Camels, Cairo, Classy

Hoopoe birds! I was so excited to see them. A few years ago my friend Jenn and I were doing a foot study in the bible and accidentally looked up hoopoe for something and we read about this Egyptian desert bird... and so I was pretty excited to see one, and that's the only way I was actually able to recognize it!

A vulture we found on our patio at the hotel

One of the hotels we stayed at on the Red Sea

The pyramids and I (perfectly framed on the first self-portrait may I add)

Cairo at night. We went on a Nile river dinner cruise and enjoyed the city lights as well as some belly dancing and a twirling dervish (maybe that's not what they're called but oh well)

Pyramids at Night during the light show

Pyramids at Sunset from afar

My mom and the pyramids

From afar the pyramids didn't look that spectacular... but then when you get right up to them you realize the first stone is taller than you. Okay, impressive.

Camel caravan at the desert

The Great Pyramids

Micheal Jackson (the camel) and I. I thought I was going to fall off the whole time.. haha.. Getting up on it was the worst because you're pretty much suspended in air.. haha.. but it was a great ride and very cool riding towards the pyramids!

A statue of Ramses II. It's way bigger and probably one of the most impressive statues, just because the engravings and detail are so ornate

The second largest sphinx, this one found in Memphis but it weighs less because it's made of alabaster

Poor Sphinx lost his nose

The Step Pyramids. The oldest stone structure in the world. It started just as a flat square tomb, but the guy it was being built for didn't want his tomb finished while he was still alive, so they just kept building layers on it, and it happened to look like a pyramid!

The Palace we stayed at in Cairo-spectacular!

Khalid and I

And those are my pictures! Well, not all them, but I hand-selected these ones for you! All in all I had a fabulous time and it definitely exceeded my expectations. Interesting to see a different culture to think about the implications of what it would be like growing up in that culture and what a completely different worldview I would have. One thing that wasn't too positive was that out of all the countries I've ever been to, I have never been harassed verbally so much by the men.. You couldn't walk anywhere without all of them staring at you and yelling stuff out at you. So that wasn't too cool, but I thought it was interesting in light of their views of their women and then to see how they treat foreign women. Interesting...

2 more days until I go to Quebec!! Yay!!