Upper Egypt... which is actually the south...

This week we had only 2 Arabic classes, then took off for a 4-day excursion to Upper Egypt.  And most people probably learned this already at one point or another, as did I once, but I forgot, so:
to clarify, Upper Egypt is the south of Egypt, and Lower Egypt is the north-- because the Nile flows south to north.  This is why after getting (slightly) spoiled by Cairo temperatures that were only in the 90s for the last couple weeks, we once again had to plunge into 110+ degree heat down south.  Blarg!  Luckily most of the places we were staying had air conditioning, for a change... including the sleeper train that we took both ways.

I had high expectations for this sleeper train after watching The Darjeeling Limited, and yes... it was pretty much that awesome.  We arrived in Aswan by mid-morning and spent the day visiting a couple temples there.  Then we had a felucca ride (sailboat) in the Nile, which was beautiful and excellent for tourist-watching.  We saw some excellent British tourists all wearing neon orange life-vests, as well as a very Amurrcan cruise boat that was in fact flying a huge U.S.A. flag from the front.  Wow.

It was interesting to see how different everything is in that part of the country-- the countryside is much lusher since we were out of the metropolis, and even the people look significantly different there.  I also noticed there was a significant change in selling tactics: many of the street merchants tried flattery and reverse psychology to get you into their shops, whereas in Cairo I feel there is not quite so much strategy!  I lost track of how many people yelled "nice eyes" at me before even mentioning what they were selling, and I also got several offers of camels for marriage.  Anywhere from 5 camels (conservative offer) to 10,000,000 camels (desperate attempt to sell me a scarf). 

We were in Aswan just one day, then traveled to Luxor for the next 3 days.  Luxor is one of the ancient capitals of Egypt, and it is also going to be one of the service locations for a couple guys in my SST group, so we needed quite a bit of time there.  Probably the most exciting part of Luxor for me was visiting the Valley of the Kings.  I had no idea what to expect, but I definitely didn't realize that this was an entire area full of excavated tombs that you can go inside.  Our tickets allowed us to go into three different tombs of our choice.  Because these tombs have been pretty well sealed in the desert for thousands of years, they have an amazing amount of color still inside them... Many of them had several huge connected rooms, all covered on all the walls and ceilings with huge painted carvings.  We weren't allowed to take pictures but I sat and gaped as long as I was allowed to.  One of the tombs I went into was a pretty far hike up the side of the rock mounds, followed by a huge set of stairs down inside and then another back up to get to the inner chamber of the tomb.  This led me to accidentally think of another bad pun... in addition to Cairobics, we were now experiencing... (wait for it...): Luxorcise.  By the time we got to the inside we were already dripping sweat, only to find that this tomb was at a much higher elevation and therefore unbelievably hot and stuffy.  I'm pretty sure I have never been so sweat-soaked in my normal clothes-- it was like my job in Kansas this summer, only I was just standing still instead of doing manual labor in work clothes.  But totally worth the Luxorcise that it took to get there, and totally worth the jello-legs I had for the rest of the day!

In Luxor I also experienced my first serious illness since arriving in Egypt.  We for some reason went to McDonald's for our group meal one night, which I'm sure would have been at least a little more appealing to me if I hadn't already been having stomach pain that day... and then I ordered my meal, a harmless(?) hamburger which ended up to be AS BIG AS MY FACE!  This, on top of the internal issues I was already having, led to me and my stomach rejecting all food and water for most of the next day.  The most exciting stomach upheaval happened in the very first room of the Luxor Museum, while I was surrounded by a huge group of tourists... lovely, I know.  Luckily I had brought a plastic bag! I'm actually the third in our group so far to throw up at a museum, so it's kind of a badge of pride... haha.  And no worries, it has been a few days now and I am feeling mostly recovered.