One more day in Cairo

I'm using my hotel roommate's laptop while sitting in some other girls' hotel room where i can get an internet connection. maybe this time i'll use spell check so you can't see how pathetic my spelling is. SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED since i last wrote. We've done a mosque tour through the great and ancient mosque-plural of Cairo. The mosque of Sultan Hassan is ginormous and something i've looked forward to ever since I learned about it in my Islam humanities class. After the mosque walking tour, some of us decided to use what energy we had left to see Bab Zuwaila: the gate of the city. Jason showed us the way. Jason is one of the young teachers with us on this trip. He is a grad student and i took Arabic 102 from him. I once went on a date that ended up being a triple date including him. Yep, dating with teachers...almost as weird as the time i went on a small group date with a girl who turned out to be chad's teacher from the previous year.
ANYway, Jason led us at his usual break-neck speed through the souq where the Arabs yell and barter so that we could get to the Bab. I didn't realize we would climb to the top of the tallest minaret-like tower, but it turned out to be my favorite part of the day! I'm not sure i've ever stood on such a high precariously dangerous spot.
It was amazing, as you can see from the picture i just pulled off the internet.

Another great adventure was the one we all took, all 55 of us, to LUXOR. We took an overnight train there, spent the day seeing the sights, then took a night train back. I LOVE SLEEPING ON TRAINS! That is, i love sleeping in a bed in a cabin on a train. the first dinner they served us was nasty-to-the-max though: little silver foil dishes with eggplant mush, runny hummus, 3 slabs of suspicious meat, and greasy fried fish. i was surprised to admit my pickiness this time and NOT eat most of my meal. that is a RECORD!! there is food that nikki won't eat!!!! luckily there was a role and an orange included so i ate those. sleeping on the top bunk was great, and cabin roommate and i had our own little sink where we washed up (including our dirty sandle-laden feet) and went to bed happily.

speaking of sandals... my chacos were a FANTASTIC investment. apparently everyone else in the program was thinking the same thing because half of us wear chacos.

So, once in Luxor, we went to the valley of the kings and saw 4 tombs, including King Tut's. We also saw the temple of Hatshepsut, built right into the shear rock-face of a "mountain." Sadly, that is where my Egypt guide book was stolen. I was pretty sad about losing it because it had earned me friends and praise when it made me sound smart or like i knew where i was going. I wanted it as a future reference too but alas, i lent it to a friend and it was stolen when they set it down for a moment. We also saw the guardian statues of Memnon, which now guard a temple that is now long gone. These seated figures are huge, yet the temple once was even bigger.

The most amazing sights of Luxor: the temple of Karnak and the Luxor temple. I do have pics for these at the moment! buuut they keep going to the top of this post. great.

Moving on, the train back from Luxor was another great night of sleep while being rocked slightly by the sway of the ol' egyptian train. the next morning our whole group flooded the cairo branch for church. They knew we were coming and were generous enough to feed us lunch after church. I already had stomach cramps by then and i thought the american tacos would cure them, but i still have them and they've gotten worse today! i'm already sick. kudos to me, the girl who thought she was immune to all sickness because of her travels. this girl was WRONG. if this stomach cramping DISEASE gets me like it got dad on his first rotation in egypt, then i'll end up at the local clinic with an IV in my arm. hopefully it won't get that bad. I was told to get electrolyte-something to put in my water. salt and potassium is what i need!
Without the stomach cramps that FALSELY suggesting further intestinal problems, i might've enjoyed TODAY's adventure more. It was still a good day though. I went to Alexandria today and saw the fort built over the place where the ancient lighthouse once stood. only the doorframe of the fort is whats left of the lighthouse. we ate beans, hummus, and falafal with arab bread for lunch, including the essential carbonated drinks to kill whatever bacteria we just put in our stomachs. coke works best but i LOOOOVe fanta, so my fanta probably didn't help much. I did a lot of journal writing on the train to and from Alex. once back in cairo, a group of us students took taxi's to a beatiful garden/park that you pay to enter. this garden is at a high point of the city and has a hill you climb to see the whole area. We climbed it just in time to hear the call to prayer at sunset. the sunset was beautiful, and the call to prayer rang out from every mosque in the city. all of them were a little different, varying slightly at their starting points, volume, and prayer style. It was a completely unique experience. Hmm, i seem to be getting a lot of those. :)

well this post is too long. after tomorrow, the next stop is Jordan.