Egypt: the rest of the story - days 5-8

So the reason that I've been so reluctant to post... When I got back from Egypt, I moved to Bethlehem the next day. The house I moved into had no internet. So, I had the last two posts written already, because I wrote them while we were in Egypt, but I had no way to post them until I either moved or went back home for a two week break. Which was fine, but that meant I had four more days to write about and no motivation to write them. Why did I need to? I couldn't post them anyways. Plus, my notes for those last four days were all on my itouch and my itouch bit the dust the day after we got back to Israel. So any interesting thoughts that I had at those sites, were gone. Then I went to to America, the week of Christmas, and was so overwhelmed with family and friends that I had even less motivation to update about Egypt. What's sad is that I have lots of interesting things to talk about in relation to my living in Bethlehem for five weeks, but I didn't feel like I could write about it till I finished talking about Egypt. And the more time that goes by, the less I wanted to update.

All that to say, I'm going to summarize the last four days in Egypt the best that I can. And I just discovered that my itinerary from Egypt is no longer in the trash box of my email. Hopefully my pictures will jostle my memory enough... We'll see how it goes...

Our fifth day in Egypt started at the Valley of Kings, famous for the discovery of King Tut's tomb which has granted us much of the knowledge of ancient Egyptian life that we know of today. I couldn't tell you a whole lot about the place, though. It was riddled with vicious vendors and Egyptian Antiquity Police who were stealing peoples cameras as soon as it left their purse or pocket. So I spent my whole time there coming up with new ways to be rude to people, and sneaking in pictures. I am happy to announce that I successfully took pictures of everything in King Tuts tomb:

List of insults for vendors, and their responses to me:

Me: “I told you no ten seconds ago, why would I want it now?”

Vendor: “Egyptian scarf, 5 pounds.”

Me: “I just told you no!”

Vendor: “Okay, 3 pounds.”

Me: “I'm not playing games, I really don't want it. I already told you know.”

Vendor: “You give me baksheesh.” (Which means “tip” in Arabic.)

Vendor follows me with some cat made out of “white basalt” - which doesn't exist, mind you. This guy kept following me after I politely told him several times that I didn't want it.

Me: “STRANGER DANGER!”

Vendor looks at me strangely, says nothing, but still gets closer to me and holds out object in my general direction.

Me: “HELP! I NEED AN ADULT!”

Vendor continues to hand me object.
Me: “I'm not allowed to talk to strangers. STRANGER DANGER!”

Vendor: “Do not like...” I think he meant to say that he doesn't like me.

Vendor corners and harasses one of my friends that is too polite to tell him to go away.

Me: “Hey, she obviously doesn't want it. Go away.”

Vendor continues to corner and harass her, now touching her arm and scaring her.

Me: “Hey! Leave her alone! GO AWAY!”

Vendor: “You stop talking!” Said in my general direction.

Me: “I'll stop talking whenever the heck I want to, I'm a free a woman. So is the woman you're harassing. Go away!”

And last... vendor forces object into my face.

Me: “No thank you.” I tried to be polite, sometimes. I at least tried to give them one chance.

Vendor touches my arm.

Me: “Haraam! (Which means “shame” in Arabic) That is inappropriate! You are not allowed to touch me! Be gone with you! Leave us alone!” He looked shamed after words. I felt happy and self-assured.

So, after King Tut's tomb we had tickets to visit three other tombs in the area. There are several tombs in the Valley of the Kings but only King Tut's and three others are opened per season so that the tombs aren't ruined. After sneaking in pictures in all the other tombs, I arrived in the last one and decided to take just a few more. I shouldn't have bitten the hand that fed me. One picture in a guy caught me, yelled at me in Arabic, grabbed another guard, and they proceeded to keep me from walking further into the tomb or exiting it while asking me for my camera. I told them for a good five minutes that I would put the camera away but I would not hand it over. I didn't know what they were going to do with it, or if they would ever give it back. There was no way I was giving them my camera. They finally let me be. I later found out that another student got his confiscated by the guards, and all of his pictures were deleted. So I'm glad I didn't give them mine.

After the Valley of the Kings, we went to Hatsheput’s temple. She was a fascinating woman. She created the “rebirth” rooms so that she could go into one for a week, come out, and say she had been reborn as the son of Ra. Being a man, now, she could rule as Pharaoh. Her temple was made of beautiful white stone and dedicated to Anubis, my favorite Egyptian god. I took pictures of Anubis and sat down with our tour guide the rest of the time, because it was hot.

We visited yet another temple, just before lunch. The only distinguishing factor of this one was the stone images of beheaded people at the gate. It apparently proved to the gods that the land outside the temple was safe. And I think we visited yet another temple after that, with the largest Ramses statue found:

Luxor was a fascinating place. By fascinating I mean that I never need to go there again. We had a little bit of free time to ourselves after visiting the Luxor temple and a few of us decided to go explore the markets and grab dinner before having to suffer through another sleeper train ride. So, we innocently began looking for quality Egyptian scarves. It didn't take long before hordes of men (not exaggerating too much, there, either) surrounded us and started begging us to buy things from them or come into their store or marry them. I've never been harassed verbally so much in my life. We're talking hoots, hollers, whistles, hisses, and pet names that I wouldn't let my fiance call me. I was genuinely frightened. Thankfully, a group of men from our JUC group caught up with this and they were suddenly all silent. The Egyptian men looked upon us with lust and disdain. It baffles me that women are such objects to them and deserve such little respect that as soon as a male joins their presence they no longer hit on us. I don't get it. Anyways, the JUC men kindly walked us to McDonalds so that we could grab dinner. Fun fact, did you know that McDonalds in other countries deliver?

Even though it meant getting on the sleeper train, we were all pretty happy to leave Luxor:

Our next morning started with a two our drive into the middle of no where, to stand on a mound of dirt called “Tell Yehudea”. It's significance is that it's a place named “Judah” in Egypt and may have been where the Israelites lived pre-exodus or post-exile. It was literally just a mound of dirt, though. And, of course, good ol' antiquities police followed us all the way out there and charged us money for wanting to stand on said mound of dirt.

Then we drove back into Cairo, two hours back, to look at the pyramids and the sphinx. They were pretty great, indeed. Since I was a child I've dreamed of going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids and learning about Egyptian mythology. I don't want to say it was anti-climatic, but I think that Egypt held a lot more interest for me as a child. Having been there, it's so overrun with rude vendors, tourists, and trash, that it lost a little bit of it's allure to me. That being said, I did still enjoy being there:

Because it took us so long to drive all the way out to our first site, we got stuck in Cairo traffic and missed going to the Cairo museum that night. So we all went to Starbucks instead :)

We were able to wake up early and go the next day, thankfully. I could spend two weeks in that museum and not see everything. I think the things of most interest were, of course, King Tut's death mask made of pure gold, as well as all the other objects he was buried with, and the room of mummies. They have a room with about 9 mummies in it, and the tallest one is 5'8”, I think. They were so small!

Then we rode into Sinai to go on jeep rides with Bedouins through the desert. That was pretty frightening. They practically play bumper cars with each other, out there. We got stuck in the sand once while racing our professor's jeep, and drove our jeep off a mini sand dune at another time. So we did all of that nonsense, to go surprise hiking (not the good kind of surprise) up a cliff to see another not reconstructed temple... then to go look at turquoise mines that have been completely farmed out. Meanwhile, I had to go to the bathroom and was car sick from the silly jeeps. Then we rode back through the desert, but this time in the dark – which did not make it more fun or less scary, so that we could eat a fairly traditional dinner with the Bedouins. That was amazing, actually. There's hardly any light pollution out there, so you could see all the stars. We sat under this tent-like covering on pillows and drank Bedouin tea (which is officially my favorite kind of tea) while eating chicken and rice and cooked vegetables, and singing songs around a fire. That was an experience I'll never forget.

But you know what will be even more difficult to forget? Having to wake up to climb Mount Sinai just four hours after arriving at our hotel that night. Yep, we arrived at our hotel, took a little nap, and woke up at 3 in the morning to climb Mount Sinai in 3 degree Celsius weather. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, t-shirt, sweater, leather jacket, sweat pants, two pairs of socks, mittens, scarf, and hat. Of course, at this point, I had spent all my money on souvenirs I've dreamed of buying since I was a kid and therefore had no money for a camel ride. Ten minutes into the walk my body started over heating and I was having to strip off layers and find ways to carry them. Thirty minutes in I started hyperventilating and had a sort of panic attack – I have trouble breathing when I'm concentrating on something, which I never remember until I can't breathe anymore. It also probably didn't help that I was exhausted and hiking with no food in my stomach because of course we didn't get breakfast before we did this hike. An hour into the hike, after my mini panic attack, I started feeling quite sick to my stomach. Nausea turned into sharp stomach pains and dry heaving. Two hours later, I threw up off the side of Mount Sinai and crawled my way up to our meeting point where everyone was waiting for me. Thankfully, three other people had stayed behind with me to make sure I hadn't died. I was beyond thankful for the company in such miserable and cold conditions. Once we were all at our meeting point, it was only 900 more steps, which was supposed to take us 45 minutes. Well, one of the professor's wives was moving pretty slowly too and we stuck together. We would walk about three steps, and take a break. Sometimes we would even take five steps before taking a break. We talked the whole time, and decided at some point that if we didn't make it to the very top then that would be okay. It was a generally good time, and we made it to the top, at our own pace, and saw the sun rise.

That was basically the end of the trip. We sat up there for a while longer, walked back down to the buses, and the rest of the trip was just the ride back into Jerusalem. Nothing too interesting happened at boarder crossing, other than that I got my bagged checked. And I was more than happy to shower and sleep in a real bed when we got back to JUC.