Mummies or Bust (Sorry about the title...it was either that or walk like an Egyptian...)

Hello there from Cairo! When my mom asked about where the other students were going for the break, I told her it was either Egypt or Baghdad so, here I am! We arrived into the Cairo Airport around 8pm Thursday afternoon. Bought our extremely jenky Egyptian visas (seriously-- The guy handed us a sticker and we had to stick it on to our passports ourselves!), and stepped out of the airport into the dense and smoggy, hot Cairo air. I am not a particularly huge fan of haggling, but luckily the boy who is with us, Ian, seems to enjoy it.  After settling on a price of 60 Egyptian pounds (that is 10 dollarsish) we were on our wait to 'Wake Up! Cairo' hostel which we had found on the hostelworld website for about $7.00 a night.  Traffic was an absolute mess and between no one knowing where our hostel was (which we soon found out why) and our spotty Arabic, after 2 hours of searching, I was about ready to call it quits and check into the Hyatt. Eventually, we decided to get out of the cab and sluff it on our own. We met two nice men who looked at our map and walked with us until we found it.  Unlike anyone else in the country, they did not want money for helping us.  We found the sign for the hostel and walked into the building. Actually- 'building' is being very generous. Yes, it was a structure with a few windows and walls- but that is about it. We walked in and were greeted by particularly cute but surely rabies carrying cat. We took one glance at the elevator and its lack of well, buttons, and headed up the stairs. "to the 7th floor!" Evelyn said, and we started up the stairs. about 5 floors later Rachel pointed out that there hadn't actually been any floors yet. We had, however, found feces on the floor, and new living or once-had-been living surprise around every corner. I more than half expected to run into dead body next. Eventually, after realizing floor 7 meant 17, we arrived at the hostel.  Contrary to the scenery of the rest of the building, the hostel was (is, I am still here) quite nice.  They give us complementary breakfast in the am and are generally very helpful. Plus our room is home to the best air conditioner I have ever experienced. After a mildly rough day of traveling, we hit to sack and slept well.
Early the next morning we were up and ready to start our day at the Egyptian Museum.  We took about 4 hours to get through the whole thing.  Between sauntering pace (IIIII'm not positive that word works in this context but I am going to go with it) and the outrageous heat/humidity, we were all pretty groggy the whole day.  That being said the museum is amazing. Seeing all the artifacts, and thinking about how many different museums in the world are home to other Egyptian artifacts, I couldn't help but ponder on the outrageously immense amount of STUFF the Egyptians produced. Seriously--the museum is more like a warehouse! My favorite part, was definitely the mummy section of the museum. It was unreal to see bodies that were 6000 years old still with hair and fingernails. When I was in 4th grade, I did a project on Hatshepsut, arguably the most successful female pharaohs (see! The strong, beautiful, Barnard woman was brewing in me since childhood!).  What is now believed as her mummy is at the museum. The card on the glass says something along the lines of "This overweight, diabetic woman is now believed to be the mummy of the Great Hatshepsut. She also had bad teeth." Although I suppose I could have chosen a more glamorous woman to do that project, something about that description seems fitting for me.  After the museum we went back to awesomely freezing cold room of our hostel and took a nap. Around 7, we headed out to some neat restaurant Evelyn read about in her guidebook, joined by our roommate, Stephanie, an ex-woman-in-finance who had earned enough American Airlines miles to quit her job and travel around the world.   Must be nice.
Today, it is Saturday, and the hostel people told us we would be better off going to the Pyramids etc. today rather than Sunday as there would be less traffic.  The hostel arranged for their driver to pick us up and drive us around for the day.  We started at the Red Pyramids (that used to be covered in red granite that has since fallen off).  We arrived around 10am as literally the only tourists on the entire grounds. We bought our tickets (everything is half price with our student IDs!) and pulled up to the base. Unlike Giza, going inside this pyramid does not cost extra extra money so we decided to go inside. IT. WAS. AWESOME.  It was such a weird experience climbing down the ramp/stairs. It was a mine-like tunnel that would have caused serious problems for someone with any sort of claustrophobia. Once inside, we exchanged "THIS IS SO SO COOL, WOAH, and OH MY GOD"for a few minutes and then stood there staring at the ceiling for a while reflecting on the fact that we were all alone in an ancient Egyptian pyramid. Woah.  We followed along through the empty rooms until with came to a dark staircase that lead to the tomb room.  I ran ahead to check it out, and sprinted back to catch my breathe. "Has anyone ever gotten their hair permed?" I asked. The room smelled VIOLENTLY of ammonia, a chemical used in the mummification process. Although the smell was definitely overwhelming the fact that it was so old made it so cool.  After that, we climbed back into the car and took off for the Pyramids at Saqqara.  Here we saw the oldest of the Pyramids and were also seriously bothered by the huge group of locals trying to trick you into tours, extra fees.  Although that did put a bit of a damper on the beauty of the scenery, we got over that pretty quickly.
Between Saqqara and our next sight, the Pyramids of Giza, we made a stop at a Papyrus print shop and an incense store where I purchased a few gifts, including a lovely painting of the Egyptian symbol for family, with the name 'Tully' spelled out in hieroglyphic. It better make it to some wall in the AZ house.
Around 1pm we arrived to the Pyramids of Giza and after a bit of debating, decided to take a Camel/horse ride around the Pyramids.  This was also, very, very cool. In my opinion, camels are super weird and are definitely underratedly gigantic. We basked in the sun (with sunscreen of course, Mom and Dad) and took in the awe-inspiring, breathe-taking (there I go with the cliches again!) spectacle of the pyramids and the sphinx.  Around 5pm this afternoon we arrived back to the hostel, a bit toasty with a lot of great memories.  Tonight, we plan on getting a felucca boat and cruising around the Nile for a few hours.


We have two more days in Cairo. Monday night will take an overnight train to Aswan, spend a night there, drive out (at 4am, yuck) to Abu Simbel Temples (yay!)  then get on a boat that we will stay on for three nights with stops on the way until we reach Luxor. Friday, we will take another overnight train back to Cairo, come back to the hostel to shower/regroup, then fly back to Amman Saturday night, in time to get a good nights rest in before classes resume Sunday. 


I'm sure I'll tell you all about the rest of my week in Egypt, but thought I would get a head start with the posts while I could.  I am currently on the hostel computer and only paid for an hour and I have been on here for two...oops.  Insha allah that won't be a problem. I'll upload pictures when I'm back in Amman.

Maa Salama, wa Ehubkum!