(some of) The Italian ladies: Maria, Valeria, Sara, Francesca.

As for the questions I left unanswered in a previous post about our arrival in Egypt… I did get champagne at midnight, though the steward had to wake me up to give it to me. My hotel did let me check in at 4 am but I had to pay an extra night. Meg did make it to Egypt, though she was actually partially strip searched! (In America, of course.)

I found Meg at the airport and of course she had already made a friend, which led to Meg’s first cultural lesson in Egypt. She had chatted with this guy who is Egyptian through the ten hour flight and he told her all sorts of things about Egypt, from the growing gap between rich and poor to his sisters’ wearisome Sinai hikes. So she felt they knew each other pretty well. He helped her wade through the throngs around the luggage belt (I assure you a survival of the most aggressive situation, as are most “lines” in Egypt), steered her through customs (No diarrhea of the mouth thankfully) and offered us a ride into Cairo. Unfortunately, I already had a taxi driver waiting and he was pretty upset about the delay (because of course there was an hour delay). When Meg went to say bye she automatically reached out for a hug. He got a look of awkward surprise and managed to stick out his hand in the small gap between them while I widened my eyes and shook my head at Meg from over his shoulder. Afterwards I told her that “No touching” between un-related men and women is a way to err on the safe side here. And if you are in a really conservative/religious area it is best to wait to let men offer to shake hands or not. I thought I would have had at least a few minutes when she first got here to tell her the basics. But I probably wouldn’t have thought of that anyway, it is so obvious and ingrained into me now.

And on that note everything has been proceeding as usual. Sarah and I went to Kom Ombo to work in the storage magazine for a day. It takes an hour to get there and for a long portion the road is really bad. The taxi kept going slower and slower in the washboard like conditions, until, one block away from the storage magazine, it rolled to a stop and lost all power! We all said Humdililah for making it that far, grabbed our bags and walked the rest of the way.

I have a new addition to my repertoire of nick names. Usually, my name is “Bes” since “th” gets pronounced “s” in Egypt. But the Italians call me Beta, and some of the guys we work with have started calling me Beyt, similar to Beta. Ironically it is a more appropriate translation of my name since it means ‘house’ in Arabic and ‘Beth’ means ‘house’ in Hebrew, so I hear. But my favorite is that one guy has had his own pronunciation: Beet! Beet, Beyt, Beta, Bes, Bet, Betty, Beeth, as long as it starts with a B it works for me. (I try to discourage Beef though.)

Oh there was one unusual occurrence a few days ago: Rain! In Aswan! We’d just finished telling Francesca the night before about how it doesn’t rain here, and I was thinking in my head that it is unlucky to say that. There was a storm that night and it really rained, more than a few drops! I of course, being trained on Michigan thunderstorms, slept through the whole thing. I hear it only lasted half an hour or so. But it was enough to flood the roads and have our hearts in our throats on the way to see our fully exposed entirely mud settlement site the next day. Luckily the spectacular Fawzy and co. had covered it with sheets (Possibly not a good idea if it had really poured, but it worked) and the site wasn’t affected at all. There are still puddles in the low spots of the roads now, three days later. And I hear that Cairo had it worse with thunder and lightning and everything!

Since we didn’t work on the site that day b/c it seemed that it would rain again, Sarah and I got to survey for rock art! Which is quite possibly the best thing to do with one’s time that doesn’t involve food or private spaces. We surveyed the entirety of a little mountain (about 100 m or so high). We found many wonderful things and one very morbid “thing.” But I won’t say more on that, only that we climbed up rocks, slid down dunes, scaled narrow crevices and had a view over all the area and the Nile.

And for the day off we are going to ride camels from Kubbeyet al Hawwa to the Monastery of St. Simeon. (Kubbeyet al Hawwa is the remains of a little chapel or something with a vaulted roof on the top of the High desert above some pharonic tombs. It means “cup of winds.”)