Pictures from Egypt!

Valley of the Kings

Me with my donkey- I named him Frederick

they had some pretty tall columns in Luxor...

Luxor Temple

A few of us with Thomasina!

Pyramids of Giza

And the Sphinx

Inside the mosque

Cairo

The Nile

Egypt Part 2

On Thursday, we went to the Temple of Hathor and looked at many Egyptian carvings. Magic, our tour guide, told us the more about the layout of a temple, and what parts each needed to have. Even the layout of the temples were based on religious beliefs. After we finished this tour, we had a few minutes to explore the rest of it. After escaping from a few random Egyptians who wanted us to give them money for leading us to a picture of an eye, we returned back to the bus and headed out for the airport. From Luxor we flew to Cairo, approximately a 1 hour flight.
Friday was Pyramid Day!! We went to the Pyramids of Giza where we had a little too much fun taking pictures in front of all 3 of them. Magic told us about how and why they were made. Then, we took a lovely (and by lovely I mean bumpy) camel ride down to get a closer view of the pyramids. We explored the tomb of a queen which was under a smaller pyramid. We essentially had to crawl in order to get down to the burial chamber itself. Afterwards, we walked around the Great Pyramid, took some more pictures, and left for the Sphinx. The Sphinx was a cool site to see, like the pyramids. I've seen so many pictures of it, but seeing it in person was incredible! Following this, we returned to our hotel for a very relaxing afternoon and evening.
Saturday was our last full day in Egypt. In the morning we went to the Citadel of Salah El Din and the Coptic Disctrict of Cairo. Here we saw mosques, churches, and synagogues. Supposedly, one of these synagogues is built over a room where Mary, Joseph, and Jesus hid for 3 months right after Jesus was born. After this, we went to one more market, where I bought the last of my Egyptian souveniors (including a very cool lamp that looks like the genie lamp from Aladdin!!!) We ate lunch at a beautiful park with a breathtaking view of the city. Our final destination was the Egyptian Archaeological Museum. This place was very crowded, with both people and artifacts. Magic had told us earlier that plans are underway to construct a new museum, because the current one is too full of stuff. He was right. We saw things from the time of King Tut, as well as some jewelry, and many other things. We returned to the hotel after this, and were suprised to find that dinner that night included an outdoor show, goats, and camel rides!
Sunday morning we left the hotel at 6:30 for the airport. After many crazy incidents, including 3 almost-fights, and me being questioned of my true ethnicity by the visa lady, we boarded the plane and headed back to London! While I am glad to be back home, I'll certainly never forget this amazing trip. I experienced so many new things, learned so much about Egypt's culture and history, and got to know many people in our London group a little better.

Egypt: the land of Pharaohs, Sphinxes, and Sand... a lot of sand

Well, we made it back safe and sound from Egypt!! All in all, it was an amazing experience. Egypt has so much culture and history behind it. Even though we were there for an entire week, I felt like there was so much to see and so little time to see it in. However, I have to admit that I am so glad to be back in London. A week was definately enough time for me!
While it was a great trip, it was also an exhausting trip, both mentally and physically. I'm all for a good bargain, but I got tired very quickly of having to haggle for everything I wanted to buy and ignoring Egyptian men and children relentlessly trying to get me to buy something from them. As for the culture, wow is it different. People try and get you to tip them for everything from letting you take a picture with them (and by "let" I mean forcing their way into your picture then demanding money for it) to using public restrooms to showing you a "special hole in the wall possessing magical powers". It did seem pretty ridiculous at times, but I just had to keep reminding myself that this is their culture, not mine. And in Egypt, many men have to rely on tips to support themselves and their families.
We arrived in Luxor, Egypt on Monday and were already a little tired by the time we arrived at our hotel. We split up into 2 groups, so we could each have our own tour guide for the week, since 40 people is kind of a large group to deal with.
On Tuesday, we set out for the Valley of the Kings. We went inside a couple of the tombs, which were very smelly and very interesting. Having never seen real hieroglyphics before, I was amazed at how intricate they were for this ancient time period. Immediately after this, we rode donkeys to another tomb. It was about a 45 minute ride! I think we all looked a little silly on them, but it was so much fun nonetheless. We also visited a temple of a goddess (I think). Then, we saw Karnak Temple, which is the largest religious site in the world! They had these huge columns supporting the ceiling, and I have absolutely no idea how they built them that high! We saw some old ruins and climbed around them for awhile... Last, we visited Luxor Museum, and saw mummies!!! yea I know... pretty gross. They also had jewelry and writings and other ancient Egypt stuff.
Wednesday, about 15 of us woke up at 4:30AM to go on a hot air balloon ride along the Nile!! We got off to a rough start, with one of the balloons taking about 1/2 an hour to stay up in the air (yea... glad we weren't on that one!). It was cool to see part of the sunrise from the sky, and the landscape of Egypt. You could really tell where the fertile land with trees and plants and villages stopped, and the desert began. Everything went very smoothly... until the landing. You see, the pilot had failed to mention that it is typical for the basket to tip over and slide a good 100 or so feet before coming to a stop. So it came as quite a shock when we fell over on our backs, then proceeded to keep moving along the sand and dirt. It did, however, make for some good stories upon arriving back at the hotel just in time for breakfast with the rest of the group. We took a bus tour through Luxor in the morning, where our guide explained a lot of Egypt's history to us. We stopped at a market and had our first haggling experience. We were able to have some free time at the hotel afterwards to relax and swim in the infinity pool, which was designed to give the effect that it connected with the Nile. Pretty amazing if you ask me. That night, we went to Luxor Temple. It is illuminated at night, so it looks gorgeous. We saw the different areas of a temple, and looked at how it was built and how you can determine what period in Egyptian history something is from. Outside the temple were 2 rows of sphinxes with probably 10-15 in each row. These things are really amazing to see in person, looking at how much detail they put into each carving. Not to mention how well it has been preserved!

It's been a long day, so I'll have to continue this tomorrow. Stay tuned for more stories and pictures from Egypt!

Busy, busy, busy!

Hey guys!

Sorry it's been awhile since my last post. "Mid-terms" were last week, so things were a little hectic. So I'll try and sum up the past 2 weeks as best I can:

Last Thursday we went to the Globe Theatre and saw Shakespeare's Love Labour's Lost. It was pretty neat to watch a Shakespearian play inside his famous theater! They have rebuilt it, so it's not actually the original, but it was cool nonetheless.

Friday we took a day trip out to Brighton. It was basically a really cute town with a pier on the beach, a ton of little shops and cafes, and some pretty amazing views! We walked around on the pier and through the town for most of the day. We also went inot the Royal Pavillion, which is where one of the princes lived. He built this palace for the purpose of displaying his wealth to the people, so you can imagine how extravagant it is!

As I said, we had exams in all of our classes this week. They went okay overall I suppose. Luckily, I get to wait at least another week before finding out how I really did.

This Thursday we saw Phantom of the Opera!! It was a great show. The only negative thing I have to say about it is that I was a little disappointed by the chandelier. If you've ever seen this musical performed, you know what I'm talking about. Afterwards, we stayed near the stage door to meet the cast. We took pictures with Meg, Christine, and of course, the Phantom.

Friday, we went to Oxford for the day. It is such a wonderful town! It's a college town, so there are a ton of cool clothing and coffee shops. AND the colleges themselves are amazing to see. We walked around one of the colleges along a little river for awhile, and ate lunch outside. It was a very relaxing day, which is just what I think everyone needed after mid-terms week.

Saturday we had to go to Charles Darwin's house for our science class. Inside the house, there were exhibits on the top floor dedicated to different parts of his life. On the ground floor they had rooms set up exactly as he had them back then. There was also a tea room, where we had lunch. Outside, we walked down the "sand path", which is where Darwin used to walk when he needed to gather his thoughts. Supposedly, it is where he came up with the theory of evolution. We also saw his greenhouse/laboratory. I actually enjoyed this trip a lot more than I thought I would. Even though I don't believe some of his "theories", it's still really interesting to see how and why he developed them.

After Darwin's house, we went to Abbey Road. This is the famous area where the Beatles had their recording studio AND where their last album cover picture was taken.

Today, a few of us went to Hillsong London. Hillsong church is based in Australia, and they put together a lot of Christian worship cd's. The churches are huge, consisting of thousands of people. This one is so big they have 3 services, each of which are held in theatres! Like, HUGE theatres. It was an amazing experience, probably a little too large for me. However, the speaker was wonderful.

Well, that's a shortened version of the past couple weeks. I've been having some trouble posting pictures, but I am aware that those are the main reasons many of you probably read this blog, so I'll try my best to get some more up!! I probably will not be updating again for about another week at least, since we are going to Egypt tomorrow, and won't be back until next Sunday. Until then, have a great week guys!

The famous Abbey Road (and it's crosswalk)!

Magdalen College of Oxford- where C.S. Lewis taught

Darwin's backyard

Darwin's home.

Pictures from Amsterdam!

as promised...

Amsterdam has so many bicyclists! they have the right of way, over both pedestrians and cars. And there are entire parking garages just for them!! crazy!

We had to get a jumping picture....

Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam!!

Our hostel... and where we THOUGHT we were going to be sleeping

where we ended up sleeping!

In front of the hostel... that we will never go back to!

On the canal cruise!

largest windmill in the Netherlands!

at the Diamond Factory

and THAT was Amsterdam.