Well, it’s been a long year in Egypt, but I am finally done! I left Egypt-land quickly after finishing my finals, to celebrate with my buddy Paul on my 20 hour beer drinking layover in London-town. Now I have returned to the States, where I am currently spending time with my lady here in Indiana. I will remain here till the 12th, then I’ll be taking good ol’ ghetto airlines, (aka Southwest), back to Sacramento, where I expect to see several of you guys for a pint or two.Till then, Cheers! (more…)

The last few weeks have been a blast! I had the privilege of having some distinguished visitors to Egypt as my house guests. It was wonderful seeing my mom again, it had been since August when I left for London and to return to AUC for the Fall semester. It was also nice to see my friend PaPai again, who I had not seen since August as well. Albeit, it was a bit strange at first to merge my two worlds, but we all had a lot of fun together.

I took them to the Cairo Museum, showed them my school, introduced them to the Cairo Metro system, and took them shopping in Khan el-Khalili.

Also, I wanted to make sure that their visit would be very memorable, so I arranged a cruise on the Nile to see most of the sites in Upper Egypt. We took the train, first class my ass, to Luxor, where we settled onto the boat to begin our expedition. We stopped to see the temples in Edfu and Komombo on our way to Aswan. Upon arriving to Aswan we had to wake up at the crack-of-why-the-hell-am-I-awake to take a tiny micro bus for 5 hours to Abu Simbel. Although my Arabic is quite poor in my opinion, I had some fun serving as a translator to our drivers to and from Abu Simbel. Then, upon returning to Aswan sometime in the afternoon, we got to check out the temple at Philae and the Aswan High Dam. Originally our schedule had us returning to Luxor by train that night, but we opted to stay in Aswan an additional night so we could visit Elephantine, which is awesome, and the beautiful botanical garden on Kitchener’s Island. We then departed on that wonderful train to get back to Luxor. In Luxor we went to the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Hatchepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri, Karnak temple, and Luxor temple. All this was done in one day… For those that don’t know Luxor, it was quite the undertaking. All in all, the whole trip was a blast, the only downside was when my iPod decided to grow legs and run away from my hotel room in Luxor… No more music for Bob

My mom and PaPai decided that the train was just too unbearable to endure once again, so they decided, and I love them for this, to upgrade us to the sleeper train. After that marvelous experience, I will never go to Luxor without being on the sleeper train again!

Well, after we returned to Cairo, I arranged for my good friend Arto to go with us to Giza so they could see the last standing Wonder of the Ancient World. Then the next day I arranged a day trip. We first went to see the Step Pyramid of Djoser in saqqara, enter the pyramid of Teti, (which has beautiful inscriptions all over the walls), and visit the new Imhotep Museum. I must say, the Imhotep Museum at Saqqara must be the nicest museum in all of Egypt, it was a most enjoyable visit. Next we went to Dashur, where we entered the Red Pyramid, Egypt’s first true pyramid, and took a look at the Bent Pyramid.

The last couple of weeks have been fantastic, I posted about 350 pictures from our trip, I will add more when I can get some from my mom, I hope you all enjoy them.

Also, I want to thank my mom and PaPai for coming all this way to visit with me, I had a great time. (more…)

Due to all the fighting to get DSL here in Egypt, I have been unable to upload the pictures from traveling with Paul back in August. In case I didn’t already state this, London is a fabulous city and we had a blast.

There are over 1000 pictures from our exploits in London, Amsterdam, Cairo, and Luxor. I haven’t filtered them or added captions for anything, so just ooh and aww at their prettiness without explanation…. Besides, you probably know just as much as I do about what you’re looking at….

Enjoy! (more…)

hawaiiWith the impending deployment to Iraq that my brother faces, my mom and I decided to go visit him in Hawaii. We just got back last night.
We had a lot of fun doing various activities, my mom and Amanda swam with dolphins, we went snorkeling at Hanama Bay, played airsoft, went parasailing, and had dinner at a revolving restaurant in Waikiki. Overall it was a blast.
I posted about 150 photos to brag about my fun.

Enjoy!

Egypt/LuxorThis morning I returned from Luxor on a grueling 10 hour train ride. The train ride to Upper Egypt wasn’t that bad, but the return trip was like being packed into a sardine can filled with concentrated B.O. Other than that, I had a fabulous time in Luxor. Tom kicks ass, and had a room at the Hilton that we all stayed in. So, when we weren’t hiking through the Valley of the Kings in the desert heat, we were relaxing at a nice 4 star hotel. The day we arrived we went straight over to Deir el-Medina, an ancient village for the workers of the Valley of the Kings. There we saw a beautiful temple to Amhes-Nefertari, the wife of Amenhotep I. After that, we went to see the magnificent temple of Amun (and mortuary temple of Ramses III) at Medinet Habu. We then made a quick stop at the Memnon Colossi for a couple of photos, and returned to the hotel to escape the heat. The following day, we unfortunately didn’t really get up early enough to start before it got to hot, but went to Karnak anyways. I will say one thing about Karnak, we were there for like 2 hours and still barely saw maybe half of it. We then went to Luxor temple a couple of kilometers down the road. Unfortunately we got to Luxor temple too late to take any pictures. Then, on the third day, we went to the Valley of the Kings, and went into the tombs of Thutmoses III, Seti II, and Ramses III. Sorry, but pictures are forbidden in the tombs, so all I have to show for it is the signs from outside the tombs. Next we went to Deir el-Bahri where the famous temple of Hatshepsut can be found. Then on day four we returned to Luxor temple and spent the good part of the day there being geeks and reading hieroglyphs and taking pictures. Overall, it was a fantastic spring break, the only downside is that I hurt my knee, so it was a bit difficult with all the walking and stairs…

I took over 300 pictures, so I hope you enjoy them. I will slowly be putting captions on them, just not right away…

Egypt/DahabWell, the bus ride to Dahab was about 9 hours of pure hell. I had the worst possible seat, which required me to sit in the most unnatural position while being audibly harassed by crappy Egyptian movies. When I was finally freed from this prison, we were in Dahab at about 9am. When we arrived at the hotel, our room wasn’t going to be ready until noon, so we had a bite to eat. Without realizing what time it was, I had ordered a beer, subjecting these poor people to my blatant american lushness…
Anyways, we got our room and then felt that snorkeling would be a good plan… As it turned out, it was actually a magnificent plan! Unfortunately I do not possess any form of underwater protection for my camera, so I cannot share the awesome things I saw in the Red Sea with you.
That night, at 11pm, the bus to Mt. Sinai came to pick us up. And I thought the bus to Dahab was bad… This tiny “bus” was so packed full of people, the only way anyone could have been comfortable in there would be if they were an amputee. So, to continue the tale, we began hiking up Mt. Sinai at about 1 am or so. I, being massively out of shape, was the first to have to take a break, at which case, I was never able to catch up with the rest of the group. I got to the top of the mountain at about 4:30ish… Just in time to see the sun rise.
Going down the mountain however, was easy and quick… Since I was running, and taking shortcuts… This turned out to be a bad idea near the bottom… When I was almost to the end, I tripped and fell, scraping up my arm pretty bad, and messing up my knee… I am SMRT….

Well, that pretty much concludes part 1 of my spring break, I hope you enjoy the pictures. Part 2 is next up, where I will be traveling to Luxor to see the temples. Hopefully, I will be able to refrain from hurting myself further…

Well, today is the last day of classes before spring break. We will be going to Dahab on the Sinai, and then climb Mt. Sinai for phase one of the spring break adventure. I will be gone until about the 16th or 17th, not entirely sure… I will then return for enough time to maybe post some pictures, then I will continue on part 2.

To be continued…

Egypt/DahshurSakkaraThis morning I had a field trip to Dahshur and Sakkara, homes of the Bent Pyramid, Black Pyramid, Red Pyramid, and the Step Pyramid. I was able to go down inside the Red Pyramid, and the pyramid of Titi. Unfortunately they do not allow photography inside the pyramids, however, I used the camera on my mobile to snap a few shots inside Titi’s pyramid…
I am in the process of uploading everything, so enjoy the photos!

Also, on a side note, the internet in the dorms is progressively sucking more and more everyday. In order to upload these pictures, I had to take my computer to a coffee shop down the street. Because of this there is a possibility that they all aren’t there when you read this. So just so you know, there should be 100 pictures. I’m not sure what the deal is, but I’m going with the head of student housing tomorrow to talk to computing service to get everything fixed. The run this whole network so backwards… :-/

Egypt/ArrivalC1Yesterday I went to see the pyramids with a couple of friends I have made here. All I have to say is… WOW. Well, anyways, I don’t really have much to say, but take a look at the 273 pictures I just uploaded. My camera decided to commit suicide and stop working halfway through our tour, so most of the pictures are actually a combination of two of my friends’ cameras.

Well, I got here at about 22:30 on Thursday night after a lengthy 18 hours of traveling (10 1/2 hours from San Francisco to London, 2 1/2 layover, and 5 hours from London to Cairo). It took like 2 hours to gather all the students and get us to the dorm. Then, it took another 2 hours or so to get our room assignments. Being very hungry, I ventured out to find the closest food place open at 2 am, which turned out to be Pizza Hut :-/.
The next day, I went on a mission to get a sim card for my mobile, and couple of other people decided to go along. After about 7 1/2 hours of wandering aimlessly throughout downtown Cairo, I grabbed a taxi back to my room, and yes, I did succeed in getting a sim card!
Yesterday was going to be my day of rest, but I thought I’d go to the school and see about registering for classes, only to find out that I wasted LE 5 (roughly 82 cents) going when all the offices are closed. So back to my room to rest.
Today I woke up early at 5 am, couldn’t get back to sleep. and wandered around the dorm until the shuttle to the school arrived at 0830. I managed to get sent to damn near every office possible in the school, however, I do have almost a complete schedule now! I am taking Cultural Anthropology, Ancient Egypt, and some english writing class. Unfortunately my schedule is still pending to see what Arabic class I can get into.
Well that’s it for now, I don’t have really that many pictures, so I’m not going to put them up yet. But don’t worry, there will be.