Highlights

Disclaimer: This post has way too many pictures. My life has way too many pictures.

Our first night in Cairo was extremely entertaining, thanks to karaoke and a nearly fatal taxi ride. Driving there is insane, and insanely fun. The roads were full of people, camels, donkeys, cars, and lanes that mean nothing. Our taxi driver, Sahid, was hilarious. I asked him if he had ever hit anybody and he just laughed mysteriously. He took us to look at the pyramids (they light them up at night), then to a shop to see how papyrus is made. The driving was the best part though.

We drove from Luxor Temple to the Temple of Ramses in a carriage, which was also an experience. Scott and I had an interesting carriage driver with great photography skills. There were other pictures I considered posting, but I figured I should do one with our heads in it.

I love following Brother Manscill around at all our sites because he just knows so much about everything. He's my Old Testament teacher for the first half of the summer, and he relates church history to everything we learn. This is at Luxor Temple, where he taught us a lot about similarities between the Egyptian people and temple ceremonies. I need to go back there someday.

We stoped at Tel Beersheba and went on a really fun hike on the way down to Egypt.

Chrissy and I at the top of the mountain! Ladders, caves, stairs...it was a nice break from the bus.

Lisa, Chrissy and me at Hatshepsut. It was insanely hot, but I got a personal tour from a funny worker there for a minute. I couldn't really understand him, but he was telling me a lot about the hieroglyphics and something about giraffes.

Shopping at the Luxor Souks was too much fun, I don't know why I loved it so much. Nothing distracted me from the heat more effectively than shopping. I heard a lot of horror stories about Egypt before going, but all of them about shopping weren't true for me at all. It was a blast!

Memphis! Massive, yeah?

Saqqara was really cool until a (seemingly) cute old Egyptian man tricked me into giving him too much money. That story won't be publicly posted because I'm still ashamed. And I'm not posting the picture I took with him either because I'm still a little bitter. But the pyramid, still cool.

This guy just looked legit.

I think this bird is an 'M'. But I'm not positive. I do know if the arms are crossed on a person it means they're dead, so I'm at least a little more skilled in interpreting hieroglyphics.

Last of the random highlights: the Temple of Ramses III. Luxor Temple was my favorite, but this place was really impressive. I wonder if the Egyptian people knew how timeless all their work would be. Another place we went to was the Valley of the Kings, but they don't let you take pictures there in order to get people in and out faster. We went at 6:30 am so that we could just get back to the hotel during the heat of the day, which was fantastic. The Valley has a lot of tombs of Pharoahs, they haven't even discovered them all -- including King Tut's tomb, which I loved. We also saw Pit Tomb 33, where mummies were discovered that Joseph Smith bought...but that picture is MIA right now. Like I said, I've taken over 1,000. That might be a problem.