Tuesday 2/26/08

So I definitely went from the girl who sleeps all day, to the girl that barely sleeps. Like clockwork, my body, unable to sleep through the night, wakes me up at around 2:30 a.m. despite any time that I fall asleep, and despite how much sleep I’ve managed to accumulate overall in the days before. My only explanation for this is that 2:30 a.m. Egypt time is around 7:30 p.m. U.S. time and my stomach is saying, “KELLY WAKE UP, it’s time for Aunt Marcia’s Dinner!” Only there is no Aunt Marcia’s dinner for me to eat at this odd hour. So instead I toss and turn. Monday I was unable to fall back asleep and therefore I wound up being awake from 2:30 a.m. all the way to 10:30 p.m. Four hours later I was awake again, quickly finding myself repeating the same pattern. Originally I thought going to bed too early was the culprit and that is why I stayed up until 10:30 even though I was really ready to sleep much earlier. Now that that does not seem to be the case, I will have to go to sleep earlier tomorrow and just accept and brave the late hour when it coaxes me again from my slumber. That being said, it is going on 2:00 p.m where which means I've been awake a good 12 hours now. It has been another wonderful day in Luxor. At 6:30 I went down for breakfast. After I was done eating I switched rooms again. Now I am actually staying in Mark Lenher's room. It is much bigger and the internet works from inside the room so I no longer have to sit in the hall way in order to use it. The only thing is that a lot of Mark's things are still in here and get worried that he is just going to show up in the middle of the night or something! I like it though. In this room are water steamer/boilers so I can make my own tea now if I wanted to. I was pretty much done moving around and ready for more touring of the city by 7:30. I began at Luxor Temple, which is really a 5 minute walk from the hotel. I spent about an hour and a half there taking pictures and going through with my guide book. Sometimes it is really great to have someone who knows a lot about sites and monuments and history go through and talk to you about everything you are seeing, but I enjoyed going solo as well. Everything was done at my own pace, I could look at the things that I found interesting and at no point was I zoning out. This book is absolutely excellent too. It divides the temple into various components, maps it out, labels it, and refers to the map when explaining significance and context, so I knew exactly where I was, what I was seeing and where I was going next. Once I finished at Luxor, I came back to my hotel, grabbed some more batteries for my camera, and went to the site at 10:00 for second breakfast. There I was hooked up with a driver to take me to Karnak Temple. Karnak took me a bit longer to get through, but it was stunning. It is much larger than Luxor Temple and there were times when I would be completely isolated, hidden away from anyone and I could have probably stayed there all day without a single person running into me..it's that huge and divded. Karnak really blew me away....it is like a huge monumental palimpsest. Seeing Luxor and Karnak on my own finally inspired me to learn to read hieroglyphs, something I never really was interested in before (haha when I told Richard his response was, "oh boy.."). I'm sorry I just can't stand to be looking at something andbe shrouded in mystery. Anyways, I am going to look into some books on that. After finishing Karnak Temple, I walked home...it's about a 2 mile walk from the hotel so not too bad. I get so excited now about the fact that I can do so much in Egypt on my own now. Last year I would have never felt safe enough or comfortable enough to go anywhere alone, and now I find myself independent on most occasions. I am still careful though. I always have my headscarf and I know this area really well now. I havent yet deal with arranging my own cab ride though...that will be quite the experience. I really appreciate how supportive Richard has been and how aware he is of when to guide me and help me out, and when to let me stand on my own....though I suppose it's a mentor's job to recognize and balance those kind of things.

Anyways, I am going to work on organizing the posts for the Luxor and Karnak trip. I took over 100 pictures today, so its going to take a bit to organize it all and to explain the images. 100 may seem a bit excessive, but i am going to be teaching one day and you never know what kind of stuff I'm going to need. For now, I am going to wash my face for the 3rd time, because I still seem dirty from the walk home, and read/nap...though napping is probably a bad idea if I was to try and overcome this 2:30 am business. Tomorrow it's back to the West Bank to see more of the Land of the Dead!