a whole lot of nothing. Desert! It was still cool though, just to see how dry it was.

After we got on our new bus we just drove for a long time, basically. We had about a six hour drive? And with 82 students we also had scheduled stops for bathrooms and lunch and etc. every couple hours. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs, but it was definitely hard to get everyone rounded up and back on the bus in a timely manner. Most of the time we ended up playing frisbee or going in the little rest stop shops and buying soda or candy or ice cream and we were there for a little longer than planned (or maybe they planned for it, I don't know), but it was all very fun, actually.

When we drove into Cairo I was awake and alert. I wanted to see the pyramids! I knew that our hotel was somewhere close (ish?) to the pyramids, so that eventually we'd be able to see them. I don't know if it's all the times we played "who can see the ocean first" or the lake or the city or whatever we were going to, but I definitely have it ingrained into me that I want to be the first one to see the big site! And guess what, all the years of Dave Clark training paid off, and I was the first one to see the pyramids on my bus. I was so excited too, like a little girl. I had kind of given up on seeing them when I finally did, and so I saw them, literally looming out of the haze in the distance (they are so big!), and I didn't mean to, but I yelled out, "Pyramids!!" and everyone on my bus started looking around for them. It was pretty sweet. They were sometimes blocked by buildings and stuff so we all to be patient to see them sometimes. It was really fun. They are actually located in Giza, not Cairo (which is why they are the great pyramids of Giza :) ), and Giza is on the west side of the Nile (oh, which I also saw and we crossed. That was sweet too.). They're on the west side of the Nile though because the sun sets in the west and so that is where the people were buried always. The Egyptians lived on the East side, the place of life, where the sun lives again each day, and their tombs and such were on the west side, where the sun dies each day. Interesting, right?
This was kind of the first view that I saw of them. They were actually much smaller than this and must more in the distance, but I didn't think to take a picture until about here. Aren't they huge? They just loom out of the distance.

And some more pictures....

Anyway, we went and checked into our hotel and a lot of us went swimming before dinner, including me. They had told us that we shouldn't get the water from the pool in our mouths or eyes and so we shouldn't duck our heads under (also that we weren't allowed ever to drink the water in Egypt, brush our teeth with the sink water, or get any water in our mouths or eyes while showering or etc --it was bottled water and hand sanitizer all week long.) but we decided to go for it anyway. And, of course, we ended up playing a big keep away game that was really fun and a lot of us got our heads under the water and just tried not to be too afraid of it. The pool was chlorinated, so we felt okay about it. Brother Manscill also kind of gave us the green light, so that was okay. (And I didn't get sick the whole time I was there, so there you go.)

Dinner was good, and consisted of everything cooked really well and no fresh fruits or veggies. (That was our food all week. Bread and Meat with the occasional cooked veggies...we were all so so so so grateful for our fresh fruit at the center when we got back.)

After dinner we went to a light show at the Pyramids! My goodness, that was cool. They light them up and do lasers and stuff on them. I thought it was just going to be done to music or something, but it was also narrated and kind of a history about them. Our guide, who was with us the whole time in Cairo, Islam, told us that it isn't updated and so he'd tell us about them more the next day on our tour, but it was still interesting. The voice was just like Jim Dale, the narrator for Harry Potter, though. Very deep and soothing, to the point of making sleepy people even more sleepy. One funny quote that we said all week after we went to this light show is, "Man fears time....but time fears....THE PYRAMIDS!" We all died laughing at the light show when they said that. It was pretty random and really funny.

First shot of the pyramids! Welcome to Cairo!

They used lasers and put them on the pyramids and the sphinx and everything, it was cool.

Just part of the narrative, but the picture was clear so I thought I'd put it on here.

This was the last view of them, at the end, with everything lit up. (The building next to the Sphinx is the temple that we went into to go look at it.)

Anyway, after that we went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Now for today, the 26th of September:
Today was the Sabbath at the Center, and we woke up, had breakfast (I had pancakes with peanut butter and syrup on them. It tasted so good, and reminded me of home, it was great!), and went to choir (the prelude hymn was #70 - Sing Praise to Him, which I haven't heard, but really liked), then in Sacrament they talked all about parables and each person had a parable. My OT teacher talked on the parable of the Ten Virgins. It was really interesting. He told us about how after being betrothed a bridegroom had a period of 12 months to prepare for the bride to come to live in the house of his father with him, and the bride would also have to prepare. He said that in the parable of the Ten Virgins the waiting period that they have is that 12 months, and that their unwillingness to share their oil was not an act of selfishness, but just because they simply couldn't share the preparation that one makes during those 12 months, because a lot of it isn't tangible. I thought that was really interesting, and made the parable's meaning come to life a little more. After sacrament we of course had Gospel Doctrine, and talked about preparation and blessings of the temple. Then in Relief Society we had an amazing lesson about Service and the example that Christ is in service. It was, again, a wonderful Sabbath.

After that I've just been catching up on my blog a little bit. We have dinner in a half hour, and then a fireside from our Relief Society president on Charity --one of my favorite subjects to learn more about and think about. I am really excited.

I hope all of you are having a wonderful Saturday! I love you all!