September 24, 2007

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Laura White
September 25, 2007
The Wonders of the World
The day began early as we headed out to see the pyramids and sphinx! Yesterday, was amazing because everyone was just kind of chatting on the bus and looking around when suddenly the pyramids just appeared on the horizon. To me at least it felt a bit surreal to see them off in the distance. Also, it was amazing to me that these little horse/mule drawn carts were just calmly driving down the highway alongside huge cars racing past them. It would definitely unnerve me but was obviously a common occurrence.
We arrived at the pyramids of Giza and between lots of picture taking we went inside the middle sized pyramid of Khafre. It is soooo humid in there - unquestionably claustrophobic potential and the walkways were narrow and short - I definitely bumped my head dozens of times. Still, it was cool to go inside. They truly are magnificent structures! I can't even imagine how much effort - sweat, blood, sacrifice went into their construction.
Next we walked up to ride camels! We rode in pairs on the camels and the camel that I was on was a particularly unhappy camel. He didn't want to get up from the ground in the first place and then he definitely was unwilling to get back down again at the end of the ride. To make matters worse, the saddle was slipping as the camel was lurching down and I definitely thought I was going to fall off – it was a great adventure.
Following our camel ride we went down to the valley temple to walk through it and then see the sphinx. I actually was surprised at the size of the sphinx – it always seemed really big to me in pictures – I guess it makes a difference to have the enormous pyramids in the background.
The Memphis Museum was our next destination where we saw the gigantic Ramses II statue. We also went to Saqqara to see the first pyramid – the Step Pyramid of Zoser. Originally it was to be a mastaba, but Imhotep decided one level wasn’t enough – what a smart guy. We also were acquainted with Pyramid text, diagrams, and statues at these sites – things we would come to know well through the next few days.
This was the day of starvation – due to Ramadan, I don’t know how the Moslems do it all day in the heat – and I must say that the things started to blend together a little at the end in my haze of hunger. J Anyway, we went to the papyrus shop – it was very cool to actually see how they make papyrus – and the jewelry shop. After finally eating food we headed to the train station ready to take on the overnight trip to Luxor. The train ride was awesome and there were definite parties going on in the corridors. I think the workers thought that we were insane. The day was definitely eventful – in fact it seems impossible that we actually were able to go see all of those sites in just one day.