Friday, May 21, 2010 … Rome
In how many languages can you say my feet are tired? It’s late Friday afternoon, Melinda and I are back at the hotel siesta-ing and resting feet while Joe is … not sure where he is … she and I got off the metro at the Repubblica station and he kept going. While eating a delicioso (I think that’s Spanish, but English doesn’t do it justice) 2 pm buffet lunch at Perilli in Prati, a few blocks from the Vatican, Melinda said, “I think we’ve seen everything in Rome.” Joe pulled out our guide book, started flipping pages and said, “No, there are things we haven’t seen ….” Though the word ‘buffet’ is French, I wonder if buffets in restaurants is an American thing … all you can eat … a bit of everything.
The group of 7 adults seated near us ordered off the menu. They were speaking Spanish and one of the women pulled out an Italian/Spanish dictionary from her bag. Melinda half listened to their conversation, sometimes chuckling. It was a wonderful meal, complete with beer and water. We order water with ‘no gas’ so we don’t get carbonated water. Today we ordered it ‘naturale’, forgot to ask Joe if we were charged for it as it came in a carafe, not a sealed bottle. (Yes, paid 2 euro for it.)
Afterward, in the metro, Joe unloaded water bottles and umbrellas from his pack, took the camera and said he was going back to the Roman Forum, or maybe Palatine Hill, or maybe Capitol Hill. It works for us …. gives me a chance to write a little bit and Melinda is snoozing.
Lunch was memorable because we very much wanted a good one. As we were leaving the Vatican Museums, Melinda said, “If we have a lunch today like we did yesterday, I’m going somewhere else afterward and ordering a second one.” Today was a winner. Yesterday, after hours in St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, we saw a little orange store front restaurant on a side street which looked family-run and intimate. It was the worst restaurant meal in the universe. Should have not allowed ourselves to be seated. Should have found a place where a lot of nuns were eating … they must know the area. There weren’t any nuns in this place. It was family-owned and they were fighting with each other, yelling in the seating area, yelling on the sidewalk near the outdoor tables, yelling from the front counter to the kitchen. An expressionless woman came to our table, with pen and pad, “Si?”, and took our order. Looked like Papa was in charge; he seemed to not like the young man (son?) who seemed to not like him. I wonder if the woman was scared of the guy (her husband?) Lots of yelling between the men. Two women quickly paid and left as we came in; a table of 6 people sat very quietly, ate, paid and left. That left us. We ate our marginal meal, paid, and had to literally squeeze between the young man and the dirty counter during more yelling in order to leave.
I’m thinking it wasn’t just a family, but a “FAMILY”. And the restaurant was not really a restaurant, but a front for “family” business. And the young guy had made a mistake … maybe a huge mistake. And the woman didn’t want to be there, but didn’t want to leave her sons, so she was trapped. She was wearing what looked like a blue housecoat over black pants … because the Papa had taken all her clothes? And the ‘good’ son was following orders, doing what he was told. Joe thinks it was just a family who was yelling at each other and serving not very good food.
Two days ago I made an online reservation for 9 a.m. tickets for today for the Musei Vaticani. Left here at 8:15 a.m., took the metro to the Ottaviano stop, and walked. And walked. And walked more past long lines of people waiting to get in and buy tickets. We entered through the “reservation” door, were eyeballed by the clothing polizio (no bare shoulders or too much leg showing), went through security, sailed over to the ticket booth to pick them up. (Should have made reservations before we left the U.S., so I feel fortunate to have received tickets for today.) Rented audio guides … always have to leave your driver’s license or passport at the audio guide counter … does anyone actually want to take those things home?
The Musei Vaticani consists of about a dozen self-contained museums with over 1400 rooms. You can’t see it all. But we tried. You start out listening to every audio guide stop and since the first collection is the Egyptian collection, it’s all pretty interesting. There is an unwrapped mummy in his coffin …. then a woman in her coffin, not mummified with head, hands and feet exposed. The info pointed out that her hair was dyed red with henna. Her right eye had a piece of cloth over it … learned that her brain was most likely removed through that eye. We saw the scarabs placed on her chest to help give her safe passage. Melinda leaned in and said, “Her inside is filled with sawdust.” She learned that during her 2 weeks in Egypt. I wondered who she was, what her life was like. Children? Content? How did she die? Next was the wrapped mummy in his coffin. In about room 8, Joe said, “We need a plan or we’ll never make it through to the Sistine Chapel.” All roads in the museum lead to the Sistine Chapel.
Frescoes, paintings, sculptures, mosaics, marble floors, painted and gilded ceilings and walls … everywhere you look there is something. And then more, lots more. The Rick Steves’ ROME guidebook says that, in his opinion, you leave either because 1) you’ve died, 2) it has closed or 3) 2 ½ hours have passed. We spent 4 ½ hours in it. There’s a rare deep red stone, porphery (something like that … don’t have internet access to check an online dictionary … am saving this as a word document until the hotel’s internet is working and I can send it) … and our St. Peter’s Basilica guide told us yesterday that 75% of the world’s supply of this stone is in the Vatican City (an independent sovereign state, 109 acres, in the heart of Rome.) We walked on a huge circle inlay of it in St. Peter’s. In the museum, we saw an enormous basin made out of this stone, I think it was 13 meters (over 40 feet) in diameter. And tall, very tall. It once stood in a public place in the Roman Forum. Saw two very high and deep sarcophaguses (sarcophagi??), coffins, that were used in Constantine’s family … one for his wife (and later a pope) and one for a daughter. Each had intricate carvings on all sides. I wonder what the “finders” do with the dust and bones or is nothing left inside? Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire. And the marble … were has all the marble come from? Marble floors, marble statues, marble everywhere.
After a few hours my mind was becoming numb from too much information, too much antiquity, too much history, too much … too much. And I love information and history. THEN … we entered the Sistine Chapel … a long oval room. It was filled with people speaking all kinds of languages, though the Italian guards tried to shush people, said talking was not allowed. Picture taking was definitely not allowed. A hushed atmosphere would have been appropriate, but hard when hundreds of people are standing shoulder to shoulder looking straight up, on all sides, all around. I want to read a biography of Michelangelo … may have one at home … our St. Peter’s guide referred to him many times as a crazy genius. He didn’t want to paint the chapel, but the pope cajoled, begged, threatened and Michelangelo said yes. He spent 4 years (1508-1512) lying on his back painting the ceiling … paint dripping in his face … if he wanted to change something he had to plaster over it and begin again. The room is 5900 square feet of space, he painted the vast majority. Scaffolding was 6 stories high. The pope wanted him to paint the 12 apostles, but he decided he would paint the history of mankind up to Jesus. He also designed the dome of St. Peter’s, based on the Pantheon dome. Yesterday in St. Peter’s, we saw Pieta, the sculpture he did of Mary holding the body of Jesus. Took him 2 years, from ages 22-24. He believed it was as important to find the right block of marble as to do the sculpting; that the figures are in the marble waiting for the excess to be peeled away.
After the Sistine Chapel, we went to the Pinacoteca rooms, paintings and tapestries … saw Rafael’s Transfiguration painting … the last thing he painted before dying at age 37, in 1520, was Jesus’ face in it, considered possibly the most beautiful rendition of his face. Rafael is buried in a crypt in the Pantheon (saw it) and the painting was brought to his funeral. Across from The Transfiguration, in the same room, hangs his tapestry of the Last Supper. It fills up the entire wall and is behind glass. Saw da Vinci’s painting, St. Jerome. Gaunt and harsh.
Joe’s back …. he revisited some ruins, went into a church built in 600 with 120 steps to it from the street. Historically women have crawled up the steps on their knees … to get pregnant, a fertility thing.
We have to check out tomorrow by 10:30 a.m., stash our luggage and take a cab later to the airport (about a 40 minute crazy cab ride from here) as our flight to Heathrow/London leaves at 9:15 p.m. (Joe thought he booked an a.m. flight but this will work fine. We better allow at least 45 minutes for a crazy cab ride.) We’ve rented a car at the airport and will get it Sunday morning. I’m the designated driver for next week in England and Scotland as I have an international driving permit and Joe doesn’t want to drive. His sense of left and right has never been very strong and it’s going to be really important to be aware of left and right. I’m a bit apprehensive. Would like a WalMart parking lot to practice in before driving away from the airport. We’re not going into London … decided to see rural areas by car. We have a 2 night stay in an Edinburgh bed and breakfast next Tues/Wed … can leave the car and take the bus into the city. Other than those 2 nights, we don’t yet have a clue what next week holds. I think we’re all looking forward to simpler towns and villages, more grass and trees, fewer vehicles and crowds. We leave London … volcanic ash willing … May 30, Melinda at 8:30 a.m. and Joe and I two hours later. We shipped 55 pounds of her clothing and books to Nebraska from Bilbao, but we’re hauling the rest with us. Should have shipped 2 boxes.
We flew from Barcelona to Rome Tuesday morning and took a cab from the airport to Hotel Nardizzi Americana … all 4th floor rooms of an old building on a tiny narrow street that is jammed with motorcycles and is across from the ministry of defense or something like that. Lots of polizia in the area. When our cab driver dropped us off, he grunted about the heavy luggage, so I tried to explain in a combination of English, Melinda’s help with Spanish and maybe a French word or two, that she had studied in Spain and was now going home. He drove wonderfully, but traffic is unbelievable … I bet his wife thanks God every night when he walks in alive. I told Melinda and Joe if I ever say I want to drive in Rome to please shoot me.
We’re fairly close to the main train station and close to a metro stop. Cars park on sidewalks if streets are too narrow to allow for both parking and driving. It appears motorcycles park wherever they want to. People cross busy streets, sometimes with 6 lanes of traffic, with no pedestrian lights … you start walking and vehicles are supposed to stop. So far it’s worked. Melinda forges out in front and leads the way. She said this is easy compared to crossing streets in Cairo. There, she and her friends grabbed hands and started running, dodging … said if one got hit they would all get hit. Have been watchful for pickpockets … I’m quite sure the 2 young guys who tore out of a metro car last night at the Flamini stop and ran up the stairs 3 at a time had other peoples’ crossbody bags on them. I didn’t like that area … my gut was saying don’t dawdle, get moving. We crossed the street into the Piazza del Popolo where Melinda turned away a couple men-with-roses-scammers and it got better. The obelisk in that square once stood in/near the palace of Ramses II in Egypt. We walked to the Spanish Steps and the fountain in front of it … sat on the cement benches surrounding the fountain and watched people. Watched the sun set behind the Spanish Embassy (I think that’s what it was, and has been for 300 years.) Watched lights come on. Down one of the streets were Gucci, Dior, Yves St. Laurent. Didn’t go in any of them. The British poet Keats died in the narrow pink building next to the Spanish Steps and Lord Byron lived for a time on the other side of the fountain. I love that stuff.
On the first floor of this building is an opera theater. We’ve heard people practicing. Also on the first floor is an Italian Korean Methodist Church. I think people may live on the 2nd floor. The Oceania Hotel occupies the 3rd floor and Nardizzi Americana is on the 4th … all are a square with the center open to the sky. Very quaint, very old, very unlike American chains. Melinda said it looks and feels like a hostel, smells like a hotel. (She has stayed in some not so nice hostels.) We have a room with a double bed and a single bed and a tiny balcony with narrow French doors that looks across the open area to the entrance hallway to the hotel. We can hear people in the hotel’s reception area from our room. Samy … a 30 something man with lots of curly hair and a beautiful smile … has been very nice. Wish I could speak Italian so I could therefore speak English with the same accent he has. Think I’d like to learn Italian. He was on duty when we checked in, took us to our room, opened the balcony doors, showed us how to use the big old heavy key to unlock and lock our door and then stick it in the holder by the door which allows electricity to turn on. (Same with the key cards from other hotels.) We turn the key into the desk each time we leave the hotel. The huge, heavy wooden doors into the building stand open all day and lock in the evening, but you buzz the hotel and they unlock the door. The one elevator (lift) is tiny. You open the lift’s metal door, then its French doors to enter … close the 3 doors and ride to 4th. Have to remember to close the 3 doors when you exit, otherwise it can’t go. Three women from France squeezed themselves into it last night with a couple small bags, but the man with his bag and backpack rode up with Joe and me.
There’s one hotel computer for guests but internet is spotty. Samy gave Melinda the hotel password so she can use her computer in the reception area. Am writing on her computer and will copy and paste into an email to send when it’s up and running. I know this is long, but it’s also my journaling. Haven’t written about Tuesday … the National Museum or Wednesday … the Colosseum, which is unbelievable, Roman Forum, standing where Julius Caesar was assassinated, standing where his funeral was held ... monuments and statues and ruins and all this in the center of Rome … the Pantheon that evening … we had taken the metro in the morning and walked from spot to spot to spot to spot, then home. Thursday … St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s Square ... seeing where St. Peter was crucified (though a couple or more layers above it), looking at the spot where he was buried, under the church … Trevi Fountain … watched a whole class of kids stand in front of it and toss a coin over their shoulders.
Rather than eat supper at 9 pm or later, twice we’ve bought fresh crusty bread, a hunk of cheese and wine and had it here. Not sure what tonight will hold other than packing to leave. At the moment, Melinda is sleeping and Joe is watching the BBC. We don’t have a clue what’s happening in the U.S., Nebraska or Lexington. Melinda misses her University of Duesto friends and was sad at saying good-bye to Amelia. She said Spanish people don’t hug, but she gave Amelia a bear hug and Amelia fought back tears. She was exceptionally kind and loving to Melinda for 4 months … doted on her … and Melinda thinks Amelia may request another foreign student. Melinda was her first. Amelia is tiny and energetic and speaks very fast … we spent an hour in her apartment one evening in Bilbao. She served us wine and pate, crusty bread and appetizers of some sort. Neither she nor Carlos (her husband, Melinda called him Carl) ate with us. Melinda said it’s the way they do it. They serve guests, don’t eat with them. Though they must eat with dinner guests … we weren’t officially dinner guests. Joy Roos and Melinda were translating between Amelia, Carlos, Joe and me until conversation was whirling around and Joy started speaking Spanish to me. At 10 pm that evening, Joe, Melinda and I walked to the Crazy Horse bar, had a glass of beer and split one hamburger … tiny sliver of meat but I buy round loaves of crusty bread that look like that bun. Enough for now. Linda
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Last Bilabo Post...bittersweet
I want to thank all of you who have been reading my blog. This is my last Bilbao blog....sad, I know. This whole experience has been more amazing than I can explain. It was changed me in a way that will affect me for the rest of my life….for the better of course :)
My parents arrived in Bilbao on Tuesday night and we left for Barcelona Saturday morning. Friday night we had our goodbye ceremony and party for the college. It was tough to say good bye to teachers and friends, but I’d like to think of it more as a “see you later”…because we all know we will at some point. Saturday morning my parents and I left for Barcelona. I knew saying goodbye to Amelia would be one of the hardest things…and it was. As we said our final goodbyes before we got in the taxi …she started to cry and she told me to write her and send her pictures (which of course I will). She was the best host mom I could have had….I am so glad we connected like we did.
While in the airport waiting for my parents I made a list that I wanted to add in with my last blog….so here we go.
Eleven Things I’ve Learning While Studying Abroad in Spain!!
11. The Rain in Spain falls mainly in Bilbao.
1o. Red wine and Coke really do go together! …try it, you will be surprised :)!
9. Public Transportation = a love and hate relationship.
8. Trust Random people….they may surprise you.
7. Always keep kleenix in your purse…it comes in handy for more than just blowing your nose.
6. Speaking Spanish isn’t as terrifying as you may once believe.
5. You can make a home out of anywhere you are.
4. Be careful or else you may have to buy a new camera…..twice.
3. Life-long friends can be made in 5 months.
2. Saying you are full to your host mom doesn’t ever matter…she will always make you eat the flan.
1. Studying abroad is a life changing experience full of fun, laughter, mistakes, learning and growing.
Thanks again to all you readers!
Love you guys! I will be seeing you in less than 2 weeks...yayayayaya
Xoxoxoxoxox -Mel
My parents arrived in Bilbao on Tuesday night and we left for Barcelona Saturday morning. Friday night we had our goodbye ceremony and party for the college. It was tough to say good bye to teachers and friends, but I’d like to think of it more as a “see you later”…because we all know we will at some point. Saturday morning my parents and I left for Barcelona. I knew saying goodbye to Amelia would be one of the hardest things…and it was. As we said our final goodbyes before we got in the taxi …she started to cry and she told me to write her and send her pictures (which of course I will). She was the best host mom I could have had….I am so glad we connected like we did.
While in the airport waiting for my parents I made a list that I wanted to add in with my last blog….so here we go.
Eleven Things I’ve Learning While Studying Abroad in Spain!!
11. The Rain in Spain falls mainly in Bilbao.
1o. Red wine and Coke really do go together! …try it, you will be surprised :)!
9. Public Transportation = a love and hate relationship.
8. Trust Random people….they may surprise you.
7. Always keep kleenix in your purse…it comes in handy for more than just blowing your nose.
6. Speaking Spanish isn’t as terrifying as you may once believe.
5. You can make a home out of anywhere you are.
4. Be careful or else you may have to buy a new camera…..twice.
3. Life-long friends can be made in 5 months.
2. Saying you are full to your host mom doesn’t ever matter…she will always make you eat the flan.
1. Studying abroad is a life changing experience full of fun, laughter, mistakes, learning and growing.
Thanks again to all you readers!
Love you guys! I will be seeing you in less than 2 weeks...yayayayaya
Xoxoxoxoxox -Mel
Barcelona and Canary Islands
Well these last couple weeks have been pretty darn full and I obviously haven’t done a very good job keeping up with the ol blog. So here we go….this is my last couple of weeks in a nut shell. Sorry it is soooo late.
The week after my birthday (April 20th) I flew to Barcelona for a couple days to see my friend Chris who is studying in the Checkz Republic but was on Spring break. It was the first time I have flown alone, but it went very smoothly. While waiting for my delayed plane in the Bilbao airport that Tuesday night I met a couple that were probably in their late 50’s who were from Ohio and were on my flight to Barcelona as well. The man, a University professor, was on sabbatical and so they were living in Barcelona for a couple of months. They were very nice and we talked for quite a while waiting for our plane. I then asked them if they knew where my hostel was because all I had was an address and I wasn’t quite sure how to get there once I got off the plane. The guy pulled out his blackberry, google-maped it, and then they gave me very good details on how to take the bus from the airport to a certain plaza and then they said there would be taxi’s there…and by doing this it would save me about 20 euros….it sure did….everything went very smoothly….what a blessing that couple was!
Getting to the hostel it was very good to see Chris….always nice to see someone from home when you haven’t been there for so long. That night we went to a club….it was decent....hung out for awhile and then headed back to the hostel. Being the only one who could speak Spanish I was the one directing the Taxi’s for that weekend…I assume I did ok considering we always made it back to the hostel. But to be honest it felt good to be the only one cause it made me speak up.
The next day we headed to the beach. It was sunny but windy so it was blazing hot. Chris was super smart the day before and got fried and looked like a lobster but he said that he wanted to go anyway…(I know im safe putting that in here because he put it in his… ). We laid at the beach for awhile but then it began to get to cold because Chris was burnt so badly so we went and got something to eat at a Chinese Restaurant and then went back to the hostel. We then tried watching a movie but failed and fell asleep for awhile. After waking up Chris and I wanted to cook supper so we found a tiny grocery store and bought stuff to make pasta and cheese bread. After supper Chris and I headed to a club which I thought was the best one of the week.
The next day we did the same relaxing thing and just hung out and what not. Then for supper we did the cooking thing again and so we went to a better grocery store and bought stuff for steak tacos. We cooked….which I can thank Chris for considering I don’t like to touch raw meat….and then we got ready to go out that night with the whole group (all of Chris’s friends that were with him). We started off at one club and then half way through the night we went to the Catwalk which is supposed to be one of the best clubs in Barcelona. It was pretty good…..but the best thing about going out for the night life we got in free to every place because of the hostel we were staying at….pretty nice.
The next day was our last day in Barcelona….Chris and I walked around outside for awhile, got lunch, and then headed back because his flight was a couple hours earlier than mine and at an airport that was outside the city. I then chilled alone for awhile and then headed to the Barcelona airport to head back to Bilbao. Over all it was a great couple of days…thanks Chris for having Spring break in Barcelona!!
The next day (Saturday) was one of my friend’s 21st birthday….so of course we had a good ol American celebration for that. During the day a group of us went to the beach for the day. It was such a nice day to lay in the sand. Then Catherine, Ali, and I decided that we would test out the waters….it was a solid 40-45 degrees, but we went in anyway….I mean after you are completely numb you cant really feel much. Then after the beach, Carmina and Mo (friends from Cali) made a good Mexican dinner for a group of us and then we went out. Good night!
That next week we all wanted to pass by quickly because on Thursday we were heading to the Canary Islands for the weekend. It was by far one of my favorite trips! We took the bus on Thursday night from Bilbao to Madrid and then early Friday morning we flew from Madrid to the Canaries. Getting to our hotel we really didn’t know what to expect but it was very nice…each room had two single beds and a little mini kitchen and a bathroom….and it was cheap which was surprising for as nice as it was. It also had a really nice pool area. So the first day we spent some time by the pool while we ate lunch and then headed to the beach. All of the beached on this particular island are black except one. We laid on the beach for a couple hours and of course swam as well…the water was a little chilly but not nearly as cold as Bilbao’s Bay of Biscay. After the beach we headed back to the hotel and took a nap considering the night before was pretty much sleepless between being on the bus and in the Madrid airport. After our nap we …well Catherine and Mo cooked dinner….quesadillas and veggies….perfecto. Then that night we all sat around in one of the rooms and played games and just hung out with the intentions on going out later considering Ali was going to turn 21 at midnight….(this weekend we celebrated two 21st birthday….Ali’s on May 1st and Morgan’s on May 2nd).
While in the room a couple of the girls had left to go get something out of their rooms and they came back saying that they had been robbed and that we needed to go check our rooms. So we went down to our rooms and sure enough other rooms had been touched. We had four rooms on the 2nd room but each were conjoined with one so we left the dividing doors open so we basically had two big rooms. In one pair of the conjoined rooms a I-touch (ipod) and an American cell phone had been stolen and in the other conjoined room (which was mine) a total of 300 euros and a returning bus ticket from Madrid to Bilbao had been stolen. Luckily enough that was only in one of the rooms…which happened to be the room I wasn’t in. Plus I had all my important stuff with me so the only thing they could have taken of mine were my clothes or shampoo haha…..they apparently didn’t want either. This was a pretty much the ultimate party killer so we all decided to go to bed and sleep it off and get up and start the morning fresh.
The next day four of us girls (out of 13 total) wanted to rent a car so we could take our time and be on our own schedule to go see all of the historical stuff. So Ali, Gracie, Catherine, and I headed to a car rental place that was near our hotel and asked them if this would be possible. They told us that you needed to be 25 to rent a car and that all the cars are stick. We then told them that our only person who knew how to drive stick was only 20 and they said that there was one car that they could let us rent because of our age. We were shocked that they were allowing us to do this considering we were “of age” but we decided to have a look at the car. I think we all maybe burst out laughing…it was one of the smallest cars I have ever seen…but we did some contemplating and we decided to do it. The other funny thing about this was that Catherine (the only one who knew how to drive stick) has never driven on a highway or interstate (because she is from St. Thomas…a small island in the Virgin Islands...and so she has never needed too) but she was our only option. It took a little convincing of me that this would work…but we decided to do it and I am so glad we did.
So we were shown were to go by the guy at the rental place and then we hit the road. We wanted to first go to Teide the Volcano on the island. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours to get there but its all driving up in the mountains and it is sooo gorgeous. At times we would just pull over along the side of the road and get out, take pictures, and then just sit in the silence. It was wonderful! I felt like my family for doing this, because I know that if I was with my mom we would have done the same thing….get out of the car….take pictures….and just take in the beauty of it all.
Once we got to the Volcano we called Mo, Megan, and Carmina to see where they were at because they had taken the bus to get there instead of renting a car. They happened to be at the Volcano at the same time so we met up with them. After the Volcano we decided to drive around for awhile and then go to The Cliffs. It was crazy to see how much volcanic rock was everywhere and also to see random trees and flowers growing up in between the piles and piles of rock. Seeing The Cliffs was amazing…pictures do not do them justice on how beautiful they really are. We decided to eat at a restaurant by the cliffs since it was about 4 and we hadn’t had any lunch. After the cliffs we decided to head back to the hotel. A little over half way back we became a little distracted and stopped at a beach. It was the most beautiful black sand beach I have ever seen. The sand was verrrry black. Ali and Gracie got in the water to swim and Catherine and I just laid in the sand and soaked up some sun.
After the beach we then headed back to the hotel.
We got cleaned up and then headed to one of the rooms were everyone else was. That night we had decided that we wanted to do Karaoke. This was by far one of the funniest parts of the weekend. We sang everything from Spice Girls to Jackson Five. It was very entertaining. After Karaoke we headed to a different club and stayed there until they closed. Then after that Gracie, Mo, Ali, and I wanted to go walk along the beach. There was nobody out there and it was so peaceful. We stayed out there for about an hour and a half and walked up and down the beach in the water. Great ending to a great night.
The next day was our last full day and Gracie’s last day…she had to get back to Rome to take finals. Us girls loaded up in the car again and did so touring before we had to drop her off at the airport. Our touring of course happened to get us lost….we missed our exit because we were talking….imagine that. BUT we were thankful because getting lost led us to see the only white sand beach on the island. It was gorgeous! Then before heading to the airport we stopped at this little family owned restaurant that was packed full of families (because it was Mother’s day in Spain) but there was a small table open so we sat down and ordered some oysters and bread. The food was amazing and the service was sooo good. The guys who owned it were very friendly and talked with us as if they had known us for years.
After dropping Gracie off at the airport we went and met up with Carmina, Mo, and Megan and they joined us in our little but hearty car. We did some more touring…went to see the natural pools which were soooo gorgeous and we stayed there until the sun went down. We then went back to our hotel to pack and get ready to leave early for the airport. We got back into Bilbao at about 8 that night.
The week after my birthday (April 20th) I flew to Barcelona for a couple days to see my friend Chris who is studying in the Checkz Republic but was on Spring break. It was the first time I have flown alone, but it went very smoothly. While waiting for my delayed plane in the Bilbao airport that Tuesday night I met a couple that were probably in their late 50’s who were from Ohio and were on my flight to Barcelona as well. The man, a University professor, was on sabbatical and so they were living in Barcelona for a couple of months. They were very nice and we talked for quite a while waiting for our plane. I then asked them if they knew where my hostel was because all I had was an address and I wasn’t quite sure how to get there once I got off the plane. The guy pulled out his blackberry, google-maped it, and then they gave me very good details on how to take the bus from the airport to a certain plaza and then they said there would be taxi’s there…and by doing this it would save me about 20 euros….it sure did….everything went very smoothly….what a blessing that couple was!
Getting to the hostel it was very good to see Chris….always nice to see someone from home when you haven’t been there for so long. That night we went to a club….it was decent....hung out for awhile and then headed back to the hostel. Being the only one who could speak Spanish I was the one directing the Taxi’s for that weekend…I assume I did ok considering we always made it back to the hostel. But to be honest it felt good to be the only one cause it made me speak up.
The next day we headed to the beach. It was sunny but windy so it was blazing hot. Chris was super smart the day before and got fried and looked like a lobster but he said that he wanted to go anyway…(I know im safe putting that in here because he put it in his… ). We laid at the beach for awhile but then it began to get to cold because Chris was burnt so badly so we went and got something to eat at a Chinese Restaurant and then went back to the hostel. We then tried watching a movie but failed and fell asleep for awhile. After waking up Chris and I wanted to cook supper so we found a tiny grocery store and bought stuff to make pasta and cheese bread. After supper Chris and I headed to a club which I thought was the best one of the week.
The next day we did the same relaxing thing and just hung out and what not. Then for supper we did the cooking thing again and so we went to a better grocery store and bought stuff for steak tacos. We cooked….which I can thank Chris for considering I don’t like to touch raw meat….and then we got ready to go out that night with the whole group (all of Chris’s friends that were with him). We started off at one club and then half way through the night we went to the Catwalk which is supposed to be one of the best clubs in Barcelona. It was pretty good…..but the best thing about going out for the night life we got in free to every place because of the hostel we were staying at….pretty nice.
The next day was our last day in Barcelona….Chris and I walked around outside for awhile, got lunch, and then headed back because his flight was a couple hours earlier than mine and at an airport that was outside the city. I then chilled alone for awhile and then headed to the Barcelona airport to head back to Bilbao. Over all it was a great couple of days…thanks Chris for having Spring break in Barcelona!!
The next day (Saturday) was one of my friend’s 21st birthday….so of course we had a good ol American celebration for that. During the day a group of us went to the beach for the day. It was such a nice day to lay in the sand. Then Catherine, Ali, and I decided that we would test out the waters….it was a solid 40-45 degrees, but we went in anyway….I mean after you are completely numb you cant really feel much. Then after the beach, Carmina and Mo (friends from Cali) made a good Mexican dinner for a group of us and then we went out. Good night!
That next week we all wanted to pass by quickly because on Thursday we were heading to the Canary Islands for the weekend. It was by far one of my favorite trips! We took the bus on Thursday night from Bilbao to Madrid and then early Friday morning we flew from Madrid to the Canaries. Getting to our hotel we really didn’t know what to expect but it was very nice…each room had two single beds and a little mini kitchen and a bathroom….and it was cheap which was surprising for as nice as it was. It also had a really nice pool area. So the first day we spent some time by the pool while we ate lunch and then headed to the beach. All of the beached on this particular island are black except one. We laid on the beach for a couple hours and of course swam as well…the water was a little chilly but not nearly as cold as Bilbao’s Bay of Biscay. After the beach we headed back to the hotel and took a nap considering the night before was pretty much sleepless between being on the bus and in the Madrid airport. After our nap we …well Catherine and Mo cooked dinner….quesadillas and veggies….perfecto. Then that night we all sat around in one of the rooms and played games and just hung out with the intentions on going out later considering Ali was going to turn 21 at midnight….(this weekend we celebrated two 21st birthday….Ali’s on May 1st and Morgan’s on May 2nd).
While in the room a couple of the girls had left to go get something out of their rooms and they came back saying that they had been robbed and that we needed to go check our rooms. So we went down to our rooms and sure enough other rooms had been touched. We had four rooms on the 2nd room but each were conjoined with one so we left the dividing doors open so we basically had two big rooms. In one pair of the conjoined rooms a I-touch (ipod) and an American cell phone had been stolen and in the other conjoined room (which was mine) a total of 300 euros and a returning bus ticket from Madrid to Bilbao had been stolen. Luckily enough that was only in one of the rooms…which happened to be the room I wasn’t in. Plus I had all my important stuff with me so the only thing they could have taken of mine were my clothes or shampoo haha…..they apparently didn’t want either. This was a pretty much the ultimate party killer so we all decided to go to bed and sleep it off and get up and start the morning fresh.
The next day four of us girls (out of 13 total) wanted to rent a car so we could take our time and be on our own schedule to go see all of the historical stuff. So Ali, Gracie, Catherine, and I headed to a car rental place that was near our hotel and asked them if this would be possible. They told us that you needed to be 25 to rent a car and that all the cars are stick. We then told them that our only person who knew how to drive stick was only 20 and they said that there was one car that they could let us rent because of our age. We were shocked that they were allowing us to do this considering we were “of age” but we decided to have a look at the car. I think we all maybe burst out laughing…it was one of the smallest cars I have ever seen…but we did some contemplating and we decided to do it. The other funny thing about this was that Catherine (the only one who knew how to drive stick) has never driven on a highway or interstate (because she is from St. Thomas…a small island in the Virgin Islands...and so she has never needed too) but she was our only option. It took a little convincing of me that this would work…but we decided to do it and I am so glad we did.
So we were shown were to go by the guy at the rental place and then we hit the road. We wanted to first go to Teide the Volcano on the island. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours to get there but its all driving up in the mountains and it is sooo gorgeous. At times we would just pull over along the side of the road and get out, take pictures, and then just sit in the silence. It was wonderful! I felt like my family for doing this, because I know that if I was with my mom we would have done the same thing….get out of the car….take pictures….and just take in the beauty of it all.
Once we got to the Volcano we called Mo, Megan, and Carmina to see where they were at because they had taken the bus to get there instead of renting a car. They happened to be at the Volcano at the same time so we met up with them. After the Volcano we decided to drive around for awhile and then go to The Cliffs. It was crazy to see how much volcanic rock was everywhere and also to see random trees and flowers growing up in between the piles and piles of rock. Seeing The Cliffs was amazing…pictures do not do them justice on how beautiful they really are. We decided to eat at a restaurant by the cliffs since it was about 4 and we hadn’t had any lunch. After the cliffs we decided to head back to the hotel. A little over half way back we became a little distracted and stopped at a beach. It was the most beautiful black sand beach I have ever seen. The sand was verrrry black. Ali and Gracie got in the water to swim and Catherine and I just laid in the sand and soaked up some sun.
After the beach we then headed back to the hotel.
We got cleaned up and then headed to one of the rooms were everyone else was. That night we had decided that we wanted to do Karaoke. This was by far one of the funniest parts of the weekend. We sang everything from Spice Girls to Jackson Five. It was very entertaining. After Karaoke we headed to a different club and stayed there until they closed. Then after that Gracie, Mo, Ali, and I wanted to go walk along the beach. There was nobody out there and it was so peaceful. We stayed out there for about an hour and a half and walked up and down the beach in the water. Great ending to a great night.
The next day was our last full day and Gracie’s last day…she had to get back to Rome to take finals. Us girls loaded up in the car again and did so touring before we had to drop her off at the airport. Our touring of course happened to get us lost….we missed our exit because we were talking….imagine that. BUT we were thankful because getting lost led us to see the only white sand beach on the island. It was gorgeous! Then before heading to the airport we stopped at this little family owned restaurant that was packed full of families (because it was Mother’s day in Spain) but there was a small table open so we sat down and ordered some oysters and bread. The food was amazing and the service was sooo good. The guys who owned it were very friendly and talked with us as if they had known us for years.
After dropping Gracie off at the airport we went and met up with Carmina, Mo, and Megan and they joined us in our little but hearty car. We did some more touring…went to see the natural pools which were soooo gorgeous and we stayed there until the sun went down. We then went back to our hotel to pack and get ready to leave early for the airport. We got back into Bilbao at about 8 that night.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Egypt, Day 15 and 16
Day 15: OUR LAST DAY IN EGYPT! For our last day we got up had breakfast in bed, showered, got ready for the day and then went out and walked around Cairo for awhile, got lunch (our last time of having koshery!) and then we got a taxi to go to the Muhammad Ali Mosque. The Mosque was very big and gorgeous. Us 5 girls wrapped our heads with scarves out of respect and headed in. You can’t wear shoes either so we slipped off our sandals, slipped on our socks and headed in. There were a lot of people in there because it was one of the most famous mosques in Cairo. We looked around and then went and found a spot on the carpet and just sat and talked and watched people. A lot of locals that where in there touring as well, got a good kick out of us American girls with our hair wrapped. Obviously they don’t see that often and thought it was pretty funny.
After leaving the Mosque we wanted to go to the big Cairo Bizzare. We spent a couple hours there haggling with the vendors and buying stuff to take home. My favorite haggle experience was buying scarves. I had picked out three that I liked from this certain vendor…and of course as soon as you even look at their stuff they jump down your throat. He said that for the three scarves it would be 130 Egyptian Pounds…I said sorry that’s too much and began to walk away…he then followed me and said ok 120…and said sorry still too much and Carmina and I went off walked again…he didn’t like this and began following us down the street. He kept dropping the price, 115, 105, 100, 90, 85, 75. Then Carmina wanted to go back to this jewelry place that was right next to this scarf man and so we walked back….he still wouldn’t let go and I said sorry not interested so I tried to ignore him and then he said fine 70 and I said ok how about 4 scarves for 80. And he said no you can’t add one more scarf in for that low…and I said then sorry I am not interested and began walking away and so then he yelled OK FINE, I’ll take that! I was quite proud that I dropped the price 50 Egyptian pounds and added in one more scarf. So four scarves for about 14 US dollars. After a couple of hours at the bizarre we needed to go back to the hostel to get our stuff and head to the airport. Our flight was at 2am.
Day 16: The rest of the trip is pretty much the same as the beginning except we decided to spend our 20 hour layover at a nearby hotel instead of in the airport. So we went to the airport tourist office and they booked us a room at a nice hotel that happened to be pretty cheap. We took a hotel bus to the hotel, checked, took a nap, showered, ate supper, went to a nearby grocery store to buy fruit for breakfast in the morning, then went back to the hotel and went to bed. We had to be up early because our flight was at 7:30. Once getting to the airport we met up with other friends that had the same flight as us back to Bilbao. We got back to Bilbao around 9 and got back to home sweet home around 10. As my grandma Lois would have said…home again home again jiggidy jig. It felt very good to be home.
So this finally concludes the Egypt blogs. I know they were lengthy so thanks for reading or skimming or whatever you chose to do. This was by far the best spring break/ birthday present ever. Thanks mom and dad! It was definitely another experience that allowed us to grow as people and allowed us to experience many new things. It also allowed us to be very thankful for all the blessings we have in our lives.
Prayers for my dad and the others that left for Haiti today. Pray that they will be able to be a blessing to so many people in need, and also pray for safety for all of them during this week! (wow I posted this late....they have now all returned safely!)
And of course I love and miss you all!
Mom and Dad, Ill be see you in TWO weeks!!!
-Mel
After leaving the Mosque we wanted to go to the big Cairo Bizzare. We spent a couple hours there haggling with the vendors and buying stuff to take home. My favorite haggle experience was buying scarves. I had picked out three that I liked from this certain vendor…and of course as soon as you even look at their stuff they jump down your throat. He said that for the three scarves it would be 130 Egyptian Pounds…I said sorry that’s too much and began to walk away…he then followed me and said ok 120…and said sorry still too much and Carmina and I went off walked again…he didn’t like this and began following us down the street. He kept dropping the price, 115, 105, 100, 90, 85, 75. Then Carmina wanted to go back to this jewelry place that was right next to this scarf man and so we walked back….he still wouldn’t let go and I said sorry not interested so I tried to ignore him and then he said fine 70 and I said ok how about 4 scarves for 80. And he said no you can’t add one more scarf in for that low…and I said then sorry I am not interested and began walking away and so then he yelled OK FINE, I’ll take that! I was quite proud that I dropped the price 50 Egyptian pounds and added in one more scarf. So four scarves for about 14 US dollars. After a couple of hours at the bizarre we needed to go back to the hostel to get our stuff and head to the airport. Our flight was at 2am.
Day 16: The rest of the trip is pretty much the same as the beginning except we decided to spend our 20 hour layover at a nearby hotel instead of in the airport. So we went to the airport tourist office and they booked us a room at a nice hotel that happened to be pretty cheap. We took a hotel bus to the hotel, checked, took a nap, showered, ate supper, went to a nearby grocery store to buy fruit for breakfast in the morning, then went back to the hotel and went to bed. We had to be up early because our flight was at 7:30. Once getting to the airport we met up with other friends that had the same flight as us back to Bilbao. We got back to Bilbao around 9 and got back to home sweet home around 10. As my grandma Lois would have said…home again home again jiggidy jig. It felt very good to be home.
So this finally concludes the Egypt blogs. I know they were lengthy so thanks for reading or skimming or whatever you chose to do. This was by far the best spring break/ birthday present ever. Thanks mom and dad! It was definitely another experience that allowed us to grow as people and allowed us to experience many new things. It also allowed us to be very thankful for all the blessings we have in our lives.
Prayers for my dad and the others that left for Haiti today. Pray that they will be able to be a blessing to so many people in need, and also pray for safety for all of them during this week! (wow I posted this late....they have now all returned safely!)
And of course I love and miss you all!
Mom and Dad, Ill be see you in TWO weeks!!!
-Mel
Egypt, Day 14
Day 14: For the Pyramid tour we decided to first do the sunrise camel ride that was out in the desert and it was a place where you could see the pyramids from farther away. It was the perfect place! When we got to the camel stable the owner convinced us to take 4 camels and 2 horses so we could trade off because he said you will most definitely be walking like an Egyptian if you ride a camel all day. So Joy and I started off on the horses, and the other four on the camels. There were two boys that took us on the tour. They lead us through the dessert up on this hill were you could see the pyramids perfectly. We took a lot of pictures and one of the boys also took a lot of pictures of us. We then traded animals so Joy and I were on camels and then we went further up the hill to this little place that was serving Egyptian tea. We sat and had tea and then went back through the desert to town to the stables were we would be meeting our guide for the pyramids.
The owner of the stable knew that we hadn’t eaten breakfast yet and so he went somewhere and brought back breakfast for us, what a nice guy. Then our tour guide showed up and we all got in a big van and headed towards the Pyramids. We started at the big pyramid and he told us a lot of history about them. We then took pictures and headed to the next two to do the same. The Pyramids are soooo huge. It is so amazing to think of how they were built and how long ago they were built. Truly a World Wonder. We then went to the Sphinx and took pictures there as well. Then he took us to this cool restaurant for lunch that was included in our tour package. We ate a good lunch there and then for our last thing he took us to a perfume factory. This was really cool to see. They had a glass blowing station where they make all the really cool perfume bottles and then we went up to this room where they had us smell all of these different kinds of perfumes and scents.
After leaving there we went back to the hostel where all 6 of us fell asleep pretty quickly since we had been up at 3:30am. We set our alarm for 7:30 pm thinking we would get up and go eat dinner and hang out for awhile. The next thing I knew Carmina woke us up saying it was 10 o’clock. We then quickly decided that we might as well just go back to sleep and plan on getting up early to have a good long last day in Cairo. So yes….we did sleep 15 straight hours. When we woke up the next morning we couldn’t believe he did that….but then again the last 2 weeks were full and we were really only getting about 6 hours of sleep every night after spending long hot days in the sun….so this was our re-coop night.
The owner of the stable knew that we hadn’t eaten breakfast yet and so he went somewhere and brought back breakfast for us, what a nice guy. Then our tour guide showed up and we all got in a big van and headed towards the Pyramids. We started at the big pyramid and he told us a lot of history about them. We then took pictures and headed to the next two to do the same. The Pyramids are soooo huge. It is so amazing to think of how they were built and how long ago they were built. Truly a World Wonder. We then went to the Sphinx and took pictures there as well. Then he took us to this cool restaurant for lunch that was included in our tour package. We ate a good lunch there and then for our last thing he took us to a perfume factory. This was really cool to see. They had a glass blowing station where they make all the really cool perfume bottles and then we went up to this room where they had us smell all of these different kinds of perfumes and scents.
After leaving there we went back to the hostel where all 6 of us fell asleep pretty quickly since we had been up at 3:30am. We set our alarm for 7:30 pm thinking we would get up and go eat dinner and hang out for awhile. The next thing I knew Carmina woke us up saying it was 10 o’clock. We then quickly decided that we might as well just go back to sleep and plan on getting up early to have a good long last day in Cairo. So yes….we did sleep 15 straight hours. When we woke up the next morning we couldn’t believe he did that….but then again the last 2 weeks were full and we were really only getting about 6 hours of sleep every night after spending long hot days in the sun….so this was our re-coop night.
Egypt, Day 13
Day 13: Day 13 we woke up in Cairo after a very uncomfortable and cold bus ride. We got all of our stuff off the bus and looked for a taxi to take us to our hostel. We were staying at the Juliana Hostel because our Egyptian Nights hostel that we had stayed in when we were previously in Cairo was booked. So when we got to the hostel they told us that we couldn’t check in until noon. It was currently about 8 am. They said that we could leave our luggage there but that we couldn’t use the rooms yet. Though it was very hard, we tried to be understanding about this, but we were soooo tired. So we left our luggage and decided to just go walk around downtown and try to find something for breakfast. We were all getting on the crabby side just because were sleep deprived, sun burnt, and hungry. We found a bakery and ordered a pastry and a cup of tea and we just sat at the table trying to kill time. It got to the point were almost all 5 of us were asleep on the table…good thing it was a big place. Then around 11 we got up and went to a pharmacy to get some medicine for Michaela because she had gotten kind of sick the day before and then we headed back to the hostel.
As soon as well got into our rooms our attitude totally switched and we actually became nicer people. But then it took us about 2 minutes for all of us to fall asleep. We woke up to a tapping on the door so we all just yelled come in not knowing who it was. It was our Carmina!!! our 6th friend that was joining us for our last couple days in Egypt. She had spent the first part of her Spring Break in Italy and Greece and then come to Cairo for a couple days. So when she got there we got up and showered and then we went to go talk to the hostel people about getting our camel and Pyramid tour set up for the morning. When doing that he told us that we could also go on this Nile Dinner Cruise tonight if we wanted. He said it would be dinner and entertainment on a big boat that would go around on the Nile in downtown Cairo. Carmina, Catherine, and I decided we wanted to do that…Michaela was still sick so she stayed, Ish stayed with Michaela, and Joy also wasn’t feeling to good either, so the three of them stayed behind.
The hostel got a driver to drive us to the river. This guy was quite interesting…and of course began hitting on Mona (aka me) from minute one. We got in the car and introduced ourselves and then he said well Mona you look like my ex-wife but wayyyy more beautiful. What do you say to that?.....Yeah I don’t know either. He then went on to tell me that he had 100 camels in his trunk that he would buy me with. The three of us girls just laughed and tried to ignore his weirdness. Getting in the car he pumped up his Egyptian music quite loudly and was driving like a maniac. During the ride Carmina yelled up front to him saying “So when I need to puke because of your crazy driving where do you want me to do it?” He then said ohhh should I slow down? We all shook our heads yes. The Dinner Cruise was pretty fun…the food was good and the entertainment was decent. They had two guys to some dance stuff and they were very funny but then they had a girl belly dancer come out that wasn’t wearing enough clothes and she acted like she hated her job. So it wasn’t very entertaining…though every guy on the boat seemed to enjoy it….they all got out their cameras really fast as soon as she hit the floor. Then when she was almost out she came out in the crowd to grab someone to come dance with her….of course she came to our table and tried grabbing Carmina. Carmina refused and so she tried grabbing me and I said no as well, but apparently she didn’t care and pulled me out of my seat and pushed me to the middle dance floor. She tried getting me to dance but all I did was stand there laughing thinking are you kidding me? Melinda dance?….not a chance. She then came up behind me and tried getting me to shake my hips and dance so I finally just did it so basically I could sit down. Belly dancing will never become a hobby of mine haha.
While we were there we met this guy from Canada that sat by us at dinner. He was quite the character. We asked him why he was in Egypt and he said “Ohh just want to check it off the list”….the three of us girls didn’t really know how to respond to that one. He then went on to tell us that he travels a lot. And so Carmina asked him where his favorite place is that he has traveled to and he said “Well I have been to 35 countries so it’s really hard to slim that down”…..He basically turned into this very proud guy who seemed to just travel so he could tell people he has done so and not for the experience of traveling. He was very into himself and all that he has done and so lets just say we weren’t sad to say goodbye at the end of the night. Driving home our driver again tried to convince my friends that they should trade me for 100 camels that he was trying to convince us he had. Catherine kept telling him that I was worth way more than 100 camels so it wasn’t going to work out. The funniest thing about this guy though, was that he thought he was absolutely hilarious so after anything he said he would laugh with this most ridiculous laugh. His laugh was so hilarious that Catherine and I were almost crying we were laughing so hard at his laugh, but he thought we were laughing at “jokes” so he just kept on going. It was a funny ride home for sure. Once we got back to the hostel we hit the hay because we had to be up at 3:30 for our day of camels and pyramids!!!
As soon as well got into our rooms our attitude totally switched and we actually became nicer people. But then it took us about 2 minutes for all of us to fall asleep. We woke up to a tapping on the door so we all just yelled come in not knowing who it was. It was our Carmina!!! our 6th friend that was joining us for our last couple days in Egypt. She had spent the first part of her Spring Break in Italy and Greece and then come to Cairo for a couple days. So when she got there we got up and showered and then we went to go talk to the hostel people about getting our camel and Pyramid tour set up for the morning. When doing that he told us that we could also go on this Nile Dinner Cruise tonight if we wanted. He said it would be dinner and entertainment on a big boat that would go around on the Nile in downtown Cairo. Carmina, Catherine, and I decided we wanted to do that…Michaela was still sick so she stayed, Ish stayed with Michaela, and Joy also wasn’t feeling to good either, so the three of them stayed behind.
The hostel got a driver to drive us to the river. This guy was quite interesting…and of course began hitting on Mona (aka me) from minute one. We got in the car and introduced ourselves and then he said well Mona you look like my ex-wife but wayyyy more beautiful. What do you say to that?.....Yeah I don’t know either. He then went on to tell me that he had 100 camels in his trunk that he would buy me with. The three of us girls just laughed and tried to ignore his weirdness. Getting in the car he pumped up his Egyptian music quite loudly and was driving like a maniac. During the ride Carmina yelled up front to him saying “So when I need to puke because of your crazy driving where do you want me to do it?” He then said ohhh should I slow down? We all shook our heads yes. The Dinner Cruise was pretty fun…the food was good and the entertainment was decent. They had two guys to some dance stuff and they were very funny but then they had a girl belly dancer come out that wasn’t wearing enough clothes and she acted like she hated her job. So it wasn’t very entertaining…though every guy on the boat seemed to enjoy it….they all got out their cameras really fast as soon as she hit the floor. Then when she was almost out she came out in the crowd to grab someone to come dance with her….of course she came to our table and tried grabbing Carmina. Carmina refused and so she tried grabbing me and I said no as well, but apparently she didn’t care and pulled me out of my seat and pushed me to the middle dance floor. She tried getting me to dance but all I did was stand there laughing thinking are you kidding me? Melinda dance?….not a chance. She then came up behind me and tried getting me to shake my hips and dance so I finally just did it so basically I could sit down. Belly dancing will never become a hobby of mine haha.
While we were there we met this guy from Canada that sat by us at dinner. He was quite the character. We asked him why he was in Egypt and he said “Ohh just want to check it off the list”….the three of us girls didn’t really know how to respond to that one. He then went on to tell us that he travels a lot. And so Carmina asked him where his favorite place is that he has traveled to and he said “Well I have been to 35 countries so it’s really hard to slim that down”…..He basically turned into this very proud guy who seemed to just travel so he could tell people he has done so and not for the experience of traveling. He was very into himself and all that he has done and so lets just say we weren’t sad to say goodbye at the end of the night. Driving home our driver again tried to convince my friends that they should trade me for 100 camels that he was trying to convince us he had. Catherine kept telling him that I was worth way more than 100 camels so it wasn’t going to work out. The funniest thing about this guy though, was that he thought he was absolutely hilarious so after anything he said he would laugh with this most ridiculous laugh. His laugh was so hilarious that Catherine and I were almost crying we were laughing so hard at his laugh, but he thought we were laughing at “jokes” so he just kept on going. It was a funny ride home for sure. Once we got back to the hostel we hit the hay because we had to be up at 3:30 for our day of camels and pyramids!!!
Egypt: Day Twelve
Day 12: SCUBA DIVING!!!! We were so excited! The company picked us up at the hostel at 8:30 and as we were leaving Hisan, the guy who picked us up the previous night and was the owner of the hostel, told us he would make us an really good Egyptian dinner that night when we got back. So we headed to the boat, got on and filled out or information and then went up to the bow to get some sun. This trip was both a scuba diving and snorkeling trip so Ish and Michaela decided to snorkel and Catherine, Joy and I went scuba diving. When it came time to go out in the water they got us in our wet suits, goggles, flippers, weights, and air tanks and flopped us right into the water. We each had a guide that took us down. I can’t even explain how amazing this was. The whole breathing underwater took a couple minutes to get used to, but it was so worth it. They then took our pictures under water and then we swam around for while.
Then we went back up to the boat and had lunch. After lunch we soaked up some more sun before round two of scuba diving. The whole day was sooo great. The crew absolutely loved us (of course in a creepy nice way)…it was pretty evident that they don’t usually get four 20 year old American girls on their boat, but they were all very nice and helpful. After a long day in the sun we went back to the hostel to shower and rest before our meal that Hisan said he would make for us. Of course it was absolutely delicious. After that since we had a while until we had to go to the bus station for our bus, Hisan said we would show us the way to this really nice restaurant/bar that we could kill some time at. So the 5 of us stayed there for awhile, had some drinks and Shesha and talked. Then Hisan came back and said he would walk us around downtown Horgada if we wanted. Of course we wanted to do that so we went and walked around for about another hour or so.
All of the shops were still open and the streets had a lot of people still in them. Then Hisan took us to a fresh juice shop and treated us to fresh mango and sugar cane juice. He was soo very nice to us! We then went back to the hostel and waited until it was time to head to the bus station for our overnight bus. Hisan then took us there and saw us off. We tried giving him a very good tip for doing all he did for us, but he wouldn’t take it…he said it’s never about money, it is about meeting new people and making friends. We then hopped on our 1am bus and hit the road to Cairo.
Then we went back up to the boat and had lunch. After lunch we soaked up some more sun before round two of scuba diving. The whole day was sooo great. The crew absolutely loved us (of course in a creepy nice way)…it was pretty evident that they don’t usually get four 20 year old American girls on their boat, but they were all very nice and helpful. After a long day in the sun we went back to the hostel to shower and rest before our meal that Hisan said he would make for us. Of course it was absolutely delicious. After that since we had a while until we had to go to the bus station for our bus, Hisan said we would show us the way to this really nice restaurant/bar that we could kill some time at. So the 5 of us stayed there for awhile, had some drinks and Shesha and talked. Then Hisan came back and said he would walk us around downtown Horgada if we wanted. Of course we wanted to do that so we went and walked around for about another hour or so.
All of the shops were still open and the streets had a lot of people still in them. Then Hisan took us to a fresh juice shop and treated us to fresh mango and sugar cane juice. He was soo very nice to us! We then went back to the hostel and waited until it was time to head to the bus station for our overnight bus. Hisan then took us there and saw us off. We tried giving him a very good tip for doing all he did for us, but he wouldn’t take it…he said it’s never about money, it is about meeting new people and making friends. We then hopped on our 1am bus and hit the road to Cairo.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Egypt, Day Ten and Eleven
Day 10: HAPPY EASTER! (We didn’t celebrate considering we were in Muslim Country) Today we went exploring in Luxor. We wanted to go to the bizarre (local market area)…and so we walked through that and as we started, this random kid (probably 17 or so) was following us and trying to show us where everything was even though we just wanted to walk. And then he said he wanted to take us somewhere, so since we didn’t have anything us really to do we did. It was this three level building that was also a bizarre but the first floor was another papyrus factory and display place. He happened to be an art student (and was also studying English too) and so he had help hand paint some of the papyrus sheets. We then wandered around those three levels for while, Catherine and I were asked if we were sisters for about the 10th time while we were there…which we always just went along with it and said yes…haggled but didn’t buy anything….got hit on while haggling, surprise surprise….and then we left.
Also during this Luxor exploring day we met a Scottish guy that was staying at our hostel…his name was Howart, so he tagged along with the 5 of us….very nice guy. So after we got done at the bizarre we went back to the hostel. At this point we needed to talk to the wife of the guy that owned the hostel. Her name was Paula. She was actually Columbian but had married an Egyptian so then moved to Egypt. She was soooo nice and helped us so much, and we could talk Spanish to her if we wanted haha. So the next day we were planning on leaving to Horgada so the following day we could go on this Scuba Diving trip that Paula had set up for us. So we talked to her about all of those plans and then she took us to the bus station to buy tickets and then to a sports shop that had swim suits since Joy and I hadn’t brought ours. Later that night Paula and some of her friends invited us to go to bar to hang out for awhile. Just the girls wanted to go. This was quite the bar. It was really neatly decorated (but also had its weirdo perks…there were two 3 and 4 year olds running around and the 3 year old girl came up to joy and wanted to sit on her lap…haha….and then they also had this dog wondering around the place…not as weird as bring your kids to the club night except for the fact that this dog was the size of a small horse) and then in the back it had an indoor pool and then right outside by the pool area there was a camel and a horse in the pen that would come up to this big open window so you could pet them. Paula took us back there to see the animals and as I was petting the horse Joy said she wanted to take my picture while petting the horse so I put my hand on his nose and turned around….well the horse apparently thought I tasted good because he lightly bit my hand….it didn’t hurt but it did scare the crap of me…so I believe Joy’s picture is of me screaming…good timing I suppose.
So we hung out at the bar for awhile and danced. Then a slow song came on (yes we were all confused by this too….who plays slow songs in a club??) and this very good looking guy that had been talking to us girls asked Joy if she wanted to dance. We all thought he was very good looking but then he began to talk, and he ruined it for himself. Joy told us later that while they were dancing he said “Do you want to know why I had these tattoo? It ‘s because I have such a nice body that I can put them anywhere and they look good”. Weirdo. Then after the club we went back to the hostel and hit the hay.
Day11: Today was a big Egyptian Celebration. I’m really not sure what it was but everyone came out into the streets near the Nile and set up picnics and had family time. It basically looked like what the 4th of July might look like in the States. Hiraji wanted to take us out and walk us around for this holiday just so we could see what it was like. So he picked us up at the hostel at 10:30am and we went to the Nile to walk around. We then crossed to the other side and Hiraji bought us Egyptian peanuts and roasted squash seeds from a vendor and then we just went and walked around. There were kids swimming in the Nile and other little kids on donkey rides, pretty cute. We then walked down to this little street restaurant that had fresh juices. They had this little cute shelter area to sit under by the river that had music and such. So we sat under there and Catherine Joy and I got fresh mango juice…amazing! After that we decided that we wanted to do another Faluka ride on the river since it was our last day in Luxor. So we got on the Faluka and sailed on the river for awhile. Because of the holiday there were sooo many people along the shore of the river swimming and playing games. After sailing we went back to Hiraji and his friend’s man hut again and had a glass of tea.
Then as leaving the hit one of Hiarji’s friends came to meet us, so on the way out of the hut we introduced ourselves…and of course I was the last one out…and so he grabbed my hand and kissed it and said some comment…thank you? What else do you do, haha. After that we went back to the hostel to get everything together because we had to get to the bus station to get on our 6 hour bus ride to Horgada. This bus ride was quite interesting. First we met an American guy (he was who Joy sat by) who was from Boston BUT he was born in NEBRASKA! He didn’t live there that long, but was born in Omaha so we thought that was pretty cool. And also his mom went to Creighton and so I told him my dad went there as well, but turns out not at the same time. Small world. We talked to him for the majority of the bus ride…very nice guy. I’d say he was 24 or so…he is working in advertisement in Boston… and now we are all officially facebook friends with the guy haha.
Then came the more interesting part of the bus ride. A couple seats in front of us and to the side there was a young couple with a little girl who I would say was probably about 4. We saw the dad get up and go talk to the bus driver and then all of a sudden the bus driver slammed on his breaks and this guy who obviously wasn’t in his seat fell forward and almost hit the windshield and so to brace himself he reached up and grabbed this shelve thing in the front of the bus and while grabbing it, it broke causing him to again almost fall straight into the windshield. His wife stood up screaming because we didn’t know why the bus driver would do this and then she went up there and then the fight began. I guess the man from the young couple went up there to talk to the bus driver about him stopping every 5 minutes (which he was doing) and told him that he had payed good money for this ticket and he had to be wherever he was going on time so wanted to know if all of the stops were necessary. Apparently the bus driver didn’t like this and slammed on his breaks causing this guy to fall. Then people from the back of the bus got involved and came up and started yelling and there were people in the middle trying to mediate it and keep people from punching each other and it grew to be a big mess. And of course as I said before we were sitting very close to these people so we were very much in the middle of all of this. I was on the isle and was then basically sitting on Catherine’s lap because there were so many people getting into this mess.
The only funny part of this was that in front of us there was also two more rows of American students and so we thought it was quite ironic that all of this fighting was happening around us and we were the only ones who couldn’t understand Arabic….all except for our Boston friend Bernie though. Bernie had taken Arabic in college and so he was telling us what they were saying. Then they also began to fight because I guess curse words were being said and the dad of the little girl got mad and said that nobody should be cursing in front of the children. This got to be such a big deal that at the next check point that we stopped at we the police were brought on the bus to handle all of this. They the police took everyone that was involved off the bus and apparently got things figured out. We also thought it was funny that all of us American Students were the main witnesses of what happened….but we obviously wouldn’t have been any good at witnessing.
Then after a couple more hours we arrived in Horgada where Paula (the lady from the Luxor hostel) had arranged for the guy who ran the hostel in Horgada to pick us up. He was there waiting for us as soon as we got off the bus and took us back to the hostel. It was about 1:30am when we finally got to the hostel and we had to be up early for our day of scuba diving and so we went straight to bed.
Also during this Luxor exploring day we met a Scottish guy that was staying at our hostel…his name was Howart, so he tagged along with the 5 of us….very nice guy. So after we got done at the bizarre we went back to the hostel. At this point we needed to talk to the wife of the guy that owned the hostel. Her name was Paula. She was actually Columbian but had married an Egyptian so then moved to Egypt. She was soooo nice and helped us so much, and we could talk Spanish to her if we wanted haha. So the next day we were planning on leaving to Horgada so the following day we could go on this Scuba Diving trip that Paula had set up for us. So we talked to her about all of those plans and then she took us to the bus station to buy tickets and then to a sports shop that had swim suits since Joy and I hadn’t brought ours. Later that night Paula and some of her friends invited us to go to bar to hang out for awhile. Just the girls wanted to go. This was quite the bar. It was really neatly decorated (but also had its weirdo perks…there were two 3 and 4 year olds running around and the 3 year old girl came up to joy and wanted to sit on her lap…haha….and then they also had this dog wondering around the place…not as weird as bring your kids to the club night except for the fact that this dog was the size of a small horse) and then in the back it had an indoor pool and then right outside by the pool area there was a camel and a horse in the pen that would come up to this big open window so you could pet them. Paula took us back there to see the animals and as I was petting the horse Joy said she wanted to take my picture while petting the horse so I put my hand on his nose and turned around….well the horse apparently thought I tasted good because he lightly bit my hand….it didn’t hurt but it did scare the crap of me…so I believe Joy’s picture is of me screaming…good timing I suppose.
So we hung out at the bar for awhile and danced. Then a slow song came on (yes we were all confused by this too….who plays slow songs in a club??) and this very good looking guy that had been talking to us girls asked Joy if she wanted to dance. We all thought he was very good looking but then he began to talk, and he ruined it for himself. Joy told us later that while they were dancing he said “Do you want to know why I had these tattoo? It ‘s because I have such a nice body that I can put them anywhere and they look good”. Weirdo. Then after the club we went back to the hostel and hit the hay.
Day11: Today was a big Egyptian Celebration. I’m really not sure what it was but everyone came out into the streets near the Nile and set up picnics and had family time. It basically looked like what the 4th of July might look like in the States. Hiraji wanted to take us out and walk us around for this holiday just so we could see what it was like. So he picked us up at the hostel at 10:30am and we went to the Nile to walk around. We then crossed to the other side and Hiraji bought us Egyptian peanuts and roasted squash seeds from a vendor and then we just went and walked around. There were kids swimming in the Nile and other little kids on donkey rides, pretty cute. We then walked down to this little street restaurant that had fresh juices. They had this little cute shelter area to sit under by the river that had music and such. So we sat under there and Catherine Joy and I got fresh mango juice…amazing! After that we decided that we wanted to do another Faluka ride on the river since it was our last day in Luxor. So we got on the Faluka and sailed on the river for awhile. Because of the holiday there were sooo many people along the shore of the river swimming and playing games. After sailing we went back to Hiraji and his friend’s man hut again and had a glass of tea.
Then as leaving the hit one of Hiarji’s friends came to meet us, so on the way out of the hut we introduced ourselves…and of course I was the last one out…and so he grabbed my hand and kissed it and said some comment…thank you? What else do you do, haha. After that we went back to the hostel to get everything together because we had to get to the bus station to get on our 6 hour bus ride to Horgada. This bus ride was quite interesting. First we met an American guy (he was who Joy sat by) who was from Boston BUT he was born in NEBRASKA! He didn’t live there that long, but was born in Omaha so we thought that was pretty cool. And also his mom went to Creighton and so I told him my dad went there as well, but turns out not at the same time. Small world. We talked to him for the majority of the bus ride…very nice guy. I’d say he was 24 or so…he is working in advertisement in Boston… and now we are all officially facebook friends with the guy haha.
Then came the more interesting part of the bus ride. A couple seats in front of us and to the side there was a young couple with a little girl who I would say was probably about 4. We saw the dad get up and go talk to the bus driver and then all of a sudden the bus driver slammed on his breaks and this guy who obviously wasn’t in his seat fell forward and almost hit the windshield and so to brace himself he reached up and grabbed this shelve thing in the front of the bus and while grabbing it, it broke causing him to again almost fall straight into the windshield. His wife stood up screaming because we didn’t know why the bus driver would do this and then she went up there and then the fight began. I guess the man from the young couple went up there to talk to the bus driver about him stopping every 5 minutes (which he was doing) and told him that he had payed good money for this ticket and he had to be wherever he was going on time so wanted to know if all of the stops were necessary. Apparently the bus driver didn’t like this and slammed on his breaks causing this guy to fall. Then people from the back of the bus got involved and came up and started yelling and there were people in the middle trying to mediate it and keep people from punching each other and it grew to be a big mess. And of course as I said before we were sitting very close to these people so we were very much in the middle of all of this. I was on the isle and was then basically sitting on Catherine’s lap because there were so many people getting into this mess.
The only funny part of this was that in front of us there was also two more rows of American students and so we thought it was quite ironic that all of this fighting was happening around us and we were the only ones who couldn’t understand Arabic….all except for our Boston friend Bernie though. Bernie had taken Arabic in college and so he was telling us what they were saying. Then they also began to fight because I guess curse words were being said and the dad of the little girl got mad and said that nobody should be cursing in front of the children. This got to be such a big deal that at the next check point that we stopped at we the police were brought on the bus to handle all of this. They the police took everyone that was involved off the bus and apparently got things figured out. We also thought it was funny that all of us American Students were the main witnesses of what happened….but we obviously wouldn’t have been any good at witnessing.
Then after a couple more hours we arrived in Horgada where Paula (the lady from the Luxor hostel) had arranged for the guy who ran the hostel in Horgada to pick us up. He was there waiting for us as soon as we got off the bus and took us back to the hostel. It was about 1:30am when we finally got to the hostel and we had to be up early for our day of scuba diving and so we went straight to bed.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Egypt, Day Nine
Day 9: The next day we went to the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. We signed up for a tour for this so we could actually learn the history about it and not just go and look and guess at what we were seeing. We were in a group with about 8 other people. We drove around in a big van and then they would drop us off at certain historical places then we also had a guide that would give us the history on everything. The Valley of the Kings was most impressive. It is where all the past King’s tombs are. There are I believe 63 or so of them. In old Egyptian times when you became King they would start digging your tomb and then stop when you died/ went out of power. If they were not done by the time you died, the workers had 70 days to finish because that is how long it took to prepare the body. To prepare the body they would pull your brain out through your nose, cut a slit on the side of your stomach and pull out all of your intestines except your heart and then fill you with saw dust to dry you out. Then they would put salt on your body to also dry you out and then they would mummify you with long strips of cloth.
So when touring the tombs you could see how long people where in power by how deep their tomb was. We went down into the deepest tomb…it was quite a hike down…and sooo hot. Luxor is a lot hotter than Cairo…about 90 degrees each day….and so when we went down into the tomb you instantly started sweating allll over. We then went to the Valley of the Queens and went in some of those tombs as well. The paintings on the walls in the tombs are unreal because they still look so good even though it was done sooo long ago. After the Valleys we went to a Papyrus factory. Papyrus is a type of plant that they strip to make papyrus paper and then people hand paint on top of it. I bought one that on half of it has an Egyptian symbol that is the key of life and then the other half has my name in hieroglyphics.
That night before after the faluka ride, Hiraji invited us to his house to eat a traditional Egyptian meal, and then after that to go out “on the town”. We were so gracious and accepting of his offer. So that night after the Valley of the King and Queens we met Hiraji and eight and he picked us up in a taxi and took us to his home where he lives with all of his family (his brothers and sisters, parents, nieces and nephews). We would say that Hiraji was probably 35-38ish….not married. So his mom and whoever else was in the kitchen cooked us this huge meal….I have pictures that will help show what I mean by this….but it was this large tray that had plates and bowls of food and we set it down in the middle of us and it was a big community dinner with him and the 5 of us (his family had already eaten together). The food was amazing! There were different kinds of soups, pasta, chicken, potatoes, veggies, and amazing homemade bread. We had also gotten a few beers with dinner…but since the Muslim culture isn’t really supposed to drink beer (but most everyone does anyway) they pick up the beer from this building with one window in it…Hiraji called it the Black Market…and it looked exactly like that haha, we just didnt ask questions haha.
After dinner we all went in and thanked their whole family for dinner as well as we could considering there was a large language barrier….but we shook all of their hands and said Shukran….which means thank you. Also while we were there Hirajis nieces and nephews were pretty curious about us…they were no older than 3 or 4…they would peak in and wave and then scury away….but towards the end they would come in and sit with us…they were all so adorable. After dinner we went to Hirajis cousins for awhile and just sat around with his family again. It was so awesome for us to get to experience this. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. After his cousins we went back to the other side of the river because Hiraji said that he was going to take us to an Irish Pub. We went there for a drink and played some pool and then he said there was a disco that we could go too. None of us could quite imagine a disco in Egypt.
At this time Ish and Michaela were tired so they walked back to the hostel, but Catherine Joy and I decided we would go check it out with him for awhile. So this disco was in the downstairs of a hotel….it was pretty hilarious to see….it maybe would have had potential if it would have had more than oh 15-20 people haha. We danced for a while and then when it began to get really lame….the three of us girls wanted to go. So we got a taxi and went back to the hostel. And now here comes the creepy nice reference again….Hiraji had been drinking pretty solidly during the night and that was quite apparent when he tried kissing Joy when she got out of the taxi. It was absolutely hilarious, but at the same time a total creep move. When she denied him he said “what is kissing at the end of the night normal????” …haha we just laughed and said not for us and made a dash for the hostel door.
There was so much to laugh about from that night as soon as we got up into our room….it just proved our creepy nice moto right again….because even when we were dancing at the “disco” he tried dancing with us and it again was creepy and we just kinda stayed clear of his awkward dancing…..but none the less, still a nice guy. Getting into our room that night, we got ready for bed and as soon as Catherine went to go lay down on her bed, we heard this crash and she kind fell in because her mattress sunk in. We all burst out laughing and as soon as I was getting up off my bed to help her mine did it too. Turns out the mattresses were being supported by slats of wood that weren’t nailed into the frame. So we had to lift up our mattresses and resituate our slats of wood….this sounds easy but we were all laughing so hard that it was almost impossible. But all in all….a good night.
So when touring the tombs you could see how long people where in power by how deep their tomb was. We went down into the deepest tomb…it was quite a hike down…and sooo hot. Luxor is a lot hotter than Cairo…about 90 degrees each day….and so when we went down into the tomb you instantly started sweating allll over. We then went to the Valley of the Queens and went in some of those tombs as well. The paintings on the walls in the tombs are unreal because they still look so good even though it was done sooo long ago. After the Valleys we went to a Papyrus factory. Papyrus is a type of plant that they strip to make papyrus paper and then people hand paint on top of it. I bought one that on half of it has an Egyptian symbol that is the key of life and then the other half has my name in hieroglyphics.
That night before after the faluka ride, Hiraji invited us to his house to eat a traditional Egyptian meal, and then after that to go out “on the town”. We were so gracious and accepting of his offer. So that night after the Valley of the King and Queens we met Hiraji and eight and he picked us up in a taxi and took us to his home where he lives with all of his family (his brothers and sisters, parents, nieces and nephews). We would say that Hiraji was probably 35-38ish….not married. So his mom and whoever else was in the kitchen cooked us this huge meal….I have pictures that will help show what I mean by this….but it was this large tray that had plates and bowls of food and we set it down in the middle of us and it was a big community dinner with him and the 5 of us (his family had already eaten together). The food was amazing! There were different kinds of soups, pasta, chicken, potatoes, veggies, and amazing homemade bread. We had also gotten a few beers with dinner…but since the Muslim culture isn’t really supposed to drink beer (but most everyone does anyway) they pick up the beer from this building with one window in it…Hiraji called it the Black Market…and it looked exactly like that haha, we just didnt ask questions haha.
After dinner we all went in and thanked their whole family for dinner as well as we could considering there was a large language barrier….but we shook all of their hands and said Shukran….which means thank you. Also while we were there Hirajis nieces and nephews were pretty curious about us…they were no older than 3 or 4…they would peak in and wave and then scury away….but towards the end they would come in and sit with us…they were all so adorable. After dinner we went to Hirajis cousins for awhile and just sat around with his family again. It was so awesome for us to get to experience this. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. After his cousins we went back to the other side of the river because Hiraji said that he was going to take us to an Irish Pub. We went there for a drink and played some pool and then he said there was a disco that we could go too. None of us could quite imagine a disco in Egypt.
At this time Ish and Michaela were tired so they walked back to the hostel, but Catherine Joy and I decided we would go check it out with him for awhile. So this disco was in the downstairs of a hotel….it was pretty hilarious to see….it maybe would have had potential if it would have had more than oh 15-20 people haha. We danced for a while and then when it began to get really lame….the three of us girls wanted to go. So we got a taxi and went back to the hostel. And now here comes the creepy nice reference again….Hiraji had been drinking pretty solidly during the night and that was quite apparent when he tried kissing Joy when she got out of the taxi. It was absolutely hilarious, but at the same time a total creep move. When she denied him he said “what is kissing at the end of the night normal????” …haha we just laughed and said not for us and made a dash for the hostel door.
There was so much to laugh about from that night as soon as we got up into our room….it just proved our creepy nice moto right again….because even when we were dancing at the “disco” he tried dancing with us and it again was creepy and we just kinda stayed clear of his awkward dancing…..but none the less, still a nice guy. Getting into our room that night, we got ready for bed and as soon as Catherine went to go lay down on her bed, we heard this crash and she kind fell in because her mattress sunk in. We all burst out laughing and as soon as I was getting up off my bed to help her mine did it too. Turns out the mattresses were being supported by slats of wood that weren’t nailed into the frame. So we had to lift up our mattresses and resituate our slats of wood….this sounds easy but we were all laughing so hard that it was almost impossible. But all in all….a good night.
Egypt, Day Seven and Eight
Day7: The next day we got up and walked around Cairo since it was Catherine’s first day there. After exploring for awhile we went to the restaurant that Musa had taken us to a couple nights previous and had lunch there. After that we decided that we wanted to go to Cairo Tower. It is a verrry large tower in downtown Cairo, right by the Nile, and it allows you to see pretty much all of Cairo from the top. We went up there and took pictures and then spent awhile up there just talking and enjoying the nice weather. That after leaving the tower, we went and got supper and then went back to the hostel to get all of our stuff so we could catch out 10 pm train. I have never been on a train before….but I am guessing the ones we road in Egypt are a tad different then the US ones. In each box car there were probably 8 rooms and in each room there were 6 seats. So it was the five of us and this middle aged Egyptian man in our room. We all took sleeping pills hoping we could just fall asleep and stay asleep for most of the 9 hours we were going to be on the train. The ride wasn’t bad all accept for it was absolutely freezing…they had the air conditioner very cold and high up the whole time….its Egypt, we didn’t pack our winter coats….so of course we shivered through it. And also of course we cant go anywhere without someone hitting on one of us….I didn’t know this until we got off the train but turns out when we were trying to go to bed, the guy that was in our room was sitting next to Joy, and he motioned to her that she could rest her head on his lap to sleep if she wanted….creepy nice….that’s what we call that…and that’s just what Egyptians are….creepy nice.
That kind of became our moto because every Egyptian guy that we met or befriended…or even sat by on the train, always started out being very nice….and then they would hit on us or do something creepy….hence the name Creepy Nice.
Day 8: Our first day in Luxor!!! As soon as we stepped out of the train station taxi drivers swarmed up and other people asking where we were going. We said we were going to the Venus hotel, but that we could walk because we knew it wasn’t far. One guy grabbed another and said wait this is the owner of the Venus he can take you there….we were always a little skeptical of things like this just cause Egyptians want money and so we knew if we had someone take us there we would have to pay them even though we could do it on our own. But the owner told the other guy to lead us there and he would meet us there. So this guy lead us there…we knew he was probably just tip hungry….but little did we know this particular man would open so many doors for us. So once we got there we got checked in and the guy that lead us there said that he would sit down with us for awhile and plan the next couple days with us if we wanted…they had special packages for the hostel to go see things, but he said we could say no at anytime and it would be ok. We agreed to sit with him and just see what he had to offer….so we did so over breakfast. Some tours he had turned out to be good prices so we decided to do some.
We also chose to go on the faluka boats that night. The faluka deal was 30 pounds (a little less than 6 US dollars) to go out on the faluka (a type of sail boat) on the Nile for a couple hours. We first just sailed around for awhile ( oh and in the boat with us was the guy that planed this for us…his name is Hiraji…his friend who owned the faluka and a younger boy who helped out)….we all took off our shoes and had our feet in the water as we sailed around. Then we stopped at Banana Island which is an Island right next to Luxor. It has tons of banana trees and they use it as a stop for the falukas so people can get off and walk around the island and they have this shelter area with picnic tables where they serve you this whole plate of bananas for free. Some people live on this island, but not many….I am guessing the agriculture on the island is what they do for a living. So we walked around the island for awhile, saw an alligator that they have caged up there and then sat down and ate some bananas.
After that we got back on the boat to catch the sunset and take pictures of that. It was so gorgeous…and weird to think at the same time that we were sailing on the Nile. I wonder if Moses ever had a faluka to sail around in? Then after that we went to a little hut that Hiraji and his friend ( the owner of the boat) have right next to Nile. It basically like a man cave for them. We went there and had some tea and just chilled out for awhile. Then we noticed that they had a motorcycle…Hiraji said we could drive it if we wanted, but we all told him we didn’t know how. He then said we would take us for rides around the little country village that was near….Catherine and I kind of wanted too and he really wanted us too….so we did. So as Catherine and I were walking over to it we were both saying you’re going first, no you’re going first, no your going first….so with getting nowhere with that I volunteered to go first. It was a lot of fun…and Catherine had fun too. After the motorcycle rides Hiraji told us he would take us to a good Egyptian restaurant that was close to the Nile and it has a good view from where we ate. So we went there had a great meal and then headed back to the other side (Luxor is split into two sides by the Nile, the west bank and the east bank) by a small ferry boat.
Getting on the ferry boat the driver who was probably 18 or so asked us our names and such (sorry another detour…Egyptians had a very hard time be able to pronounce my name…and every time I would say Melinda they would think I said Mona which is a popular Egyptian name….so therefore I thought I’d make it easy on people and just say my name was Mona while being in Egypt)…so when the boat driver asked our names I said Mona and he said oh really that is my sisters name…and I said yes, I am sure it is haha. So as we got to the other side when we were exiting the boat he would grab our hands to help us out and when he grabbed mine he squeezed it and said “Mona you have very beautiful eyes”….I just laughed and said thank you.
These kind of things happened a lot while we were in Egypt....We all know that Egyptians love American girls….but for sure reason I was the favorite in the group….we concluded that maybe it’s because I was the most different looking….tall, light skin and eyes, and curly hair. Let’s just say I got a lot of crap from my friends while being there because of all the comments I got. But we just have to remember the creepy-nice thing...because it is true about all of them. But I am more thankful then anything that we were treated very nice the entire trip....i rather have someone be slightly creepy then mean :).
That kind of became our moto because every Egyptian guy that we met or befriended…or even sat by on the train, always started out being very nice….and then they would hit on us or do something creepy….hence the name Creepy Nice.
Day 8: Our first day in Luxor!!! As soon as we stepped out of the train station taxi drivers swarmed up and other people asking where we were going. We said we were going to the Venus hotel, but that we could walk because we knew it wasn’t far. One guy grabbed another and said wait this is the owner of the Venus he can take you there….we were always a little skeptical of things like this just cause Egyptians want money and so we knew if we had someone take us there we would have to pay them even though we could do it on our own. But the owner told the other guy to lead us there and he would meet us there. So this guy lead us there…we knew he was probably just tip hungry….but little did we know this particular man would open so many doors for us. So once we got there we got checked in and the guy that lead us there said that he would sit down with us for awhile and plan the next couple days with us if we wanted…they had special packages for the hostel to go see things, but he said we could say no at anytime and it would be ok. We agreed to sit with him and just see what he had to offer….so we did so over breakfast. Some tours he had turned out to be good prices so we decided to do some.
We also chose to go on the faluka boats that night. The faluka deal was 30 pounds (a little less than 6 US dollars) to go out on the faluka (a type of sail boat) on the Nile for a couple hours. We first just sailed around for awhile ( oh and in the boat with us was the guy that planed this for us…his name is Hiraji…his friend who owned the faluka and a younger boy who helped out)….we all took off our shoes and had our feet in the water as we sailed around. Then we stopped at Banana Island which is an Island right next to Luxor. It has tons of banana trees and they use it as a stop for the falukas so people can get off and walk around the island and they have this shelter area with picnic tables where they serve you this whole plate of bananas for free. Some people live on this island, but not many….I am guessing the agriculture on the island is what they do for a living. So we walked around the island for awhile, saw an alligator that they have caged up there and then sat down and ate some bananas.
After that we got back on the boat to catch the sunset and take pictures of that. It was so gorgeous…and weird to think at the same time that we were sailing on the Nile. I wonder if Moses ever had a faluka to sail around in? Then after that we went to a little hut that Hiraji and his friend ( the owner of the boat) have right next to Nile. It basically like a man cave for them. We went there and had some tea and just chilled out for awhile. Then we noticed that they had a motorcycle…Hiraji said we could drive it if we wanted, but we all told him we didn’t know how. He then said we would take us for rides around the little country village that was near….Catherine and I kind of wanted too and he really wanted us too….so we did. So as Catherine and I were walking over to it we were both saying you’re going first, no you’re going first, no your going first….so with getting nowhere with that I volunteered to go first. It was a lot of fun…and Catherine had fun too. After the motorcycle rides Hiraji told us he would take us to a good Egyptian restaurant that was close to the Nile and it has a good view from where we ate. So we went there had a great meal and then headed back to the other side (Luxor is split into two sides by the Nile, the west bank and the east bank) by a small ferry boat.
Getting on the ferry boat the driver who was probably 18 or so asked us our names and such (sorry another detour…Egyptians had a very hard time be able to pronounce my name…and every time I would say Melinda they would think I said Mona which is a popular Egyptian name….so therefore I thought I’d make it easy on people and just say my name was Mona while being in Egypt)…so when the boat driver asked our names I said Mona and he said oh really that is my sisters name…and I said yes, I am sure it is haha. So as we got to the other side when we were exiting the boat he would grab our hands to help us out and when he grabbed mine he squeezed it and said “Mona you have very beautiful eyes”….I just laughed and said thank you.
These kind of things happened a lot while we were in Egypt....We all know that Egyptians love American girls….but for sure reason I was the favorite in the group….we concluded that maybe it’s because I was the most different looking….tall, light skin and eyes, and curly hair. Let’s just say I got a lot of crap from my friends while being there because of all the comments I got. But we just have to remember the creepy-nice thing...because it is true about all of them. But I am more thankful then anything that we were treated very nice the entire trip....i rather have someone be slightly creepy then mean :).
Egypt, Day Five and Six
Day 5: We had planned our day trip to Alexandria through the Hostel, so they hired a driver that would take us to all the big sites in Alexandria and then he would take us anywhere else we wanted to go. Our drivers name was Muhammad…(we like to say of course it is after this because we pretty convinced that half of Egypt is named Muhammad)…he is 30. So we all got in his car…the three girls in the back and Ish in the front and headed to Alexandria…which is about 3 hours away. This is when we really first experienced highway driving in Egypt….there are three lanes on the road…but that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be 7 lanes of traffic all trying to get to the same place. Driving in Egypt is absolutely crazy…I am sure I will talk about it more later….but automobile related accidents is the number one killer in Egypt just to give you a clue at how crazy people are. So on our way to Alexandria, I was the only one who didn’t fall asleep, but Muhammad and I had a good time taking pictures and messing with our sleeping friends.
When we first got to Alexandria Muhammad took us to a couple sites of Egyptian Ruins. They were so amazing to see. We also saw a lot of catacombs. It is crazy to think of how old all of these things where. Muhammad was very good about driving us around, but sometime in the middle of him driving us and us exploring these sites it turned into “pick on Melinda” day. He was constantly picking on me and joking with me, but me being me I was dishing right back to him. I have older brothers; I know how to handle myself. He would continuously say Melinda you are smiling and laughing all of the time…you need to stop and just be quiet for the rest of the trip. He also told me that my mouth is always open….and I honestly I looked and him and said “Really? Because that is what my mom says too …haha”. The joking and picking on continued…and I thought it was just all fun and games until Ish told me that while us girls were in the bathroom after lunch Muhammad asked him if I had a boyfriend. Basically this told me that his “picking on me” was a way of flirting.
We then went to a couple more historical sites and then we wanted to go to the beach because it was a really nice day out and we just wanted to go put our feet in the water and hangout there for awhile. While at the beach the flirting greatly increased on his side….I was just my ordinary outgoing self…which I guess he liked…..oops. And also at this point I didn’t know about him asking Ish about me having a boyfriend…..so I was really unaware of what he was really thinking. I then was almost shoved in the water a couple of times and had sand thrown at me more than once…..and then we decided to clean our feet off and leave. As we were walking back to the car I took off running because I knew that “lovely” friends would try to stick me in the front seat because they thought what was going on was funny. I worked my way into the back seat and Ish again took the front. Then after Muhammad started the car he said “Ish are you going to sleep on the way home (he asked this because Ish slept on the way down to Alexandria)”? And of course Ish said yes….and then Muhammad said “Melinda are you”? and without thinking about where this was going I said “No, Im not planning on it”. So then Muhammad went on to say that we should switch because he wanted someone to stay awake while he was driving since it would be dark out…..so we switched….and as soon as I got into the front seat Muhammad burst out laughing….basically saying hahaha I tricked you into sitting in the front seat. I didnt think it was quite as hilarious….but none the less I did fall for it. Then on the way home my again “lovely” three friends fell asleep and that left Just Muhammad and I awake.
I will now give you the short version of the rest of the car ride ……He professed him “love” for me…even though he had only known me for 12 hours….and he didn’t understand why I kept saying I didn’t love him and I did NOT want an Egyptian boyfriend. Reading this you would think that he is a total creep…which it was a tad creepish, but he wasn’t a creep….it is honestly just a different in culture. While this was all going on I was trying to reach behind me to squeeze Joy’s leg to wake her up, but the seat was too close to the door so it wasn’t happening….so after a long while of awkwardness I finally here Joy say “Wow Melinda look at the moon…it is sooo big”….which it was because it was full, but it was just the funniest line to interrupt with. Joy had then told me later that she woke up and she was listening to the conversation for about 5 minutes and she knew it was awkward so she was waited for a good time to interrupt. Then after that the other two woke up and I turned around and said that they all better sleep with their eyes open that night for putting me in the situation. The good thing about Muhammad was that his English wasn’t very good and so if we talked fast in front of him he wouldn’t be able to understand….or we also would talk in Spanish, which worked even better. So for Muhammad or as I like to refer to him as Muhaha….he has a very nice guy…..just apparently a fast mover….haha.
Before when I had mentioned the driving in Egypt is insane…the night time driving is worst. When you are on the highway people don’t drive with their lights on. What you do is about every 30 seconds you flip on your brights to let people know where you are….or when you are passing someone you just flip them on and off on and off while passing. I asked Muhammad why this was and he said its easier on the eyes….and I said well its not going to be easy on the eyes when I am sitting in the ditch after being hit by someone. After the three in the back woke up and noticed that’s what was going on, Michaela asked about it and he said Its normal, everyone does it and she looked and him and said THIS IS NOT NORMAL….IN THE US THIS IS ILLEGAL!!!. We arrived home safely….but Im sure we were holding on to our “oh shit” handles a little tighter that night. Later we had talked to someone about the driving at night and they said that you can actually get pulled over and get a ticket for driving with your lights on the whole time…..crazy….just crazy.
That night we were tired from an early morning and a long day so we just decided to go order a pizza from Pizza Hut. As we were sitting in Pizza Hut waiting for our order, a lot of American music was playing over the speakers….but it was older stuff from like when we were in late Elementary and Middle school. Then “I Believe I can Fly” came on and we all started to sing…and then I said we should be recording this, so I got out my camera and recorded us singing….it was hilarious because the people behind the counter were just staring and laughing at us like we were crazy….which we kind of are, but to see their faces while we sang every word to that song was pretty priceless.
Day 6: On day six we decided to go get our train tickets to go to Luxor in two days. After we finally found the train station we went in to go get tickets for an overnight train. As we were doing this we ran into our American friends that were staying at our hostel. They were planning on going to Luxor the same night we were, so we bought all of our tickets together. After going our separate ways with them the four of us decided to go to Coptic Cairo which is the Christianity part of Cairo. As soon as we got off the metro (quick side note about the metro in Egypt…there are separate metro cars for women and men and a women can only be on a men’s metro car if she is accompanied by a man…also they are verrrrrrrrry packed and the doors are a tad intimidating because unlike most metro doors they just shut whenever they want too and if you are half in…it doesn’t matter. So when getting on our off you have to make a mad dash in or out so you or your jacket or your purse doesn’t get caught in the metro door)…so as soon as we got off the metro and walked down to Coptic Cairo we ran back into our American friends, so we went to the museums, churches, and lunch together.
The museum was very interesting to see all of the old artifacts that have been discovered….old bibles written in Arabic, old clothing, paintings, and many other artifacts. For lunch we ate at a little café and I had falafel for the first time. It was very good. After lunch…which happened to be at about 4 pm…we decided to walk around Coptic Cairo for a little bit longer, and then after that we decided to go back to the hostel and relax because we had to stay up late because Catherine was flying in and was going to get to Cairo at around 2am. So later that night we went and got koshery for supper again and the people from the hostel ordered us in some Cream Carmel…which is basically like Spanish flan….which is basically like really good pudding but made with eggs. That night the plan was for Ish and I to go to the airport and pick Catherine up if she hadn’t called by a certain time, because we didn’t know the exact time her plane was getting in. So we took a little nap and had our alarms set for 2 and so when I got up I called her and she was in a taxi on her way…so I waited up for her, got her checked in and then we went back to bed. The funny thing about this night was that we didn’t get another room for Catherine since we were going to leave the next day for Luxor and so Catherine, Joy and I tightly fit in a bed that was clearly only made for two….it was a pretty restless night haha.
When we first got to Alexandria Muhammad took us to a couple sites of Egyptian Ruins. They were so amazing to see. We also saw a lot of catacombs. It is crazy to think of how old all of these things where. Muhammad was very good about driving us around, but sometime in the middle of him driving us and us exploring these sites it turned into “pick on Melinda” day. He was constantly picking on me and joking with me, but me being me I was dishing right back to him. I have older brothers; I know how to handle myself. He would continuously say Melinda you are smiling and laughing all of the time…you need to stop and just be quiet for the rest of the trip. He also told me that my mouth is always open….and I honestly I looked and him and said “Really? Because that is what my mom says too …haha”. The joking and picking on continued…and I thought it was just all fun and games until Ish told me that while us girls were in the bathroom after lunch Muhammad asked him if I had a boyfriend. Basically this told me that his “picking on me” was a way of flirting.
We then went to a couple more historical sites and then we wanted to go to the beach because it was a really nice day out and we just wanted to go put our feet in the water and hangout there for awhile. While at the beach the flirting greatly increased on his side….I was just my ordinary outgoing self…which I guess he liked…..oops. And also at this point I didn’t know about him asking Ish about me having a boyfriend…..so I was really unaware of what he was really thinking. I then was almost shoved in the water a couple of times and had sand thrown at me more than once…..and then we decided to clean our feet off and leave. As we were walking back to the car I took off running because I knew that “lovely” friends would try to stick me in the front seat because they thought what was going on was funny. I worked my way into the back seat and Ish again took the front. Then after Muhammad started the car he said “Ish are you going to sleep on the way home (he asked this because Ish slept on the way down to Alexandria)”? And of course Ish said yes….and then Muhammad said “Melinda are you”? and without thinking about where this was going I said “No, Im not planning on it”. So then Muhammad went on to say that we should switch because he wanted someone to stay awake while he was driving since it would be dark out…..so we switched….and as soon as I got into the front seat Muhammad burst out laughing….basically saying hahaha I tricked you into sitting in the front seat. I didnt think it was quite as hilarious….but none the less I did fall for it. Then on the way home my again “lovely” three friends fell asleep and that left Just Muhammad and I awake.
I will now give you the short version of the rest of the car ride ……He professed him “love” for me…even though he had only known me for 12 hours….and he didn’t understand why I kept saying I didn’t love him and I did NOT want an Egyptian boyfriend. Reading this you would think that he is a total creep…which it was a tad creepish, but he wasn’t a creep….it is honestly just a different in culture. While this was all going on I was trying to reach behind me to squeeze Joy’s leg to wake her up, but the seat was too close to the door so it wasn’t happening….so after a long while of awkwardness I finally here Joy say “Wow Melinda look at the moon…it is sooo big”….which it was because it was full, but it was just the funniest line to interrupt with. Joy had then told me later that she woke up and she was listening to the conversation for about 5 minutes and she knew it was awkward so she was waited for a good time to interrupt. Then after that the other two woke up and I turned around and said that they all better sleep with their eyes open that night for putting me in the situation. The good thing about Muhammad was that his English wasn’t very good and so if we talked fast in front of him he wouldn’t be able to understand….or we also would talk in Spanish, which worked even better. So for Muhammad or as I like to refer to him as Muhaha….he has a very nice guy…..just apparently a fast mover….haha.
Before when I had mentioned the driving in Egypt is insane…the night time driving is worst. When you are on the highway people don’t drive with their lights on. What you do is about every 30 seconds you flip on your brights to let people know where you are….or when you are passing someone you just flip them on and off on and off while passing. I asked Muhammad why this was and he said its easier on the eyes….and I said well its not going to be easy on the eyes when I am sitting in the ditch after being hit by someone. After the three in the back woke up and noticed that’s what was going on, Michaela asked about it and he said Its normal, everyone does it and she looked and him and said THIS IS NOT NORMAL….IN THE US THIS IS ILLEGAL!!!. We arrived home safely….but Im sure we were holding on to our “oh shit” handles a little tighter that night. Later we had talked to someone about the driving at night and they said that you can actually get pulled over and get a ticket for driving with your lights on the whole time…..crazy….just crazy.
That night we were tired from an early morning and a long day so we just decided to go order a pizza from Pizza Hut. As we were sitting in Pizza Hut waiting for our order, a lot of American music was playing over the speakers….but it was older stuff from like when we were in late Elementary and Middle school. Then “I Believe I can Fly” came on and we all started to sing…and then I said we should be recording this, so I got out my camera and recorded us singing….it was hilarious because the people behind the counter were just staring and laughing at us like we were crazy….which we kind of are, but to see their faces while we sang every word to that song was pretty priceless.
Day 6: On day six we decided to go get our train tickets to go to Luxor in two days. After we finally found the train station we went in to go get tickets for an overnight train. As we were doing this we ran into our American friends that were staying at our hostel. They were planning on going to Luxor the same night we were, so we bought all of our tickets together. After going our separate ways with them the four of us decided to go to Coptic Cairo which is the Christianity part of Cairo. As soon as we got off the metro (quick side note about the metro in Egypt…there are separate metro cars for women and men and a women can only be on a men’s metro car if she is accompanied by a man…also they are verrrrrrrrry packed and the doors are a tad intimidating because unlike most metro doors they just shut whenever they want too and if you are half in…it doesn’t matter. So when getting on our off you have to make a mad dash in or out so you or your jacket or your purse doesn’t get caught in the metro door)…so as soon as we got off the metro and walked down to Coptic Cairo we ran back into our American friends, so we went to the museums, churches, and lunch together.
The museum was very interesting to see all of the old artifacts that have been discovered….old bibles written in Arabic, old clothing, paintings, and many other artifacts. For lunch we ate at a little café and I had falafel for the first time. It was very good. After lunch…which happened to be at about 4 pm…we decided to walk around Coptic Cairo for a little bit longer, and then after that we decided to go back to the hostel and relax because we had to stay up late because Catherine was flying in and was going to get to Cairo at around 2am. So later that night we went and got koshery for supper again and the people from the hostel ordered us in some Cream Carmel…which is basically like Spanish flan….which is basically like really good pudding but made with eggs. That night the plan was for Ish and I to go to the airport and pick Catherine up if she hadn’t called by a certain time, because we didn’t know the exact time her plane was getting in. So we took a little nap and had our alarms set for 2 and so when I got up I called her and she was in a taxi on her way…so I waited up for her, got her checked in and then we went back to bed. The funny thing about this night was that we didn’t get another room for Catherine since we were going to leave the next day for Luxor and so Catherine, Joy and I tightly fit in a bed that was clearly only made for two….it was a pretty restless night haha.
Egypt, Day Three and Four
Day 3: Well our alarms went off….except we forgot about a little thing called day-light savings…..we woke up at 5 instead of 4….Well Joy and I did….Ish and Michaela had their international phone and so when they came to check if we were almost ready we were just getting up. We decided that taking the next bus wouldn’t mess us up too badly so we got ready and went to the bus station to find out what time the next bus left….9am. So we waited in the bus station with all of our luggage. We then looked for a place to eat since we had not had breakfast and didn’t know when the next time anything to eat would be available. We found this little “café” and had “pastries” and tea. The funniest thing about that café was that they had menus out on the table and they had Hot Chocolate spelled as Hot Shoklet…..it gave us a good laugh for a long time. We saw this a lot while we were in Egypt….Egyptians sometimes spell English words out how they say them….we don’t want to poke fun, but it’s pretty hilarious.
We boarded the bus and got ready to start our “what we thought would be a 6 hour bus ride”….little did we know that this wouldn’t really go as planned. It’s quite a long story….so I will sum it up to make it better to read and make it less boring. Pretty much this is what happened…..our 6 hour bus ride turned into 9…little did we know we had to stop at every little check point to get our tickets or passports checked…..met some interesting people….a man named Dr. Pip was a psychologist that moved from Holland to Egypt because he said why would I want to stay in Europe or go to the US, their economy is crap….talked to him for a good while…he gave us tips on where to go, what not to eat or drink if we still want to continue to have a good vacation and not get Hep C, and shared some of his stories. Nice guy….a little different…but nice. Also met a guy named Daboo….looks wise he would fall right under Bradly Cooper on my list…and he was very intelligent. He was an Egyptian who lived in Cairo….but it was very clear about how he dressed and how he talked that he would rather be an American. When we first asked him where he was from he said unfortunately Egypt…and then he said No, I am proud to be an Egyptian, but I am not proud about many things that happen in my country. His dad works for a tourism business and it was very evident that they were well off. He said that he spent a lot of time around his dads business when he was little and that is why he can speak about 5 or 6 different languages. When he said “well Russian was the hardest language I have learned” all of our jaws probably dropped. I’d say he was 22 or 23.
So back to the quickness of this story….we landed in Nueva…of course three hours late…therefore we missed out fairy and had nowhere to stay. So we were stranded in this small town that really didn’t have anything right on the coast of the Red Sea with two weeks of luggage and nowhere to go. Oh and did I mention that finding someone in the little boon-dock town that spoke English was basically impossible. So we tried looking for a hostel…or the two streets that this town had….found nothing. Then we found this restaurant with a guy that spoke English and his wife was German so she spoke English as well. They basically gave us two choices….you can either sleep in a hut on the beach (which we had no camping supplies or anything...which was needed in this case) or the Hilton. We hated to be those people, but we chose the Hilton. We got the taxi driver who had been following us around since the moment we stepped off the bus to take us to the Hilton, and we went to go check in to a room. The cheapest thing that they had was a Villa on the beach….so we got two double rooms (which included a free buffet dinner and breakfast and free drinks …which by the way was amazing food). Even though we were ticked about missing the fairy we told ourselves that we would make the best out of staying here and try to have fun….plus it was clean beds and a clean shower….which he really hadn’t had for a couple days. The Villa was very pretty…about 150 feet from the Red Sea.
Day 4: The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and took a taxi back to the port to see if we could get the first fairy out. Turns out that the next fairy didn’t leave until 3 in the afternoon (It was currently 9am) and it would cost each person 160 US dollars to use the fairy for a round trip. So after talking this over we decided that spending that amount of money for two days in Jordan wasn’t worth it. And that is where out Jordan fairytale ends. But it is ok, because not going to Jordan opened up a lot more for us. So after leaving the ticket building for the port we tried to ask a couple policemen where the bus station was…just a little word of advice…if you ever end up in Nueva and the policemen say they speak English…they really mean that they don’t. We probably looked like idiots trying to describe how we needed a bus back to Cairo….so after a while of working through our language barrier we were pointed in the right direction. We spotted the buses and began walking in that direction. As we are walking up to the big lot with buses one bus was pulling out…and as we were passing it, it stopped and the driver got out…..it was our same driver from the day before! We couldn’t believe it....he couldn’t speak English either, but with all of his hand motions and such he basically said I am leaving now you guys can through your luggage in and just come with me. We quickly payed him, which we are all pretty positive he pocketed since we didn’t even make it up to bus building to buy proper tickets, and we got on. Even though it may have been “illegal” for him to do that…it was a blessing because we knew him and we knew that we would return to Cairo that night….even if it took us an extra three hours.
We finally got back to Cairo and since we didn’t know what bus stop to get off at we just randomly picked one hoping for the best. As soon as we got off the bus we had a taxi driver in our face asking if we needed him….all we needed to do at that moment was to call the hostel that we had been at two nights before and ask them if they had room for us for the next couple days considering we wouldn’t be using our hostel in Jordan. They said that they had two rooms open and that we could head that way whenever we wanted. During this whole process this taxi driver was still all over us and part of me wanted to just look him in the eye and say Please Sir, we really don’t need you, I am sorry….but we just went with the flow and after getting our reservations we began to walk to the street to look for a legit taxi….and of course he followed us….so we said fine you can take us but we are setting the price….he didn’t like our price….so we haggled for awhile…but he wasn’t being easy about it…his persistence of taking us with his price was quite entertaining and just made me laugh….we still didn’t even know if this guy was even a taxi driver cause we had yet to see his car. All of this negotiating happened to be taking place in front of a couple of police officers…they were laughing and getting a kick out of it too….and then one of the policemen looked at me, smiled, and said this guy is a really nice guy….so we finally decided on a price with the cab driver, loaded up our stuff and headed towards to hostel.
This cab ride was probably one of the most hilarious memories in Egypt. The cab driver new English very well and was an absolute hoot. His name was Jimmy, and when he introduced himself he said I’m Jimmy! Not Jimmy Carter, Jimmy the Egyptian!! It was soo funny. We had a good discussion about are presidents….he loves Obama….along with the rest of Egypt …and hates Bush….also along with the rest of Egypt. Then he said “I like Clinton, but Clinton like too many women”…haha. He then began to give Michaela and Ish tons of crap about being a couple and he clearly let Ish know that Joy and I were going to be his considering he already had a women. At the end of the cab ride we got his number just in case we needed his assistance again and went and checked into the hostel. Its instances like this that we are glad we just went with the flow…because even though Jimmy was a little too much to handle at first, he turned out to be an awesome person that we are all glad we met.
That night so of the guys that worked at the Hostel invited us out to a bar for some drinks. We said that we would go but we wanted to get something to eat first. So Musa…one of my favorite people we met on this trip ( he is an Egyptian, but lived in Canada for 18 years so he has the Canadian accent, and is very outgoing and hilarious) took us to this restaurant, ordered for us, and said he would be back in 40 minutes to pick us up and take us to the bar. This just shows how nice the people we met really where….they took care of us a handful of times….so greatful. We had a delicious dinner (and cheap for the amount of food we got) and then we met up with them again and they showed us the way to the bar.
Musa had said that there was other Americans at the bar that were staying at the same hostel that we needed to meet. So we got to the bar, they ordered us some beer, and we all sat and chatted. The two American girls where from Philly and DC area. They were friends that had known each other for a long time and they both had breaks so they were traveling for about a week and a half. One was in her first year of residency to be a Neurologist and the other was Structural Engineer. Both very bright and very nice. It was fun to be out with locals and new friends and just to have the chance to sit and chat. After I had finished my beer, Musa looks at me and he says “WOW she drinks like a FISH” with his Canadian accent this was hilarious…then he looks at the bartender and yells from across the room “Get this lady another beer!”….I didn’t think drinking one beer by myself was that impressive but since Michaela and Joy shared one…maybe to him it was. That whole night was just a hoot. Musa and the other guys from the hostel were telling joke after joke and we were all constantly laughing. Then Musa and his friend (we like to refer to him as the guy in red coat that was creepy nice because he flirted with Joy….because we still don’t know his name) led us back to the Hostel and we showered and hit the hay because in the morning we were planning on having a day trip to Alexandria.
We boarded the bus and got ready to start our “what we thought would be a 6 hour bus ride”….little did we know that this wouldn’t really go as planned. It’s quite a long story….so I will sum it up to make it better to read and make it less boring. Pretty much this is what happened…..our 6 hour bus ride turned into 9…little did we know we had to stop at every little check point to get our tickets or passports checked…..met some interesting people….a man named Dr. Pip was a psychologist that moved from Holland to Egypt because he said why would I want to stay in Europe or go to the US, their economy is crap….talked to him for a good while…he gave us tips on where to go, what not to eat or drink if we still want to continue to have a good vacation and not get Hep C, and shared some of his stories. Nice guy….a little different…but nice. Also met a guy named Daboo….looks wise he would fall right under Bradly Cooper on my list…and he was very intelligent. He was an Egyptian who lived in Cairo….but it was very clear about how he dressed and how he talked that he would rather be an American. When we first asked him where he was from he said unfortunately Egypt…and then he said No, I am proud to be an Egyptian, but I am not proud about many things that happen in my country. His dad works for a tourism business and it was very evident that they were well off. He said that he spent a lot of time around his dads business when he was little and that is why he can speak about 5 or 6 different languages. When he said “well Russian was the hardest language I have learned” all of our jaws probably dropped. I’d say he was 22 or 23.
So back to the quickness of this story….we landed in Nueva…of course three hours late…therefore we missed out fairy and had nowhere to stay. So we were stranded in this small town that really didn’t have anything right on the coast of the Red Sea with two weeks of luggage and nowhere to go. Oh and did I mention that finding someone in the little boon-dock town that spoke English was basically impossible. So we tried looking for a hostel…or the two streets that this town had….found nothing. Then we found this restaurant with a guy that spoke English and his wife was German so she spoke English as well. They basically gave us two choices….you can either sleep in a hut on the beach (which we had no camping supplies or anything...which was needed in this case) or the Hilton. We hated to be those people, but we chose the Hilton. We got the taxi driver who had been following us around since the moment we stepped off the bus to take us to the Hilton, and we went to go check in to a room. The cheapest thing that they had was a Villa on the beach….so we got two double rooms (which included a free buffet dinner and breakfast and free drinks …which by the way was amazing food). Even though we were ticked about missing the fairy we told ourselves that we would make the best out of staying here and try to have fun….plus it was clean beds and a clean shower….which he really hadn’t had for a couple days. The Villa was very pretty…about 150 feet from the Red Sea.
Day 4: The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and took a taxi back to the port to see if we could get the first fairy out. Turns out that the next fairy didn’t leave until 3 in the afternoon (It was currently 9am) and it would cost each person 160 US dollars to use the fairy for a round trip. So after talking this over we decided that spending that amount of money for two days in Jordan wasn’t worth it. And that is where out Jordan fairytale ends. But it is ok, because not going to Jordan opened up a lot more for us. So after leaving the ticket building for the port we tried to ask a couple policemen where the bus station was…just a little word of advice…if you ever end up in Nueva and the policemen say they speak English…they really mean that they don’t. We probably looked like idiots trying to describe how we needed a bus back to Cairo….so after a while of working through our language barrier we were pointed in the right direction. We spotted the buses and began walking in that direction. As we are walking up to the big lot with buses one bus was pulling out…and as we were passing it, it stopped and the driver got out…..it was our same driver from the day before! We couldn’t believe it....he couldn’t speak English either, but with all of his hand motions and such he basically said I am leaving now you guys can through your luggage in and just come with me. We quickly payed him, which we are all pretty positive he pocketed since we didn’t even make it up to bus building to buy proper tickets, and we got on. Even though it may have been “illegal” for him to do that…it was a blessing because we knew him and we knew that we would return to Cairo that night….even if it took us an extra three hours.
We finally got back to Cairo and since we didn’t know what bus stop to get off at we just randomly picked one hoping for the best. As soon as we got off the bus we had a taxi driver in our face asking if we needed him….all we needed to do at that moment was to call the hostel that we had been at two nights before and ask them if they had room for us for the next couple days considering we wouldn’t be using our hostel in Jordan. They said that they had two rooms open and that we could head that way whenever we wanted. During this whole process this taxi driver was still all over us and part of me wanted to just look him in the eye and say Please Sir, we really don’t need you, I am sorry….but we just went with the flow and after getting our reservations we began to walk to the street to look for a legit taxi….and of course he followed us….so we said fine you can take us but we are setting the price….he didn’t like our price….so we haggled for awhile…but he wasn’t being easy about it…his persistence of taking us with his price was quite entertaining and just made me laugh….we still didn’t even know if this guy was even a taxi driver cause we had yet to see his car. All of this negotiating happened to be taking place in front of a couple of police officers…they were laughing and getting a kick out of it too….and then one of the policemen looked at me, smiled, and said this guy is a really nice guy….so we finally decided on a price with the cab driver, loaded up our stuff and headed towards to hostel.
This cab ride was probably one of the most hilarious memories in Egypt. The cab driver new English very well and was an absolute hoot. His name was Jimmy, and when he introduced himself he said I’m Jimmy! Not Jimmy Carter, Jimmy the Egyptian!! It was soo funny. We had a good discussion about are presidents….he loves Obama….along with the rest of Egypt …and hates Bush….also along with the rest of Egypt. Then he said “I like Clinton, but Clinton like too many women”…haha. He then began to give Michaela and Ish tons of crap about being a couple and he clearly let Ish know that Joy and I were going to be his considering he already had a women. At the end of the cab ride we got his number just in case we needed his assistance again and went and checked into the hostel. Its instances like this that we are glad we just went with the flow…because even though Jimmy was a little too much to handle at first, he turned out to be an awesome person that we are all glad we met.
That night so of the guys that worked at the Hostel invited us out to a bar for some drinks. We said that we would go but we wanted to get something to eat first. So Musa…one of my favorite people we met on this trip ( he is an Egyptian, but lived in Canada for 18 years so he has the Canadian accent, and is very outgoing and hilarious) took us to this restaurant, ordered for us, and said he would be back in 40 minutes to pick us up and take us to the bar. This just shows how nice the people we met really where….they took care of us a handful of times….so greatful. We had a delicious dinner (and cheap for the amount of food we got) and then we met up with them again and they showed us the way to the bar.
Musa had said that there was other Americans at the bar that were staying at the same hostel that we needed to meet. So we got to the bar, they ordered us some beer, and we all sat and chatted. The two American girls where from Philly and DC area. They were friends that had known each other for a long time and they both had breaks so they were traveling for about a week and a half. One was in her first year of residency to be a Neurologist and the other was Structural Engineer. Both very bright and very nice. It was fun to be out with locals and new friends and just to have the chance to sit and chat. After I had finished my beer, Musa looks at me and he says “WOW she drinks like a FISH” with his Canadian accent this was hilarious…then he looks at the bartender and yells from across the room “Get this lady another beer!”….I didn’t think drinking one beer by myself was that impressive but since Michaela and Joy shared one…maybe to him it was. That whole night was just a hoot. Musa and the other guys from the hostel were telling joke after joke and we were all constantly laughing. Then Musa and his friend (we like to refer to him as the guy in red coat that was creepy nice because he flirted with Joy….because we still don’t know his name) led us back to the Hostel and we showered and hit the hay because in the morning we were planning on having a day trip to Alexandria.
Egypt:, Day One and Two
This is the start of the Egypt Blogs...im going to put them in a couple days at a time so its easier to read.....not quite done, but that is a goal to reach before I leave for Barcelona on Tuesday. Enjoy. I apologize in advance for all of the typos that may be found in here....i dont really have time at this point to re-read everything...sorry mom.
Day 1: Well I guess the best place to start is day one: the airport. As you all probably read in my last blog I thought we were leaving on Friday….turns out we left Thursday….I found this out Tuesday night haha….After I told my mom this she said it’s a good thing you travel with people or else you would end up nowhere haha. Anyway, it all turned out ok…it just meant I needed to actually pack before Thursday…which successfully happened. We flew out of Bilbao Thursday to Barcelona….had a lovely 19 hour layover in the Barcelona airport….I use lovely VERY loosely. We only had one bench that was comfortable enough to sleep on…so we switched on and off. While we were staying the night in the airport there was this middle aged homeless man that was trying to sleep near us. I think he suffered from some mental illnesses from the way he was acting…so in the morning when he was still asleep on the other side of this small café area, Joy and I bought him breakfast and wrote a little note that said have a good day and Jesus loves you. He didn’t end up eating the breakfast but he read the note and then left. Then Friday morning we flew from Barcelona to Prague and then from Prague to Cairo. We arrived in Cairo at about 230am Saturday morning.
We stepped off the plane, got our luggage and went to go find a taxi. This was quite the experience considering the language barrier totally took place here. After a little confusion we finally had this guy lead through the airport to a place where he said taxis where….we were all a little skeptical, but we knew we had to eventually trust someone to lead us in the right direction so we went with it. Once we got to the place where this taxi was we loaded up our luggage as the taxi driver tried to figure out where our hostel was from the information we had. He didn’t really understand the address so after asking a few people around the airport, he finally got in and we began to drive. During this drive, I leaned over to Joy and I said This will probably make number one on the list of most uncomfortable times in my life…we wanted to think positively about this situation…but at that time all I could think about was that we were in a Country we had never been in…in a car that was driving quite fast….with someone we don’t know…and also someone we can’t communicate with…at 3:30 in the morning. But now that I look back…we were completely fine, I think it was just a little initial culture shock or something to that degree. After driving around lost for about 45 minutes and asking about every police man we saw for directions to our hostel, our taxi driver finally got us there. We checked in and then went to bed.
Day 2: First day in Cairo: We got up, got ready for the day, and then decided to just wonder around Cairo and what not. Our hostel was downtown….so we were in a good place to be able to just walk around and explore. Since we had gotten up after breakfast time and had had a dinner the previous night that consisted of airplane food, we decided to look for something to eat first. We knew that we really had to be careful about where to eat because we didn’t know how things would affect our stomachs…and we also did not have a clue where any good food places where….sooo we were lame Americans and ate at McDonalds for our first meal in Egypt. Yes we know, it is pathetic and funny at the same time…but we were so hungry that we really didn’t care. We then walked to the Nile and decided to walk along that. It was soo pretty…we took picture and just stood on a bridge for a while and talked…the weather was perfect, probably around 65-70 degrees. After that we decided to walk on the other side of the river so we crossed the bridge and began walking again. We then saw a sign for a Hard Rock Café that was right on the water so we wanted to see if we could go out on the porch for awhile….turns out we couldn’t get there through the Hard Rock Café, but we went down to the restaurant anyway. We decided we would just go in for drinks and sit and chat for awhile. What we thought would be a half an hour or so turned into a couple of hours….mostly thanks to our AWESOME waiter Sayied. He was absolutely hilarious and after we were there for awhile he started to give a riddles and these little small table games that we had to figure out. It kept us entertained for quite so time. Then the other waiters were seeing that we were laughing and having a good time so they would come over and see what we were doing and such….I think we met most of the staff that night.
Before we left we asked OUR WAITER about this food that we had been told to try called Koshery…we wanted to know where would be a good place to get it. He said there was a place called Tom and Basals not far away and that they had really good koshery. He gave us directions ….well “directions”….we took pictures with him, and then we left. Finding this place wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but after asking a few more people we finally made it. We ordered to go and then headed back to the hostel so we could plan our Jordan trip with the help of the people at the Hostel. The Koshery was amazing. It is this mixed dish that contains rice, paste, lentils, Garbanzo beans, caramelized onions, and a marinara sauce. They also gave you two different kinds of spicy sauce to put on it too. Not only was this food realllly good, but it was realllly cheap. With converting from Egyptian pounds to dollars, it cost us less than a dollar….and it was a very filling meal. Let’s just say, this was definitely not the last time we ate this. We then talked to Hisann (one of the main workers at the hostel) about going to Jordan for the next couple of days. He told us that we could take a 6 hour bus ride to Nueva, a small town close to border that has a port that we would go to too take a fairy to the Jordan boarder. We got it all planned out and set our alarms very early to get up and catch the 7oclock bus.
Day 1: Well I guess the best place to start is day one: the airport. As you all probably read in my last blog I thought we were leaving on Friday….turns out we left Thursday….I found this out Tuesday night haha….After I told my mom this she said it’s a good thing you travel with people or else you would end up nowhere haha. Anyway, it all turned out ok…it just meant I needed to actually pack before Thursday…which successfully happened. We flew out of Bilbao Thursday to Barcelona….had a lovely 19 hour layover in the Barcelona airport….I use lovely VERY loosely. We only had one bench that was comfortable enough to sleep on…so we switched on and off. While we were staying the night in the airport there was this middle aged homeless man that was trying to sleep near us. I think he suffered from some mental illnesses from the way he was acting…so in the morning when he was still asleep on the other side of this small café area, Joy and I bought him breakfast and wrote a little note that said have a good day and Jesus loves you. He didn’t end up eating the breakfast but he read the note and then left. Then Friday morning we flew from Barcelona to Prague and then from Prague to Cairo. We arrived in Cairo at about 230am Saturday morning.
We stepped off the plane, got our luggage and went to go find a taxi. This was quite the experience considering the language barrier totally took place here. After a little confusion we finally had this guy lead through the airport to a place where he said taxis where….we were all a little skeptical, but we knew we had to eventually trust someone to lead us in the right direction so we went with it. Once we got to the place where this taxi was we loaded up our luggage as the taxi driver tried to figure out where our hostel was from the information we had. He didn’t really understand the address so after asking a few people around the airport, he finally got in and we began to drive. During this drive, I leaned over to Joy and I said This will probably make number one on the list of most uncomfortable times in my life…we wanted to think positively about this situation…but at that time all I could think about was that we were in a Country we had never been in…in a car that was driving quite fast….with someone we don’t know…and also someone we can’t communicate with…at 3:30 in the morning. But now that I look back…we were completely fine, I think it was just a little initial culture shock or something to that degree. After driving around lost for about 45 minutes and asking about every police man we saw for directions to our hostel, our taxi driver finally got us there. We checked in and then went to bed.
Day 2: First day in Cairo: We got up, got ready for the day, and then decided to just wonder around Cairo and what not. Our hostel was downtown….so we were in a good place to be able to just walk around and explore. Since we had gotten up after breakfast time and had had a dinner the previous night that consisted of airplane food, we decided to look for something to eat first. We knew that we really had to be careful about where to eat because we didn’t know how things would affect our stomachs…and we also did not have a clue where any good food places where….sooo we were lame Americans and ate at McDonalds for our first meal in Egypt. Yes we know, it is pathetic and funny at the same time…but we were so hungry that we really didn’t care. We then walked to the Nile and decided to walk along that. It was soo pretty…we took picture and just stood on a bridge for a while and talked…the weather was perfect, probably around 65-70 degrees. After that we decided to walk on the other side of the river so we crossed the bridge and began walking again. We then saw a sign for a Hard Rock Café that was right on the water so we wanted to see if we could go out on the porch for awhile….turns out we couldn’t get there through the Hard Rock Café, but we went down to the restaurant anyway. We decided we would just go in for drinks and sit and chat for awhile. What we thought would be a half an hour or so turned into a couple of hours….mostly thanks to our AWESOME waiter Sayied. He was absolutely hilarious and after we were there for awhile he started to give a riddles and these little small table games that we had to figure out. It kept us entertained for quite so time. Then the other waiters were seeing that we were laughing and having a good time so they would come over and see what we were doing and such….I think we met most of the staff that night.
Before we left we asked OUR WAITER about this food that we had been told to try called Koshery…we wanted to know where would be a good place to get it. He said there was a place called Tom and Basals not far away and that they had really good koshery. He gave us directions ….well “directions”….we took pictures with him, and then we left. Finding this place wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but after asking a few more people we finally made it. We ordered to go and then headed back to the hostel so we could plan our Jordan trip with the help of the people at the Hostel. The Koshery was amazing. It is this mixed dish that contains rice, paste, lentils, Garbanzo beans, caramelized onions, and a marinara sauce. They also gave you two different kinds of spicy sauce to put on it too. Not only was this food realllly good, but it was realllly cheap. With converting from Egyptian pounds to dollars, it cost us less than a dollar….and it was a very filling meal. Let’s just say, this was definitely not the last time we ate this. We then talked to Hisann (one of the main workers at the hostel) about going to Jordan for the next couple of days. He told us that we could take a 6 hour bus ride to Nueva, a small town close to border that has a port that we would go to too take a fairy to the Jordan boarder. We got it all planned out and set our alarms very early to get up and catch the 7oclock bus.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
20th birthday
Well I am sure all of you thought that this would be the first of the Egypt blogs....but sorry its not. BUT I have started on those and they will be coming soon...it will take a couple blogs to get it all in....but they will be coming.....hopefully.
Anyway I just wanted to write this blog what has happened since I have returned from Egypt....or aka my birthday.
I had a great birthday...and thank you all for the birthday wishes....its not everyday you get to turn 20 in a different country.
Amelia (my host mom) is absolutely wonderful...I honestly think that maybe she was more excited about my birthday than I was haha.
When I walked into the kitchen for breakfast the morn of my birthday there was a bouquet of flowers in front of my breakfast plate and a present on my plate. I went to go find her out on the porch and said thank you a million times....she grabbed my face gave me a kisses on my cheeks and kept saying happy birthday. I then unwrapped my gift and it was this very awesome necklace. She said I want to be your mom away from home so I want to give you a great birthday...haha she is just so cute. Then when i got home from class she had this feast prepared. We had calamari, shrimp and other appetizers first and then
we had this pot roast thing....very good. Oh we also had champagne. Then when I was finishing up lunch, Amelia left the room and when she came back she was holding this big raseberry cheesecake with a big 20 candle in it. It was so cute. She again kissed me on the cheeks and had me blow out the candles. Perfect birthday lunch! She even told me that next year when I turn 21, I will say WOW I wish I was having Amelia's Birthday lunch today....she is probably right.
That night a group of friends and I went to the bar Crazy Horse to have some drinks and then we went to a friends apartment and just hung out, we took it slow since it was a school night. Tonight is when we are really celebrating. We are going to cook in Catherine's apartment and then go out.
Perfect Spanish Birthday!!
Egypt blogs will soon be coming!
love you all...
Mel
Anyway I just wanted to write this blog what has happened since I have returned from Egypt....or aka my birthday.
I had a great birthday...and thank you all for the birthday wishes....its not everyday you get to turn 20 in a different country.
Amelia (my host mom) is absolutely wonderful...I honestly think that maybe she was more excited about my birthday than I was haha.
When I walked into the kitchen for breakfast the morn of my birthday there was a bouquet of flowers in front of my breakfast plate and a present on my plate. I went to go find her out on the porch and said thank you a million times....she grabbed my face gave me a kisses on my cheeks and kept saying happy birthday. I then unwrapped my gift and it was this very awesome necklace. She said I want to be your mom away from home so I want to give you a great birthday...haha she is just so cute. Then when i got home from class she had this feast prepared. We had calamari, shrimp and other appetizers first and then
we had this pot roast thing....very good. Oh we also had champagne. Then when I was finishing up lunch, Amelia left the room and when she came back she was holding this big raseberry cheesecake with a big 20 candle in it. It was so cute. She again kissed me on the cheeks and had me blow out the candles. Perfect birthday lunch! She even told me that next year when I turn 21, I will say WOW I wish I was having Amelia's Birthday lunch today....she is probably right.
That night a group of friends and I went to the bar Crazy Horse to have some drinks and then we went to a friends apartment and just hung out, we took it slow since it was a school night. Tonight is when we are really celebrating. We are going to cook in Catherine's apartment and then go out.
Perfect Spanish Birthday!!
Egypt blogs will soon be coming!
love you all...
Mel
Monday, March 22, 2010
Well its been about a week....wow how time flies.
Last week (minus being sick) was a good week. It was Joys birthday on wednesday so we celebrated Tuesday and Thursday....because whoever really celebrates on their birthday??...well that will be our excuse. Anyway as I said in the last blog we did a bakery hop on Tuesday.....went to a couple bakeries and then went to get some sorbet icecream. It was super nice out so walking around was enjoyable. Then since Wednesday was full of lots of homework and studying for tests for everyone we stayed in...but had a happy green day anyway. Then Thursday Javi, Sarah, Joy, Robert, and I went to a Mexican resturant for supper to again celebrate the big 20 for Joy. It is so funny how all of us kids are in so much need of spicey food...but being born to a mother where ground pepper is a food group and being born in a town where mexican food is a food group....(Joy and I just want some dang jalepenos) we needed some spice. So at the mexican place we ordered enchiladas and pina coladas....it was no Taqueria, but it had spice and thats all we really cared about. After that we went by the river and sat on a bench and all talked until about 2 in the morning. It was soooo nice out and we could ever see some stars.
The rest of the weekend we kind of layed low....I wanted to get rid of my sickness before heading to Egypt on Friday (which it is almost gone :) ). Friday night Joy, Javi, and I watched Pride and Prejudice....Joys FAVORITE....good flick. Then Saturday night Joy, Javi and I went for a walk by the river to walk through this carnival that was going on...they had a live band and rides...we just walked around and such...was another really nice night. Then after that we found a little cafe and ordered some hot tea for all of us and sat and talked.
Sunday was the hair dying day. Two boxes of hair dye + two unexperienced hair dying American girls + two pairs of instructions in Spanish + one veryyy small bathroom = a success story. Joy did mine and then while mine sat I did hers. It wasnt as hard as we thought...and both of our heads look good....just had to get rid of those roots.
My last blog I had two comment requests...which is good because it gives me more to talk about. The first was from my lovely friend Sarah White asking me to explain what I do during the week, since I tend to just write about my weekends. So here we go...A normal day consists of getting up at 8:30am....making my bed...showering...getting ready....eating breakfast (fruit, yogurt, muffin, orange juice)...walking to school with Joy (except on Wednesday because she has class at 9 instead of 10)....Monday through Thursday I have Spanish Language, conversation, and writing class....on Monday and Wednesday its just from 10-12 and then on Tuesday and Thursday its from 10- 1...then also on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Spanish Culture class from 1:10- 2:25. Then after those classes I walk home....have lunch with Mil (my nickname for Amelia)...then I sometimes take a nap...then I go to the Library and work on homework/check facebook and email/ chat with my momma and amigos. Then I walk home and eat supper (which by the way I want to know how many people use the word supper...because Joy and I have been teased a lot here from our American friends for using that word...appearently nobody uses that word anymore...they say it stopped being used in the pioneer days....i beg to differ) Then after that I go wash my face, brush my teeth, read or watch a podcast, and go to bed. Now thats a general day...some days consist of more so dont think I dont have a life...but really life here has become the normal everyday school life. But smelling the fresh mountain air everyday also really adds to it.
Ok second request is from my spanish teacher Guillermo. He thought I should talk about our salsa dancing lessons...which i dont know how i forgot this in the first place. Two thursdays ago after our test, Guillermo said that he would teach us how to Salsa. As most of you know...Melinda likes to dance....but her skills lack. Guillermo was my partner so at least I was with someone who knew what they were doing... it was a lot of fun. I did a lot of looking at my feet making sure they were doing what they were supposed to...so next time my goal is to look at someones face haha. So I will try to improve my skills while I am here and whoever wants to learn when I get back I will be booking lessons...first come first serve...haha :).
Well at this moment I am killing time by talking to all of you...(thats not to say you guys arent important to me...) I just needed to do something while waiting for Joy to get out of class. When she gets done we are going to go get last minute necessities from Egypt seeing as we leave FRIDAY!!! We are very excited but a tad nervous maybe..idk maybe nervous isnt the word....its just this came so quickly....so we need to pack and make sure we have everything!
Well I think that is about it. I dont know if I will be able to write before I leave for Egypt so if not there may be a little break in my writing. I dont know what kind of internet access I will have in the hostels....but I am going to write everything down that we do each day so I can write about it when I return.
Prayers for healing for my grandmas back!
I hope you all have a wonderful Easter..I hope you can spend it with friends and family and rejoice in the fact that He has risen!
Also Happy birthday to my two favorite brothers on March 31st!!! 24 and 22....wow...love/miss you guys!!!
Hugs and Kisses
-Mel
Last week (minus being sick) was a good week. It was Joys birthday on wednesday so we celebrated Tuesday and Thursday....because whoever really celebrates on their birthday??...well that will be our excuse. Anyway as I said in the last blog we did a bakery hop on Tuesday.....went to a couple bakeries and then went to get some sorbet icecream. It was super nice out so walking around was enjoyable. Then since Wednesday was full of lots of homework and studying for tests for everyone we stayed in...but had a happy green day anyway. Then Thursday Javi, Sarah, Joy, Robert, and I went to a Mexican resturant for supper to again celebrate the big 20 for Joy. It is so funny how all of us kids are in so much need of spicey food...but being born to a mother where ground pepper is a food group and being born in a town where mexican food is a food group....(Joy and I just want some dang jalepenos) we needed some spice. So at the mexican place we ordered enchiladas and pina coladas....it was no Taqueria, but it had spice and thats all we really cared about. After that we went by the river and sat on a bench and all talked until about 2 in the morning. It was soooo nice out and we could ever see some stars.
The rest of the weekend we kind of layed low....I wanted to get rid of my sickness before heading to Egypt on Friday (which it is almost gone :) ). Friday night Joy, Javi, and I watched Pride and Prejudice....Joys FAVORITE....good flick. Then Saturday night Joy, Javi and I went for a walk by the river to walk through this carnival that was going on...they had a live band and rides...we just walked around and such...was another really nice night. Then after that we found a little cafe and ordered some hot tea for all of us and sat and talked.
Sunday was the hair dying day. Two boxes of hair dye + two unexperienced hair dying American girls + two pairs of instructions in Spanish + one veryyy small bathroom = a success story. Joy did mine and then while mine sat I did hers. It wasnt as hard as we thought...and both of our heads look good....just had to get rid of those roots.
My last blog I had two comment requests...which is good because it gives me more to talk about. The first was from my lovely friend Sarah White asking me to explain what I do during the week, since I tend to just write about my weekends. So here we go...A normal day consists of getting up at 8:30am....making my bed...showering...getting ready....eating breakfast (fruit, yogurt, muffin, orange juice)...walking to school with Joy (except on Wednesday because she has class at 9 instead of 10)....Monday through Thursday I have Spanish Language, conversation, and writing class....on Monday and Wednesday its just from 10-12 and then on Tuesday and Thursday its from 10- 1...then also on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Spanish Culture class from 1:10- 2:25. Then after those classes I walk home....have lunch with Mil (my nickname for Amelia)...then I sometimes take a nap...then I go to the Library and work on homework/check facebook and email/ chat with my momma and amigos. Then I walk home and eat supper (which by the way I want to know how many people use the word supper...because Joy and I have been teased a lot here from our American friends for using that word...appearently nobody uses that word anymore...they say it stopped being used in the pioneer days....i beg to differ) Then after that I go wash my face, brush my teeth, read or watch a podcast, and go to bed. Now thats a general day...some days consist of more so dont think I dont have a life...but really life here has become the normal everyday school life. But smelling the fresh mountain air everyday also really adds to it.
Ok second request is from my spanish teacher Guillermo. He thought I should talk about our salsa dancing lessons...which i dont know how i forgot this in the first place. Two thursdays ago after our test, Guillermo said that he would teach us how to Salsa. As most of you know...Melinda likes to dance....but her skills lack. Guillermo was my partner so at least I was with someone who knew what they were doing... it was a lot of fun. I did a lot of looking at my feet making sure they were doing what they were supposed to...so next time my goal is to look at someones face haha. So I will try to improve my skills while I am here and whoever wants to learn when I get back I will be booking lessons...first come first serve...haha :).
Well at this moment I am killing time by talking to all of you...(thats not to say you guys arent important to me...) I just needed to do something while waiting for Joy to get out of class. When she gets done we are going to go get last minute necessities from Egypt seeing as we leave FRIDAY!!! We are very excited but a tad nervous maybe..idk maybe nervous isnt the word....its just this came so quickly....so we need to pack and make sure we have everything!
Well I think that is about it. I dont know if I will be able to write before I leave for Egypt so if not there may be a little break in my writing. I dont know what kind of internet access I will have in the hostels....but I am going to write everything down that we do each day so I can write about it when I return.
Prayers for healing for my grandmas back!
I hope you all have a wonderful Easter..I hope you can spend it with friends and family and rejoice in the fact that He has risen!
Also Happy birthday to my two favorite brothers on March 31st!!! 24 and 22....wow...love/miss you guys!!!
Hugs and Kisses
-Mel
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