Mall Dancing

For those of you who don't feel life is complete without Alisa's dancing, this one's for you. Location: Food Court, City Stars Mall, Cairo.



By the way, we did make it to Jerusalem and it is fascinating - not just because of all the holy sites, but also because of the crazy people watching. Orthodox Jews, girls in booty shorts, and everything in between.

It took us 6 hours to get across the border. Not bad, but waiting in passport control at the Israel border felt like forever. Part of the room had literally become a children's jungle gym with kids hanging upside down from the railings and running in circles. The speed of the line was beyond slow and kept being further delayed by families that reached the front of the queue and then couldn't find all of their children. Honestly? You lost your kid?

The Return of the Puppets

We wandered into a little tailor shop in Madaba, Jordan and noticed a fantastic puppet (or is it an oven mit?) hanging on the wall near the ceiling. The following ensued:

Jerusalem Bound

Tomorrow morning we will wake up early and try to get to Jerusalem. Today we tried to look at Jerusalem from Mount Nebo, the place where Moses supposedly died (we just can't get enough Moses on this trip), but the view was really hazy. We decided we better go see the city in person.

Everyone should guess how long it will take us to get across the border. Apparently, if you could drive straight through it would take an hour and a half . . .

Amman: Where the Falafel is Good and the Hummus is Even Better

We are so caught up we are posting photos taken today!

Except this photo was taken yesterday. We are now in Jordan and exactly half way through our 11 months of travel. We can't believe we're only half way, but we are feeling great and going strong. This is our half way-through celebration dinner of pita, hummus, and falafel. The food in Jordan is really, really good, and we've been a lot of places, and so we really mean it when we say this food is good.

Though also an Arabic speaking country, Jordan already feels quite different from Egypt. In Cairo everything was grandiose and elaborate - big, fancy buildings, bright colors, and bold prints. In Amman, almost every building is rectangular and white. There is a simplicity, but also an orderliness and, perhaps, cleanliness. For instance, the people selling fruit on the streets wear gloves. They might be smoking a cigarette in the gloved hand, but at least they're wearing them! Amman seems a little less conservative than Egypt as well, at least in terms of dress code. We have seem numerous women of various ages walking around without headscarves. So far there is also less hassle than in Egypt. We visited a very touristy place today and none of the vendors asked more than once if we wanted to buy. Amazing!

Another neat thing about Jordan is that the entire country is within 4 hours of the capital. Today we hopped on a minibus for an easy 40 minute drive and arrived at Jerash, home to the remains of Gerasa, one of ancient Rome's decapolis cities. Here are a few shots of the truly impressive ruins. (We really liked it, if you can't tell.)

As of now, you know exactly where we are!

A Celebration

To celebrate us finally, finally, finally getting caught up on the blog (it has taken us many hours and many different computers all with very slow connections), we get to post this photo of Alisa's sunburnt lips. Just keep in mind that they got much worse before they got better. In this photo, the pussing has not even begun.

Ruins, Ruins, and More . . . Shopping Malls

After we lost Marques to medical school, we headed down to Luxor to see some of the best ruins Egypt has to offer. We were awestruck, to say the least, and won't pretend that our photos come close to capturing the magesty and mystique of coming face to face with ancient temples and tombs.

For instance, this photo barely gives a taste to the sea of columns we encountered at Karnak temple. This temple was expanded and elaborated by one pharoah after another and the wealth of history is overwhelming. Almost every inch of ruin was covered in incredibly detailed carvings recounting stories of civilizations, royalty, and gods.

Next we had to visit the tombs. We couldn't take photos inside the tombs but the artwork was very beautiful and well-preserved. The walls and ceilings were full of brilliantly colored scenes of gods and goddesses, as well as hieroglyphics describing the Book of Dead. It felt as if the paintings would come alive and the gods would jump off the walls. This photo is from the the outside of Queen Hatshepsut's embalming temple. The inside of the tombs were like this times 20.

The Valley of Kings. Beneath here are unknown numbers of royal tombs weaving through the earth.

At the Egyptian Museum we saw lots of mummies but the one that was missing was King Tut's. We got to see it inside his tomb. His tomb actually is not as elaborate as the others, but it is the only one so far that has been found fully intact, making it very special. All the other tombs were robbed by tomb raiders long ago - some even shortly after the king or queen was buried. We're glad they didn't get to King Tut's - his mummy was really burnt and crispy looking. It was cool.

Also in Luxor, we took a ride on the Nile in a wind-powered falucca. There wasn't much wind and a leisurely ride down the mighty river was just what the doctor ordered.

We knew we couldn't miss an opportunity to drink from this beautiful, ancient, and sacred source of life and love.

But don't worry, hypochondriacs, we "steri-pen"ed it first. And it tasted delicious.

And then the sun set.

We spent a long time posing for these girls who lived next door to our hostel. At one point they asked Alisa to take a few photos of them. They taught her very carefully how to hold it, wind it up, look through the eye hole, etc. Alisa picked up the camera to discover there was no back and nothing inside. We loved that these girls took their jobs as photographers very seriously -- and they never ran out of film.

A striking difference between the drought in Ethiopia and the modern cities of Egypt were these public water fountains found all over boiling hot Cairo.

When we got back to Cairo we stayed with the Fathy family for our last 2 nights. Here is 8 year old Yosef and I sitting down for lunch at 7pm. After hours of playing dominoes and card games, it was 2 am and Alisa and I were dragging our tired bodies into bed. The rest of the family, however, including Yosef and little neighbor kids were just sitting down for dinner and couldn't believe we didn't want anything to eat.

Not surprisingly, the family didn't really begin to surface until noon the next day. We set out on a mission to buy pants as the only pair I had left were my pajamas. Malls can be an intense experience without 3 young Egyptian women and an 8 year old, so you can only imagine what we were in for.

We shopped and shopped, being pushed and dragged from one store to another, all while the girls maintained nonstop cell phone conversations in which we would be asked to periodically interject things such as "I like Egypt." Here is Sara and her friend at the second mall taking a much needed ice cream break. Duck fans be glad, the combo of green and yellow is all the rage in Cairo.

It took us over an hour in a taxi to get through the Cairo traffic and back home. South Africans (*cough*Gilli*cough*), we know you think you have bad traffic, but it is nothing compared to Cairo. Back home, we found the entire apartment complex strung with multi-colored, blinking wedding lights, men shooting off fireworks, and a cow waiting to be slaughtered.

The next day . . .

Goodbye, Egypt!!!