Reading Sense and Sensibility is a good way to pass the time on a plane/bus

Thanksgiving and Eid Al-Adha: My Dad's Visit

So here is the last of my "catch-up posts." I will try harder to stay up to date from now on since you all gave me a good talking to while I was home for Christmas on how I had failed up update my blog. Sorry!

So we actually had some time off for Thanksgiving because it lined up with the Islamic Holiday of Eid Al-Adha. I will defer to wikipedia to define the holiday for you:

"Festival of Sacrifice" or "Greater Eid" is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, but instead was able to sacrifice a ram (by God's command).[1] Eid is also about spending time with family and friends, sacrifice, and thanksgiving for being able to afford food and housing. In traditional or agrarian settings, each family would sacrifice a domestic animal, such as a sheep, goat, cow, or camel, by slaughter (though many contemporary muslims do not sacrifice an animal as part of their observance). The meat would then be divided into three equal parts to be distributed to others. The family eats one third, another third is given to other relatives, friends or neighbors, and the other third is given to the poor as a gift.
So actually, it's almost a perfect corresponding holiday to our Thanksgiving.

I had the fortunate opportunity to have my Dad come visit during this time! He arrived and I picked him up at the airport very early in the morning, around 2:30am. I took him and got him checked into a hotel on the Corniche so he would have a nice view of the Mediterranean when he woke up. I then ventured back to my apartment because I had to get up for class in the morning. It was an interesting journey back to my apartment. I though it would be easy to catch a taxi on the corniche because there are usually a lot, but it was super early in the morning, about 4am. Instead, I had three cars pull over, mistaking me for a prostitute. Nevermind that I was wearing a long sleeved sweather and a scarf over my neck, apparently according to Egyptians, a young girl out by herself at that hour could only mean one thing. I angrily shooed them off and finally got a cab home.

The next day after class I went and picked up my Dad from his hotel and we went to the Alexandria Library and to a cafe across the street for some lemonaide and shisha. Afterwards we met up with some of my friends from the program and had Egyptian donuts- yum! I took my Dad on the tram for the first time. I'm sure he found it interesting. We actually ran into a American who is living in Egypt on business and he talked to my Dad for a little while while I was talking to an Egyptian girl whose attention I had attracted. When I finally rejoined the conversation, the man asked me if I had lived in the same city and how we met. Did we work for the same company? I replied that this was my father. The man was surprised. Apparently he though we were married. That was the first, but not the last time that happened on the trip. Awkward. Apparently they don't get many fathers and daughters traveling together in Egypt.
The next day we slept in and I took my Dad to the citadel. Later that evening we hopped on a train and headed for Cairo.

When we arrived in Cairo, it was super crowded, more than usual, because of the holiday. When we came in to the train station, the third class platform was literally overflowing with people. It took us forever to get to our hotel, which was not that far from the train station because of the heavy traffic and all the people in the street. We finally made it and headed to bed, so we could get up early and see the pyramids!

The next day we hired a driver and went to the pyramids in Doshur, Saqqara, and Giza.

We had to drive through the countryside outside of Cairo to get to Doshur, which was very interesting. It's a poor area and there's lot of trash lining the canels there. I even saw several dead water buffalo carcasses laying bloated in the canel. People take out their trash by taking it in a bucket and dumping it along the canel bank. Also driving through the village, we saw people slaughtering animals for Eid. Cow and sheeps heads all over the street. We saw similar sights in Cairo when we were walking around later. I think that was a new sight for my Dad.

Where were we on Thanksgiving? Inside a pyramid- the Red Pyramid at Doshur to be exact. We had a lot of fun touring around and shooing off the over zealous Egyptians trying to sell us stuff. We saw a lot and took a lot of pictures. We finished in the early afternoon, took a nap, and then had a nice dinner in Zamalek. The next day we woke up and went to see the Egyptian museum during the day and then hopped on a plane that evening to Luxor in southern Egypt. We arrived in Luxor around 11pm, checked into our hotel and went to sleep, preparing for another early morning of touring.

We once again hired a driver the next day and headed over to the East bank of the nile. We spent the day seeing the Valley of the Queens, the Valley of the Kings, Hapshetsut Temple, and Ramses Temple. The tombs were amazing. At first, I wasn't impressed. I was like, Ok, we're going to see some holes in the ground. But when you get inside there are heirogliphics that look like they were just carved and painted yesterday all over the walls. Some of the tombs are enormous! It was beautiful. The temples were equally impressive. They were absolutely massive. I couldn't believe it! We walked around and took pictures and enjoyed the sights.

Eventually and inevitably our driver insisted on taking us to an alabaster shop, one "owned by his family." We saw a demonstration on how the alabaster was made and then escorted into the shop to look around and have tea. The owner was particularly friendly and impressed that I spoke Arabic and chatted us up. He also assumed we were married (as did our drivers in Cairo and Luxor) and when he found out that I was with my father, he became increasingly interested. This conversation ended with him offering my Dad his entire shop to marry me. Luckily we escaped with a coupld of really nice candle holders instead.

We then journeyed back to the west bank of the nile and had dinner and visited Luxor temple while it was all light up at night. I love Luxor temple. It is once again, enormous! It was beautiful with all the lights at night. A perfect ending to the day.

The next day we caught a plane back to Cairo and then the train back to Alexandria. We just hung around and relaxed that night. The next day we did a little shopping, stopped at the beach for my Dad to pick up some sand to bring home, and I took him to my favorite icecream place in Alexandria. We finished off the night with a wonderful dinner at the four seasons cafe and I dropped my Dad off at the airport later that night.

I was sad to see him go, but I was excited that I would be coming home for Christmas break in two weeks time. Dad was a great travel partner- very easy going and up for almost anything. He found Egypt to be interesting, but was glad to be heading home too. He put on a slide show with all of the pictures that we took at work, twice, and had people come both times because they thought it was so interesting. So if you see him, ask him to show you!