Friday morning we left Aswan bright and early to bus down to Aswan. on the way we stopped to visit 2 temples - one of Horus that was mostly intact, and then one of Horus and Set(maybe? the crocidile god) that was along the nile. We got to Aswan around noon, where we had lunch at our hotel overlooking the pool. We stayed at the Old Cataract, ( Read more... )

yesterday we visited Karnak temple, which is reportedly the biggest religious complex ever. It was pretty cool, cause every king who came through added his own touch to it, so there's lots of different things. the temple is enormous, even if it is just ruins now, you can still get a good idea of the magnitude of the place. that took all morning, ( Read more... )

yesterday we started out going to the Zebellen project outside of Cairo. the area is inhabited by people (the Zebellen) who live by collecting trash from Cairo and recyling it. we visited the nursery that cares for kids from 6 months to 6 years while their parents work - the kids were so adorable - if i ever adopt a kid, i would love to get an ( Read more... )

So friday night most of the group went out to dinner with prof. taylor's wife's cousins that went to Sinai with us at a nice outdoor restaurant in al Azhar park near islamic Cairo, which had a beautiful view of the cididel and parts of the city. it was good french food. i'm not a big fan of most of the native food here - i'll eat stuff, but i've ( Read more... )

today was a pretty empty day on the schedule - we had an optional walk through the medieval city this morning, that almost everyone came on, but that was it. as the group was walking down the street, we past a bunch of police officers, who radioed back that there was a group of americans wandering around without an escort, and they were apparently ( Read more... )

tuesday we slept in late (probably over 12 hours of sleep that night, since i took a nap from 9:30-10:15ish and then went to bed at 11ish - there was talk of trying to find someplace to see belly dancing around 10:30, but people decided to hookah instead, so i went back to bed, and we didnt get up till maybe 10ish in the morning) at 12 we had a ( Read more... )

yesterday we got up earlyish to visit 2 mosques - the first one was from early middle ages, and was a university mosque, and the second was a royal mosqe from the 19th century, done in a barroque style. i really loved the intrict designs in the first one done in marble and wood - it was so beautiful, while the second was very oppulent. these ( Read more... )

after i got back to the hotel from the last time at the internet cafe (it's a real cafe, with sandwitches and ice cream, in addition to having 7 computers in a corner) we saw the rest of the group sitting in the lounge, so we went down a floor to join them and stayed up late talking about anything and everything - from adoption, being minorities, ( Read more... )

Yesterday was pretty busy - we got dressed up and went to al-Azhar University, the oldest continuingly opperating university, open for like a thousand years or something, where we met the head sheik of the interfaith department, who basically said that in egypt there are no problems at all between christians and muslims, and that everything was all ( Read more... )

today we had our first day of lectures at the American University in Cairo - 2 lectures on Egyptian government politics and religion - first one pretty interesting - we asked her (egyptian prof and member of parliment) questions, but the second guy had a very thick accent which made him hard to understand, about islam and the government. then ( Read more... )