Day 2 in Cairo

So Day two in Cairo-

After getting very little sleep, we hopped on the bus and drove to the step pyramid at Sakkara. It was a long bus ride since our bus was slow and our driver didn't really know where we were going, so I at least got to take a little nap.

We arrived at the step pyramid and our bus struggled to make it up the hill to the pyramid. In fact, we made it about 75% of the way up and then rolled backward all the way down! But on the second try we were successful. We took a tour of a tomb first. It was really cool to see real hierogliphics in person!! Afterwards we drove over to the step pyramid and our tour guide gave us a history of the pyramid in Arabic. We posed for a group picture and also made a human pyramid in front of the pyramid. You know, the touristy stuff.

Next we went to lunch and then to the Pyramids at Giza. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to see these pyramids, so I was super excited! It's amazing how big they are in person! We drove up to an area behind the pyramids (yes, struggling up the hills again) to take some great pictures and then a group of us rode camels back down to the first pyramid. Our program coordinator and tour guide negotiated the price for us and we hopped on. It was kind of scary to be on the camel. Actually, I was downright terrified to begin with! The camel was so high when it stood up! But after about half way I finally relaxed and took a lot of pictures. In retrospect it might have been faster for us to take this caravan of camels home over the bus. When we arrived at the first pyramids we disembarked from the camels and took some pictures up close. A few of us climbed up a little on the pyramid, which is not allowed, so you have to do it quickly before the tourist police come see you and yell at you. But it was worth it.

After that we visited the sphynx, but only for a short period. That's one thing I didn't like about our tour. The guides kept only giving us 10 minutes to take pictures and look at things. We just blatantly ignored their time frames and stayed much longer in most places because for most of us this was the first time seeing this stuff!

After the sphynx we stopped by a papyrus place and I bought a small picture of Nefrititi printed on handmade papyrus. Then we stopped back at the hotel and a group when to the large market in Cairo know as Khan al-halili.

Valerie (the other student from Michigan) and I took a taxi to our professor from Michigan's apartment and had dinner with him. It was really nice to see him outside a classroom setting. He was full of good advice for living in Egypt, since he was born there and lived there for a long time before moving to the US to teach Arabic and visits twice a year every year, he knows Egypt well. We had a great dinner at a nice restaurant and for dessert we ate some of the chocolate cake that Valerie and I stopped and bought on our way to his home. Delicious! We took a cab back to the hotel and the driver had on some great Cairo techno station on the radio all the way home which was nice.