Wow!

What a day! It's only about 6 o'clock here and I feel like we fit a lot more into those first ten hours of the day than I ever have before!

We started the day with breakfast in the hotel at 6:30. Well, most people started at 6:30. I, of course, woke up around 6:30 and then started breakfast around 7:05. There was a selection of cheeses and fresh breads and omelets and quite a few other things I didn't recognize and wasn't brave enough to try on day one. Maybe I'll experiment with those tomorrow. I was excited to find that the little packet of jelly I grabbed for my bread without looking was fig jam. (Dad, it was delicious! I just bought us a jar, but I'll talk about that later.) We hopped on the bus by 7:30 to make our way towards Giza.

The traffic, which I forgot to mention last night, is absolutely insane! No city in the US could ever (ever!) claim to be as harrowing as the streets of Cairo. There are no lane lines, no stop signs, and I have seen only one actual traffic light in all of our driving these past two days. Yasser, a GIS professor at Clarion originally from Egypt, made a point of telling us that these are typically ignored by most people if they are ever actually used. All traffic decisions, particularly about right-of-way, are decided by eye contact with other drivers and angry honking. Pedestrians run across the streets with absolutely no fear. They are all so unbelievably calm, whether being cut off by a coach bus or a moped. When Lynn, the Honors Program coordinator at Clarion, and I sit together, I take the window seat so she doesn't have to look. It makes her too nervous!

We weren't driving long this morning when the pyramids loomed into view. It was funny; one minute we were driving past apartment buildings and shops, and the next moment you can clearly see the pyramids not even a half a mile behind them. I had this notion that we were going to have to drive for hours to the middle of some desert, far away from any kind of city or town, before we would catch even a glimpse of the pyramids. In every picture I've ever seen, that's the impression you get, that they're far away from the high rises and power lines and nestled among sand dunes and camels. Oh, no. Not true. Well, yes about the sand and camels, but you never see the smog of the city down the hill or the hundreds of people and the brightly colored buses that bring them there. I think I may have taken as many pictures of the crowds of people as I did the tombs themselves. Ok, well, seeing as I took something like 400 pictures today, that might be an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Lots of people, lots of stuff you don't see on the History or Discovery Channel.

We saw the pyramid of Cheops first. At least, I'm pretty sure that was it. Our guide is heavy on the information and the Arabic accent, so you don't always know where you are exactly. I know I'm here though, and that's enough for me! Anyway, we get to the pyramid and it is huge and imposing and awe-inspiring and all those things you know it will be. What really got to me though was walking, and crawling, inside. You're walking doubled over in these narrow tunnels, wooden boards and railings added so that you're not trying to walk up a giant limestone slip-n-slide, and somehow you end up walking the opposite direction at some point (start out uphill, then downhill, and vice versa) and of course it only gets hotter as you go and then, just like that, you're deposited out into a burial chamber. A stuffy, hot, empty burial chamber. At Cheops, there was this little group of people sitting in a circle on the floor meditating and humming with a candle and an apple on the floor between them. I never did figure out what the apple had to do with anything. I was more fascinated by the walls than anything though. These slabs of granite are absolutely massive and all perfectly smooth and straight and the seams are just microscopic. It's that exact! And, oh yeah, there isn't a granite quarry for a good 1000km. The rest of the pyramid is limestone, which is located nearby in large quantities, but not granite. Just another crazy detail to think about when you're roaming around the chamber, trying not to think about how hot you are. And then, in thinking about not thinking about how hot you are, you can't help but think about the people who built this structure. The man power, the heat, the hours, the absolute precision of their work. You just stop, staring at the wall in front of you. It is impossible to fully wrap your mind around that sort of thing.

Sadly, you're not allowed cameras inside the pyramids, although I think I've come to understand why. 1) There really isn't a whole lot to see in there. The walls, floors and ceilings are all bare and rather dark. 2) Some sneaky people in front of us managed to bring their cameras in and had to stop every 10 ft or so to take a picture of the next blank space of wall, usually while trying to walk up or down one of the taller sections of limestone slip-n-slide. We darted around them as soon as we found an opening. We were in and out of each pyramid in under 30 minutes. That would easily have been doubled if people were permitted to take their cameras. And that would just be annoying!

After Cheops we made our way (by bus) to a panoramic vantage point for all three pyramids. We snapped a few pictures and a couple kids played with a Frisbee just to say that they had. There were a few market stalls selling souvenirs and other trinkets, but we'll be hitting some major market areas later in the week, so our tour guide advised us against it. Instead, we stuck around to go for a camel ride! I took a short ride with another girl from our group and took the bus with most of our group down to the second and third pyramids. Other groups actually rode the camels to the second tomb and I'm sorry I missed out on that part. But I still got to ride a camel in Egypt, so I can't complain!

Most of us also went inside the second pyramid, which I won't even pretend to remember the name of. I just had to look it up on Wikipedia, and it's the Pyramid of Khafra. (Say the 'kh' like the guttural German 'g' sound. That's the closest approximation.) The inclines were steeper there and shorter, but, again, I'm in Egypt; why wouldn't I?? One interesting thing about Khafra: the burial chamber is famously graffitied by the Italian archeologist who originally discovered it in 1818. His name and the date are painted high on the wall opposite the entrance to the chamber. Otherwise, the tomb is similar to Cheops. Big room, big stones, extreme precision, extreme heat, etc. Once again, no cameras, so you'll just have to trust me on that one.

The third pyramid - once again, I'm lost on the name - is not open to tourists. There is, however, a tomb outside this pyramid for the pharaoh's doctor and his family. There are still quite a few panels of hieroglyphs. The contents of the hieroglyphs are meant to tell the viewer something about the man and family housed there. The ones we saw were of various animals, predominantly some kind of deer/antelope cousin grazing or being eaten by a lion. I have no idea what that's supposed to say about the good doctor, but I'm sure it says something! We also could climb down into the burial chamber and see some of the other rooms in the tomb, which the guide explained was set up like a typical house in order to be useful as a home in the afterlife.

After we escaped the clutches of the tomb attendant who requested "a little something? tip?", we walked down the hill to see the Sphinx. As every travel site I read about Egypt warned me, it is a lot smaller than you imagine. In photos, it seems like it's close in location and size to at least one of the pyramids, but it's actually a good distance down the hill. It's still huge and imposing and an overall impressive structure, but not immediately what you're expecting. There were again many more souvenir sellers in the area around the sphinx, which we avoided. The teenage boys and young children seemed to be the most persistent, but no one got harassed too heavily. They understand "no, thank you" in probably every major language, I'd guess.

By this point, it was starting to actually get quite hot outside and the breeze we had been lucky to have all morning wasn't making as big of an impact. We hopped back on the bus to make the short trip back to downtown Cairo and stopped off at a chain restaurant called Gad. This was easily the most authentic food we've had the chance to eat. Everyone at my table had a shawerma sandwich of either beef or chicken. Shawerma is like the more delicious cousin to the gyro. Where the gyro is a meatloaf, the shawerma is solid pieces of meat layered with spices (absolutely delicious spices!) and served on a narrow hoagie-like roll. It was so flavorful and just plain yummy. I could easily eat one everyday for lunch while we're here. There was also grilled pigeon on the menu, which I was not brave enough to try just yet. Most of us have decided we'll try it at least once while we're here. Yasser says it's delicious, but he grew up here, so that's no surprise. He hasn't led us astray yet, so maybe that will happen tomorrow.

Hell, I'm pretty sure I could try both for lunch and it still wouldn't hurt my pocket! My sandwich today was more than filling enough and it cost something like 3 USD. If I got something simpler like falafel or fava beans, it'd be more like 1-2 USD max. Even the camel ride was only 10 USD, which I didn't think was bad at all. The exchange rate is definitely working to our benefit. One USD converts to about 5.59 Egyptian pounds. I bought a liter of water today for just over a pound. We go through bottled water like crazy, so that's great for us! There's a grocery store less than a block from the hotel, so I had fun exploring there during our free time after lunch and before dinner. For example, did you know there is more than one flavor of Tang? I have trouble finding Tang at home, so it was difficult to resist the packet of mango Tang as it leaped into my basket. Same thing goes for the fig jam (for Dad), hibiscus tea (for Mom) and chocolate hazelnut wafer bar thingies (for me). I may also be going back for the interesting brands of Nutella (which is all for you, Dom!). It's fun to drink the Pepsi too - or 'Bibsi' since the Arabic alphabet doesn't use a 'p' - because the can opens differently and the flavor is noticeably sweeter. And, of course, I'm taking pictures of all of this stuff!

Aside from a nap and dinner in the hotel, that about covers it for today. Dinner was served in the restaurant on the roof, which was pretty interesting. I wish I would have had my camera with me up there. It looked like rooftop gardens full of satellites and assorted garbage for as far as you could see. It was a very strange sight. The food was good, but nothing particularly interesting or authentic to report. This makes me look forward to our lunches more, as breakfast was also a westernized version of an authentic local meal. Tomorrow we don't start our excursion until after lunch, so I may or may not have more to update before then. We have two museums to visit between lunch and dinner, so I will undoubtedly have more pictures as well. I took over 400 pictures today, so I've got quite a lot of uploading to do now before bed. I was going to set up a Flickr account or something similar, but I'm feeling lazy so I'll just add them all to Facebook and post the public link here when I'm finished.

I know it's only 3 in the afternoon for you guys, but it's just after 10pm here, so it's time for a shower and bed soon. I love you all and wish you could be here to see this with me! Don't forget, you can email me any time and sending me a text will only cost a nickel! I hope to hear from you soon!