My Last Day

I go home tonight! The taxi will come at 2 a.m. to take me to the airport. I can't wait! Today I've sat around, cleaning, packing, checking my email. I'm so bored!! I'm just wasting time now. I have nothing else to pack, buy, or throw away.

I'm so excited to be somewhere that is a reasonable temperature and doesn't have mosquitoes.

It's so close!

Backup Plans Gone Awry

This morning in class I had a great plan. Come in to class, hand back some papers, and do a practice listening test. I had the CD player and the test packet all ready to go. I opened up the test packet and the CD was not there. Hm. I contemplated reading the script for them, but decided that is not good practice, especially as I was not about to change my voice 50 times to sound like a man!

I sent a student to the computer labs to see if one was available. They could do listening practice on the computer. They are normally available, but not today! Hm.

What did we do? We played Simon Says. That's right, the kids' game. They loved it. We played for probably 30-40 minutes. Since I had already planned to play the game later this week, I didn't feel too guilty for "wasting" a class period. We got a nice little workout - my heart rate was climbing!

Upper Egypt - The Train

Over the next few posts I'll share about our Spring Break trip to Upper Egypt. We took the overnight train about 14 hours south to Aswan then a cruise ship north to Luxor, then another overnight train back to Cairo. Here are some pictures from the train to and from Upper (southern) Egypt. We had adjoining cabins. It was fun, although sleep was kind of difficult!

Out the window:

Alexandria - Montazah

The Gardens of Montazah is an area that belonged to the last king of Egypt. It is a park area on a prime piece of land right on the sea. There are summer cottages and a Hilton resort on the property as well as a presidential palace. Michelle and I wandered around, avoiding the guys in the red car trying to give us a ride, managing to understand from the guards that no, we cannot go into the presidential palace, and so on. It was hot. We finally found a place to sit and read in the shade.

The entrance to Montazah:
The Presidential Palace:The guard zoomed in on:The fence surrounding the palace:The palace gardens behind the fence:Some views from our resting spot:

Cairo - Khan al Khalili

We went to the Khan al Khalili (those kh letters are pronounced in the back of the throat). This is supposedly the most ancient continually-running market in the world. We had some hassles, but it was a noisy, smelly experience that every visitor to Cairo needs.

At one point, I was buying something for Jeff. He was standing next to me listening to me discuss the price in Arabic. The vendor asked if Jeff is my fiance, and I answered affirmatively. He then proceeded to tell me that I should marry him, not Jeff. I looked at him, and said, "Eh da?! Howa henna, delawati! Inta magnun!" which translates to "What is this?! He's here, right now! You're crazy!" All his buddies standing around got a good laugh at that.

Spices! Loofahs!

Random market scenes.

The Western Desert

Thursday morning I joined a group from school for an overnight camping trip in the Western Desert. We saw the Black Desert, did some off-roading and sight-seeing, then made our way to the White Desert where we camped. It was really neat. The silence was incredible.

It was also my first experience of camping without toilet facilities. Sometimes it was hard to find a rock for cover when people were walking around and other groups were camping as well. We had a nice, long morning walk!

Ready to go!

From the top: Me, Alice, Nevine in the Black desert.We went down the hill and it was really fun. I had the front seat passenger take video. These Land Cruisers can go anywhere!

A nice sunset with clean air. I didn't know such things existed in Egypt! The stars that night were fantastic.

We didn't get dinner until 10:30. We were all starving!Our tent. Spooky.

Campsite at dawn.

One of our guides, packing up. I was tired and sitting in the car.The White Desert. The limestone looks like snow.
You can't really see it, but there is all kinds of quartz and other crystals on top of this strangely formed rock. This was at a site called Crystal Mountain.

Alexandria - Streets and Sea

Here are some final pictures from Alexandria of the street and the sea. We spent quite a lot of time simply walking up and down the Corniche and watching the sea and the people.

This man was at the park outside the train station. He was feeding the cats like I've seen people feed pigeons and ducks.
Street scenes:

The night market:Scenes along the corniche:

Alexandria - The Shoe Shine Incident

During our evening in Alex, I wanted to see the sunset over the Mediterranean. As Michelle and I strolled the Corniche, we decided to stop in at a cafe with sidewalk seating. This was our view.
We ordered drinks (banana "juice" for Michelle and Turkish coffee for me) and prepared to take a rest and enjoy the view.

What we didn't count on was our seating's accessibility to people on the street. We turned down two guys selling rugs and guys selling watches. One of the watch guys came back and told us he is a Christian from Sudan and needs to eat tonight and any little amount will help him. I gave him two pounds. A lady walked up to us and simply held out her hand. I gave her a pound just so she wouldn't keep standing there.

And then came the shoe shine guy.

He looks harmless enough, but he was a pain in the rear. Since I was wearing black leather shoes that really needed a shine, I agreed to let him do my shoes. This is something I only see men doing on the street (getting their shoes shined and doing the shining), and I figured being a tourist let me do things I wouldn't normally do. He was trying to chat with us, saying how wonderful America is and I don't know what else. I couldn't really understand him. He let Michelle take a picture.

After stopping him from forcing Michelle's sandals off her feet, I asked him how much I owed him. I know this is cheap - it's done everywhere and all the men have their shoes shined. I figured a couple pounds. "Twenty!" he said. Yeah, right. I gave him five. He complained and I said that five is plenty. Then he asked for a dollar because he allowed Michelle to take a picture. I gave him another pound and he finally left. My shoes looked great, but it was a hassle and kind of ruined our pleasant moment.

According to my Egyptian host, a shoe shine normally costs 1 pound.