AUC Campus (Jan. 3)

The truth is out.

Now when I suggest/plead/beg Andrew to stay at home to work/study/research and he says,

“I think I’ll just go onto campus even though the commute is a bear. It’s less distracting there. No offense.”

I know that what he really means is,

“You want me to keep holed up in this cave of an apartment when I could go to campus? Who are you kidding?!”

I always knew about the free air conditioning but I didn’t know that campus was akin to a palace. Sheesh. I’d choose campus over me, too, given the choice…which I’m not.

Ibn Tulun and Gayer-Anderson (Jan. 2)

We spent New Year’s morning at church, after which we broke our fast with a delicious meal of potato pancakes. Then we wasted away the late afternoon by napping (me and Miriam) and playing Risk (Andrew, Jacob, Grandpa, and our friend Joseph from the branch) and colouring (Rachel and Grandma). 

It was nice to have a low-key day again so that we could gear up for another full day of touring the next day.

Andrew estimated that Saturday’s activities should take no longer than three hours. I scoffed at him and suggested we’d be gone for at least six. We were, in fact, gone for seven.

We took the metro to Mar Girgis and walked from there to the Nilometer on Roda, first passing over the metro and through a crumbling neighbourhood full goats, children and a few spontaneous garbage dumps…

New Year’s Eve 2009

This was a day of nothingness for me. The past few weeks had been all too exhausting and had taken their toll on Miriam and me, so when we were getting ready to hit the town Karen suggested,

“You can just stay home and sleep. We’ll take Rachel.”

Mother-in-laws are full of such good ideas.

The day that almost wasn’t (December 30)

Our itinerary for today was light and easy compared to the previous three days: swing by the Suez Canal, relax by the Red Sea at Ain Sokhna, finish off the day with a swim at the Maadi House.

It should have been an easy day. But it wasn’t.

We loaded into the van bright and early once again and set off through the desert. Everything was going just fine until we got to the checkpoint/toll booth onto the Suez road.

Super Pyramid Day (December 29)

I’m not sure whose idea it was to do the Dashur, Saqqara, and Giza Pyramids all in one day. It was an exhausting venture, to say the least, and much colder than we had planned on. That desert wind just rips through you!

We learned today that neither of our girls like wind very much.

Alexandria, Day 2 (December 28)

At the insistence of our driver, we started our day bright and early by checking out of our hotel and loading into the van by 8:00 AM. He drove us over to the Fort of Qaitbay in the maniac fashion of his and dropped us off by the ticket booth where we were informed we had to wait until 9:00 AM when the citadel opened.

We had wanted to wander around on the harbour for a while, anyway, so that’s what we did instead, much to the annoyance of our driver who seemed to want us to be on the go the entire day.

Wadi el-Natrun and Alexandria (December 27)

We left in the thick early morning fog to drive up to Alexandria. It’s often foggy in the late evenings and early morning here, but I’ve never seen the fog quite as thick as it was today. Everyone was driving with their hazards lights blinking and we couldn’t see across the Nile, let alone a hundred feet in front of us. It was eerie.

When I woke up from my car-nap, though, the fog had dispelled and the trash-filled desert splayed out in all directions. We still had a couple of hours worth of driving in front of us but were stopping half-way to visit a Coptic monastery.

Our driver pulled into a rest stop/gas station for a twenty minute “smoking break.” For him, of course. We just used it to stretch our legs and let Rachel play on the—get this—playground! This rest stop just sprouted out of the middle of nowhere and came complete with playground and Western shopping outlets. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why they would have such a nice playground out in the middle of the desert. Nothing like that exists in Cairo.

Rachel enjoyed the swings but she doesn’t have very much experience with swings, since Maadi House doesn’t have any, so when she wanted to get off she just let go. The result was a little traumatizing for her—she learned that gravity is still in full force.

Islamic Cairo (December 26)

My friend Jill’s in-laws arrived in Egypt the same day that Reid and Jacob arrived. We flew down to Luxor on the same flight that they did and bumped into them at almost every tourist destination down there. We had talked about setting up some tours together but it just didn’t happen. Finally on Boxing Day we had Andrew take everyone on a little tour of Islamic Cairo.

Christmas Day 2009

Christmas fell on a Friday this year, which meant that we had church in the morning, but only for an hour and at 10:30 instead of 9:30.

Andrew made us get up and open presents before he left for choir practice in spite of my warning of temper tantrums and tears. Rachel had quite the haul of gifts waiting for her under the tree and I knew that parting with any of them would unleash her crazy side.

I was right. But we won’t rub that in Andrew’s face or anything.

Miriam got to open her stocking first. Inside was pretty much nothing—a washcloth (that I put in Andrew’s stocking in 2007 and 2008) and a My Little Pony that the Lewises gave to us before they left. She was still excited about it. As was Rachel, who declared,

“I want one of those, too!”

Banana Island (December 22)

Finally, a sleep in day! The hotel breakfast closed at 10:00 AM, so everyone was up before then so that they could have breakfast. Everyone except for me and Miriam, that is.

We slept through breakfast.

Everyone came up from breakfast, lazed around, packed up their rooms for check-out and moved their things into our room (which we kept until 9:00 PM) and then got ready to go to lunch.

Miriam and I took a nap instead.

Worst thing to happen to archeology since Indiana Jones (December 21)

Before leaving Dendera for good we decided to have a little fun.

With, I might add, blessings from and pleasure for the guards who were egging us on a bit for some of these pictures.

Jacob pretended to be a sphinx…

Dendera (December 21)

Not quite as early as Sunday we loaded back into the van and headed out of Luxor, past the city of Qena, to the temple of Dendera.

I loved seeing all the little villages along the canals. It was very rural—the houses all had farm animals in the front and little shelters made out of grass and mud.

Luxor West Bank (December 20)

Our day started bright and early, at least for us. We loaded into the van at 8:00 AM to be taken across the Nile to the West Bank. Our driver was a happy, obliging fellow which meant that he cheerfully drove us to each destination we asked him to without pressuring us to hurry it up. Last time our driver was not so nice.

Luxor East Bank (December 19)

Our first day in Luxor was bust—we flew down after church on Friday, which was wonderful because the flight took less than an hour and was so much more pleasant than, say, an all-night train ride. Rachel was so excited to fly she could hardly contain herself but behaved wonderfully on the plane. Miriam slept.

We braced ourselves to face the gauntlet of taxi cab drivers circling around outside