Egypt Update

Egypt: was so great. We had a personal guide and driver the whole time we were in Cairo and we really loved her. I cannot imagine seeing Cairo any other way. (Err... other than with BYU professors and students. :D) Seriously though, I was pretty nervous to be going back, but it was the least stressful place we have been.
Cairo is such an interesting city. Over and over, Dad would ask "why is this, this way?" or "how come _____" and our guide would look at him and say "you are in Egypt." Truly the dirtiest city, I have ever seen. Dad couldn't stop asking how it got that way and why can't they clean it up.
Dad was especially fascinated with the City of the Dead. (This is a huge cemetery, where people buy tombs before they die and until they die, homeless people move in. It is very unsafe. When I came with BYU, our bus drove through very quickly. We were told that we were the first (of the Jersualem students) to drive through.) Anyway, Dad liked to tell people that we had walked through on our own to get a reaction.
So the major sites we saw were the Giza pyramids, the Sphinx, the Citadel (or Mohammed Ali mosque), a shopping mall- the name of which I don't remember, and the Egypt Museum. (Possibly more that I don't currently recall.) I don't think Dad was as excited about the pyramids as I recall being when I first saw them. Frankly, he described them as a "pile of rocks." He loved the mosque though. The metal details inside the domes are very beautiful. Oh ya! And who would we run into there, but the Jerusalem Center students and professors, which was funny because I had been thinking that it was around the time in the program that the students would be in Egypt. So random that we would be in the same place at the same time.
Next we went to Luxor and fit SO much into one day. We started the day very early and went hot air ballooning over the West Bank of Luxor. It was so very cool. We could see tons of the temples around there, specifically Hatshepsut's temple was really cool to see from up there. I think we went back to the hotel and napped after since we only had about four or five hours of sleep. Later, we saw Karnak temple and met up with a guide there who then took us around to the Valley of the Queens, Valley of the nobles, Valley of the Kings, and Hatshepsut's temple. (I want to let Dad update on this part because I think he will be able to describe all of it better than I could.)
Our guide was very good. It's so crazy that these people have studied Egyptology (4 years or more at university) and know so much about all of these many different places and they are making about the same as minimum wage in America.
We have been really blessed to meet so many great people along our way. Our guides have all been so great and especially our new friend, Lamiee, who was our guide in Cairo. It was so good to get to talk to her about a lot of cultural things. She told us a lot about her life and she is an incredibly strong and hard working person. I hope were I given the hardships she has faced, I would be able to have as much courage and strength to overcome obstacles as well as she has.