Yesterday was the experience of a lifetime! And today too, although we were all very tired from travel. Yesterday was the day we saw...the PYRAMIDS OF GIZA. I had been so excited for this day since I even applied to Global! (that is, if I was accepted) We arrived there with our tour guide and immediately went inside the largest pyramid, which is where Khufu was buried. Inside there is an unfinished burial chamber, the queen's chamber (although the queen has her own pyramid) and the king's chamber. Unfortunately we were only able to crawl/hike/stoop over to the king's chamber. I am a little claustrophobic, and I thought this would be fine but it DEFINITELY pushed my limits a bit. We walked into a tunnel and a bat started flying around our heads. Don't worry grandma, it didn't bite anyone! Then we climbed up some stairs and started up a ramp, the ceiling getting shorter and shorter as we went until finally I was hunched halfway over and all I could see was the person in front of me and behind me; and it was hot! I had no idea when the ceiling above me would get higher again and all I could think of was the massive stones of the pyramid that were above my head, and I was INSIDE the pyramid. Eek! Anyway, we finally made it to the top and found ourselves in a large, granite room with a huge granite sarcophagus and granite airvents with a plastic fan. Notice which one isn't supposed to be there. It was pretty cool, but not much to see so we didn't stay too long. We had to go down the ramp backwards because it was too hard on your knees to go forward and no one wanted to see how far they still had to go. 

After this pyramid, we traveled around to the rest of them and on the way saw the remains of Khufu's funerary temple, pits that had once held giant boats (the equivalent of a pharoah's yacht) that the pharoahs wanted to have in the afterlife, and a reconstructed boat in a museum. One interesting fact I loved learning is that in the building of the pyramids, the workers actually built a ramp to bring all the large stones up. The ramp kept getting bigger as the pyramid got bigger, and in the end the ramp almost took more work than the pyramid to build! Obviously they tore it down though so the actual masterpiece could be seen. Lastly, we went to a hill where there was a great view of all three pyramids and then went riding on camels about 10 minutes into the desert and back. It wasn't much of a camel ride, it was more so to see the pyramids and experience seeing them while on a camel. But it was still cool! Last night we got back all dusty and exhausted, but it had been a great day of sightseeing. We had a pizza party in the professors' apartment and played a game called "The Village," which is really similar to Mafia but we could play with 27 people. Also ordered nutella-filled pancakes, YUM. 

Today we flew to Luxor, Egypt. It's right by the Nile and can boast of having one of the largest open air museums in the world, which is at the Karnak Temple. We got off the plane, briefly stopped at the hotel, and then went to Luxor Museum with our guide. After that we went to temple of Karnak and I took about 200 pictures. It was incredible--huge pillars and hieroglyphs EVERYWHERE you look, in perfect detail and some with the paint still there! The whole place is actually a mix of 2000 years of temples, each pharoah adding his own twist to the place. It covers about 200 acres and the Hypostyle Hall alone is big enough to hold both St. Paul's Cathedral in London and St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. It's also full of 134 pillars with hieroglyphs on each. We saw open air museum there as well as the sacred lake, which is one of the only ones still full of water in Egypt. Today after all of this we went swimming at the hotel and had dinner as a big group. Now we're pretty tired and might play games before bed. 

Anyway, I won't bore you anymore with random facts. Tomorrow we're visiting the Valley of the Kings, so I'll tell you all about it soon! Photos will be published in the next post.