our last day

don't let the smiles fool you. we were very sad to be finished with our little adventure. i suppose we should have a final comment to sum up the trip, but i'm too tired at the moment. maybe i can get josh to write something witty. all i can say is that i'm incredibly grateful for the experience and what it taught me. behind all the pyramids and temples is a country i will not soon forget. that and i will never again take traffic signals for granted.

siwa oasis

cairo wanderings

the market dictates

most hipster band ever

note the balancing act

primary school murals

sinai peninsula

sunrise from top of mt. sinai

mt. sinai again

cocktail hour

streets of nuweiba

inside a pigeon coop

journey from aswan to luxor

freight train conductor and other unknown smiling guy

felucca


our felucca captain. he's as young as he looks.

the nile at dusk

note the advertisement for skin whitening cream

dahab (red sea coast)

the sickness is lifting. it feels like a new day! the first two days in dahab were pretty miserable for me (lorna) due to a bad cold i probably caught on either the twelve-hour train ride or nine-hour bus ride it took to get here from luxor. but now it's all sunshine, beaches, seafood... and a weird rash/bug bite that covers the entire upper left portion of my back. it's always something, right?

josh's beach attire

aswan

Hey all, here's a couple photos from our trip to Aswan. It was pretty nice but, to be honest, not the coolest place we've been. The place is beautiful, but the harassment and ripping off is the highest we've seen anywhere. In Cairo you haggle down to half price, here it seems like you haggle down to one fifth. At one point I ended up dragging a guy down the street as he was trying to pull me back into his shop...

Nonetheless, the water's great, the climate's good, and it made a good starting point for Lorna's felucca trip. Oh, and we met a very sweet family who had fun henna-ing lorna's arm.

Philae Temple

Nubian village on Elephantine Island

henna artists

view from Aswan Dam on the Nile

Port Said

Ah, Port Said. Me and Lorna headed up to this sleepy town on the Suez for the weekend to get away from the insanity that is life in Cairo. It was perfect. The streets were sparse, the people kept to themselves, and the architecture was beautiful. We ate calamari sandwiches from a cart and got drunk with Polish sea captains who tried to convince us to go bowling... Oh , and they have one of the best pastry shops ever, we went there about 6 times in two days...

western desert

i was worried i wouldn't get out to the western desert since josh didn't have time to make the trip with me. i don't think i've written much about the limitations of being a lone female traveling in egypt, but let's just say it ain't easy. luckily, i found a very sweet brazilian couple and their little boy who were open to an extra travel companion. the four of us and our guide spent two nights camping under the stars and eating some of the best meals i've had in egypt so far. we had a couple vehicle mishaps - flat tire and dead car battery – which take on a new level of severity when in the middle of the desert, but in the end we all agreed it just added to the adventure.

i was surprised how much desert landscapes can vary in a relatively small area – black, white, stone cliffs, “sand seas”, etc. one of the highlights was finding seashells revealing the fact that the desert had once been sea... the water kind. it was a wonderful trip that has me yearning for more. hopefully, i can find a way to get out there again, and this time bring josh to enjoy it with me.

rodrigo and paula deserve the credit for some of the photos below. they were kind enough to share with me.

our guide essan, rodrigo and julio (photographer: paula)

"chalk" formations carved out by wind

desert fox looking for our leftovers

our camp for the first night

camel market

Hey all, Josh again. So Lorna, our friend Chris and me wake up in the wee hours of the morn to climb on a microbus in Imbaba (one of many Cairo ghettos) headed toward Bir'ash, home of Egypt's largest camel market. The ticket taker can't be older than 12, but he seems to be the toughest guy onboard; arguing about change with new riders and yelling the destination to all within earshot as we pass through sleepy villages made green by an irrigated Nile.
The camel market is a trip. We aren't really sure what's more interesting; the men or the camels. The control of the beasts is done by mobs of gallibiyya-clad men with canes whacking away at the wandering dromedaries. We sit with our cups of tea amidst a swarm of flies.
Afterwards, we head to what is basically a flea market next door which seems to mainly traffic in sweaters, mattresses, and doors. We get ourselves some ta'meya and peruse the junk, where I find a Casiotone complete with an Arabic scale option. I ask the guy if it works; he says he doesn't know. I ask how much; he says three hundred pounds. I laugh and after some haggling, we settle on ninety ($17). By this time a crowd has gathered to watch the foreigners make such a fuss over what they see (rightly so) as a piece of junk.
Prize in hand we hop into the back of a pickup truck which takes us to the town of Menashy. There we walk across town, harassed by little girls who are entranced by Chris' lanky frame, long hair, and booming, stilted Arabic. We hop in a bus and head back to Imababa. When we get there, the bus slows and we prepare to get out, but then the bus begins to pick up speed again. Undaunted, Lorna, like a regular action hero, jumps for it. Unfortunately, clogs are not made for such antics and she eats it. She dusts herself and laughs to the crowd of men gathered around. I love having such a tough wife.

the elections...

So Lorna felt like y'all might want to hear my retrospective on us finally winning the white house. I honestly don't know where to start. I'm saddened that we weren't able to be in the states when it was announced. Not that there hasn't been a lot of celebrating here, but I imagine nobody celebrated quite as hard as our beloved, drunken liberal Portland did.
I wish I could tell you that it's been a relief. In many ways it has, but this campaign really has just solidifed our status as political junkies and now we can't help but check the feed every day; anxiously awaiting the announcement of Treasury Secretary, eyes on the Minnesota senate race (204 votes!), talking trash about Alaskan voters, etc. But it was a fun race wasn't it? I think it really got a lot of us involved more than we ever had been and I hope that we keep that going. We look forward to the next eight years (fingers crossed), but, if this last president has taught us anything, it's that we must always keep an eye on what he's doing and call him out when mistakes are made...
Don't mean to sound like such a pessimist. Under all of it, I'm giddy as a schoolgirl...

thank you, america!

3am, november 5, 2008. we were at our friend jon's apartment watching cnn with pizza, sweets, and coffee on hand. obama was definitely the favored candidate here amongst egyptians. "george bush no good."

chip sandwich

street food makes us happy. freshly made potato chips, lettuce, tomato, and tahini/baba ghanouj type sauce packaged neatly into a pita pocket. this "sandwich" has other variations: the chips can be replaced with french fries ("batatas") or falafel ("ta'meya"). it's the cheapest street food you can find at 15 to 20 cents each, and if you catch it when the falafel is fresh you can't imagine a better deal.

pyramids of giza

i was on a solo mission this day while josh was at school. he went to see the pyramids before i got to egypt... and josh being josh, didn't take a single picture while there. i love it. he may have been the first modern day tourist to NOT take a single photo at the great pyramids of giza!
i was surprised how close they are to the city of cairo. in the second photo you can see the city in the background. this was taken from the foot of the pyramid of khafre (2nd largest).
despite all of the litter and men selling camel rides, i thought the pyramids were captivating. seeing them while driving along the highway, as a backdrop to the city, made me appreciate their beauty more. josh, on the otherhand, was not so impressed. there is, of course, a lot of hype about them, so i can understand being a bit disappointed with the reality. and it's hard to get past the feeling of being in a tourist trap – there are tour buses everywhere.

yes, yogurt.

one of our favorite finds in egypt so far has been coconut flavored yogurt. we can't get enough of it! why we don't have this in the u.s. i do not know.

sand storm

It's kind of hard to tell here, but josh and I got caught in a sandstorm the other day while shopping in the market. It got pretty intense at one point and everyone was in a bit of a frenzy... lots of eye rubbing and taking cover. Soon after that, it rained! it was a sizable shower that went on for at least a half hour. Josh and I didn't think we'd get to see rain because it usually happens in january/february, but I guess we got lucky. This probably sounds pretty amusing to our portland friends and family who are in the process of hunkering down for another long, wet winter.

best of both worlds

this is a statue of a particularly buxom egyptian goddess at the alexandria national museum. when the greeks ruled egypt there was a lot of blending of artistic styles. this goddess has an egyptian style headdress and a very greek style body.

So about the school...

Hey all, Josh here. I know I haven't been very good with the updates, guess I just realized that Lorna would be on it once she got here. Anyways, I figured y'all might want to know what the school's like considering the blog's named after it...

As you can see, the two prominent features are; 1) It looks like a mall, and 2) It's in the middle of freakin' nowhere. The students are mostly too young for an old man like me, and it is a little strange to have moved to a third world country to be surrounded by kids who are all richer than me. Ma'alesh...

lorna's turn: as you can see josh isn't too happy with his school. but it really is a beautiful campus... in the middle of the desert. the first photo was taken from outside the campus walls (that little pink dot is the sun). he's also been saying that the classes are getting more difficult, so at least it's doing its job as far as educating him.

balaa' and muhammad

young boys are some of the friendliest people we meet on the streets. they learn a few key english questions and phrases and get a kick out of using them with westerners. balaa' and mohammad quickly befriended josh and i on the trolley in alexandria. we all had fun taking pictures of each other.

urban sunset

the smog is constant and sometimes unbearable, but seeing intensely beautiful sunsets every night from the center of cairo almost makes it worth it... almost.

sheesha!

josh initiated me quickly to egyptian life with sheesha (smoking tobacco via water pipe) in a traditional ahwa. common flavors are apple, mint, and plain old tobacco. ahwas are places where men gather to sit, drink tea/coffee, smoke sheesha, play backgammon/dominoes, watch football, etc. egyptian women aren't allowed in most ahwas but tourist women are. you can find an ahwa around every corner.

school murals

many of the elementary schools have murals on the walls that border them. Now when i'm walking around the streets and I hear lots of kids screaming and laughing I head in that direction in hopes of finding some great artwork.