Monday, November 30, 2009

2 weeks left















Exactly 2 weeks from now I will be snuggled into the warmth of and comfort of my home and I can't wait. I love Switzerland so much but I am so excited to see my family for the holidays. This past weekend we went to all the Christmas markets in Lausanne and neighboring cities. They are much like a street fair with small stands of vendors selling home-made unique things, but it is all Christmas based. It was so much fun. We bundled up in our warm clothing, gloves, hats and scarves and set out to stroll through the Christmas markets. With everyone drinking hot chocolate and cider, our breath foggy when we speak and the smell of cinnamon and chestnuts filling the air and Christmas music playing it couldn't have felt more like Christmas. We took our time looking at all the stands and the different things everyone was selling. At the end of the night we rode the ferris wheel in the middle of the markets and like to froze our butts off, but it was well worth it. The view of the city decorated for Christmas from the top was so beautiful. I can't wait to be home for Christmas!!

Thanksgiving in Switzerland






The beginning of the pie line.


When we entered the dining hall we all were assigned as pilgrims or indians and given corresponding hats.


The converted dining hall to accommodate 100+ people.


Of course Switzerland doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but with a house full of 100 American kids, there was no way around not celebrating. Thanksgiving night here consisted of 100+ people, skits, music, 17 pies, a ton of turkey and a very different atmosphere from home. During the week leading up to Thanksgiving, we spent our time baking pies, preparing crafts and decorations, cooking turkeys and everything else that goes into making Thanksgiving a success. With a stressful school week for everyone it was nice for everyone to get together and release some stress with a huge feast. I thought I would miss being at home for Thanksgiving, and don't get me wrong I definitely did, but being in Switzerland was such a cool opportunity. Everyone was away from home so we all tried to make it feel as much like home as possible. After dinner, I helped clean up and then stayed up till 3am decorating the house for Christmas. We set up a Christmas tree with fake presents, lights and ornaments. Decorations all over the house, snowflakes on windows and stars hanging from ceilings. It was a great success and everyone was surprised when they walked downstairs for breakfast on Friday morning. Here are some pictures of the night.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Egypt!!!

The dang Koshary that was oh so good, but oh the consequences!




Alex wasn't too happy to take this picture




Traditional Egyptian meal.

Fresh pita bread from the lady below.

Local Egyptians making pita bread in a brick oven.

It was super windy, so most of my pictures turned out with my hair like this :(


The Sphinx










We climbed all the way up on it!

Sitting on the actual Pyramid


Sun shining on the Pyramids


Where we ate :)



At our picnic.


Leaving on our camel ride!


Perfume Gallery in Egypt


Vatican Museum, Ancient bath tubs

Here is the post most of you have been waiting for. It's gonna be a big one so you might want to grab a chair or just take a peak at the pictures and read it later. Just thought everyone would want some details on this trip. Since it's such a long one I'll break it up by days like I did for Corsica.

So we had fall break last week where we had 5 days off from school and were free to travel wherever we like. Alex and I chose to go to Cairo, Egypt with 2 of our other good friends Michelle and Yvonne.

Wednesday: We left at 10am on a flight out of Geneva and headed for Egypt. We had a 9 hour layover in Rome so instead of staying in the airport for 9 hours we took the metro out to the Vatican. We toured the Vatican Museum and went into the Sistine Chapel. We had about 4 hours at the museum and wasn't enough. The museum was one of the greatest museums I had ever been to. We started at the beginning and took our time strolling through each room and exhibit and we still felt rushed and like we couldn't have walked through one more time. The Sistine Chapel was absolutely breath-taking. There were no cameras allowed in the chapel so I don't have any pictures but they wouldn't have turned out great anyways because of the lighting. The ceiling and walls of the chapel are completely by Michelangelo and are what he is most famous for. Some scenes he painted included God giving life to Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden and the Great Flood. There are no words to express this work of art. It was the end of our tour so we were ready to sit down for a few minutes once we got to the chapel. A few minutes was an understatement. We sat in silence staring at the ceiling and the walls that are completely covered in paintings and frescoes. After finally leaving, we caught dinner at a pizzeria down the street and hopped back on our metro back to the airport to catch our flight to Egypt.

Thursday: We arrived at the Cairo airport at 2:30am and were dead tired but so excited to be in Egypt we didn't let our exhaustion get to us. By this time we were delirious and finding everything funny. When exiting the airport we went through customs and security check and they were checking Egyptian visas. Our hears all sank because we didn't know that you had to have a visa before coming into the country. The last thing we needed was to be stuck in the airport with no way back because we didn't have a visa. Luckily, that was not the case. If you were only there on vacation you can buy a visa for $15 at the window before the exit gates. I guess this was our first indication that Egypt doesn't really give a crap about anything. So we bought our visa's and got the heck out of there. When we got the bottom of the escalators there were two men waiting for us with our names on a plaque. This was so cool, I had always wanted someone waiting for me at the airport! His name was Muhammed and his partners name was Husein. They were our tour guides that would be in charge of us the entire time we were there. I was so happy to know that we would have a local with us at all times because judging from what I had only seen at the airport so far, I could tell that this wasn't going to be a safe place for four girls on their own. When we arrived at our airport we had a little mishap because our reservation was for Nov. 5, but their days don't start until 6am instead of midnight so we technically didn't have our reservation until 6am. It was 4am and we did not want to pay for a full night to just sleep there for 2 hours. But long story short, we ended up getting suckered into paying just so we could go to bed. Just as we got into bed and started to fall asleep the city had its morning prayer call. The churches have towers called minarets and they are all over the cities and at the same time all of the minarets have people in them that start chanting their prayers and the entire city stops what they are doing to pray. This was the first time we had heard it and got a little freaked out until we realized what it was.

Later on Thursday: We got up at around 11am and ran downstairs for breakfast then got ready for our tour which picked us up at noon. Our tour-guide's name for this day was Rehem, but we called her Rico. She was really nice and cool and had our whole day mapped out for us. We went to the Egyptian Museum which houses all the mummies and the treasures from inside King Tut's tomb. They also have the entire history of Egypt in this museum so we took some time brushing up on our Egyptian history that we had learned about in high school and college. Next we went to a perfume shop where they mix all the oils to make their famous perfumes. Ancient Egyptians were known for their talents of mixing oils to make perfumes and the recipes got passed on over time so they have the exact ingredients of Cleopatras favorite scent and other oil remedies they would use for calming and relaxation. This was the same idea as wine tasting but with perfumes and oils if you can imagine.

Thursday Night: This was the most epic night of our entire trip. We got picked up from our hotel at 8pm and were taken in a van for about an hour out of town until we pulled into this parking lot that had 4 camels waiting for us. There was a camel driver and his son waiting to take us on a camel ride into the night. We hopped out of the car and were all a little hesitant to get on the camels after seeing how huge they are. After a couple deep breaths we got on them and they got up like transformers in a bunch of different movements. Our tour guide got on the camel with Alex and the camel driver got on my camel with me. Michele and Yvonne had their own camels that were tied to ours. We headed out into the desert and after about an hour we were completely in the middle of the Sahara desert. It looked straight out of Aladdin, rolling hills of sand for miles and miles and nothing but darkness, the stars and our camels. After a while of riding we took our camels up to the top of this hill where our tour guide had a surprise waiting for us. They had set up a pic-nic before hand with a blanket and pillows and tea and traditional Egyptian food. So we proceeded to eat our food in the middle of the Sahara with our camels huddled next to us and as we looked around we noticed that the Pyramids were off the distance and they were the only things we could see for miles. It was so surreal, literally something out of a movie. I would have to say this was one of my favorite parts of Egypt.

Friday: Today we had a full day tour. We got picked up by Rico and we headed out for the Pyramids. After a little drive were standing in front of the biggest pieces of man made creations I had ever seen, let alone the oldest. 6,000 years old and still standing strong they looked amazing. They seemed to not be as big as first but as we got close to them we realized how enormous they were. We even crossed the rope and climbed up on them for a little photo session. I can't really do much more explaining without pictures so once you see the pictures you will see how amazing it was being able to see the Pyramids, the Step Pyramid and the Sphinx. Later on Friday night our other tour guide Ahmed asked us if we wanted to hang out with him after hours and he took us to the top of a mountain that overlooked all of Cairo and we had tea and talked for a few hours. It was really nice and he was really cool and nonetheless it was a beautiful view.

Saturday: This was our last day in Egypt and we didn't have anything planned so we of course had to see the biggest mall in Africa so we took a day trip out to the mall that was 7 stories and had a ton of stores. It was really cool being able to see it, even though I didn't buy anything. Not much went on this day, we really just were killing time before our plane left that night. We felt like we had spent the perfect amount of time there and had seen everything we wanted to. At 2am our plane left and we couldn't wait to be back home.

Don't get me wrong, Egypt was the most amazing experience ever and I absolutely loved it but I was so ready to be back home in Switzerland. The city in general was extremely dirty and resembled a third world country. Lots of poverty everywhere we went and was really unsafe, although we were always safe with our tour guides. We also had found a liking for this food called Koshary which ate two times and fell in love with. It's traditional Egyptian food that we drove into the slums to get just because we wanted it that bad. Well after being back for a few days, I am regretting my decision to eat all the Koshary. I'm still feeling the effect a week later, if you know what I mean!

There is so much more to say about Egypt but I feel like I've written so much already that it would be excessively long to write it all out. Also, if I tell it all on here then I won't have anything new and exciting to share when I get home. So that's all for now :) xoxox

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