Cairo

Apparently I took a 5 month hiatus from blogging- whoops. It has been a whirlwind 5 months! I started this post 5 months ago and it was forgotten about and left in "draft" mode for months...so here's what I had written so far...

Cairo is a crowded (over 20 million people), dusty, and dirty city. (And I thought Saudi was dusty...) It is a very interesting city though- and you must experience it if you want to see the pyramids. The freeway was packed and the kids were fascinated with all the sights they saw during our drive from the airport to hotel. I was shocked at how many people were walking along the freeway (and trying to "frogger" themselves across to the other side). We even saw horses pulling a wagon...just trotting along next to the cars zooming by. I did think seeing this truck full of camels was pretty cool.

Our first night we visited a papyrus shop and got to see a demonstration on how papyrus paper is made.

At the base of the pyramids you can pay to go for a camel ride out to a panoramic viewpoint where you can get all 3 large pyramids in 1 picture.

Mina kissing the sphinx.

So that was my post on Cairo that I never got around to publishing until now. BUT, I did want to mention that our camel guide talked a lot about how he loves having American tourists at the pyramids (there are so few these days b/c most Americans feel it too dangerous) b/c it's a sign that maybe the economy will start to bounce back. The pyramids, despite not getting many Western tourists, have plenty of Chinese tourists. But our guide was straight up blunt telling us he hates the Chinese...b/c they are too easily scared by the camels and won't ride them (thus he makes no $), or if they do choose to pay for a camel ride they scream the entire ride...AND they don't laugh at his jokes. The irony is that I'm half-Chinese. I made sure to laugh at his jokes.

Up close pic of the pyramids...I didn't realize how big each block is. It's kind of a marvel that they could stack blocks that size before the existence of heavy machinery. I can't get a Jenga tower to double in height before toppling over- so you know I'm impressed.

Nile River- sort of anti-climactic actually b/c it just looks like any other river running through a city. I guess I was secretly hoping I'd see Moses float by in a basket or something.

Also, Egyptian Museum is super duper rad...and huge! The kids loved seeing the mummies...ok we parents loved it too. This is us in from the the museum.

Oh this is kind of funny- or weird. See the group of people in the photo below? I'm in the middle of that cluster of people...I still can't figure out why but I was approached probably 15-20 times by different groups of people and asked to pose for a photo. I took a lot of selfies with strangers that day. A couple even shoved their baby into my arms and took a photo of me holding their baby. And if my kids were around me they wanted pics of them too. I'm still puzzled by it...but for the 1-2 hrs I was inside the Egyptian museum I was a celebrity.

Super, not flattering photo but do you see how they've got me surrounded?! They just wanted to take pics and make conversation. Egyptians are nice.

Yay- all done with the Cairo blog post. Now the dilemma...do I try and stick with chronological order until I catch up to present day? Or start posting present day stuff and work my way backwards? The struggle is real. I will have to sleep on it. B/c jet lag is not my friend.