Sept 26, 2007

Tiffany Dunn
Journal
9-26-07
So….I’m in Egypt! How cool is that? It’s basically amazing. Ok, story time:
Last night we rode the overnight train from Cairo to Luxor. It was so fun! The only downside was the fact that we couldn’t eat half the food they gave us for dinner because it wasn’t safe. (We can’t drink their water and eat anything that has been washed in the water. Bugs…their nasty.) When I got my dinner I was so excited to eat my grapes! Then I realized that that wasn’t an option because, ya know, the whole water thing. That wasn’t a big deal until I was going to one of the other cars later on and saw our servers eating the grapes! It was so sad. We had our wakeup call at 4:30am, had breakfast at 5:00am and were on our way to the Valley of the Kings.
We were in the Valley of the Kings! Does that blow anyone else’s mind? Anyway, we went in and the landscape, while very barren and dry, is very beautiful. We went into 3 tombs. It’s actually kind of sad because we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of the tombs we entered; something about laws and keeping the tombs in good condition for other people. The thing that I found most interesting was the fact that the hieroglyphs were painted. I had always thought that they were just carved into the stone (which is the case when it’s not limestone). The things you learn when you go to different places. The colors were vibrant and beautiful. I was surprised. They had reds, yellows, blues, black. It was impressive. Sad to say, that when we finally got to the third tomb it all started to look the same. After we finished the third tomb word was spreading that we weren’t going to see King Tut’s tomb! Oh there was almost a mutiny. But it seems that that was false information and we did indeed go and see the tomb. It wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. The whole going into an untouched tomb. Yeah, the people who discovered it took everything out and put it into a museum. Boring! But they did leave a sarcophagus in for us to see. Tut was short! I was really surprised.
Then we were once again on the buses. Our next destination was Hapshetsut’s Temple and the Alabaster store. The temple was pretty, but we didn’t get to go see it. It was a “view only.” The alabaster store was pretty interesting. They showed us how they make the vases, etc. and then we got to go shopping. Nothing there was useful so I just waited for everybody else. Ps. The way you know whether it’s real alabaster or not is if it’s transparent if put under a light.
The next place we went was Medinet Habu, the Funerary Temple of Ramses III. Now that is an amazing sight! Every surface of the temple was carved. There was a story on everything! Literally. Some of the hieroglyphs were painted and others just carved. Some of the places had the cartouches scratched out. They didn’t want those people to be remembered.
We finally had lunch and free time. Almost all of us got in the pool and played keep away. Guys v girls. It was so fun and felt so good! It was stinkin hot! After that we all went on a Faluka Ride. That was really, really fun! My boat got pulled over by the Nile police! Yeah, it was intense. We were sitting there talking and singing with our captain when he told us to be quiet and get down. (We had too many people on ours.) The police came up, our captain got his registration information and told the officer to hold on for a minute. He turned to us and asked if any of us had a dollar and Sam gave him one. He promptly handed it over to the police and they left. Do realize what this means? We got pulled over by the Nile Police and bribed them to go away with an American dollar.
That night, after dinner, a couple of us went to the Luxor Museum. That was way fun too!