Egypt Day 14

Wow... what a busy day! We got up at 5, but i got up at 4 cuz I love to be an early riser ;-) Actually, i heard something ring in the hallway and i thought it was our wake up call. So I got up and took a shower and packed all my stuff and headed to breakfast. When i got there, the door was closed and i asked teh couple outside what time it was and they said 4:15. Great... i just chilled for a bit and when everyone got up we got breakfast. We were out the door by 6 and hit up the valley of the Kings and the valley of the Queens and some other tombes. They were amazing! The colors were still on teh tombs and it was interestign because the longer a Pharoah ruled, the deeper and longer the tombs were. The people kept on working so that they could keep their jobs until there was a new tomb to start working on, plus no one wanted to tell the Pharoah that his tomb was ready for him :-)

Next we went to the Karnak Temple and it was really cool. It was 65 acres, so we didn't get to see all of it, but there were tons of cool ruins and cool stuff to see. The statues of the Pharoah are always with his left leg forward. For a long time people thought it was a military pose or other theories, but then the found one with the right leg forward. Everyone thought it was a mistake, but later when they dug up that King's body, they discovered that his heart was on the right side of his body. They figured out that the foot is linked to the heart and means that the Pharoe rules out of a sense of love. It's funny how we work to interpret things from teh past without all or sometimes any information. We make lots of assumptions, and don't even realize it all the time. We also learned that the scarab bug was a sign of love that this one Pharoah gave to this lady he wanted to marry because she wasn't of royal descent. It was a cool story about how he rebelled and didn't want to marry his sister like most pharoes did. It really strkes me that as different as Egyptian culture was and is, they were looking for the same things we are still looking for. There are tons of similarites between their relgion and Judaism and Christianity. In fact, Satan appears way more in Egyptian writings than in Christain writings. Next we went to the Luxor Temple, it was very cool as well. These dudes kept showing us around and then asking for money. I was sick of it so when these dudes started to show me around there, I asked them for money. They said they didn't have any, and I told them that I saw someone give them some, please, I need some money. It was funny, no one else bothered me the whole time i was there.

The lady and her daughter left a little early today and it turns out that it was the girl from the Twilight movies. I haven't had time to look her up and see what she looks like, but after they left our guide told us that the mother had said something to him about it at the very beginningand how they wanted to spend this time together so they didn't want anyone to find out. For some reason, the mother is in Cairo after taking leave from her job. She was very secretive about it... I'll have to find out by watching TMZ when I get home :-) It is funny becuase the girl told me her name the first day on the boat but it didn't mean anything to me at the time so I totally forgot it. I don't even know if she gave me her real name or not then. I can't remember what she said for the life of me. When I found out that actresses name was Kristen or something like that, it sounded familiar like that's what she said, but who knows. So mystery solved... it was pretty cool that we got to spend a few days with her even though they acted kind of weird sometimes. It must be hard to be famous and have people bugging you all the time. I hope I find out what a pain that is someday :-)

We chilled back on the boat for the afternoon and then took a plane back to Cairo to stay for the night. We are leaving early tomrrow morning and we will be home on Wednesday afternoon... it's gonna suck, but we'll be fine I'm sure.