Egypt Part 1





Egypt was incredible. It was definitely the poorest and least westernized country we had been in, so it was definitely more of a culture shock, plus we weren’t able to drink the water at all, even to brush our teeth. From the first moments at the Port in Nuweiba we could see Egypt was going to be very different. It looked like a scene from a couple hundred years ago with merchants picking up their goods from the boats in sacks balanced on their backs and heads and pulling carts overflowing with sacks and boxes, all crowding through customs. It was insane. Since the boat got in late in the day and we didn’t know how long it would take to get through border control, we just drove to our hotel in Nuweiba which is right on the Red Sea and becoming quite a resort town. It was beautiful. Lori and I got up early to see the sun rise over the beach.

Sunrise over the Red Sea

 The next day we drove to Mount Sinai where we toured St. Catherine’s monastery. It is right at the base of Mount Sinai, and was built in the 6^th century but until the 12 century, the only entrance was at the top of the walls, so you had to be hoisted up in a basket. They have a great collection of icons, including the famous Christ Pantocrator which is the oldest known icon to have Christ pictured in this way. 

From wikipedia, not my picture lol



The monastery behind some of my friends on camels



We had the afternoon off to relax, and in the afternoon left the hotel to go back to the monastery and begin the climb. I was really nervous about riding the camel for some reason, but it was fun! Way more comfortable than the donkey earlier in the week. We were on the camel for 2 hours as it carried us up about ¾ of the mountain on a switchback path. I was in a caravan with my professor Laurie, who had an international cell phone so my parents got a really great phone call: “Hi Mom and Dad! Guess where I am?” When we got off of the camels and our legs were still like Jello after sitting like that for so long, we continued the climb on foot. There was a staircase made out of huge boulders that you had to climb to get the rest of the way up, and it was intense. When I finally got to the top, my heart was pounding out of my chest and I was gasping for air. But as I approached the peak, there was a Korean group singing so beautifully and you could just tell that they were praising God with all their hearts, and it felt a little bit like they were also celebrating my making it to the top! It was really a perfect soundtrack to the beautiful view. The sun was just beginning to set, throwing rays of light over mountain peaks as far as you could see. It was so serene and majestic, it is not hard to imagine Moses having an encounter with the Divine there. This was definitely one of the best experiences of the trip, up there with the Sea of Galilee. After we had taken the necessary pictures, we said a prayer service that has been used by CTU students at the top of Mount Sinai for years and years. It was really beautiful. We started down the mountain, and before we reached the camel path it was pitch black. Of course my flash light ran out of batteries almost immediately. Thank goodness we ran into some other CTU people who had an extra. It was really peaceful to be walking in the dark, in pretty much the wilderness with no signs of life other than some other flashlights spread out over the mountain, some small Bedouin houses and the occasional camel that would come up behind you and scare the crap out of you!

The next day we drove to Sharm el Sheik which is another huge resort city on the Red Sea. Our itinerary had changed so that we could fly instead of taking a train one day, which means we had an extra day. Our very kind professor decided to give us a relaxing day after the Sinai climb at a resort which has some of the best coral reef snorkeling in the world! So we bought goggles and snorkels and spent all afternoon exploring the reefs on the coast. It was such a huge contrast from the desert and mountains the day before, but still so amazingly beautiful! I felt like I was in an aquarium, seeing all of the brightly colored fish that you never think exist in real life. There were huge fish over a foot long that had every color of the rainbow in their scales, and little black and white striped fish, and pink and green swirled fish. It was amazing. And the coral was just as colorful and varied.

Me and Lori in our snorkel gear

Since I didnt have an underwater camera, this is the best I can do :)

The next day we flew to Luxor and began our exploration of the ancient Egyptian temples and cities, so that will be coming in the next post!

Jordan!

Hi everyone! Sorry it has been so long. We didn’t have internet often in Jordan and Egypt, so I didn’t try to post. I will work on those entries now that I’m home! Jordan was a really neat country, I wish we would have had some more time there. We started off in Gerash which was a Roman city of the Decapolis (a loose association of gentile cities in the time of Jesus). It was a really beautiful site with huge monuments, and we have not seen a city like it since Ephesus. It had lots of colonnaded streets and temples and a beautiful theater in which there were Jordanian men playing bagpipes and drums! It was really odd at first, but our guide explained that bagpipes originated in Mesopotamia, and the Scottish changed them a little. They are a really traditional Jordanian instrument and we heard them at another site, and at a wedding reception at our hotel that night! It was really strange to hear bagpipes in the Middle East!

A view of Gerash



The bagpipes in the theater



Then we toured the acropolis of the ancient city of Amman. There were nice temples there as well, and a small museum containing some Dead Sea scrolls, with way less security so we could take pictures. And statues that are some of the earliest carvings of people…whose noses look like Michael Jackson’s? Our guide was proud of the fact that MJ bought his nose from Jordan, haha!

The next day we saw the site of Jesus’ baptism on the Jordan river. It was interesting because Israel is building a platform directly across the river from Jordan’s site, and the river is only about 10 feet wide, so its not very scenic. The Bible describes John baptizing people at “Bethany across the Jordan” and archaeologists found the site Saint Helena built a church on by using a mosaic map from the floor of a 6^th century church that we also got to see in Madaba. The map shows the Holy Land of the time, so you can see Jerusalem and pick out the main street and the Holy Sepulcher, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea (with a fish swimming away from it because it is too salty), the Nile River Delta, and other cities. It was really amazing. We also drove up to the top of Mount Nebo where Moses looked over into the Promised Land before he died. It was really a spectacular view. You can see the green fertile land surrounded by nothing but desert, and imagine how exciting it would have looked to Moses after wandering the desert for 40 years.

Me by the Jordan river



The Madaba Map



The view of the Promised Land from Mt. Nebo



Then Saturday we went to Petra! It was one of my favorite sites on the whole trip. The city was almost magical. You start off down a really long and narrow corridor between two huge winding cliffs of beautiful sandstone swirled with reds and purples. Along the way were niches carved into the stone with images of the three goddesses who the Nabateans prayed to, who would then take their prayers to the main god. Then suddenly through the opening ahead you catch a glimpse of the “treasury”, then the passage opens up to the full view. It was just stunning. It is amazing how they carved the whole thing out of the rock. It was actually a tomb of a king, and never used as a treasury. And unfortunately we couldn’t go inside, so I didn’t get the Indiana Jones adventure we were all hoping for, even though we were humming the theme song the whole time.

Going through the siq



The first glimpse



Me and Lori in front of the Treasury



After the treasury, the path opens up to the city, where there were several other smaller tombs carved into the cliffs, and caves that were homes. There was one that we could actually go and walk around in. The swirls of red and purple on the walls, ceiling and floor are absolutely beautiful! Further down was the Roman city with columns and temples, and a Byzantine church with beautiful mosaics. We stopped for a quick lunch, then got on some donkeys to climb up to the monastery! The donkeys were neat to ride… a little scary because mine and Lori’s kept trying to pass each other for the lead on really narrow and steep steps next to a deep ravine. But they were fun! They took us about ¾ of the way up the mountain, then we had to get off and climb the rest of the way. The monastery was beautiful. Very similar to the treasury, but less ornate. It was a temple tomb that may have later been used as a church. Then we climbed up further to a high point advertising “the best view in Petra.” I don’t think I will ever be able to explain how physically intense all of our hiking and climbing has been. My leg muscles are incredible though! haha. It really was beautiful seeing all of the mountains from that high. All along the path going up were Bedouin men, women and children selling trinkets and jewelry and sure enough there was a tent at the top selling souvenirs too. We talked to the man and asked if he has to walk up the whole mountain everyday, and he said no, that he lives right there at the top! What a front yard! He also played for us on a little guitar and sang. After getting back down to the bottom we had to walk an hour to get back through the site to the bus. Fortunately after a certain point a horse ride is included in your ticket price, so we rode horses up the last part of the hill. The next day we got on a ferry boat to Egypt! More on that later!

More tombs and houses in the hillside



The monatery from the peak



Me on the peak



The Dead Sea and the Negev desert

Wednesday we went South to the Dead Sea and the Negev which means both south and desert, because the southern part of the country is all desert. First we stopped at Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. It was a small community of Jews who had broken away from the temple because they believed the priests were not legitimate and that they were preparing for some cataclysmic battle between the Sons of Darkness and the Sons of Light, so they were very aesthetic. But whatever their beliefs were, they studied the scriptures and kept them in caves where they were hidden until the 1940s. As you know, these are some of the earliest copies of the Old Testament scriptures. We already had seen some of the scrolls, so it was neat to see the community and caves that they came from! 

Me infront of one of the caves the scrolls were found in

Then we went to a public beach at the dead sea where we swam…or floated…for a while. It was so weird because it just doesn’t act like you expect water to act. When you lean back in it, your feet just pop up and its like you are lounging in a chair, only you’re in water. Then its really difficult to get your feet back under water! And because of all of the salts and minerals, the water has a very oily feel to it. When you get out and the super hot sun immediately evaporates the water off of you, you are left with a really thick layer of salt on your skin! It was kinda gross, but definitely fun!

floating!

Then we went to Massada which was a city built on top of a huge plateau where after the first Jewish-Roman war, the Romans were breaking through the city walls and the Jews planned a mass suicide because they would rather die than become Roman slaves. Today many Israeli soldiers hike up the mountain with all of their packs and gear and take their oath to serve the country from the top vowing “Masada shall never fall again.” It was a really great site with ruins of Herod’s palace on the edge of the cliff from 30 BCE, which was beautiful, and a gigantic cistern at the other end with nice examples of a synagogue and houses and storage rooms in between and stunning scenery all around.



The Massada Plateau



Herod's Palace



John "sacraficing" me at the temple

Thursday we went to Arad, which is an Israelite city mentioned in the Old Testament. There is a temple there with monoliths dedicated to Yahweh and possibly Asherah who was the female counterpart to Yahweh. This was during the time of David when temples outside of Jerusalem were forbidden. There was also a good example of a house from about 3000 BCE.



The Holy of Holies in the Israelite Temple



 

As we were driving to the next site a heard of wild camels crossed the road!



Then we went to Avdat which was a prosperous town on the incense trade route between the Mediterranean and India. It was inhabited by Nabataeans, not Israelites, but eventually converted to Christianity and has ruins of two basilicas. The side of the hill have tons of cave dwellings which was where the residents of the town would have lived. The houses were carved into the white chalky hillside, and there were a few that we could go into. It was incredible how much cooler it was inside the caves compared to the 105 degrees outside. You could see counters and storage holes for pottery inside, and niches in the walls for oil lamps with black burn marks still there. It was a really interesting site.



We got to the hotel and Laurie our professor told us that we were near a canyon, so after a long hard day of walking through the desert, Lori and I decide to go back out into the desert to this canyon. It was only a block from our hotel, but we went on a trail that took us up a mountain that looked like a camel to a great lookout. It looked like the Grand Canyon only wider and more shallow. It was stunning. My pictures don’t do it justice.

 

That night we had a Bedouin dinner! It was a tourist stop, not a real Bedouin community, but still neat. We ate in a huge tent supported by palm trees, sitting on cushions around a huge tray of food: chicken, potatoes, veggies, a thin chewy pita they called Bedouin bread, and hummus. After dinner we went to another temple where a Bedouin sheik sat and told us about Bedouin life and played music for us.



A view of the inside of the tent

The next day we started at a nature trail near Avdat. It is a trail through another canyon. This one was made of white chalk which was beautiful, and there were ibex playing all over the sides of the cliffs. The stream running through the canyon led to a trickle of a waterfall which is believed to be the site where Moses struck a stone and water came flowing out for the Israelites. It was such a beautiful walk!  

Ibex on the cliffs



the stream leading to the waterfall



Then we went to Beersheba where Abraham lived for a while, and God saved Hagar and Ishmael from dying in the desert. The ruins we saw are from a much later period than that though. It was a small little town, and was the southern most point of the ancient land of Israel.



When we came back to Jerusalem, Saturday we just walked around town. We stopped at Basil’s store for the last time. Basil is a friend of our professor, and has become a friend of ours too. Since he knows us, he always gives us the best deal he can, and it is so nice to not have to barter. He brings us delicious tea that is for the shopkeepers and tastes like mint and honey. It is just nice to know someone in the city, and he is great for advice about the city and to get a good opinion on the politics and events going on. We will definitely miss him!



Basil with the ladies!

Yesterday was our last day in the city. We had a passion walk, and walked from the garden of Gethsemane, to the site of the upper room of the last supper. Technically we would have to go back to the garden after that, but it is quite an uphill hike, so we only did it once haha. Unfortunately the church that commemorates the high priest’s palace and Peter’s denial was closed. But then we walked to where the praetorian would have been, then to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Calvary and the tomb are. We read the passages from Mark that fit all of these places and it was very powerful. It was a good reminder that Jesus’ death and resurrection is the real reason any of us are on the trip, and that any of these sites are even here today. It was a great conclusion to bring the experience of Israel full circle to the real meaning. I finally got to go into the tomb! It was crowded and rushed, and covered with so much marble and decoration that you cant see anything, but just the fact that its probably one of the most archaeologically correct sites in the city made it worth it!



The chapel at the upper room where the last supper took place. The figure on the far right is of a woman because women were certainly present even though they are never depicted.



Then we finally got to go up to the Dome of the Rock. To get there we went through the Western Wall area, and it was fitting that we spent the last day in the city at the holiest sites of each of the three religions. The mosque was so beautiful up close. So vibrant. And the temple mount around it was really neat, like a park with trees and children playing.

A group of us at the Dome of the Rock

We leave for Jordan tomorrow. Our last few days here were spent in retreat, which wass really helpful for processing everything we have done and seen so far and what it means for us. Two weeks from Wednesday I will be back in the US!