Okay, so on Wednesday, July 9th 2008, (Brittni's Birthday!) we woke up at 5:15 to hit the Valley of the Kings as early as we could, to avoid the heat and the masses of tourists. The morning looked a lot like the day we went to Giza, and it was light out by the time we left, but not overly bright. Luxor is pretty in the early morning, before it gets hot and people begin to yell things that I can't understand in Arabic. I don't remember ever seeing clouds in Egypt, so the sky must've been clear and blue with a grey layer beneath that is something of a semi-permanent desert inversion mixed with some pollution (although less than Cairo). I expected the Valley of the Kings to be much more vast, and look more like hills of golden sand... I was surprised to find it made mostly of pale orange sandstone with a whiteish dusty-looking pathway leading to the tombs of various kings.
Part of me wished that I could've been there to see how it was before all the archaeologists, pollution and tourism got to it. Emad, our tour guide told us that the kings started to be buried ("Bae-reed" Dad, not "Buhr-reed" hehe) there after the pyramids because the pyramids ended up being something of a giant flashing neon sign to tomb robbers saying, "HEY! PICK ME!!! I AM FULL OF GOLD AND TREASURE, PLUS I'M HUGE AND TAUNTING YOU!" so... I think they probably made a wise decision, at least since they truly believed that all their treasure would be helpful to them in the afterlife. Even so, many of the tombs in the valley of the kings were raided by individuals like the bad guys in Indiana Jones, even though all the stuff in them clearly "belongs in a museum" as Indie would say. I believe that the tomb of Tutankamun (King Tut) was the only one which was not plundered, because it was so well hidden due to the excavation of another tomb near it.
Anyways, so here is the part where I tell the story of the time I was most frustrated on the entire Egypt trip: So we got to the Valley of the Kings and received some instruction from Brother Draper that was rather helpful, informative (and very concise!!),
we then had the opportunity to listen to our tour guide explain many things about the Valley. *deeeeep breath*
Okay. So Emad is a very knowledgeable individual. I am very grateful for the things that he taught us... I just had an incredibly difficult time listening to him. I'm sure he is an excellent tour guide to many groups of individuals who don't listen or catch things the first several times around, but I felt like our group is rather sharp, and fairly adept at listening to important and interesting facts. I consider myself a relatively patient person, and honestly, I wanted to be respectful and listen, but I simply could not. The feeling of wasted time in a place that I so desperately wanted to explore, and had such a limited amount of time to do it in, was almost overwhelming. Redundancy is not usually a huge issue with me, but as I was standing there, feeling the air get hotter as the bright Egyptian sun began to beat down heavily upon us and saw what seemed like thousands of tourists pouring into the valley, (thereby destroying the very reason we woke up so early) and torturously watched my minute hand go nearly halfway around my watch, I looked around in angst while trying to remain respectful. I slowly felt any Christlike attributes I may have begun to attain in my life drain from my heart only to be replaced by sorrow, annoyance and frustration. This frustration with poor Emad did not recede for the rest of the Egypt, and he lectured us every day at every site. *sigh* There were times when I felt like screaming Strunk and White's motto of "OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS!" at him. All I wanted was to listen to what Brother Draper (or Brother Seely if he had only been there) had to say about the sites. Anyways, after facing my Mt. Moriah of patience, we were turned loose in the Valley of the Kings, to see King Tut's and the tombs of 3 other Pharaohs of our choosing!!!! :D
I first went into King Tut's tomb, which was pretty interesting. They had his mummy on display in a case at the lefthand side of the tomb... he was just a little guy. (A lot of that was probably the fact that he was a mummy and his organs were in jars somewhere and skin was all dried out.) But still. He was young when he died, possibly about 16 or 17, and Egyptians were a pretty small people to begin with. Little did I know it, but his tomb was far from impressive compared to the tombs of some of the other pharaohs that I saw that day. It was rather small, with some painted hieroglyphics to the right side where his sarcophagus was for thousands of years. The quality of the paint was astonishing to me, I couldn't believe that it had lasted so long. There was a guard down there, making sure we didn't take any pictures. OH! And I picked up another pet peeve in Egypt. While I was yet annoyed with poor Emad (Or "Habibi" as he is commonly referred to by the Draper students due to his superfluous use of the word to command or yell at us), I felt a jabbing agitation at Arab guards, who, when they do not speak English, feel that it is their duty to communicate harsh or abrupt commands with loud clapping, and seem to think that will do the job. Being angrily "clapped at" when you don't know what you are doing wrong is highly frustrating. And listening to others being constantly clapped at is not all that fun either. (So the angry-arab-man-clap has officially made it to my top 3 pet peeves, right after stuff in the eye and pronouncing the word "nuclear" "nukular".) So we were angrily-arab-man-clapped at several times before we figured out/decided that he was trying to tell us that our time in the tomb was up and we needed to leave... and even then as an act of rebellion I stayed stubbornly situated in the tomb for 2-3 more angry claps, pretending like I didn't hear/understand them until I felt good and ready to go. I am an arrogant American after all ;). My friend Savanna and I got our picture taken by the sign when we got back up out of the tomb.
So after hitting Tutankamun's tomb, we were forced to listen to Habibi for a short while (although it seemed like eternity) we were finally set free on the site. I believe the tombs I went to were that of Ramses IV, Tutmoses III, and one that I wrote in my journal as "I can't remember, I'm so exhausted." The other tombs were truly impressive. We weren't allowed to take pictures in any of them, although I got some of the entrances.
Colors in the tombs were highly impressive, as well as carvings that covered the walls and the ceilings. In many, the outermost casing of the coffin was left, gigantic granite boxes, held open slightly so that if one were to shine his or her "torch" in them, one could see the inscriptions and carvings on the inside. All of the tombs made me wish I was an Egyptologist who could easliy read hieroglyphics. I knew what many of the symbols meant, from packets, class and Brother Draper's optional pre-Egypt seminar, but couldn't piece together anything really exciting. By the time we left, the sun was really working us hard and we were all feeling the heat. We had a bathroom break--Water Closets or WCs (restrooms) are a valuable commodity in Egypt. You have to pay, usually a few shekels, and take your own toilet paper since the individuals stationed there feel that it is only needful for you to have a teensy tiny square. Going to the bathroom in America is a ridiculous luxury that I will probably someday take for granted again, but hopefully not too soon. Luckily, not every toilet was a squatter-hole in the ground, although a flushing toilet was considered "nice." Hand sanitizer became my best friend. Funny side note--a few days after we got home from Egypt, my roommates informed me that while I was sleeping one night before they went to bed, I slept-sanitized my hands. I clapped them together above me and rubbed them vigorously and said "thanks Ashley!" as though I had borrowed some from her. That is how habitual it became. Okay, so we had a bathroom break after the valley of the kings which was very helpful considering many of us had already consumed 1.5 liters of water.
As for the rest of the Valley of the Kings day, we visited the temple of Ramses the III which was pretty cool, and then went back to the hotel. Then I believe several of my friends and I walked down the road from the hotel a ways (to the end of the Luxor Temple--which is in no means a Mormon temple for any of you that might've been confused) in the blistering heat before going back and deciding to go swimming.
Swimming!!! Hooray! It was so much fun. The water was cool, and although I was frightened at first to put my face in, (you know, amoebas, protozoans and giardia and whatnot), eventually I caved to peer pressure (only after an intense scrutiny of the water and its possible chlorine/ozone level) and many of us were splashing and playing for a good few hours. I don't remember if it was that day or the day following it that we built a giant human pyramid in the pool. Someone got it on video of their camera, I shall have to obtain a copy, but it was incredible. We had a small boy from Holland named Sylvester be the tippy top of the pyramid, but that afternoon we didn't quite make it. Anyways, it was fun, and a rather unifying, "team-spirit!", building experience. Haha. "Building." :) I am punny. After dinner, we went on the camel ride.
Oh the camel Ride. Many of you have heard tales about the camel ride, since I was quick to tell about it when I got home. I'm just going to take straight out of my journal what I said about the camel ride, (although I reserve the right to edit it and make it more interesting since I was falling asleep when I wrote it and it is not the best quality): "We took a falucca ride (a falucca is something akin to a small sailboat) across the Nile and our falucca...driver? Captain? was really cool. He put on Bob Marley music at someone in our group's request and we all had a dance party! I got my picture taken with him.
Brother Draper truly "got jiggy with it" and busted out some seriously amazing dance moves, hahaha. It was awesome. So we got to the western bank of the Nile & there were the camels waiting for us. It was so cool! I was very excited. I went over to my camel and my guide guy helped me get on.
He was very talkative and friendly... he said all the things that people trying to get money from you always say, like 'beautiful smile! Magical eyes!'etc... and so I was just quietly saying thank you and trying to shove off my uncomfortableness and enjoy the camel ride. He asked me if it was ok that we talked and of course I said yes, so he was talking to me as we got everybody on camels. Then my camel stood up, which was quite [an uplifting (haha I'm so funny)] experience. They get up with their back legs first which isn't what I was expecting, but it was really fun. Anyway, so Nathanael came over on his camel and said hi and I took a picture for him and my guide (he told me his name but unfortunately I can't remember it) asked if he was my boyfriend. I said no, that he was just a friend, but I think he misunderstood me, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, and I decided early on to just let him think that, and you'll hear why later. So we went on the camel ride all around and it was beautiful country. There were banana trees and date trees ('Sugar Dates!!! Sugar dates and Pistachiooooosss!!!!' a gold star to whomever can name the movie!) and the sun was setting. As we were walking, my guide began to say things like 'you're happy with your boyfriend? You not want an Egyptian boyfriend? Boyfriend not need to know!' to which I would answer respectively (and truthfully when considering Michael, ;)) 'Yes, very happy! No, thank you. (*nervous laughter*) haha... I would know. No thanks.' At first jokingly saying it and I laughed nervously and tried to be as polite as I could, but it was awkward. Oh, and at the beginning, he had me promise that I would get a picture with him at the end, to which I politely, although begrudgingly, agreed. He also asked me where I was staying (I told him I wasn't allowed to tell him) and how old I was. He was/is 20. We kept going and every once in a while he'd pull my camel out of th eline and let a few more go past, until I was nearly at the end. It made me pretty nervous, but Mark and David were still behind me so I wasn't too panicked. Then things started to get really awkward. He told me he would massage my legs and asked me if it was ok, but I told him a very firm 'No' and after he said it many times, I told him it would make me very uncomfortable. He then asked me if my boyfriend and I lived together, and I said no, that we lived in separate houses (I didn't mention that it was several countries for the time being ;)) with our own families. He then proceeded to say [GRAPHIC WARNING TO YOUNGLINGS! haha] 'you come sleep with me tonight. Just one night, boyfriend not have to know.' He was dead serious too. I was freaked out, and I think he could tell, and then he said 'you will like. Egyptian men are strong' to which I strongly and boldy flat out said 'NO. No no no no no no no no no no.' Yikes. After that he asked if he made me mad, and I said no, I should've said yes, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He then offered me another leg massage and told me how he wants to go to America and how difficult it is in the Army (everyone in Egypt has to serve in the army for a certain period of time, it is not a choice). After that, he offered me a cigarette, and then some weed. When I declined both, he asked if I drank and I said no, then he went on some more about Egypt and how he really wants to go to America, and right then and there he asked me to marry him. (:| YIKES!) Not even jokingly. I was scared that I might misunderstand something that he said and accidentally agree to something horrible and get in huge trouble. I obviously declined, (I was highly disinclined to acquiesce to his request). Anyway, we were led through a village and everything was so delapidated and dirty, and people were asking us for money, but I only had the dollar we were to give to our guide as a tip. These people were so poor, but the children were so cute. I felt horrible riding through that village on a camel like it was such an even or place to witness. Ugh. *sigh*. ugh. ...Anyway... my guide and I continued to have really awkward snippets of conversation that I tried to kill as quickly as possible, and yet in the most polite way I could the rest of the way back. He offered me/ gave me a flower (which I promptly threw into the Nile after the ride). Oh, and he had me ride "Egyptian style" which was to put my feet on the camel's neck, and he used the rope to tie my feet up (semi-jokingly) but yeah, creepy. Anyway, after another offer to massage my 'very nice' legs, we were finished and I got off and got my picture with him as quickly as possible
and gave him his tip (he wanted me to kiss him for the picture, but I said 'No way'). Then I grabbed Mark (the nearest JC male) who was very confused and had been oblivious to everything going on and told him to walk right next to me as I had a minor panic attack of creeped-outedness as we walked back to the falucca. Anyway, besides the creepiness, my camel ride was way cool. My camel's name was Alex." Wow. That was a long journal entry. I did it on the train the night afterwards, because the night before I fell asleep writing it. Anyways, looks like I only got one more day done for Egypt! I'm off to bed, seeing as I spent 2 hours on that, haha. I love you all so much though, and hopefully one of these days I'll get all caught up, though it is very doubtful. At least now all of you have an accurate account of my Camel Adventure. :) In splendidly wonderful news, I got a package from Sherri for my birthday! Looks like she loves me most. ;) I noticed that she carefully chose to include a large package of MIKE n' Ikes, haha. It made me laugh. Daniel and Bertha's wedding announcement was beautiful and very tastefully done as well! Thank you so much Killen family (also, Mike finally got an American companion! Hooray!)! Anyways, I really need to upload these pictures and get to bed, but I love and miss you all so much! Thank you for everything, I'll try to write again soon!
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