Giza with Sayed

We went to Giza to the pyramids!!!! It was Sayed's first trip there but it was my 4th so I felt like an expert :) But we did go into the burial chamber of the Khafra pyramid - something I had never dared to do before. We wanted to go into the Khufu pyramid but they ran out of tickets while we were waiting in line.
But the BEST part about this trip to the pyramids was that we had out marriage papers and I got to pay the EGYPTIAN price to get in. It rocked my world. 5EGP instead of 60EGP.

In Aswan

Here we are in Aswan.
On the boat.
And then in a restaurant called the Aswan Moon. They have the BEST eggplant and tomato stew at that place. It's called mosa3a.

Sayed and Asharaf

This is Sayed with his brother Asharaf. They work together hauling tourists around Aswan in the feluca or the motor boat. Sayed built a house for Ahsaraf over the last couple of years and they are very close. Now Asharaf has to find somebody to marry. Sayed is not going to help him with that :)

More pictures of Sayed

Sayed had never really been to Cairo. Well, he did go once, 15 years ago. He hadn't been back since. But when he came with me he quickly became an expert. He had the metro system memorized after the first ride and now he advises people in his village about how to get to places in Cairo :)
Here we are on one of the bridges over the Nile. At a restaurant on a rooftop at the King Hotel in Dokki, and here is Sayed in our cheap but pretty hotel with a view of the museum behind the square.

Around Cairo with Sayed and friends

These are from different places over the summer. My friend Lindsey met me in Cairo and stayed with me there while we both worked at the museum. She has been to Egypt several times, but has always lived a bit higher on the hog than I have. Because of this, I was able to show her a few things that rich tourists usually don't see. Mostly things you wouldn't want to see, heh heh, but here are a couple of pictures from Al Azhar Park. It was Sayed's first visit to the park too and everybody LOVED it!
I am also including a picture of me, Sayed, and Barkat from a hooker bar in Cairo that Barakat insisted on going to. He wanted to drink beer and smoke sheesha and see women. So we went to this hole in the wall that I am SURE had never seen a female tourist before. I was surprised at how the prostitutes fawned over Sayed :)

Cairo Flat

Sayed found me a flat in Abdeen for the summer. It was a 20 minute walk from the museum and next to Abdeen Palace, in an "Egyptian" neighborhood - no foreigners living around there. So there were no western-style supermarkets and we were close to a nice street market. The rent was 2500LE (about $500) per month and had two bedrooms and one bathroom.

I'm such a slacker

I can't believe I haven't updated this in FOREVER! I spent this past summer in Egypt, working at the Museum and hanging with Sayed. I took him to Alexandria where he walked in the sea for the first time ever in his life and he ate seafood for the first time ever. We couldn't stay in the same hotel room because the marriage papers we got in Aswan at the lawyer's office weren't legal. But it was so cool showing him Alexandria! We went to the library there :)

Funnies

My friend Laura did this and it totally cracks me up. I love the Thoth character.

Sick of FaceBook

I would much rather just keep this little blog with nobody reading it than deal with facebook crap.
Here I am in Mobile, AL. I went to see Ginger and Mommy. Ginger and her friend Amy ran in the Azalea Trail Run, a 10k thingy. It was fun. Unfortunately, Mommy's dog was dying - we thought- and I missed seeing Ginger fly across the finish line.
The dog lived.
But it was a very good trip away from the horrors of thesis writing here.
I finished my thesis, btw, and passed my defense and now am just waiting to get it back from the grad school so I can make the necessary corrections. Blah blah blah. Everything seems blah today.

Talkin to Sayed

So how sweet is this, Sayed goes into Aswan to use the internet cafes to talk to me. This morning he surprised me because I thought he would wait till Friday. It was really cool to have morning coffee with him. He's really the best. And I'm not biased at all, no.
In other news I will not be able to drink green beer for St. Patrick's Day because of thesis work. I have not been posting because of thesis work. I have not been doing anything because of thesis work. Why, again, did I put myself through this?!?!?! I don't know. But I must get back to work.

Valentine's Day picture 2010

Me and Sayed at the High Dam at Aswan. Nice.
Technically this picture was taken on about the 2nd of January 2010. But I'm using it for my Valetines Day picture. Because Sayed is my sweetheart.

My man Sayed

I know this is out of chronological order and all, but I was just feeling happy about my sweet-heart and wanted to post his picture. Probably it's all the romance associated with Hathor :)
This is my felucca captain, Sayed, who has my heart with him in Aswan.

Dendara set 4

These scenes are from one of the little rooms upstairs at the temple and narrate the mummification and resurrection of Osiris in an endearing little combination of bestiality and necrophilia :)
See, the story goes...
Osiris and Isis and Seth and Nepthys are all siblings, but Osiris is the king of the gods. Seth is a total bad-ass and kills Osiris so that he can be king of the gods. But, Osiris's wife (their sister) Isis is an even BIGGER bad-ass and takes all Osiris's dismembered parts and wraps them back up together again (the first mummy) and then she takes the form of a kite (like a falcon) and does a bird lap-dance for the dead Osiris and is able to get him to impregnate her with his own spirit so he gets born again as his son/himself Horus.
This cycle gets re-told in a different way with Nut, who, as the sky, is impregnated with the sun, gestates it throughout the night and gives birth to it again every morning. The sun is Osiris at night and Horus in the day.
It gets complicated.
But never boring.
;)

Dendara set 3

Nut on the ceiling.
Pronounced Noot like toot, not "nut" like Tut.
She is the sky goddess, sister of Geb the earth god.Born from air and moisture (daughter of Shu the air god and Tefnut the moister goddess).
The sky goddess was all over the ceilings of this place. Beautiful.
But it was very hard to get a picture of it because it is very big and you can't get further away than the floor. My camera doesn't have a wide-angle setting, so I could only get one section of Nut's body at a time.
I walked to the roof before my little group and when I got there I was the only one there so I walked through a rope barrier and tried to climb up onto the very top. But of course a guard saw me and yelled at me so I had to come back down.
But I made him take cool pictures of me on the roof. And he didn't even get me with my eyes closed. Maybe I should've traded AJ for him?
I could have stayed here all day I think.
I added the paranormal label to these pictures because there is something really divine about this place.

Dendara set 2

The Hathor-columns in this hall are just gorgeous. And I tried to get lots of pictures with me looking cool in here, but it's hard to do because the columns are so tall you can't quite get a close up of a person and still get the full size of the columns. The paint is original and they are in the process of cleaning and restoring this whole temple. There weren't all that many people here when we came and I wonder if it ever gets many tourists? I hope so.
They are renovating, or maybe building for the first time, a reception area with vendors and a cafe and all. I don't really like this "improvement." I think it displaces a lot of people who probably really need the few bucks they can get from selling some beads to tourists, because now the vendors will have to have the money to pay for a booth. They did this in Mexico you know. In Tepoztlan. Before the revolution. You had to belong to the PRI to get a space for your puesto to sell shit.
Anyway, I'd rather deal with hordes of itinerant vendors than asshole shopkeepers. But that's just me. I'm sure normal people would rather have some semblance of order so I guess the new set-up will have fans.

Dendara set 1

I should give this post an alternative title of "Why does AJ always take my pictures with my eyes closed?"
Alas, it's too late now to fix that.
We rented a car and drove to Abydos one day. On the way to the Anubis temple there, we stopped at the Hathor Temple at Dendera. This is one of the best places in the world. I will post too many pictures from here.
Briefly, here is what remains of the first pylon entryway to the temple complex. It looks like a portal to another time, huh?
Then we have a picture of me pretending to be Hathor. Ana ba'ra!
Then me looking cool at the columns in front and, again, me looking particularly cool in a Charlie's Angels pose at the entrance.