Where were you?

When I was growing up I would most often hear that question if I returned from someplace covered in something that shouldn't be on my clothes. Usually for me it was grass stains (we used to play a lot of football and soccer in my friend's backyard.) Sometimes and depending on the season, it could be mud, snow, sand, or even possibly some of my own blood. Like I said we liked to play football. Tackle football.

Sand is something that we see a lot here at Camp Dixie. Basically having all our land on a beach means that sand comes into the building an

d our house on almost every one's feet. If you have the right kind of shoes (mine are my new ones made by Reebok) they almost act like sand vacuums and you can have your own desert inside your house if you like!

Why am I asking where were you, and telling you about sand? Because since I last posted on the blog, Kim and I have been to a very sandy place. Egypt. I could probably talk for days about the interesting things that I saw there (we flew into Cairo, and the path to the runway leads right over the pyramids, and we traveled down the Nile river in a riverboat cruise.) But I thought I would share a couple of pictures, so you can see where we've been since I last posted.

Here is the obligatory picture of the one of the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. It was an amazing sight to actually be standing there and looking at those things. The pyramids are one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and the only one that still exists. Incidentally the pyramid 

behind the Sphinx here is the great Pyramid of Khufu which was built before the

 other two pyramids and the Sphinx. The Great Sphinx is commonly believed to have been built at the time of the second pyramid (built

 by Khufu's son, Khafra.) We were able to enter that pyramid when we were there (no cameras allowed). They only let 300 people each day into each pyramid so it was quite a rare treat. If you've never been in a pyramid before it's cramped, stuffy, and smells like the sweat of the 299 people that went in before you did. But it was 

amazing nonetheless.

We also went to

 visit many ancient Egyptian temples. Often we visited them very early in the morning (just as the sun was coming up) or late in the afternoon (as it was going

 down) to beat the heat. It made for some great pictures that way. This is a statue of Ramses the Great that was at one of the temples we visited. Ramses was a very interesting guy. He might have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus (there are about 5 or 6 that are suspects for that Pharaoh) and he ruled for a long time (he was alive until he was 90 or 91). He also liked himself a lot. He made many many statues of himself, and also put his cartouche (his royal name) on any piece of stone he could find. Interestingly enough, when he had his name carved into buildings that he had built during his reign, he had them carved in as deeply as possible. He didn't want a Pharaoh after him

 to renovate the building and take his name off. How did Ramses know this might happen? Because he did it to every temple that he renovated throughout his life.

Finally, the four statues that are in the last photo have as much to do with why Kim and I traveled to Egypt. I will never forget seeing this image in my 6th grade social studies text book. It is a picture of the temple of Ramses the great (here he is again) at Abu Simbel. The temple was actually carved right into the mountain, and there is actually a companion temple next to it for Ramses' wife. I remember seeing that picture and just being in awe of the whole idea of the Egyptians being able to carve that out of the mountain, and that it was lost to the desert sands for centuries. Here's what the area looked like just before it was excivated in the early 1800's. Amazing huh? Well. that's where we've been while we were away. It was an amazing trip

.