This will be posted several days after it has happened as I don't have internet at this hotel. I am in Cairo Egypt. We arrived here early this morning on a flight that left Tel Aviv at 1:20am. We got to the hotel at about 4:00am. My head was aching worse then it has as far as I can remember, my nostrils felt like they were on fire and my body like it had been hiking around Israel for the last nine without a break!
We started the day at 9:00 am today (a nice lie-in since tomorrow we start at 3:00 am). We saw the Pyramids and went to the Cairo Museum where they have all of King Tut's stuff. Beyond that everything has been an opportunity to loose money. Daniel and I just practice our negotiating skills and then walk away when they finely give into what we want. Daniel got the price on a "real" Rolex watch down to $10. Pretty good eh. He also tried a technique for the tourist areas that works well. He brought an olive wood camel (that Bagdaddy gave him for free because he remembered him as a boy) to the Pyramids and tried to sell it to anyone who tried to sell him anything. They had never seen anything like it! We thought that was strange, but they didn't want to pay the $20 he would start with for the asking price. As they tried to bargain down he would go up. By the time he hit $40 they were gone.
We have a new group now and the dynamic has changed drastically. we have people who have been here five days longer then us because they went to Petra first and then Israel. We have half of our Israel group still with us, and we have people who just got here last night. You can guess who has energy and who is drained. There hasn't been a single rest day. That hasn't mattered to much until we had to spend a night traveling from one end of Israel to the other and then to another country and continent (not a long flight but very uncomfortable). Now we have to get up in just a few hours to take another flight. We can't take our luggage with us. We're supposed to pack for two days in addition to the day we will dress for at 3:00 am. We will have church tomorrow so we are supposed to dress for that, but we won't have access to our changes of clothes until tomorrow night so we'll have to wear church clothes all day. Our guide informed us that it won't be below 45ºC where we're going. That's a minimum of 113ºF for us tomorrow in church clothes.
This part of the trip, despite my life long love for Egyptian history and artifacts, is turning out to be a disappointment. We haven't been able to learn any gospel things yet, our group has different levels of spirituality as they've merged from different groups, and different energy levels as we've all been here different amounts of time. We have a bus load of people who just want to get back to the hotel to get caught up on some of the sleep we lost last night before we loose more tonight, and then we have one lady who is only here for the Egypt part and wants to get the absolute most out her short trip. This means that every time the guide asks if we want to do something else that doesn't matter, the bus all says no and she demands that we do. She doesn't want to miss a single thing. Then we get to the market and the guide tells us not to buy anything here. He can get us a better deal at another place later and this is just to smell the BO of this kind of market. "It's just for the experience" he explains. That was a valuable hour we'll never get back.
I'm excited to be seeing Egypt but at this point, I don't think it's worth being away from Sara and Ari and Jude.
I can''t even send them a message to let them know that I'm still okay. Well, maybe I can. Internet is $5 for 15 minute here. Not worth it really but maybe just to let her know why she won't be hearing from me for a while. I don't want her to worry right now. She's got enough of that in the states without wondering if I'm okay on the other side of the world in BFE!
It's like Kelly taught. The word travel comes from the same greek word for 'travail'. I can't wait to get back home. I am excited to come back over here as a family though. Maybe even to live for a year or two.
Well, on that note, I will got and try to post this and let my lovely wife know that I livingly love her and I will see her soon in the normal two pieces I come in.
God bless you all my friends,
Jarem

Ps, I will post photos when I have more internet access.