Raft Guides

I found this little ditty on the wall of a Facebook club called, "Raft Guides Make Me Wet." While the name of the club already glorifies rafting and those who do it professionally (based out of their vans and tents by the river, of course), the following lines of pure poetry really just drive the point home!

When a boy is born, like all river guides, he is inspected. If he had been small or puny or sickly or misshapen, he would have been discarded. By the time he could stand, he was baptized in the ferocity of whitewater. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender, toward the death on the river in service for Absaroka was the greatest glory he could achieve in his life. At age 7, as is customary at Absaroka, the boy is taken from his mother and plunged into a raging violent river. Manufactured by 300 years of raft guide society to create the finest guides the world has ever known, The RGS, as it is called, forces the boy to fight, starves him, forces him to steal and if necessary to kill. By rope and paddle the boy was punished, taught to show no pain, no mercy, constantly tested, tossed into the wild, left to pit his wits and will against natures fury, it was his initiation, his time in the wild, for he would return to his people a river guide or not at all.

Barats and Bereta

Those of you from GU, you've seen these, but will no doubt watch them again. Oh how I miss ethos violations and intervis. Those of you who are not familiar with campus or the people in these videos, they're funny! You can check out another zillion of their videos here.

Daft Hands

In response to K's "Daft Dancers" posting. These guys went to GU, and I know them personally, therefore this is better, although it's not scantily-clad women...which means I may have lost the interest of the male crowd. I bet this took a lot of practice.

Koners with the HUGE....

We took this photo before we left for Egypt, and somehow, despite it's obvious awesomeness, it doesn't seem to have made a blog appearance until now. At 92", the size of the new screen, it's pretty amazing, but until you come visit and can see it in person, this will have to do. Kona's shining moment!As for Kona's "girly problems" as Keith called them, I'd have to say he's handling them pretty well for a guy! As much as I like them, and as attractive as they are, I must admit that I can't wait for the little boy undies to be gone and for her to be out of heat and spayed. You may have already seen this photo, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Right? Poor little girl...this can't be good for her self-esteem!

Brrrrrr...

We awoke this morning to a beautiful sight, fluffy, white snow!

The Finale, Cairo Style

I hope that you've enjoyed being a part of my journey through Egypt thus far. I sure enjoyed sharing it! The last few days of the trip flew by, of course, but there are a few moments of the blur that stick out in my memory. I guess we got tired of taking pictures after Sharm, so all you get are words here. Lame, I know!

After a sleepy flight, we arrived back in Cairo, to spend our last few days with Lynn and amongst the people of Zamalek. Since our flight was early, the three of us went to see a movie with Shoroke and her husband at the theater. If you haven't seen "Atonement," I should warn you that you'll probably be depressed for weeks after you watch it. It was so sad! But a really good movie and well done. Afterward, with heavy hearts, we hopped in a cab and headed back to the apartment. I dunno how it happened exactly, but we ended up having the best cab ride ever! Lynn said something that led to the creation of a small cab-like bubble of chaos, but none of us remember what. It wasn't incredibly funny, but you'd never have guessed that if you were driving past the cab while we were in it. Keith started laughing, then Lynn started laughing, then the cab driver, (who had absolutely no idea what they were laughing at) started laughing at them laughing, then I started laughing...do you follow? All 4 of us were laughing hysterically for the entire ride back! The cab driver was laughing so hard that he could hardly drive, swerving across the road and stuff! When we arrived back at the apartment, we all had tears rolling down our faces and were still giggling! I think that we probably all really needed a good laugh after watching that darn movie! Definitely something I'll remember for a long time!

The next day, was the day of the infamous spitting incident. If you somehow missed that story, check out the blog post from a couple of weeks back entitled something like "Wrong Place, Wrong Time." Spit shower aside, the Egyptian museum was (and likely still is) amazing! Though not well-organized or labeled, things in there are absolutely beautiful and I still can't get over the fact that they're SO old! There are sarcophagi and tons of jewelry and statues and furniture... Oh yeah, and mummies! While it cost us way too much to get in because neither one of us packed our student IDs, (fun fact: carry your student ID with you when you travel anywhere, it gets you huge discounts!) it was well worth it! There were 2 mummy rooms, each containing 10 or 12 mummies. Some of them didn't make the trip quite as intact as others, but one lady even brought her pet baboon along. A pet baboon would be sweet! You should definitely check out the museum if you're even in Cairo.

After running around the museum with hundreds of students on holiday, we went over to check out the Marriot, which is gorgeous and used to be a palace. We had some drinks and I ate my usual snack of peanuts, which I'm now addicted to. Later that evening, we went to dinner at Lynn's friend's apartment. We met them at the huge dinner the week before, and I guess they liked us, because they invited us to their place for yet another dining experience. Anyway, they're really nice people who have traveled and lived all over the world, have kids our age, a deaf cat, and an apartment overlooking the Nile. The food was excellent, and since I'm stubborn, and perhaps plain dumb at times, I decided to stuff myself with all of the available goodies set before me, including bread and stuffing. Since I've been sticking to a strict non-gluten (and non-dairy) diet, it was a test. I'm still not 100% sure that gluten is really a factor that contributes to my pain, and since I love pasta, I feel the need to test things until I'm sure. It's relatively easy to give up something if it obviously causes you pain, but if you don't know that for sure, it pretty much sucks. Well, I stuffed myself with something ridiculous like 5 pieces of bread and 2 helpings of stuffing, knowing that I could take a vicodin if I was really suffering later on. I went to bed planning on waking up in the middle of the night in intense pain, but, much to my surprise, I slept through the night and woke up the next morning feeling fine! Sweet! Dunno what the deal with that was, but I liked it! Perhaps I can have gluten every once and a while. Good thing I'm a scientist, because a lot more experimentation is definitely called for.

The following day, we did a ton of laundry, and walked around on the island. We walked to one of the boats on the Nile, which is docked because they built the bridges too low to allow existing boats at the time to pass under them. Smart thinking! We ate lunch at a restaurant called Sequoia, which is on the boat and has an absolutely gorgeous view of the Nile in all directions! After packing up some of our things and watching Planet Earth, during which I snuck in a quick nap, we ended up heading back down to the boat to meet up with Keith's friend, Guy, and his girlfriend, Marcia, for drinks. We had a great time chatting and ended up going back to their apartment a few blocks away to hang out for a few minutes, which turned into a long while! Stories were exchanged for hours, beer, sheesha, (and cigarettes for the other 2) quickly disappeared, and finally, when we were all about to fall asleep, (Guy may have actually been talking in his sleep near the end!) we groggily headed back to the apartment.

The following morning, we set up a contraption to get our laundry dry before we had to pack it, and headed over to the Marriot with the goal of finding a gift for my dad and some sort of a ring for me that cost less that $350! Luck would have it, that in the very last shop, we hit the jackpot! I found not only one, but two rings that are really sweet and were only $20! Keith even found a scarf there that is manly, yet feminine enough for him to proudly sport in the states! After, I ordered my last bun and cheese-free burger in Cairo and it was off to the airport.

A full 2 hours after arriving at the airport, we were finally able to leave the ticket counter and hop on the plane. It took them 2 whole hours to find/make our existing reservations and to print our boarding passes! Wow...not fun... Instead of bumping us both to business class like we requested, they gave us a 5% off coupon for the shops in the basement of the terminal. Thanks...with all the free time we had before we had to get on the plane, that came in really handy. (I hope you sensed the sarcasm there.) Due to time changes and all that, we had to overnight in London, which would have been cool had we been there more than 10 hours and had the exchange rate been a little more U.S.-friendly! $350 for a room at the Holiday Inn with 2 twin-sized beds, not including breakfast. Not even any conditioner or a shower cap in the bathroom, I mean come on... :) Nuts! Minimum wage there must be like $60 (U.S. dollars) and hour! It was nice to have a chance to lay down and sleep between flights though, and the weather was gorgeous when we woke up the next morning. After that, it was 9 hours of 4 seat-kicking, screaming little boys, 5 hours in Chicago, then back to Denver.

I guess that pretty much wraps it up. I hope that my stories and pictures do the beauty of Egypt and the "wonderfulness" of the trip, justice, but I'm afraid they don't even come close. All I can say for now is that it was an incredible experience, a beautiful place, and wonderful time, and that I can't wait to go back! Oh, and of course...thanks, Dr. Lynn!!!

The Third Leg: Sharm

I've covered part of Cairo and all of Luxor, so now it's on to the beaches of Sharm el-Sheikh. But first, the flight there. The flight to Sharm was not full of tourists as the previous flight had been, but rather, filled with locals. The flight was relatively quiet for most of the trip, the air laced with the scent of baby spit-up, but the landing was a different story. It was bumpy. A lot more bumpy than I had really ever experienced, even when flying Big Scare Airlines, and that says a lot! Once the turbulence started, men throughout the plane could be seen comforting their wives, who were obviously, yet quietly, freaking out. At the same time, this huge conversation started in the back of the plane where we were sitting. It was in Arabic, so pretty hard for me to follow, as I'm sure you can imagine, but it was definitely funny. After lots of laughter and a few (what seemed like) 10 or 50 foot drops, the guy across the aisle looked at us with big eyes and says "Oh My God!" It was really funny and the whole back half of the plane started cracking up! After, our new friend from across the aisle started testing Keith's knowledge of Arabic while the rest of the listeners criticized each other's English. Entertaining. Soon after, we touched down safely. Nice, because survival did seem a bit questionable for a while! We exited to begin our adventure in Sharm and all of our friends from the back continued on to Alexandria.

After a short car ride, we arrived at the hotel. It should be noted that driving and crossing the street are much less frightening in Sharm than in Cairo. The hotel was amazing! Absolutely beautiful and definitely the nicest place that I have ever stayed! After checking in and making friends with a sweet girl who works at the front desk, we hopped on the back of a golf cart for a ride to our room. The ride was scary, the view upon arrival, stunning. The living room and the bedroom each had private balconies overlooking the Red Sea! Amazing! The room also had a full kitchen with range, full-sized fridge, microwave, and washing machine. Fancy stuff indeed. Since we were what you would call "starvin' Marvin," we quickly changed clothes and headed up to the dinner buffet in one of the hotel restaurants. Yum! They had seafood stew, which was amazing! I had at least 3 helpings. Hehe! A little pricey, but good stuff. Apparently everything in Sharm is a little pricey because it's a resort town. Figures.
I woke up with the beginnings of a cold the first morning, which was a bad deal but didn't slow me down much initially. After stuffing ourselves with a delicious breakfast spread, we wandered down to the beach. Beautiful, as you can see, but pretty windy and therefore, chilly on this particular day. We walked around down by the beach for a while, checking out prices on diving and snorkeling gear, then headed back up to the room for a nice long nap. Slackers, I know. We finished up the day by doing some laundry, which was much-needed by this point in the trip and headed off to bed, so we'd be well-rested for Lynn's arrival the next morning!
On morning 2, we rented gear and went snorkeling! Yeah! I'd never been snorkeling before, and it was so much fun! The fish were so vibrant and beautiful and I was surprised by how many of them there were! I have to admit, though, that breathing through only the snorkel freaked me out a little bit at first. Keith said that I'm a long way from going scuba diving. Guess I'll have to work on that. Keith headed back up to the room to meet his friend, Guy, who was driving through and was going to pick up Lynn at the airport and I stayed on the beach to catch some sun! It was glorious! After Lynn arrived, we switched to what we thought was a triple room. I guess that it was, but it was about half the size of the room we had for the first 2 days. We ended up switching back and took turns sleeping in the king-sized bed and on the paper thin mattress of the hide-a-bed. We went snorkeling one more time after Lynn arrived and sadly, that was the last time for the trip. I didn't figure snorkeling with a runny nose and a cough was the way to go. Sucking a bunch of water into your lungs is bad, I hear.

I woke up the next morning not feeling well at all. I had a runny nose, headache, and a nasty sounding cough. Lynn hooked me up with a few meds and the workers at the hotel all offered their own remedies. The guy who cleaned our room said that I should drink hot water with lemon it in. Good hint. It did seem to make me feel a bit better and calmed my cough. So, next time you're somewhere with a lack of cold meds, try that. Anywho, we spent most of the next 2 days on the beach, swimming, playing with the blackberry, working on our tans, and being waited on. It was pretty rough, let me tell you! Despite my busy schedule, I did manage to sneak in a few naps as well.

On our last night in Sharm, Keith and I went to the local marketplace after dinner and did the drinks and sheesha thing. As I was sick, I had fresh strawberry slushy drink that was delicious. Our waiter had a broken arm and when we asked him what happened he told us a pretty funny story. I guess that he ran into another guys car one afternoon. We think he may have been walking and bumped into it. Anyway, the guy in the car got really mad, drove around the block, and hit our waiter as he was crossing the street! Crazy, huh? He said that he called the police and everything and I think that his medical bills were paid for, but wow! As a random comment, we of course, felt that this was a place to take yet another series of goofy photos, so here's 1, just for a sneek peek.
We woke early the next morning, as we had a fairly early flight back to Cairo to catch. I mention the early part because it was the first time that any of us had been up early enough to see the sunrise...and it was spectacular, as you can see in the pics below! After stealing some breakfast from the buffet that didn't open until 7, we were off.

A Quick Intermission...

So much for the lemon juice...

Part Deux

After spending a few days in Cairo, it was off to see the sights, starting with the tombs and temples of Luxor. Luxor is in Upper Egypt, which I learned means that it's south of Cairo. You should also know that the Nile flows north, so the water at Luxor is actually clean and beautiful rather than polluted and full of unidentifiable floaty things like it is in Cairo. Anywho, the flight to Luxor was rather interesting. My eyelash curler was nearly confiscated by one of the airport security guys, which is surprising considering the knife that we saw them let the guy before us take onto the plane. An interesting concept. Well, Keith didn't notice because he was out before the plane left the ground, but the pilot kept gunning it and then slamming on the breaks (as much as a pilot can do when flying a huge plane) and we were moving up and down like a kid on a teeter-totter. During the landing, gasps could be heard throughout the cabin and there was applause and a wide-spread sigh of relief when the plane stopped wobbling and touched down safely. If only those people had been on the flight we took a few days later to Sharm! The Luxor ride was nothing!

The view from our hotel room was beautiful as shown below and the tv even greeted us with something like "Welcome Mortensen Kelin Mr." What an inviting welcome! The hotel was full of rich, older people who enjoyed staring at us. I felt like a celebrity, minus the drug addiction. I guess we stood out with our backpacks and jeans. Or perhaps we're just THAT good-looking...
Since we arrived in the afternoon, we decided to take a walk down the Nile to a little temple called Luxor. It was so awesome! So, as my tour guide, Keith, told me, the temple was discovered fairly recently because it was buried by tons of sand for thousands of years. In fact, there is a mosque build on top of part of it. Now that the whole temple has been unearthed, the door to the mosque is something like 30 feet in the air! Very cool and very old! It's really too bad that huge parts of it have collapsed over the years. It would have been a whole new level of amazing to have been able to see the temple when it was completely in tact and bearing its original colors. After touring the temple and a photography lesson, we headed to one of the little restaurants on the river to watch the sunset.
Oh, I almost forgot the mention this guy! Stories say that he was a councilman who wanted to wage war against somebody, I dunno who, sorry. Well, when he didn't receive support, he decided that he'd make his own army. He accomplished this task by sleeping with all of the women in the land and getting them pregnant. This made all of the other men angry, so they cut off one of his legs. As you can see, as a hieroglyph, he has only one leg. Since he was so successful at reproducing, he has become a symbol of fertility in modern times and it is considered to be good luck (in the realm of fertility I suppose), to rub his phallus, hence the blackness in that general region.Dinner that evening was eaten in an Egyptian restaurant at the hotel. The restaurant was by the pool and overlooking the river, so that was neat, but the evening got even more "neat." About half way through dinner, the waiter, very excitedly announced that there was going to be a bellydancer! Having never seen a bellydancer, I was intrigued...not for long, however. While I'm told that bellydancers have bellys, she had a little more than I expected, and she was super awkward! There was another older couple in the restaurant and us, and the dancer kind of wandered from one table to the other doing her thing. The weird part was that she was constantly looking over her shoulder and watching her reflection in the window. She also had a tissue in her hand which she was using to wipe the sweat from her face and chest. In doing so, she managed to collect little bits of tissue on her face. Special! A few minutes after we made our great escape, the other couple from the restaurant caught up with us and gave us a hard time for leaving them all alone with her! It was pretty funny!

We woke early the next morning with the mission of finding a guide for a tour of the Valley of the Kings. We arranged for a driver and a guide, but when we went to get into the van, there was no guide. We pretty much got ripped off, but ended up getting the guide and the tour. We went into 3 tombs in the Valley of the Kings. It's a wonder to me that anyone ever found the entrances in the first place. The tombs were concealed in the mountains and hills in order to prevent them from being robbed. It sort of worked. Our tour guide was really nice, but didn't speak English incredibly well. He kept talking about something that I interpreted to be "modification" and Keith interpreted to be "on vacation." Turns out he was saying "mummification" minus a few syllables. It all makes a lot more sense now...

Scaffolding is a big plus!

Many steps and many dollars later, we headed back to town. We stopped for lunch at the restaurant we had been to the night before and ended up staying there for the rest of the afternoon. We were planning to go to Karnak Temple, but we were both exhausted and my knees, though chubby, were not feeling up to the occasion. I guess we'll have to go back someday. Darn! As a side note, you, especially if you are a female, should carry paper and had sanitizer with you at all time in Egypt. The restroom along the river was less-than-clean and lacking important supplies, to say it politely. Just an fyi.

We headed back to the hotel early so that we could get to the airport plenty early for our flight that was taking off at 7:oo pm. The travel agency had arranged a driver and he told us that he would be at the hotel to pick us up at 5:00. He lied. Keith made several calls to the travel agency and they eventually sent the driver over. He arrived at 5:45. Not only did he arrive late, but he was probably the slowest driver in Egypt. We should have taken one of those buggies with the emaciated horses pulling them. Might have been just as fast. Luckily, we did arrive early enough to catch our flight. So ends Luxor, for now...

Egypt: Part 1

Alright, you've all had plenty of time to focus on the fact that there is one man in Egypt who enjoyed spitting in my face. I have to say that particular event was really the only negative experience that I had on the whole trip, so I'm just gonna forget about it! Anyway, now that the adventure has come to an end and we're back in the states, its time for me to share every last detail about the trip, whether you want to hear it or not! To make things easier and the blog posts shorter, the 2 weeks is broken down into 4 parts: Cairo 1, Luxor, Sharm, and Cairo 2. Enjoy!

Cairo 1.

After several delayed flights and hours of sitting on various airport runways, listening to the air traffic controllers (hilarious), we touched down in the city of Cairo, home to 20 million people. If you can believe it, our 1 checked bag came out of the console first (miracles do happen), and we soon met up with Lynn and hopped in the car, headed for Zamalak. My first observations included, "Wow, I stand out here," and "OMG, driving here is the scariest thing ever!" We arrived at Lynn's apartment in Zamalak, an island in Cairo, and immediately headed down the street to Abu Sid for dinner. Egyptian food is yummy, and since they use a lot of rice, I could eat it! Yay! We met some of Lynn and Keith's friends, smoked some excellent sheesha, and I even made a connection with someone doing disease research at the CDC! Exhausted from our travels, we hit the hay and didn't rise until noon the next day!

We spent most of our first day in Cairo relaxing, watching the Die Hard series, catching up, and trying to recover from the jet lag. A 9 hour difference... Despite a very atypical rain the following day, we grabbed our jackets and ventured off to see the pyramids! Now I expected them to be big, but wow! They're huge! I can't even believe that they were basically built by hand. Incredible! Conveniently, while we were there (perhaps just for me) the rain stopped and most of the clouds cleared. Lucky!
After the pyramids, we went to Lynn's office to check out the incredible view that I had heard so much about. It certainly is incredible! I think I'd enjoy being able to look out my office window and seeing the Nile AND the pyramids! Sweetness! You can't see the pyramids in this pic, but they're off to the left, I promise!
To top off the day, we had dinner at a fancy restaurant with 12 so of Lynn's coworkers and friends that night. Before we left, we had to get out game faces on (see below). Dinner was a great time! Everyone had been absolutely everywhere and had tons of interesting stories. Very nice "old people" as they called themselves. Oh, and I ate duck for the first time, so that was neat too! Quack.
On Sunday, we went to Khan el-Khalili.The Khan is a local market that has been open 7 days a week for something like 200 years. You can get all kinds of goodies there like scarves, sculptures, clothes, shoes, jewelry, even bananas, I guess. What a crazy place! There are zillions of little shops and booths and as you pass each one, you are "greeted" by the owners with a plethora of dumb questions. "How can I help you spend your money," was one of my favorites. Anyway, after heckling for a while, and being followed forever by a guy who wanted us to buy a chess board, we ended up with some pretty sweet things to bring back for others, as well as for ourselves, of course.

That pretty much concludes leg 1 of the trip! Stay tuned...

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

If you are in Cairo, and you are me, (which it is fairly unlikely) it would be a good idea for you to not be outside of the gates of the museum at about 10 am on Feb. 4. I'll tell you why, with as much detail as possble, in the following paragraphs. Allow me to explain.

It is a beautiful, warm day in Cairo and I awake at 8 am. I sit down to a delicious English breakfast with Keith and Lynn, drink soothing lemon tea, shower, and prepare myself for a trip to the museum in Cairo to see all of the relics removed from the now-empty tombs that I had seen just days before. The three of us hop into the car that is taking Lynn to work, as the museum is on the way, Keith and I will be dropped off for a morning of exploring. We exit the car directly outside of the gates of the museum at approximately 10:20 am. Looking back now, perhaps 5 minutes later would have been a better time for arrival! We proceed toward the gate, at which there are several armed guards and a metal detector. Keith is just in front of me as I remove my purse from my shoulder to put on the x-ray machine. This is the part where it all starts to get a little bit fuzzy and, in my opinion, hard to follow... No longer than 20 or 30 seconds after our short walk of a few meters from the car to the gate, a man, whose face I have never seen and whom I have never spoken to, says a few words. These words are not in English, and I assume that they are being spoken to the guards standing a few feet in front of me. Apparently I am wrong. Not 1 second after the last word from that man's mouth is uttered, the left side of my face is covered in spit. Yes, spit. Gross!

I, too unbelievably shocked to respond immediately, say not a word to the man. I do not even not even turn to see his face, probably out of fear that the other side of my face will be spit on as well. I simply say (in what must have been a rather "pay attention to me now!" voice) "What just happened?..." By the time Keith turns around, the man is gone. There is a man standing next to me, who immediately backs away. Perhaps he is indeed the one who did it. Maybe he decided to stay but didn't have the balls to look me in the eye and tell me that he was the one who spit in my face. Maybe he really is a bystander and the spitter fled the scene. After a quick questioning session, the guards offer that the man was "English" like us, not Egyptian. For some reason, I don't believe them. Since I didn't see the man's face, the blame is placed on no one. One guard simply says, "Welcome to Egypt." My response, which I keep to myself is, "Thanks jackass."

I must say that a shower seemed so far out of reach for the 4 hours after the event, but did eventually come. As you may be able to guess, my attitude about the whole situation is not great, but I know I'll be able to laugh about it shortly, I'm sure of it. As for the question of "Why?" I have no answer. Perhaps it has to do with the blondeness of my hair, which may have led to the man's incorrect assumption that I am of Russian descent, I know not. All I do know is that I'm not going to take it personally. I did nothing wrong, nothing to make someone angry... I was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Lame!

Oh, and if I ever live somewhere like Egypt, I'm going brunette! Can't hurt, right?

Heya!

Hello happy people! I can't believe that it's been so long since the "Mac & Chreese" posting! To give a quick update, a lot has been happening, and it's been great! For starters, I've been in Egypt for 2 weeks. Yep, Egypt! Yep, 2 weeks! It has been so amazing! We've been smoking sheesha on the Nile, viewing the pyramids from Lynn's office, running from shopkeepers in Luxor, and snorkeling in the Red Sea! Pictures will have to come later, as the internet cables to Northern Africa were cut by someone, and there are no computers with card readers within reach. It's back to the states on Thursday, so I'll get back to enjoying my last few days in Cairo...for now...

Oh, and I might have a job!