Valentine's Day - a little bit late ;)

I found these heart doilies in my office filing cabinet, so I hung them in front of our apartment doors.

On Valentine's Day morning we awoke to find that we had been "heart-attacked" by the students. All of the faculty/staff doors were covered in the same way. In fact, now that I think about it, so was the Oasis door, the security window, the 7th level office, and a few walls and railings throughout the Center. It was really fun!

This is a close-up of just one message. Kent often refers to places, movies, or events as "the 4th most amazing" or "coolest thing in the world." Hence, the heart below:

The other 3? Me, the grandkids, and his Harley! :)

Look at this beautiful valentine. My visiting teacher made this for me!

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day too!!!

Egypt Winter 2011 - the "old people" side-trip

I just took a little break from the blog - did an online puzzle. While I was sitting here a group of students congregated out in the hall. 2 guys home teaching an apartment of girls. These are such great kids!!! The one who is teaching the lesson right now is a convert and he is sharing some of his story with the rest. Kent and I ate dinner with this young man one night and heard part of his story. This is the amazing/totally new for me part - he is from Colorado City and has 40 siblings. He was raised in a polygamist home!!! Now, he is a faithful Latter-Day Saint and has served a mission.
All of these students are really wonderful people. They are talented, smart, good and extremely LOUD! Everything they do is at a high level - we're adjusting. :) If they weren't so good and loveable it would really BE an adjustment.
Anyway, back to our side trip on day 6 in Egypt. Our tour agent, Emad, arranged for us to go back to the Giza pyramids and have a tour of a Solar boat that was found at Giza near one of the tombs. - The boat that the pharaoh used to cross over into the hereafter. Below, is the buidling at the base of one of the pyramids. This is the big stone box that the boat was buried in. This thing is HUGE!!!!!!

These are some of the stone slabs that covered the box:

Here is some of the rope used on the boat - still intact!

This is a model of the entire boat -

Here is the boat itself.

Isn't it amazing. Pictures really can't let you "feel" how big this thing is! We had to wear these big booties - triple the size of Parade of Homes booties! We were flapping. It was really fun!

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!