July 6, 2008

Egypt

EGPYT!!!!!! We embarked upon our 7 day Egyptian tour bright and early on Sunday and July 6, 2008. We honor the Sabbath on Saturday here, so Sunday is a normal day perfect for a super long bus ride with a ton of stops along the way. We stopped at a lot more places than any of us quite expected, but they were sweet and it made for some sweet adventures. The first place we went to was Beersheba where we all had to wear hard hats around the site. This was probably the best joke that anyone has ever played on tourists before. There was these buckets of hard hats that were of course nasty from a ton of tourists head sweat from the ridiculously hot temperatures, and they made everyone who came to the site put one on. Well, it was probably 15-20 minutes later that we began to look at each other in these ridiculous red, pink, yellow, and blue hard hats and wonder, wait why are we wearing these things? The place was a ruined fortress that did not have a standing wall as tall as me, let alone anything that you needed a hard hat to protect you from. Is that a funny joke or what? At the end you did have like a 5 foot long bridge you went under, but man it was funny that we wore hats for that! Beersheba is supposedly cool because everyone says that is where Abraham dug his well, but Brother Draper wasted no time in explaining to us how that was actually false. Which led us to wonder why we are here actually? Apparently because it is just a really old place.

We went to another place, that was just awesome. It was a huge ruined fotress/city that was on top of a huge hill that had caves cut into it all over the place. Tricia and I, as we have made it a habit, decided to wander off and find some sweet tunnels and caves to search for treasure in. Well, we went into all of these houses built into the side of the hill that were awesome, but then everyone caught up with us and played in there too. Then, while we were walking down the path back to the bus, we jumped over a wall and scurried up to where it looked like there were some caves, and there totally were! The first ones we went into were pretty cool, but there was still like footsteps and stuff in there, so there had been people in it quite recently. But, it was still way rad. The second one was even better because there were not foot prints and deep in the back corner of it there was a little tiny hole in the middle of the wall. We both climbed through it and it looked like we were the first two to climb into that room in a long long time. It was super dark and all we had as light was the focus light and flash of my camera. We made our way around and I climbed up to where I could see more of a pass, but it would be a difficult climb with no flashlight, but then we remembered that we were not archeologists, explorers or treasure hunters, but students and that we just might be late for the bus. We left the cave, I climbed back through that hole face first and fell on to my shoulders! Then, we proceeded to sprint down the hill to where the buses were waiting. Sure enough, there was Dr. Draper standing outside of the bus staring up at the hill with his clipboard in hand. I got to him first because I went around the steps and just plowed down the mountain, unlike Tricia who was still just flying down the steps as fast as possible. I get to him and ask the obvious, “Are we late?” “Oh yeah” he replys. Then when Tricia arrives he asks us both to wait on the bus at the next stop. Well the whole way to the next stop we are playing the guilt game and laughing and nervously handling the anxiety from the impending punishment: like a child waiting to be punished by his mother for something he knows he has done wrong. Well, Dr. Draper heads into the next site without us, and Tricia and I are left on the bus like two 8 year olds being punished for stealing candy from the candy jar. Time out was real rough on me. I seriously went into six year old mode and even made the statement, “this is the worst punishment I have ever received.” Yeah, my counterpart thought that was pretty ridiculous. The funny thing is, I still hold true to that statement. Eventually Brother Drapes came out and got us and we got to go in and eat ice cream with everyone, but man it was pretty lame! Totally worth it though, no question.

We ended the day at the Kibbutz, this Jewish kind of communal living plantation place. Basically a bunch of Jews who all live together and try to live the law of consecration. It was interesting. The best part was dinner. They fed us a great meal and then we all learned and sang Jewish songs together. It was especially helpful after going to the Western Wall, we felt cool because we were up on their dance moves. We danced, clapped, song, laughed and just had a great time with those people, basically our tour guide and her brother playing the piano. They were really fun though. We danced our hearts away and then split classes to go to separate Kibbutz to sleep. Our class got hooked up. There was a swimming pool at our place and I organized a huge prisoner game using a soccer ball and a wire that hung over the pool holding up a sign. It was awesome. The prisoner game lasted forever, but it was really really fun. Tricia and I also tried running around on the bottom of the pool with a huge stone and that got difficult because the stone was pretty big, but it was fun. Then we slept and had Kibbutz food in the morning.

Bright and early the next morning we woke up and headed across the Sinai Peninsula. A barren barren wasteland. As I sat in that AC bus and looked out over the miles and miles of desert waste in front of us for the entire 6 hour trip, I really felt for the Israelites. When they were saying that it is better to have been slaves in Egypt than to suffer here in the wilderness, they were serious. That place was absolute punishment. It would have been unbearable. That is why you learn the lesson, listen to the Lord! Do not try deviate, do not temp, do not ignore, listen to the Lord because the consequences of sin can end up being worse than 40 years in the most ridiculously hot and desolate place ever. I do not know how much worse, but real bad. We did not even stop for sightseeing and we stop everywhere, it was just a hot and miserable desert. However, when the trip was over, we ended up that evening in Egypt at the Pyramids for a light show! Woot woot!

So, once in Egypt we throw our stuff down in the hotel and cruise over to the pyramids as the sun is setting to enjoy a light show. It was absolutely amazing! Well, actually the light show was ridiculously corny. Like really bad. But, seeing the Pyramids at Sunset and then lit up at night was a real treat. We actually built a human pyramid in front of it with a bunch of guys. It was such a success that we did it like every time we were in front of the Pyramids.