Egypt Winter 2011 - Day 6 - the alternative

Ok, so normally on this day, we would tour Old Cairo, go to the Egyptian Museum, have lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, and spend the afternoon at the Khan al-Khalili Bazaar. HOWEVER, Cairo was full of protestors so we go to do something that no other groups has done or probably will ever do. We went to the Dashur Pyramids. This area is an on-going excavation dig and noone besides the archeologists are allowed there. Cool huh!!!
So, we all slept in, had a late breakfast and then went to Dashur. Here is a view of the 2 pyramids there as we approach. Notice that the one on the left is bent. Oddly enough, it is called the Bent Pyramid!! This pyramid is the Red pyramid.

We walked all the way around it.

Here is a section, where the outside covering is still in place. This would have covered the entire pyramid.

Some went inside. I'm actually not sure whether this is going UP inside or DOWN inside. :)

At least it looks like they can stand up in this one!

This is the Bent Pyramid. The story they tell, is that the architect started building and then realized that it wasn't going to stand up at the angle he had begun it at, so he changed angles to finish. Our archeologist faculty don't think so. But, that is much more interesting than their explanation! ;)

You can see that this one has more of the covering face left on it.

Here is a close-up. Notice, that even way out here, where there aren't usually toursits - there are camel drivers!

More outer casing.

This is Snefru's Valley Temple. This is where the main dig is taking place. Our 2 archeologists thought that they had died and gone to heaven. They had each tried to get in to this place using their archeology cards/influence. But, to no avail, until now!! Thanks Gabry Tours.

In the right, lower corner of this photo, is the causeway that ran from the temple to the Bent Pyramid.

Here is our 2 archeologists, expressing their delight!

Following this adventure, we went to a really cool outdoor tent restaurant. There were musicians and the food was great and the atmosphere was so much fun. Not sure why Kent didn't take any photos here. - He was probably thinking more about eating than about bringing his camera with him from the bus!

The rest of the day, the students spent, relaxing at the hotel.

Stay tuned for the what the "old people" did!

Egypt Winter 2011 - Day 5

We are still in Luxor - far from the demonstrations taking place in Cairo. We began our morning by taking a chilly boat ride up the Nile to the Karnak Temple! It took 5 boats to get us all there. Here are 2 of them: You see cows out the window of your car all of the time - well we saw cows too! :) Actually, they might be water buffalo.

Workers out in their fields - using camels and donkeys instead of horses or tractors.

The boat ahead of us is a cruise ship.

Ah, here we are at the Karnak Temple - this is the avenue of the sphinxes. This avenue originally ran from the Karnak Temple all the way to the Luxor Temple. Imagine how impressive it must have looked!!

These sphinxes are in what is called the Great Court.

This next shot if of Kent's favorite room in the whole world - the Hypostyle Hall in the Karnak Temple: You can even still see some of the colors.

Isn't this close-up amazing? Imagine an entire room full of these!!

This was one of our guides - he helped us understand the lay-out of things with diagrams:

This is one small section of the Sanctuary:

This is looking into the Sanctuary at the altar. I found this interesting and somewhat sad: In an ancient temple like this one, the most Holy spot of the temple is the furthest in and is approached by gradually going up. That part is similar to our own beliefs. BUT, instead of the room becoming bigger and brighter it gets smaller and darker, so that those approaching are in fear as they arrive in the holiest of holies. What a difference the light of Jesus Christ makes.

This is called the Sacred Lake.

Right across from this lake is a large statue of a Scarab. The Scarab was the God the pushed the sun across the sky. Also, the scarab beetle reproduces without the help of another scarab beetle so it was also a representation of eternal life.

Our guide told the students that the tradition was - if you ran around the statue 7 times you would get married. We had a lot of people running around the Scarab! :)

Our next stop was the Luxor Temple - here, again, is part of the Avenue of the Sphinxes:

Here is another view of the avenue. You can guess why Kent took this one. :)

This is looking down at the Court of Rameses II.

This is the vestibule:

Our return trip to the hotel was done in carriages. All of them have lots of color and decorations on them. These were hanging all along the edge of roof of the carriage. On some of the carriages, every inch has something hanging from it.

Luxor street scenes - school girls

Close up

This is Kent (he's the one in the middle) with one of our guides, Rafeet and our marvelous Tour Agent, Emad. You can't believe how hard he works for us!

Took a train from Luxor back to Cairo. This is our hallway:

This is our compartment. We had 24 students who crammed themselves into one just to see if they could! Those on the bottom weren't so happy!

Here we are getting ready for bed.

Train station.

As far as the demonstrations going on. Our guides and our Tour agents were, of course, very concerned about it. They had friends involved and they were very hopeful that Mubarak would step down and that things wouldn't get really ugly. Our friends are anxious for a better government, better jobs, better lives for all Egyptians. They asked us several times to please pray for them!

Our boss, here at the Center, was very concerned about us. We had much better intelligence being on the ground in Egypt than he did in Jerusalem. He talked with Kent several times a day to discuss our plans and to make sure we were fine. The tour agency we use took such good care of us and worked extraordinarily hard to provide safety and comfort and still provide us with the tour we paid for. Yea, for Gabry Tours!

Egypt Winter 2011 - Day 4

Day 4 - just like last semester. Except:
we saw different tombs at the Valley of the Kings. I wish we were allowed to take pictures inside the tombs. It is AMAZING how much color is still visible. Every inch of the walls are covered. Lots of stairs and ramps going down into the tombs which, of course, means lots of going back UP. :)
Here are a couple of new photos from Queen Hatshepsut's funerary temple. The nice difference on this day is that we didn't have anyone get sick. This was the day "Hatshepsut's" revenge started last semester. Most of our sickness this time around was upper-respitory stuff.

See, look at the amazing colors.
In the afternoon we took another felucca ride and then rode the camels. I really didn't much enjoy the camel ride this time. The camel was HUGE and I nearly fell off just when he/she stood up! I've been trying to figure out how to do the felucca ride without doing the camel ride but it would mean sitting by myself for an hour with left-over camel drivers. No thanks!

The felucca trip back to the hotel was not as efficient as last time. As before, we were pulled by a tug boat, in tow with several other feluccas, but we just sat on the river for about an hour, waiting for the tug boat to come. We had lots of fun, of course - I mean, we're sitting on the NILE River in EGYPT! But, it did eat up the free time we would have had that afternoon to go into the city. So, it was a LITTLE bit frustrating. ;)

Egypt Winter 2011 - Day 3

Day 3 for us was the same as last semester. What we didn't know, until we got to our hotel in Luxor that night, was that this day, January 25, 2011, was the beginning of the Egyptian demonstrations against Mubarak.
We spent the day in Giza which is probably an hour or more from Cairo where the demonstrations were taking place. We noticed nothing different about the traffic, security, or crowds in Giza. The pictures below are by one of our students - she's a professional and they are GOOD! This is the whole group. The man on the far left, next to the red shirt - was our guide Islam. Standing next to Kent is our Ancient Near East professor, Jeff Chadwick. Kneeling in front of us are our other 2 professors - Frank Judd [whose wife, Jill, is hugging him in the photo] and Kerry Muhlestein. I'm not sure why our other guide, Ahmed, isn't in this photo.

After our busy day and the Pyramids etc. we drove to Heliopolis, which is right next to the airport. We went to the Meridian Hotel there, and had a delicious dinner. We then flew to Luxor where we spent the night. This is a view from the dining area!

It wasn't until we started getting ready for bed, that we saw the news on what had been happening back in Cairo. We were shocked. Our guides and Tour agents were, of course, very concerned about the whole thing. They had friends and/or family that were in the middle of Tahrir Square - some were taken to jail.

Our poor boss, Eran, was on the phone with Kent immediately - fearing the worst. He was relieved to hear that we were totally safe and secure. HE had been getting calls from our BYU boss, Jim Kearl, who had been getting calls from mother's. The news is so, not good, for giving a true picture.

Anyway, that was OUR January 25. :)

Egypt Winter 2011 - Day 2, 1- read bottom to top

Day 2 was also the same as last semester, except that the traffic was so heavy going through Cairo that we had to go straight the Pyramid's Light Show instead of stopping at the hotel first. We had some extra time and here is a photo of some of our students. This is a really cool way for them to see the pyramids for the first time.

I wrote about Day one last fall semester. But, there was one thing I wanted to add to this semester's trip. Everything was just the same this time except that Kent and I participated in the "Desert dune" experience. This isn't the dune but it gives you the feel of the desert.

We spent the night on a Kibbutz. We were met by our hosts before we actually arrived at the kibbutz and they took us out into the desert. The buses dropped us off and we hiked up a trail, over the top and came to a HUGE sand dune. Kent and I didn't enjoy the next part. They gave the students about 20 minutes to "play" on the dunes. Then we were to meet AT THE BOTTOM! I did make it most of the way down before falling - I scooted the rest of the way down on my behind, filling my pockets, shoes and pants with fine powdery sand. :)

That was the first part I didn't like. Then, one of the students who was jumping down the dunes, hit his bare foot on a hidden rock and took a big chunk out of his heel. The ironic part is that he spent several minutes before he jumped moving rocks out of the way so no one would get hurt! He found the only rock left behind. :( The docs tried to bandage it up as best they could. When we finally got back to the kibbutz they sewed it up.

When we all reached the bottom of the dune, the leader had us go off into the desert and sit somewhere by ourselves. This was the next problem. Some of them went way far away, where they couldn't hear the call to come back and one of them couldn't get down from where he had climbed without help from one of the faculty!

Now, for the really nice part. As they sent us off by ourselves, they gave us a piece of paper with a scripture reference on it. It was the scripture from 1 Nephi about being in the wilderness alone. They gave us about 20 minutes to just sit and be quiet and then answer some questions on the paper regarding the scripture. After we all gathered back together, they divided us into 4 groups and we gathered around some bonfires and shared our thoughts from the scripture. It was really a wonderful experience. We had a couple of the students, when they spoke in Sacrament meeting later in the week, refer to what they had felt and learned from this experience.

When the Kibbutz first began doing this, they purposely tried to find a scripture that would mean something to Mormons. They looked through an online copy of the Book of Mormon but could not find the word "desert" anywhere. They contacted the administrator here and asked him about it. He suggested that they look for the word "wilderness". Which they did and came up with the scripture that I have mentioned. I am impressed that they would try so hard to make it a truly meaningful experience for us.

JC playground

When the Center realized that they would need to remodel some apartments to provide housing for the 2 faculty families and their 11 children, they also built a playground. Here are some pics:
This is Amanda Judd, age 6, helping clean the slide! She is so dang cute!!! This is her little sister, Emily, with the curly hair and their friend, Sabrina Muhlestein. Also, dang cute!!

When the fall students arrived we decided to have a committee of artists paint some of the walls around the inside of the playground. I wish I had pics of the finished project but here is the work in progress: This will eventually be a painting of the skyline that we see from the Center balconies. The woman kneeling is Jill Judd, one of the faculty wives. She was in charge of this project.

Here is some of the crew, getting ready to paint:

More detail:

The mural to the right is an Old City shop. Offerings of fruit, candy, nuts, & grains.

Memories of our trip to Egypt:

These are 2 of the faculty kids - Lisa Judd and BJ Muhlestein

This turns into a beautiful underwater scene. Kent tried to convince them they should put SpongeBob in. He lost.

The students had lots of fun doing this. There were a few who even stayed up the night before they flew home so that they could finish their mural.

President's reception

I just realized I never told you about this. Back in December Kent and I got an invitation to attend a reception at the President's residence. It was a reception for all religious leaders in Jerusalem. I'm not really sure why we were invited, rather than the Branch President or the JC Administrator but . . . .
The Center provided transportation for us - a taxi dropped us off and then picked us up when we were finished. Many of the people there knew each other and spent time visiting and eating from the buffet provided. We wandered around the grounds and did stop to talk to one person that we actually knew. Rabbi Rosen. He used to be the Jewish culture teacher here at the Center. We had a nice, but short, visit with him. Then they called us all into a meeting room. The men below are all of the heads of the different churches here. Each one gave a short speech. The concluding speaker was the President himself, he is the man third from the left. It was an interesting experience. Not particularly fun, but interesting.
When the President entered and left the room, we were asked to stand. Oh, yea, there was also a musical number by a local musician. It was very good. He reminded me of a hippi.
Anyway, that was our morning at the President's. :)