The rest of Egypt

So i got some motivation from somewhere today (i even cleaned my room!!) and finished my blog!! Happy reading : )

Day 2:
I decided to skip the S@S trip because they tend to be overcrowded so after donating my ticket I went with my friends, Courtney and Jill (everyone else is on overnights), to catch a cab to Cairo. In Egypt a lot of cabs have tourist services where they drive you around all day for a prearrange price and they wait for you outside the sights. Our driver, Hasan, is a really funny little old man who knew limited English but communicated fine. He really liked the word “wow” and would laugh and repeat us every time we said it. He kept saying we were like his children (he has 2 sons who are 22 and 21 and a 16 yr old daughter). He even called us habibti (again. Phonetic don’t judge) which means beloved one and is used for family members, children, good friends, etc.

It’s a 3 ½ hour drive from Alexandria to Cairo and I slept most of the way. When we got there the first place we went was the Egypt Museum. After checking our cameras and going through security we walked around and looked at the hieroglyphics on a bunch of tombs and a bunch of statues of kings and queens. It was really hot in there so we hopped from one air conditioned exhibit to another and saw King Tut’s tomb, a bunch of mummies, and then a bunch of old jewelry and other stuff that was in some guy’s tomb.

When we left I stopped at the little cart outside to get breakfast because we had left before breakfast on the ship was open. While paying for my super nutritious breakfast of Pringles I met a family from Poland who didn’t speak English. (I asked them where they were from by pointing to myself and going America and then pointing to them and shrugging and then they laughed and said Poland.) Nat you’re going to have to teach me more polish because all I could say to them was tok/tac/tak/toc however you spell it.

Next Hasan drove us to a little papyrus shop and a girl showed us how they make papyrus and then they tried to get us to buy stuff. I wasn’t going to but then I saw one I really liked and haggled them down from 50$ to 15$.

Jill really wanted to ride a camel because she wasn’t going on the S@S trip where you ride them and somehow me and Courtney (who didn’t want to go) got swindled into going with her. They put these little hat things on us and put us on donkeys and took pictures of us and then expected us to pay them for the hats. Since they had already opened the packaging and we couldn’t give them back we had to pay for the hats and then it was time to go in to see the pyramids. It was really cool riding a camel across a small part of the Sahara to see the pyramids. It was exactly how I imagined it. We stopped for a while a took a bunch of dorky pictures and then rode all the way up to the pyramid and climbed up a couple levels to take pictures. Next we rode over to the Sphinx and took some more pictures. That was when we realized that our tour guide was pretty sketchy. He had to pay off some tourist guard to let us climb on the pyramids and then snuck us in to see the Sphinx. We turned out to be right when we got back on our camels to go back to the taxi and the tour guide asked us how much we were going to tip him. When we told him $3 USD each he got really mad and started yelling.

Here’s the thing about Egyptians. Any time someone does something for you they will expect to be tipped. Also, they won’t ask for the tip they will stand there, look at the ground, and say, “It’s okay.” What they really mean is, “Its ok for you to give me money now.”

When we got back we had to deal with the camel guys and the charges. They overcharged us like it was their job (which it is). They plopped us on the camels (which me and Courtney didn’t even want to ride) and then charged us for hats we didn’t want, tickets to the museum, 25$ per camel which is about 5 times the amount they should have, and then told us we weren’t tipping them enough. Which made me really mad and I ended up standing there yelling at the Egyptian guys who handled the camels until they gave us back some pounds. Hasan looked kind of shocked and asked me if I was ok. We told him that we were out of money now and wanted to go back to Alexandria. He didn’t even argue or try to get us to spend more money. He just took us home.

When we got back I wrote my blog for the first day and then went to dinner where I was so dehydrated that all I had was 2 rolls with butter and an entire pitcher of water.

Day 3:
On this day me and Courtney went on a S@S trip. We slept the whole way to Cairo and then we drove up to the pyramids we had seen the day before and took some more pictures. I had learned how to deal with the vendors selling me stuff that I didn’t want and had a much more pleasant experience. Next we went over to the smallest pyramid and I climbed down to see the tomb (Courtney, who is 6 feet tall, decided to stay outside because it was a little cramped). It was pretty cool, much colder than outside and pretty deep.

After that we went to the Sakkara Country Club to go for a jeep safari and camel ride. The jeep safari was pretty fun. It was a bunch of jeeps driving around the Sahara. Our driver was pretty funny. He played Egyptian slow rock the whole time and every time we asked him a question he answered with one word.

After that we hopped out of the jeeps and grabbed camels. Mine was named Arabel and was led around by a 10-yr-old boy who didn’t speak English. All he knew was lean back, name, and tip. It was a fun little ride with about 60 other S@Sers.

After our camel ride we went to lunch and I had the single best meal of my life! (I’m not sure if it was actually that good or if I was just hungry because it was 2:00 and I didn’t eat breakfast) I finally had some hummus. They also had chicken, pita, rice (with almonds and brown sugar), watermelon, and 3 types of dessert! I was really full after that so once we got on the bus I fell asleep right away.

After lunch we went to 2 tombs and saw some hieroglyphics and the offerings thing and then we got on the bus and headed back to Alexandria. I didn’t really do much at night except for sit around the boat and watch movies.

Day 4:
On this day I slept in and then cleaned my room. Then me and Jill headed out to find the mosque and fort. It was a pretty long walk and we had to ask directions a couple times but we finally found it. It was really pretty! We took off our shoes and covered our heads and looked around a little bit. When we left the guy wanted a tip (of course) so we gave him a dollar and left to find the fort. It was a pretty long walk so we stopped for ice cream. When we got to the fort we hopped into a picture with some people and they laughed at us and took more pictures with us. We walked around for a while and then realized that we were really hot and headed back to the ship.

That night everyone got back from their overnight trips so we went out.

Day 5: 
This day we decided to

Wow. Ok I’m sitting on deck 7 right now writing this by the pool and my friend Courtney is working on her art project and it is really good so I just stopped typing and watch for like a ½ hour… wow! Ok where was I?

Right. On day 5 taryn, bridget, georgina, and I decided to go find the bazaar. We walked around for a while and found a street that looked pretty promising so we walked down it for a while. We had to ask directions a couple times and we found some shops that looked cool but we never actually found the bazaar. We did however get followed for about 20 minutes by 3 creepers so we stopped into a shop that sold glassware to look around and hope that the guys would go away. The shopkeeper was named Sayed and was a hilarious man. He insisted on taking pictures with all of us and then showed us the way to the bazaar and told us to come back when we were done and he’d give us ice cream (we had asked him where the bazaar was and where we could get adda ice cream that we had heard was really good). We walked around for a while and then gave up and went back to the shop and had some ice cream. Sayed has a brother who lives in New York and he lived in New Jersey for a while so he like Georgina (who is from New York). Everytime he tried to tell us something in his broken English and we didn’t understand he would yell it. Some jems of his were “SIT DOWN! YOU TALK TOO MUCH.” to Taryn when she didn’t understand that he was getting us ice cream, “NO WHAT TIME!” when we told him that we were leaving that day, “NO! USE WATER!!”

It was very entertaining. So after that bridget and I went back the ship and georgina and taryn went shopping. I got some stamps on the way and then drew my postcards (yay!!).

Other than that things on the ship have been interesting. We get an hour tonight which is a nice change from losing an hour on the way home. Tomorrow is Georgina’s birthday so we are going to sleep on the deck and enjoy the full moon… for her birthday : ) The teachers have realized that its summer and no one really wants to do any work and have been lightening up a lot (aka my teacher moved back one essay and cancelled another one) YAY! Which means that we have more free time for stuff like blogging and playing taboo! Alrighty I’m going to go sit around and watch Courtney draw… night