Egypt!

 Sorry my last post was really unorganized :P I'm going to try to do better with this one, but no promises! I'm also going to attempt to post in the middle of Egypt instead of at the very end. but not promises on that one either :P

So! first day in Egypt! we went on the city orientation tour and saw some of the catacombs of Alexandria. they were really cool! We weren't allowed to take pictures but I snuck one with my cameraphone :P It was so neat, we  walked down this 99-step spiral staircase into the site where they would lay the sarcophogi (though those were missing and in museums or something). there were all kinds of cool carvings into the walls and a couple statues and stuff. the more common areas were slightly flooded so they had these wobbly planks raised up on large cement block things to where I nearly brushed my head against the ceiling. I liked that part a lot :P  then we went to this section that was for horses! it was so interesting. the rich people buried their horses very fancily. and they had some of the bones of the horses in a case so we could see them. then we walked outside for a little bit and saw some ruins and old statues and stuff. oh! cool thing: in a lot of ancient places that I've seen so far, they like for their gutters to have lion heads. like to where the water comes out of the mouth of the lion. I think it's fantastic and I've decided that when I build my own house I'm going to steal that particular style of architecture :P

So then we got a tour of the city and stopped at some strategic photographic opportunities, conveniently bypassing the many garbage heaped sections of the city. They do have really really cool art here though. there's one wall that was done up in really amazing paintings and mosaics.. it was an epic moment for the artist in me :P they have huge sculptures in the medians of the main streets, too. we stopped at a hotel that used to be a palace of the kings of Egypt in the 1900s and has some nice gardens, we stopped at the other palace, very close to the previous one, that is now President Mubarak's summer vacation home (the picture that is my new Facebook profile pic!), we stopped at a castle/fortress thing near the ocean, we stopped by the library, and we stopped at a really lovely mosque. At the fortress there was a line of street vendors and we walked down that way looking at things. all the guys kept calling out "good price! good price!" with huge smiles on their faces. charming, but no thanks, said I. it was pretty amusing though. by the mosque it smelled pretty bad, the kind of smell where you crinkle your nose involuntarily.. oh, during this trip, I had been sitting next to Sam, but then this little girl took her spot. So she was my companion for half the trip. Her name is Addie and she wants to be a veterinarian. She also likes music, we discovered that we have a favorite song in common: walkin' on sunshine! and then she had me sing some songs to her, haha :P

we passed by a LOT of beaches. it was the most fascinating thing, considering this is predominantly a Muslim country, and almost all the women I saw were covered, you know. most with a hijab, some with a full on burka. I was intrigued to see women at the beach, they still had their clothes and head coverings on, jumping through the waves. but then the guys all had their shirts off like dudes back home! I just don't get it. if women are required to be completely covered for modesty's sake, why don't men have to as well? if it's because of lust, I'm here to tell you that women are just as capable of it as men are. maybe there's something else behind it though, I don't know.

on another note, I had the coolest Fanta ever on this trip. It was some good advertising, because I mostly got it because it was the prettiest Fanta I'd ever seen. Blackcurrant flavor, and it was tasty.

anyway after that we didn't do anything. I stayed on the ship, ate, and watched the Princess and the Frog before I fell asleep. all before 9pm! I was a sleepy kid.

the following day! which is today. wow. it feels like that was forever ago. I think I slept for like 14 hours last night.

anyway, today Sam, Emily, Pete and I went to the library :D we were there for about 6 hours and we still didn't see everything! and we got there just in time to latch on to an English tour, which was really intersting. the lady took us around the library and then had us watch a nifty thing called Culturama which is dispalyed on 9 huge screens in a row (like a panorama, right? so you get why it's called Culturama..). anyway not only do they have an amazing selection of books, free wi-fi, and a fantastic main reading area--which is completely lit with natural lighting because of how the ceiling is constructed--but they also have gorgeous museums of art and clothing and manuscripts and one dedicated to Anwar Sebat, first president of Egypt. OH! and they also have the coolest device I've ever seen in my life and I almost wet my pants and had a heart attack at the same moment when the tour guide talked about it. it is called the Espresso Book Machine. that might or might not be a mistranslation but that's what it said on the sign. and BASICALLY it has a bunch of books in a database and it's ITS OWN PRINTING PRESS. like, you pick a book and it prints it. right there. in like 5 to 20 minutes. and voila. you pay for it and you're done! apparently there are like, 4 in the world. if that doesn't make you excited, you have no brain. THINK of how amazing that is! ANY book you want! ever! assuming it's in the database. >.> the thing is, it's not up for public use yet because they have to get copyrights from authors and increase their database before it will really be good. So guess who's coming back to Alexandria in like ten years! :DD

l'anyhoodle, we hung out at the library, made use of some internet, and then ate at the little cafe upstairs on the balcony. despite the sun being in my face for half the meal, I quite enjoyed it. the waiter hit on Sam and was joking around with us, it was pretty entertaining. it seems all the men like Sam since we got around to Greece, lol. anyway we had good food and a lot of it and it was only ten USD each! ...I've taken to calling American dollars USD.. I dunno, it's easier. :P So in total I think we ended up spending .. $15 each. for the whole day. including food and taxi rides and the library entry. woo!

so we got back to the ship around 730 -- oh wait. let me just talk about traffic in Egypt really quick. OMG TERRIFYING is what it is. lanes don't mean anything, drivers don't care about pedestrians, pedestrians don't care about cars, the just cross whenever! we thought Italy was like playing Frogger. no sir. Frogger = Egypt-any semblance of organization. everyone just maneuvers around everyone else in complete disarray. no one pays attention to traffic lights or signs, in fact they're barely present.. it's a completely different world. Emily gasps a lot. I always laugh because it makes me think of how mom does. :P

anyway. :) so we got back to the ship and hung out for a bit, then I wanted to go out to the little shops that are right outside the ship. So I commandeered Sam to go with me since Em didn't feel like going and we ended up walking into the first place and staying for the next five hours! we browsed and chatted and had tea and bread and cheese and just sat and talked to these three Egyptian brothers all night! let's see if I remember their names.. Tarik, Waled, aaaand Maher? No promises on the spelling, I did my best. They were so interesting though. and so nice! like I said before, shopping is a completely different experience. Like Turkey, it is the same for Egypt. You just make friends! We talked about all kinds of things. They taught us how to count to ten in Arabic, too. I've been practicing! soon I will be able to in .. six languages, if you count pig-latin :P I really need to find a way to take an Arabic class. it's pretty awesome.

I haven't even seen the pyramids yet and Egypt has been fascinating!

man, Danny commented on the amount of emoticons I use and now I'm self-conscious about it.. :P lol. I can't help it though! they're so expressive. I need them in my life!

CAIRO!
on our third day in Egypt we went to see the Pyramids in Giza :D it was a two and a half hour bus ride out there. I slept for part of it and stayed awake long enough to listen to the tour guide talk about pigeons being eaten on special occasions. I thought that was interesting as compared to the Orvieto catacombs where pigeons were commonly used as food.

Anyway, so we stopped and saw the pyramids first. we also went down into one of the queen's tombs. it was really hot in there. I thought underground was supposed to be cooler! so we snapped a few pictures and got out of there. oh, when we were taking pictures in front of one of the pyramids, we found these convenient rock formations to stand on top of. There was a guy there who was blowing a whistle telling people to get down, but when he saw that we were taking pictures he was like "okay, picture, fine."  and then he expected us to pay him just for that -.- that's how a lot of Egypt functions though, they expect tips for everything. In pretty much any tomb we went in the policy was that we weren't allowed to take pictures. but men would be there cornering you and going "eh, you want a little picture? You can take a picture" .. but they want a tip for it, a baksheesh. so if I wanted to sneak a picture I had to avoid official guys AND those guys. I only ended up sneaking like 2 pictures anyway :P

so after thaaat we went to the desert for our jeep safari! it was hilarious. we ended up getting stranded in the desert for a minute. and then we couldn't get up some of the hills, so we'd be going and we'd get aaaaalmost to the top .. but no, and we'd roll back down. it was quite an adventure, lol.  then we got on our camels! that was fun, I got the hang of it after about a minute. the scariest part is when the thing stands up from kneeling or vice versa. I felt like I was going to be flung facefirst off its back! also, camels make the WEIRDEST noises. it's like.. prehistoric gurgly cows.

on a side note, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/user/ViralVideoFilmSchool#p/u/2/idxbvD2V5YU
because it made me laugh. :D

so after we ate and saw some more pyramids and tombs, a bunch of us signed off the trip so we could stay the night in Cairo/Giza :D one group already had reservations at the Grand Pyramids Hotel, so the rest of us just tagged along and hoped for an available room. the bus dropped us off like, a mile down the road from the hotel and told us it would just be a five minute walk. -.- dumb. so we finally arrived and waited in line at the reception desk for 15 minutes just to find out that they were completely booked. so we walked back down to the other Pyramids Hotel and hoped for better luck there. On the way, I'd decided that if we couldn't get a room, I was good with just going back to Alexandria. Giza is pretty gross. But we did manage to get a room for the six of us: Emily, Sam, Nick, Patrick, Amy, and me. and since it was the six of us, we got the suite! which actually turned out to be not so sweet. but at least it had AC! and a cool cool dining room/office with a fancy table that called for bowties and cigars. otherwise, the door to the balcony didn't close all the way, there were creepy stains on the comforter, the shower didn't work, and the floor below us was dark and creepy! :D but it was a place to sleep. the company was good. and at least it didn't smell too funky. :P

we walked down the street for a minute after dropping our stuff off and got some drinks at a grocery store. CHEAP! but the streets were gross. and a little creepy cause we stick out like a sore thumb. needless to say, we promptly headed back to the relative safety of our hotel.

we had dinner there, too. it was pretty good. they were playing jazz music during dinner. on loop. lol. and one of them was the Titanic song. and they played the same songs at breakfast the next day!

the next morning we woke up at 5 to get to the pyramids in time to see the sunrise. we made it all the way down to the lobby and asked for a taxi, but the concierge pretty much told us it was impossible. which is dumb, because plenty of people have raved about seeing the sunrise by the pyramids. and SaS had that as part of a trip. but everybody just went along with what the guy said... I was pretty mad. I took some time to myself for a minute to get over it. I think that made them think I was uber pissed or weird or something, but whatever.

finally I went up to the room and we watched the sky lighten from our balcony. we could see the tops of the pyramids from there, so that was .. kind of similar to being there >.>   the view from the balcony was really interesting though. the pyramids in the distance, unfinished buildings in the city skyline, rubble-filled lots across the street, more unfinished buildings, a huge garbage heap directly below us, and to the right a large, functioning raised highway. the contrast between such a great symbol of an ancient, prospering civilization and the way the Egyptians live today is pretty drastic.

oh btw, the unfinished buildings. they're forever being built taller (or at least looking like it, with iron sticking out of the top and random stairways to heaven) because as long as it's under construction, no taxes have to be paid on it. woo tax evasion!

after breakfast we checked out and took a taxi to the train station so we could go ahead and get tickets back to Alexandria. first class for like 7 bucks!

then we went on a leisurely Nile cruise for an hour or two. :)

then we went to the Cairo museum, which is full of all things ancient Egyptian :D we saw the Narmer palette, really cool ancient boats that had been put together from pieces found in the Nile! (that was one of my favorite things in the museum :D) there is also a very very large part of a palace floor that is older than Moses. a lot of the old statues have been restored. I feel like that's kind of cheating us, because then we don't really know what's real. there was one set of statues where the pieces were just held up by metal rods in the places they would be if the
statue were whole. I liked it much more that way than if they had filled in the gaps with plaster. we saw sculptures of Nefertiti, a random relief of a person sucking on the udder of a cow .. it looks pretty questionable until you see the 2nd udder there.  OH. and we saw the sarcophagus of the son of Ramses II. potentially the child who died in the 10 plagues?! there was a section for King Tut, a section for Jewelry, and a section for mummies! :D:D you had to pay more to see the mummies, but it was totally worth it. there were 12 of them and one was Hatshepsut and one was Ramses II!

After that we took a taxi to the bazaar, which was PACKED. from the highway it was just a sea of people. you couldn't even see the street there were so many. I bought a pretty orange bag with a peacock on it :) and two copies of the Qu'ran! one really pretty and just in Arabic and the other one has an English translation. it's my favorite souvenir from Egypt. :)

the vendors in Egypt are similar to ones in Turkey. some of the more memorable things they said: "how can I take your money?" got called out to us and made us laugh. and one came up to us and told Sam she was beautiful and then said "you like sex?"  ....I'm sorry, what?! it took a minute to process what he said, but then we were like, ummmm. no. >.> and walked away quickly o.O

on an unrelated note: did you know that the aztecs called the avocado tree a word meaning "testicle tree"? yeah. cause they look like balls.

We took a taxi back to the train station after we finished at the bazaar. the train station is covered in large green tarps and looks like a very questionable building from the outside. inside it's not so bad. except for the bathrooms.

the taxi ride from the Alexandria train station to the port was interesting. pretty sure the car had no headlights. the guy would flash his brights every once in a while though. when we got to the port I went to pay him 20 pounds and he was all like "no, fifty. five zero." and I was all like "no way man! you said fifteen." and handed him the cash and got out real quick. he didn't try very hard to convince me that it was fifty, I wonder how many people just fall for that. we got warned about cons like that at the preport briefing, but that was my first experience with anything close to that. people are generally pretty nice.

the last day we spent at the library again and then with our friends at the shop right outside the port building. :) I bought a ring, a lamp, a dress, and two shirts from them. :)

then we got on the ship to say goodbyyyyye!

today was Sea Olympics! our Sea came in 3rd place overall. not bad. :) I played Extreme Musical Chairs! and Jeopardy! (I sucked at that one) and I did the Relay Race! :D  it was a lot of fun. everyone was all decked out in their sea colours and cheering like crazy! I lost my voice a little bit from being so loud! oh, haha, and the medals for the top three places were made of some paper glued to paper plates. lulz.

tomorrow class starts again.. for the next five days D:

oh, so about that whole blogging in the middle of Egypt ... I did type stuff out right after stuff happened more than I had been. I just didn't post.... sorry!