Our Trip to Luxor: Calesh Anyone?

In late November the Heiss family and us decided to spend part of our January vacation in Luxor Egypt. Luxor is in southern Egypt where many of the famous tombs and temples are. The train ride down was relatively uneventful. Although I did notice this on the train:

I saw this plaque near the bathroom. Notice the maker: Messerschmitt. The train was pretty old and dirty. This train is at least 20 years old.

After our 10 hour train ride we arrived in Luxor. The first thing I noticed was how clean the air was. Once you've lived in a city as dirty as Cairo you really enjoy getting out and getting fresh air. Our first stop was the temple of Luxor:

This is a line of Sphinxes that leads right up the entrance of Luxor Temple.

Entrance to the temple. In the middle of the picture you can see a minaret from a mosque that was built inside the temple.

Andrew our tour guide. He was free. No baksheesh.

Possibly an old Greek shrine.

A big obelisk right outside the entrance.

5 Temple Monkeys

Hieroglyphs below one of the two large statues in front of the temple entrance.

These are columns inside the temple.

Here is the mosque they build inside the temple.

Looks like who ever wrote this wanted to emphasize that with a "!"

This Christian mural was VERY cool. It was placed over a huge wall of Hieroglyphics

There is some color left on these walls.

This is the entrance to the Holy of Holies. You can see at the very top is where they would have help the the veil.

After our visit to the Temple of Luxor we went back to our hotel for a rest. In the evening we went on a felucca ride.

Ahhh, the dirty Nile.

One ugly, old and dirty boat.

Camels on the east bank of the Nile.

The next morning we got up real early and headed out to the east bank and went to the Valley of the Kings. But on our way up to the Valley we stopped and saw the Colossus of Memnon. Unfortunately we were unable to take any pictures inside the tombs. But they were hot, humid and VERY cool.

Colossus of Memnon

Here we are waiting to go inside a tomb.

Carolee thought this man next to her was very handsome.

Next was the temple of Hatshepsut.

David Layton, Rachel (the little one) and Nancy Heiss, Carolee and I in front of the Temple of Hatshepsut.

The view from atop the temple.

More tombs up in the hills.

Next stop: Temple of Ramses. This temple was the coolest one we saw in Luxor.

I thought we'd give you some perspective.

Carolee entertained us by explaining the Hieroglyphics and telling us the stories written on the walls. In her own words and her own interpretation of course.

Egyptian infantry

Egyptian archers

These murals on the ceiling were beautiful. The color was amazing.

How nice.

Talk about fat cow huh?

The next day we went to the Temple of Karnak and the last site we visited on our trip.

So that would be me taking pictures with a camera that broke later that day. These are Ram headed sphinxes in front of the temple.

My beautiful wife and the very cute Rachel Heiss.

These next few pictures were found within the Holy of Holies. If you've been endowed some of these actions will look VERY familiar.

Us in front of the alter in the temples' Holy of Holies.

Somebody must have not liked this guy because he was completely grinded out of the wall.

Once again, does this look familiar? Even the compass above his arm is impressive.

This is where the ancient Egyptians preformed their animal sacrifice.

Same guy, same chiseled off face.

Picture on the right: The blue line marks the highest the Nile river ever flooded inside the temple.

On our way out.

After we left the temple, searching for some lunch we passed by a Muslim funeral procession.

Our attempt to leave Luxor was the usual Egyptian headache. Andrew and I went back to the train station the day before we were to leave and asked to buy our train tickets home. The man told us that the train was all full, but if we returned the next morning, they might have more seats. Is it just me or does that not make any sense? How will they magically have more seats if we come back the next morning. So a little frustrated we returned home to research this phenomenon. Andrew found some web sites that talked about the Luxor train scam. It said that often the train station will tell you their train is full so that you are forced to stay in longer. We knew the train was not full and returned the next day to purchase our tickets on a very not full train. We were ready to go by our third day. We had seen pretty much all there was to see. Time to return to dirty ol' Cairo.

الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة

 

After my first semester attending the AUC (American University in Cairo) I thought I would post some pictures, tell a little bit about the new campus and my experiences there.

Attending AUC during its first semester moving to a new campus was quite an adventure. The school wasn't quite done. And by not quite done I mean the school wasn't prepared nor was campus construction completed. I can recall quite a few classes where I could not hear my teacher standing 4 feet in front of me because of a jack hammer. Fire alarm lights constantly went off, AC seemed like it was constantly set to "freezing" and our teachers electronic keys often times wouldn't let them into our locked classroom. But amid the many headaches frustrations often associated with a new school campus, learning still happened. I remember walking to the library after my first day of classes so frustrated with my new subject of study. Learning Arabic isn't like learning Spanish. You have to learn all new written characters with strange sounds in just the first week. By day 5 they expect you to know how to read. That's quite a daunting task if you ask me. But some how with all the jack hammering and freezing cold class room I figured it all out.

This is my bus stop just down the road from our apartment. This is the actual bus I take to school.

 

 

This is the entrance from the where all the buses stop and students enter in.

 

This blog post was "in production" when my external hard drive crashed. Hence all the pictures I had for this have been lost. If the hard drive is ever revived I can finish this post.

Thank You An-rew

Our blog got a bit of a "fix". We had problems with our pictures being cut off at about half way. However thanks to our very good friend Andrew its now all fixed. Thank you. Sorry for the inconvenience. We do suggest taking a look at the Heiss blog at: http://www.heissatopia.com/

Thank you again An-rew and *sniff sniff*.

“And the streets shall run red with blood.”

Cairo really doesn’t disappoint. It’s a city where lepers can still be found. And as we learned today they still butcher animals in the streets. Today we went for a walk in downtown Islamic Cairo. Carolee, a few friends and I went to check out a few mosques during the Muslim Eid Feast.

Our first stop was the Mohammad Ali mosque in the famous Cairo Citadel. It was my second time going into the Citadel and I’m still impressed by it. I've read a few travel book reviews on this mosque and heard some disappointed tourists say its not worth your time. I however believe its still quite an impressive site. However the day’s adventures became truly insane when we were on our way see the Ibn Tulun mosque. As we walked down the side walk we could see the streets were full of puddles of goat, sheep and cow blood. As we walked further down the road we saw piles of animal skins, hooves, heads and entrails. The smell of all the blood was very thick in the air. As cars passed through the large puddles of blood it would get sprayed so we had to take cover on the sidewalks.

 

The Muhammad Ali mosque

 

Carolee and I inside the mosque

 

 

Carolee just peeled an orange and wasn't ready for this picture. It still looks good though.

 

The view from the top of the Citadel. Can you see the pyramids? Thanks to the Cairo pollution its a bit hard. Look closely in the middle of the picture.

 

 

Blood in the streets of Islamic Cairo

 

A pile of guts on the sidewalk

 

A goat hove on the sidewalk

 

Piles of hides at a butcher. You can see a cow about to become dinner.

 

 

Much larger puddles of blood near the butcher.

 

Yes, that is ALL blood. The butcher didn't want me to take a picture of his place. Opps.

 

Some butchers having fun.

 

Up on the roof of a mosque in Cairo

 

At the top of the mosque's minaret.

 

A nice view from the top of the minaret.

 

This is the minaret we climbed. It was modeled after a famous minaret in Iraq.

 

This is a butcher we met in Maadi a few blocks from out house. The hand prints are obviously blood.

Ma Salaama Fat Boy

I made the decision today that it was time to start a diet. Ever since I was living in Rexburg I made worthy attempts to loose the weight I'd been slowly gaining. But ever since we moved to Egypt I've been really "putting in on". I came to Egypt with only a few shirts and pants. I don't plan on buying more clothes. And at this point I need to either buy bigger or get smaller.

So I'm here to proclaim the "Days of Fat Are Over"! No only do I plan on eating less but I'm also getting out and running at least once a day around our neighborhood. Since we live on the 4th floor and don't have an elevator I also plan on running up and down the stairs.

Good Bye Zaharaa’, Hello Maadi!

Some bits of news in the Schilling family never quite made it to the blog. Part of the problem was that the blog was just recently created and therefore some important and slightly interesting things happened just before its creation.

Originally we decided to stay in Egypt until the end of the year. I would study Arabic at AUC and then we would return to the States. As time progressed and we got more comfortable with our new home in Egypt, we decided to extend our stay a bit longer. I was accepted to BYU in October and would start in April. So we figured why not stick around “Sand Land” a bit longer. One thing was for certain: If we do stay we need to move out of Zaharaa’ al Maadi. Maadi is a big town. It’s nothing like Cairo of course, but fairly spread out. The church building, shopping and all our friends all live in downtown Maadi. From Zaharaa’ al Maadi, which is like a suburb of Maadi, you need to take a 5 minute cab ride. That may not sound like a big deal but when you have to pay 20 L.E. roundtrip it can quickly add up. More importantly, Carolee really had nothing to do in Zaharaa’ al Maadi.

There are really no stores, no people the visit, no interesting sites to go see. Zaharaa’ al Maadi is a new town that’s built right up against the desert. On the other side of our apartment building was another apartment building. Past that was desert. Our street in front of our house wasn’t paved. Packs of wild dogs roamed the streets just outside our front door.

Our place was nice. Pink couches and walls are hard to pass up. Certainly the extremely narrow kitchen was hard to leave. But by the second day of looking for an apartment we had found our new home: Rd 87 Building 20 Apartment 47. I know Carolee realized this sooner than I did, but it wasn’t until the next morning did I realize how close our apartment was to everything. We were less than 2 minutes away from the Sharps and Heiss’. I was less than a minute away from my school bus stop. The church and Rd. 9 (the main street where all the stores are) were also less than 5 minutes walk away. No more annoying fights with cabdrivers over prices. We haven’t regretted our choice to move.

Our entryway

Our living room with our very attractive furniture.

The front door

Our alabaster toilet, sink and tub

This nice tile picture is right next to our front door.

The White Boy Price in the Land of Bakshish

Back in America we’re so used to things being “politically correct” and “non-racist”. Double standards do exist of course, but not like they do here in the Middle East. I was told in a restaurant that the Chinese Buffet was only for Chinese Customers. Apparently the buffet food was too good for my American blood. This concept was brought to my front door when our land lord messenger man came to collect the monthly rent on Tuesday. After exchanging the appropriate amount of cash, the messenger asked me if I had any problems or questions with our apartment. I explained to him that I had just acquired a TV satellite receiver from some friends of ours who had just moved back to the states. I wanted to know if our building received satellite TV reception from off the roof. Almost all apartment buildings in Maadi have this so I assumed we weren’t an exception. He told me that not only do we have regular Egyptian satellite BUT we also have European satellite too. He said he would be happy to install it for me.

So I agreed. He was a nice guy and I so I figured he would just install it free of charge. After looking at a few things he determined that he need to go buy a special cable to connect from our receiver into the back of our very old tv. When he returned my Egyptian neighbor came over and I mentioned that we were getting our satellite hocked up. I asked my neighbor to ask the guy (in Arabic) how much he was planning on charging me for all this. The guy replied 200 L.E. (That’s about $40) My neighbor flipped and said that he had angered me with such a large service charge. I was quite shocked at my future bill. 200 L.E. could buy you a lot in Egypt. But I was being charged what I like to call “The White Boy Price”. Americans get a special price here in Egypt.

Right after my neighbor told the guy that I was now upset with him for wanting 200 L.E. he became very apologetic. He suddenly became very embarrassed and apologized. I agreed to pay him back 30 L.E. for the wire he bought and 20 L.E. for the work he had to do on the roof. He was happy with 50 L.E. I imagine he would have been ok leaving my apartment with nothing after seeing him so embarrassed.

Egyptians really like to charge you for anything they can. We went to Saqqara last week and this old man wanted me pay him before I left one of the old Egyptian tombs. Usually if they are nice I’ll give them their Bakshish (tip) but this guy wanted money for doing nothing. It was like his job was to stand at the exit of the building and asking for money as you leave. He followed me out of the tomb pestering me for money. But as usual I ignored the guy, pretending they’re not there and then he left.

God Bless America; The land where you don’t have to pay to use the bathroom or to use toilet paper. Last week we were at the Khan al Khalili market in Cairo. And the funny thing is, is that your body always seems to pick the worst possible time to have to use the bathroom. As I’m with my wife looking at jewelry and Arabic calligraphy from a guy who may or may not be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood I had that familiar feeling of needing to use the bathroom. And it wasn’t one of those feelings where you know that if you wait, maybe hold out, you might buy yourself some time to get to the safety of your house… but no. This feeling was the one where all you can think about getting to the jon NOW. So after seeing and turning down some toilets that might have been installed around the time Christ was living in Egypt, which by the way were just holes in the ground. I was taken to one that actually had seats. But with no surprise to me there was no paper. After summoning a Khan employee I had a huge box of tissues at my disposal. But of course I had to pay for the tissues. I gave the guy 5 L.E. ($1). Can you put a price on clean underwear? I know I can’t. Because I know that if I didn’t get to that bathroom in time that’s what it might have come down to.

So if you come to Egypt to visit, bring a little extra money for Baksish. And don’t be surprised if you get charged the “White Boy Price”.