Wow, it’s been ten days already! I would continue my airport saga (I will only continue it if people are interested. If people don’t really care, say so and I’ll write about the other things now and the airports later). I will write about other things now to celebrate the Ten Days Off The Island.
On the Tenth Day, I rested. I slept in while my mother went with the family we are staying with to church. I had wanted to go but I must have looked so peaceful so they left me. Although I missed out on hearing the singing and seeing sights it has turned out to be a good choice. Mum is asleep now, completely exhausted. So I have Time Enough to Give (an in-joke for those of you in school choir. For those of you who don’t know it, it is creme-ala-CHEESY lyrics. They say that wine compliments cheese well, which was good because that’s what we did. Whine. I don’t think our whine was complimentary…. although it did come for free 
*)
Anyways, back to the story. We have spent the past few days with a Christian family/ tour guides that mum met last time she was in Egypt. It has been interesting listening to them, for here the Christians are in the minority and get a hard time from the Muslims. Completely opposite-ish, and very interesting. Also, the Christians here are fasting before Christmas. Ramon, one of our guides/family persons counted up the days of fasting, and he thinks that they spend about 70% of the time fasting in some way or other. Before Christmas they aren’t allowed to eat any meat except fish (sort of like Australia) or any product from an animal (dairy etc.) for about 40 days (actually, I think it’s more but I’m not sure..). At Easter it is the same (55 days, I think), except without the fish. But they still cook enough for the whole family just for us! It hurts just to think about it…. not really, but it’s still a LOT of food. They think that we are just trying to be polite when we don’t put more on our plate so they refill it for us. Oh well, at least it’s nice food.
Lots of temple seeing has been happening. I like temple, and gods and myths and such so it has been awesome fun all round. It was funny to see how they did some of the things they did, like making BIG pillar wall thingies. They’d put the stones at the base and build it up a little, then they would make a dirt ramp up to the level of the stones. From there they could drag more stones up the ramp and add them to the wall and build the ramp up to that level, and so on and so forth up and up the 20 odd metres of sheer wall. Then, to decorate it with all of the hyroglyphics and pictures of offerings and gods they simply reverse the process by starting the reliefs and decorations at the top and working their way down by removing some of the ramp. Simple, yet very effective!
We went to a very beautiful temple in Aswan, a three hour train trip from Luxor (the train was an hour late to the station, but that’s another story). It’s a temple out on an island on the Nile. It was originally on another island but when they built the dams on the Nile to provide energy for Egypt the temple was left submerged, with only the tops of the pillars visable above the water. They managed to save the temple (yet another story, which I was planning on telling now, but mum is just waking up and we are about to have lunch (more food!!)), so I will tell it another time) and relocate it to a new island.
Sorry for this sudden interruption, but I’m called for. I hope you are all well, and I would LOVE to hear from you all. E-mails, replies, comments, ANYTHING would be just swell!
Enjoy your good weather, I’m sure enjoying mine!
Have fun, and take care!
Kieran
* Oh, did you read that? THAT is ART!
