Days 7-12--(or Egypt, Mallorica, 2010 & that place I have missed…)

Well I should have blogged right after Egypt but everything was crazy and I had so much to say I didn’t think my tired brain would do it justice.

Egypt was something you read about and see pictures of but never really ‘get it’ until you are standing on the sidewalk watching young girls with babies beg for money or toddlers walk around barefoot in piles of baking trash.

We were picked up at the port dock in Alexandria by three Egyptian men in a (sketchy?) white van. For the next 48 hours we were toted around through Cairo and Gyza and saw so much I felt like cattle being herded from one place to the next.

I don’t want to rattle off all the museums and mosques and places we saw because those are what pictures are for. To me, the most important part of our condensed trip to the Land of the Pyramids were all the things we saw in getting from point A to point B.

The countryside was incredible. So much poverty. Vast fields of underdeveloped factories. The women, out of the movies I’ve seen, all wrapped up in scarves and burkahs. I am reading A Thousand Splendid Suns right now and it is completely relevant to what I witnessed in Egypt. Although the book is set in Afghanistan, the women struggle with the same issues. It was almost eerie to watch those women covered from head to toe and know that behind all that there is a woman, maybe even as young as Austin’s age, who is living this world for life. I can’t put into words my amazement at the stark class differences. There is the upper class and the poor. And no one really in between.

On a lighter note, my absolute favorite part of the trip was riding CAMELS!!!! O M G, I LOVED IT J My Arab boy guide’s name was Omar and my camel was so nice (Megan’s was mean and kept growling…ha) but we rode them in the desert right outside of the Pyramids (they were in the background for all our pictures) and it was the coolest thing EVER. I couldn’t stop taking pictures. We weren’t harnessed in at all, they just told us to hang on and the camels swayed up, got on their front legs, and then bent their weird flamingo legs and we were UP!

I will totally put up pictures of our camel adventure when I can J

So that was Egypt, we did the Pyramid light show at night and that was neat too. We saw King Tut’s tomb, toured ruins, ate Egyptian food, bought scarves (but didn’t wear them on our heads) and SAW A LOT.

Mom, Dad, and I did get a little present from Egypt… a nasty bug! L BUT it didn’t take us out completely. Austin and Megan have stronger stomachs than us I guess, but it wasn’t fun. That might have been reason number two for not blogging earlier… blahhhhh.

I almost forgot... HaPPy 2010 to everyone!! I have some personal new years resolutions that will hopefully last to February (ha) but I rang it in drinking with my under-age-but-legal-in-international-waters little sister. Doesn't get much better :) I wish for a healthy and happy year for everyone I hold dear♥

Tonight is our last night on the boat. It has been a great “at sea” adventure but we are ready to say goodbye. We ported at Mallorica, Spain today and went MOUNTAIN BIKING! It was a gorgeous day and the island was beautiful. If I had more energy I would go into detail about our “bike tour” but I’ll just hit some high points. First off, they should have called it the “lake tour” or “mud/river tour” because that’s what we biked through. Think I’m joking? We were dressed and ready for a pleasant bike ride on pavement through trees and pretty Spanish countryside… instead we trekked through the SPANISH FOREST and biked (fell, laughed, peed our pants in hyperventilation, sweated, ran full speed into prickle bushes, soaked our shoes/socks in mud, etc…) Yeahhhhh. It was just a blast! Mom and I held up the caboose. What a hoot. Mom decided to wear her Coach shoes. Good call, Mom. My tennis shoes are sitting in the garbage as we speak. I’m looking at them right now, muddy and disgusting. I needed new shoes anyways (after a semesters worth of trashing them) but I didn’t think they’d go out with such a bang. Oh Mallorica…

I have to say I’ve been counting down the days to January 5^th. When I got to September 2^nd January felt a million miles away. A MILLION. Yesterday was month marker four for me. And home has never sounded so good as it has around the holiday season, but with this excitement comes mixed emotions of course. I am sentimental about leaving Europe. I am. I don’t know how to describe it because I WANT TO GO HOME but there’s a little part in me that wants to hang on to all the adventures and all the pictures I have stored away in folders on my computer.

I don’t want to forget. Maybe it’s the thought of putting a continent and a fairly large ocean between me and all those memories is what’s not sitting well. I couldn’t say. It’s the strangest feeling to be leaving something so indescribable and at the same time knowing that nothing will make me more happy than getting my old life back.

I am anxious for school. We have new girls in Delta and I want to love them and know them just as much as I know all my sisters. I’m really honing on my major and more so than years before, I am academically focused. I get my own room in a week, officially. I haven’t had my own room since I was a junior in high school and I know that will feel amazing. I have never lived more than a floor away from Jackie and Hil and now they are going to be a (however, short) walk. God, it will feel good to get them back.

Things are just going to be different in general. Salzburg opened a new chapter for me in a lot of ways that will carry over into school and I don’t know how things will play out. My feelings are bouncing around so much sometimes I feel like they are going to about swallow me whole.

It is January 3^rd. I will be home in two days. Home! Yes! Yes! Yes!