Heading to the Red Sea (the trip Part II)

Day 4, Feb. 6: We visited the gigantic Karnak Temple complex today, in our last day in Luxor. It is basically a conglomeration of thousands of years of additions, so it is very overwhelming and a little confusing, and I had to prepare ahead of time for my tour because eight pages in the Rough Guides book was dedicated to Karnak.


We went through in a semi-organized fashion while trying to avoid being seen by the rest of the AFS group, and then took some fun pictures afters...no piggy-back races this time, though. The entire site is a really impressive work of art, but we've seen so many pharaonic sites in the past few days, that most of us were feeling a bit fatigued.


The end of our very enjoying Nile cruise was over, so we put all our things on a tour bus for our drive to Hurghada. The weather was unfortunately pretty chilly the whole time, so it was nearly too cold to sit up on the top deck of the boat, even with a towel as a blanket. We went star-gazing one night and our feet froze, but the sky was gigantic, and the stars were beautiful because we can't really see them in Cairo.


We arrived in Hurghada around 10pm, and most people just went to their rooms and fell asleep, but I went out with a few other girls and one of the chaperones that was our age to a club in Hurghada. We ended up dancing their for a while and didn't get back to the hotel until about 4am, so we were thoroughly exhausted, but I had a lot of fun. Hurghada is basically all hotels and clubs, and most of the tourists were Russian, so the setting was kind of strange compared to what I've been used to for the past five months, but we mostly stayed in our group.


Day 5, Feb. 7:
The weather was unfortately pretty chilly today, but we went down to the beach and relaxed a little. I ended up playing soccer on a small sand court on the beach with a couple friends and some of the other hotel guests. Most of them were Egyptian, but there were old men and little boys, so it was an interesting mix, but I of course enjoyed playing because the opportunities to play soccer here are so limited for girls.

Around midday, a group of friends and I gathered to go on our snorkeling outing that we had organized. We had difficulty deciding whether or not to go because the water was so cold, but we reasoned that we may not be ever to snorkel in the Red Sea again, so why not just do it. The water was freezing cold, but we ended up staying in the water for over half an hour, although most of the coral was dead. I did see some beautiful fish, and some other peoples saw a sea turtle, so despite being cold for the next two hours, the outing was worth it. I warmed up afterwards by playing soccer again until dinner :)

I stayed at the hotel tonight and watched the show that the hotel put on for free, which consisted of some Russian dancers and various other acts. It wasn't anything great, but at least it was something to do.

Day6, Feb. 8:
I managed to squeeze in some more soccer after breakfast while most of the other people were relaxing on the beach, and then went down the water slide to cool off a few times before showering and packing to leave the hotel around noon. We took our last group picture together because the students who are only staying for the first semester left only a few days after we got back to Cairo.

We had to say good bye to each other on the bus, which was very sad and also strange because many of them are going back to high school in the U.S. and continuing on with their normal lives while the rest of us are still here in Egypt.

The trip was amazing, not only because of the beautiful setting and sights to see, but also because we had a lot of fund bonding with each other! Despite all of the this, I still found myself missing my host family and we called each other almost every day during the trip to say hello, which was really great. Two days after I came back (i.e. Feb. 10), we went to Dream Park, which is an amusement park about an hour outside of Cairo. My host mom, two host sisters, and the family that lives across from us went together. All eight of us packed into a little van that my host dad had hired to transport us, and we spent all day there and had a lot of fun.

And pictures are coming soon, insha'allah (depending on whether the computer cooperates). Last week, I spent the day down in Saqqara and Dahshur, and visited the Step Pyramid, Red Pyramid, and Bent Pyramid, which were fantastic. After seeing various History Channel/National Geographic programs on these pyramids, it was incredible to be able to finally see them (and go inside some of them)...I think I enjoyed them even more than the Giza Pyramids!

Hopefully I can write about that soon, as well. Have a happy Spring!!