Uganda and Rwanda Trip!

Maria, Maureen and I planned to go gorilla trekking basically from day 1 and we finally set it up for the first break in April. We decided to bus the whole way because gorilla trekking is expensive (500usd for East African residents)  and flights were freakin super expensive. So we started our journey on the Riverside Shuttle Bus to Nairobi, as usual. Stopped at the usual border crossing and rest stop (where we got some super cheap, super delicious greens, chicken, and chipati)

Made it to Nairobi and checked into our hotel, Khweza. It was fairly nice and we absolutely loved the cabbie that worked for it. Naturally the first thing we did was head to the mall for some much needed retail therapy (I bought sparkly nailpolishes) and fro-yo (which is seriously lacking in Arusha). We also ate at a nice sushi restaurant (also kinda lacking in Arusha). 

Kilimanjaro Half Marathon

Before the race!

 I forget exactly when, but at some point in Term 2 was the Kilimanjaro half marathon in Moshi (a city about an hour from Arusha) Kelly, Kelli and I drove to Moshi the day before and stayed in a hotel overnight. Both of them were running the half marathon. I was running the 5k. (I think next year I will try the half marathon. The 5k was congested with 8 year olds and parents running with their 5 children. I was also hit on repeatedly by some 15 year old who would run over and go “hi!” and then want to chat while we were running. I ditched him. ) Victoria also ran the half marathon. 

Me after running

KP crossing the finish. 

Victoria crossing the finish.

Kelli crossing the finish.

Hike to Another Waterfall

The year 9 students climb Kilimanjaro every year and to practice they do a few hikes around the area. I tagged along one day just for fun. 

Me and Maureen

Waterfall!

Touching the pregnant belly

There was a competition to see who could pick up the most trash. He won. 

Highlights from Term 2

Pretending to eat our fraction pizzas. This student was one of my favs.

 


Jane Goodall came to visit the school! Two of her grandchildren go here. She gave a talk to all of the Year 3 students one afternoon. 

 

My fashion design elective took a field trip to the Two Brothers Fabric Shop. That all had money to buy fabric to make a skirt.

 Interhouse House Swim Gala. All of the students come to cheer on their teammates who are competing.

On my last duty weekend of the year, me Kelly and two other teachers planned a rockin weekend. On Saturday I hung out with primary and helped to set up a slip and slide for the kids. We then played in the puddles and did face painting. 

On Sunday, Kelly, myself and another teacher took the kids to Maji Moto. (It means hot water but the water isn't actually hot) The kids loved it and I would love to go back sans kids, but it is an hour's drive away from Arusha.

 

 

May fashion design club got to practice on my sewing machine. It made most of them nervous.

And Thus It Ends

On out last day in Aswan, I woke up nice and late (after sleeping for roughly 13 hours). We wandered out and grabbed lunch before packing and heading to the airport. Made it back to Cairo, otlobbed some food and then hung out and skyped the family.

Headed back to Arusha the next day. Long flights. Longer shuttle ride. The shuttle was super full so I ended up in one of those tiny middle seats that fold down the whole way. The shuttle took forever; we kept getting stopped and passport checked. They actually found a woman on our bus who wasn’t legal and booted her off.  

We finally got home at 9pm and Tisa was overjoyed to see us! We were overjoyed to be able to shower and sleep in our own beds. 

Abu Simbel

We dragged ourselves out of bed at the appointed hour and sleepily boarded the bus (Sean joined us for this excursion as well). The hotel packed us a brunch which was pretty nice. The drive took about 4 hours.

Abu Simbel has two temples overlooking Lake Nassar which is connected to the Nile River. Both temples were built by Ramses II to celebrate one of his war victories. The (naturally) larger temple is for himself. The massive statues on the front are depictions of him with his various wives and children smaller at his legs. Inside (wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside) there are a few different rooms with beautiful paintings and reliefs over all of the walls. The room straight back from the door has four statues depicting four different Egyptain gods. When this structure was originally built it was positioned so that on exactly two days of the year, the suns rays would shine all the way to the back  room to illuminate the statues of the gods. This has changed for reasons I will talk about later.

The second smaller temple was built for Ramses II’s favorite wife, Nefertari as the goddess Hathor. Across the front and on the walls inside are statues and paintings of Nefertari with the cow horns of Hathor. One of my favorite things about this tomb was the giant gold ankh shaped key that works the lock on the temple’s door.

 

The coolest thing about these temples is that their original location is now beneath tons of water from Lake Nassar. In the 1960’s the Aswan dam was being built to create hydroelectricity and to stop the Nile from flooding each year. Lake Nassar, the lake created by the dam was slowly creeping up towards Abu Simbel. It was decided that the temples would be carved out of the roce face and moved up to a higher, safer location. It took years, but they were able to carve the temples into massive blocks and reassemble them higher up in a man-made hill that overlooks the shining water of Lake Nassar. And they literally had to race because the water was steadily encroaching; at a few different times they had to set up makeshift mini-dams around the site so the water would not rush in and destroy the blocks which had yet to be moved. Very cool!

Bus ride back was uneventful. We made it back to Aswan in mid-afternoon and then grabbed lunch/dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with Sean. After eating we paid for a sundown felucca ride (a small river boat) around the Nile. In Aswan the Nile is beautiful and blue, unlike in Cairo where it is dirty and brown.

On the Train Again

We soon had to leave to make it to our train by 6pm. On the way we stopped at a McDonalds and picked up McFlurries. We hopped on the train, not a sleeper train this time, and met  Sean (an American). We chatted with him for a bit before settling into our seats. (We were entirely exhausted and beginning to get slightly grumpy.)  

Sean was seated a few rows back from us next to an irritating posse of 20 something Egyptian creepers. We could hear them chatting and the all of the sudden the Egyptian creepers start asking him questions about us. And, Sean, the dipwad, tells them that we are Americans teaching in Tanzania and that we are travelling Egypt and that we are getting off the same stop as him, at Aswan. I was literally about the strangle this boy. NOTE TO ALL BOYS: DO NOT GIVE OUT ANY INFORMATION ABOUT GIRLS TRAVELLING IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY TO RANDOM LOCAL CREEPERS!. HELLO?!?  So then the creepers come over to bother us. One sits next to Kelly across the aisle and when she refuses to talk to him, he has a one sided conversation pretending that she’s talking to him. He then decides to whistle loudly in our direction and later just talk about us to his friends.

We weren’t entirely sure which stop to get off at, but we thought it might be the last stop. At one point the Egyptian creeper told Sean that the train was stopped at Aswan. He asked us if we should get off and I asked a man and he said that it was definitely NOT the Aswan stop. I told Sean to sit back down and the Egyptian creepers got off. I can only imagine what would have happened if we had just gotten off at that stop, with the posse of Egyptian creepers, in the middle of the night.

We then get off at the (correct) stop at about midnight and head to our hotel, Memnon Hotel. Sean tagged along with us cause he didn’t have a reservation anywhere yet. We get to the hotel and inquire about day trips to Abu Simbel (the whole point of us going to Aswan) only to hear that the day trip bus leaves at 4 in the morning. We had gotten absolutely no sleep the past two nights and now we get to sleep a total of 3 hours before getting up and going again. But we did it. 

Jewels of the Nile

Right before 8am we headed back to the hotel and hopped into a tiny bus with some other tourists for our drive to the Valley of the Kings (Most of you know this place because it’s where King Tut’s tomb was discovered.)  We bus rode up, then paid the entrance fee (expensive and the dude would not give me a student discount even though I had my student card) You then hop on a little golf cart train to drive you up into the Valley of the Kings.

While on this ride Kelly was proposed to, and told how many goats, camels and chickens she’d be worth. You see, Kelly is worth more than me because she has ‘cat eyes’ (green eyes) Apparently this trait is worth a lot in terms of barnyard animals. Throughout our entire trip, random people would remark on her cat eyes.

The Valley of Kings really looks like nothing but a sandy area. These tombs were built after the Egyptians realized that pyramids were fairly obvious targets for tomb robbers. (They practically scream, “I have treasure inside!!”) These tombs were meant to be absolutely invisible. Even that didn’t help them; most were looted in antiquity. As a part of your ticket you get to choose three tombs to enter, though you are not allowed to take pictures inside. The first tomb we went in was KV 11 or Ramses III’s tomb.  It was beautiful. This was a huge tomb; it just kept going and going. There were life-size relief carvings and paintings of the gods, the pharaoh and his son. The paint was still on the walls and it had beautiful, vibrant shades. The next tomb belonged to Ramses I. It consisted of a steep staircase down then a room in which the sarcophagus lay. The paintings in this tomb were very beautiful but not as entrancing as the previous tomb. I forget the name of the third tomb we visited. This one I appreciated because in one room there was a massive depiction of the sky god with stars all over the ceiling. It was very beautiful. 

Next we went to the smaller Valley of the Queens. This was a much smaller and quieter site. We only went in two tombs here. They were not as grand, though they still had paintings all over the walls. One of the tombs contained the mummified remains of tiny babies, possibly miscarriages. The most famous tomb in the Valley of the Queens is Nerfertari's tomb. (She was the favorite wife of Ramses II [we saw his mummy in the museum in Cairo; it was an amazing experience!] Her tomb is beautifully painted and its colors remain vibrant. Unfortunately, this tombs is not open to the public so we couldn't see it. (Watch out for Nefertari and Ramses II names again in the narrative; they pop up later in the trip)

Temple of Hatshepsut

Then we hopped back in the bus and visited the Temple of Hatshepsut. She is famous for not only being a very powerful female pharaoh, but also for making friends and setting up trade routes between Egypt and its surrounding neighbors, most notably the land of Punt (an ancient kingdom south of Egypt). Her temple is fabulous but unfortunately most if it is a reconstruction as after her death the next pharaoh (I believe her nephew) tried to destroy everything of hers.

Next we visited the Colossi of Memnon. These are two massive seated statues kinda in the middle of nowhere. They used to be in front of the gate to a large temple but the temple is no longer.

 

Karnak Kartwheel

The bus then dropped us back off in town. We ate lunch and hammered out our game plan. We decided that since there was only one more big thing that I wanted to get to in Luxor (Karnak!). That we would hop on a night train that night to Aswan. So we spent a few hours wandering the massive temple complex of Karnak. It is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, temple complexes in the world. 

Temple of Luxor

Kelly had made us a reservation at a hotel and we headed that way. Our plan was to sleep for a few more hours before getting out of bed, fully rested, and exploring the wonders of Luxor. As it turned out, the hotel had double booked and so we no longer had a room. We sat in the hotel lobby trying to figure out what to do next, fighting sheer exhaustion, and watching Rambo.

At about 6am we decided on a plan. I booked a trip to the Valley of Kings for 8am that morning. While we waited for that to start, we walked across the street and wandered through the Luxor Temple. One of the nice things about visiting the temple at too-damn-early in the morning was that no one else was there. It was very beautiful and peaceful. 

Creepy guy at the Temple "Touch the walls. Feel them!" Me: "Kelly I don't think we should touch the walls. That's not good for them." So he grabs the back of her head and practically makes her touch the walls. 

Chug-a-Chug-a-Choo-Choo

Sad Christmas wine

That night, Christamas Eve, we hopped on a night train towards Luxor. I was definitely not going to leave Egypt without seeing Luxor, the Valley of the Kings or Abu Simbel. The train left at 8pm so we made sure to get there early to find our train car and our room (is that what it’s called on a train or is it a cabin or a room?) Whatever it was, it had a bench that changed into a bed, another bed that folded down from higher up. A sink, mirror, two eating trays and a widow with curtains.  We spent a bit of time exploring the cabin. (Leading to us pulling down the top bunk and then having a hell of a time trying to put it back up again.

Shoving the bunk back up.

Dinner. Womp womp.

To celebrate Christmas, since we were away from our families and sad about it, we snuck a bottle of wine on board and then managed to drink it between us within 15 minutes. Then our dinner arrived. We weren’t particularly impressed but we ate what we could. After that, the steward (train attendant?) came to set up our beds for us. We climbed into bed and I read for a awhile before trying to drift off to sleep. It was not happening. The train was LOUD (wheels screeching, people outside making noise) not to mention the train car was shifting all about, and worst of all, the stupid window would not stay closed. It kept blowing open, sending icy cold wind straight into my bed and amplifying the noise by a thousand. It was a long and exhausting night. We were woken up at around 4am for breakfast and arrived at the station in Luxor at 5am.