Wow, it's been a while since my last post! 

Not much has happened the past few days (I didn't have great internet access, therefore the lack of posts) except for what I hinted at in my last post. Last Saturday at 4 am in the morning we woke up to go on a hot air balloon ride over Luxor! We were taken across the Nile in the pitch black and given coffee and Twinkies for breakfast. The ride was fantastic, we could see many of the temples and Valleys of Kings and Queens and Nobles that we'd visited during our days at Luxor. I also saw my first sunrise, and it's so amazing from up in the sky! It came up right over the Nile river as a yellow orb shooting out pink across the hazy sky. God's beautiful handiwork. That day we flew to Hurghada, Egypt, which we discovered is a Russian vacation hotspot. EVERYONE there was Russian and all the hotel workers were amazed to see Americans, because we were a rare sight. Every day we sat on the beach from sun up to sun down pretty much, and we were there for about three days total. It was such a relaxing break and we all really enjoyed it. Our hotel had a private beach on the Red Sea and it was the clearest water I've ever seen! Some people went snorkeling and deep sea fishing too. This break was our equivalent of college fall break, and was definitely needed after all those days of touring temples in the hot sun. We just got back yesterday and today we had classes with our professors and with an Egyptian professor who taught us about Egypt after the pharaohs. After class we took a taxi to Khan al-Kalili, a gigantic bazaar in Cairo that was super busy and much larger than the bazaar at Turkey (which I didn't think was possible). Our taxi driver was hilarious on the way there; he knew English because he'd gotten his baccalaureate degree in accounting, and he was very nice to us, teaching us things to say in Arabic when we got unwanted compliments and laughing at our bad pronunciations of his name (Ahmed, which is a majority of peoples' names here). At Khan al-Kalili my friend Elise took us on the hunt to find a man named Said who was friends with her neighbor from Minnesota. He had a jewelry shop and we actually found it! He was very nice and remembered her friend from a long time ago. We bought a few things, walked down what seemed like spice MILE (I couldn't breathe), and went to a cute coffee shop for some mango juice. It was a great time! The Egyptian shopkeepers are much nicer than the Turkish ones and they don't hassle you as much when you ignore them.