Suspenseful Situation on Sinai

After the Ibn Tulun Mosque we headed to the Egyptian Museum which was so cool! We got to see the King Tut exhibit. It was all the stuff they found in his tomb (which I went to!). His golden sarcophaguses were incredible. There were thrones and jewelry and statues and all kinds of everything! It was intense. After that we had free reign of the museum. There was so much cool stuff there. I saw the Merneptah Stele. It’s a slab of stone with a victory declaration inscribed on it from a victory in Canaan by Pharaoh Merneptah. It’s significant because it’s the oldest extant mention of “Israel” and so scholars use it to date the Exodus and Israelite conquest. It’s really famous in Bible archaeology…we’d been learning about it and I got to see it! They also had the royal mummies exhibit. Now that was cool. It was the mummies of many of the famous pharaohs of Egypt, including Ramses II, Ramses III, Seti I, Thutmose III, Merneptah, Ahkenaten, and many many more. It was really neat! A lot of them still had hair and teeth. I thought Seti I looked like a really nice guy. I bet he was a sweetheart.
After the Museum we headed to the Cairo Hard Rock Café. They served us delicious-looking salad that we couldn’t eat. (Some girls did and they got Ramses Revenge BAD.) We ate large juicy hamburgers and French fries and ice cream. And then they turned on the music. They blasted Macarena, YMCA, and a few others and we ROCKED OUT. It was awesome. We got a lot of the teachers up and dancing with us. By the end a bunch of random people were up dancing with us. It was a blast. I got a Cairo Hard Rock Café T-shirt that I like a lot. It’s pretty sweet.
After that we headed to the Khan al-Khalili Bazaar. Now this is the place that we were highly cautioned about because it’s where, every year, some girl got groped. So all us girls were pretty apprehensive about it. But it ended up being really fun. It’s crazy! It’s a huge network of all these tiny roads and alleyways that wind and twist and are lined with shop upon shop full of junk! It felt like an eternal garage sale! Haha. But our entire group ended up making it through grope-free! Yay! That’s a first I think. I got some awesome gold shoes that are pointy at the end! Yeah, I know. I’m stoked.
That night we had free time, but I was totally zonked and a lot of girls were sick by then, so we stayed in and had a girls’ night watching “The Mask” in my room.
The next day we got up and headed to the Citadel, which is also the Muhammed Ali Mosque. The citadel was so cool! It looked like it should be on the planet Naboo from Star Wars. I kept thinking, “Bri would love this!” I swear George Lucas got some ideas for Naboo from the citadel. Anyway, Muhammed Ali usurped control over Palestine from the Ottoman Sultan in 1830. While in control, Ali built a new royal palace and a mosque to house his tomb, hence the Citadel connected with the mosque. The mosque was beautiful. There was this huge chandelier and tons of hanging white lamps over a beautiful rug that covered the entire floor (which was very big). It was neat.
When we were done at the mosque we headed out for Sinai. It was a long bus ride, but we finally got to the Morgan Land Hotel where they had dinner waiting for us. We ate and slept for a few hours and then got up at 2:30 am to head out for Mt. Sinai. They gave some hot chocolate and a little sack-breakfast and we were on our way. It was funny, because it was so cold everyone was wearing a billion layers so we looked like a fat camp heading to Mt. Sinai to try to lose a few pounds! We arrived at the base of the mount and now begins my adventure story.
So there are 2 options for hiking Sinai: you can hike up the whole way, or you can ride a camel up 2/3 of the way and then hike the last third. So normally I’d be all about hiking up the whole way, gung-ho, right? But I had been talking before I came with a guy who had been here Spring semester and he had highly recommended taking the camel. He said that when you took the camel you could just relax and really absorb the experience and look at the stars, which were absolutely GORGEOUS up there. So I decided to do the camel thing. PLUS you can hike up any mountain any time, but how often can you RIDE A FLIPPIN’ CAMEL up a mountain??? So us camel-riders bunched together and went to the Bedouin guides, who starting grabbing us and taking us to their camel. Now you have to understand that at our Egypt orientation we had been talked to extensively about being cautious. They told us that people would try to get us on our own or lead us out into the desert and then who knows what. So anyway, this Bedouin man comes up and grabs my arm very firmly and starts leading me off the trail. So I’m stumbling along, feeling a little apprehensive, but I could still see and hear the rest of the kids so I wasn’t too worried. He stopped by a camel and then said, “You wait” and then he headed toward a little shack about 100 feet away. I stood there for a while watching until the whole group had passed by on the trail and I was standing there alone in the dark. The Bedouin man came back finally with some blankets and such and tied them onto the camel and then I got on and we headed off. I was feeling a little worried since we were by ourselves, but eventually we caught up with the walkers, but the other camel riders were long gone and far ahead. But once we were with the walkers I felt better. So we’re going along and then we come to this fork in the road. Everyone is going to the right, but when we get there, my Bedouin man turns to the left and starts leading me down this dark path all by ourselves. I freaked out. We were rapidly getting further and further away from the rest of the group and there was no one up ahead in front of us. So I started yelling, “HELP! HELP!” I kept saying to my guide, “I want to go that way! I want to go with the rest of the group! HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME!! GUYS! HELP!” Finally people heard and started shining their flashlights at me and I heard mumbling, “It’s Heather! Look! She’s being led off the path!” And I just kept yelling. Finally, I hear a voice in the distance behind me. It said, “Heather! Don’t worry. This is Eran. I am behind you.” Eran Hiatt is the program director here in Jerusalem and he is awesome. I looked behind me and he was walking behind us with his walking stick, slowly closing the gap. Finally he reached us and told the guide that we wanted to go with the rest of the group. The Bedouin man finally got it across to us that this was the path that the camels took because the other path had stairs and it was bad for the camels. So we kept going. And finally we caught up with some of the other camel-riders and I stayed with them for the rest of the ride. But it gave me quite the scare, I’ll tell you. Anyway, it was a big story for a while—Heather getting led off into the desert by some mysterious Bedouin man and having to be rescued by Eran! Haha. What an adventure.
Sinai was incredible though. We got to the top about 5 minutes before the sun started to come up. And then it started to creep over the horizon. Guys, I can’t tell you how gorgeous it was. Simply breathtaking. We all watched the sunrise and sang some hymns and then we had a really nice devotional. It was such a beautiful experience. Man, it’s no wonder that high mountain tops served as temples back in the day. It was like being in another world. After basking in the sunshine for a while we headed back down. At the base of Mt. Sinai is St. Catherine’s Monastery. Because it was Sunday we couldn’t go in, but it was really nice to look at. It’s a church built by Helena when she named Jabal Musa as the biblical Mt. Sinai. The church was replaced by a basilica church by Justinian to protect the monks who were living there. It was really cool. We had a class devotional at the bottom and then headed back to Morgan Land Hotel for brunch.
Finally, we packed onto the bus and headed for home. Our border crossing went very smoothly and after we had crossed over we headed down to the shore and skipped rocks on the Gulf of Aqaba. It was beautiful. On the bus ride home I sat next to Miss Anne Kelly, my kindred spirit. We laughed our heads off playing “Would you rather…?” because we were so tired and drained so everything seemed that much funnier. I think my favorite of hers was, “Would you rather have a tiny little sparrow permanently attached by a chain to your nose and it was always trying to fly away and so tugging at your nose, or be chased eternally uphill by a lion?” I chose the sparrow.
It was nice to get back to the JC. It felt like coming home. It was so good to be able to eat salad and drink water not from a bottle.
Well, friends, that concludes the Egypt experience, although my words did not do it justice. Plus I got lazy by the end and just wanted to be done with it, so it’s not as detailed as it could be. But oh well, at least I finished, right? Now I need to catch up on all the fieldtrips we’ve gone on since then: Jericho, Judges, City of David and Hezekiah’s Tunnel. AND I need to tell you about our Ramadan Extravaganza! And I need to do it all before I leave for Jordan day after tomorrow, which I am so incredibly excited about!!! By-the-way, Petra was just named one of the modern top 7 wonders of the world. And I’m going there. Holy flippin’ cow.
Conclusion: I haven’t done a conclusion for a long time. Maybe because I haven’t finished an entry for a long time. Well, as much as I loved Egypt and as much as I love Israel, America will always be my home. But Egypt did have one leg up on us as far as the whole “cool and fascinating history” goes. I am so grateful that I got to go to Egypt. It was absolutely unforgettable in every way.