I'm Smitten

I don't have much to say today, so how about some smiting? This was taken at Medinet Habu, a temple where Ramses III basically says how awesome he is by depicting himself in tons of battles and smiting everyone. We thought it needed to be recreated.

- Smitee

PS. Do you notice the red and white thing sticking out of Susan's pants? That's a Waldo hat. We've had a lot of fun placing "Waldo" in several fun poses around Egypt. The tourists at Bahri thought we were a little nuts, but honestly, we weren't the ones who were lobster red, wearing tube tops and booty shots in a Muslim country, knowing we'd be spending all day in the sun. So at the end of the day, I think we were the sane ones.

PPS. We looked all over this temple and Karnak for the perfect smiting scene in the perfect lighting with a perfect place for us to pose. We take our smiting seriously.

Adding Team Members

We’ve added 2 members to the team:

Auralie is an excavator from Switzerland who has been part of the group for several years. She arrived Thursday and will be with us for 3 weeks. Currently, she’s helping dig a really important Second Intermediate Period area and helping us sieve for seal impressions.

Valerie arrived just a few hours ago. She’s from France and is here to study the Old Kingdom pottery we have. I’m really excited to learn what I can from her before she leaves us.

The only problem with these new additions (aside from the fact that we now have 9 people using 1 bathroom) is that it brings out French-speaking contingent up to 4. When Susan leaves on Saturday, we’ll be tied. Another French-speaker will be joining us after Thanksgiving and us American-speakers will be out-numbered! Greg (who is French), Nadine (who is technically German, but also speaks at least French, Hungarian, English and Arabic) and Auralie all speak English quite well, though they prefer to speak to each other in French. Valerie apparently is super shy about speaking French and I have yet to hear her say more than “hello” in English. So learning from her might be difficult.

I’m still drawing. Tasha looked over my stuff yesterday and aside from 2 sherds whose diameters need to be tweaked, she says I’m doing a really good job! And she’s a very tough critic. There really is no “good enough” with drawings for her, especially since most are being used for her dissertation! So that made me feel good. I have a new job in the afternoon scanning all the drawings we’ve been doing. Apparently, Tasha normally spends about a week at the scanner once back in Chicago scanning everything, so hopefully I can save her some time.

- Non-French Speaker

PS. Our main internet stick bit the dust yesterday. So we’re down to a stick that is pay-as-you-go, and uploading pictures can be expensive. Unless we can get the stick working, it’s going to be text-only posts for a while. When I get to Luxor for Thanksgiving, I’ll try to upload a ton onto my blogger account and try to make up for lost time.

Live Like an Egyptian

Today I thought I'd take you on a tour of the house! Unfortunately, I can't convince blogger to let me upload it here, so I uploaded it on my youtube page (amongst other videos of my cats):

http://youtu.be/H9uMdH6OfP0

Sorry I move so fast, but I wanted to keep the file size small so that I could upload it for you.

I started on the roof, where you can see our wonderful clothes dryer and the puppies that live up there (don't get me started about the pitiful state they are in). Downstairs, that first bedroom is Kat, Lindsey, and Susan's. The big table where Tasha (in blue) and Lindsey are sitting is where we eat. The next bedroom is mine and Tasha's. My bed is the one on the left with the stylish "rabbits in love" sheet and the red-luggage end table. Next is the kitchen where Muhammad works his magic. The closed door is the bathroom, but someone was in there when I took the video. That last room is Nadine and Greg's. That's our house! We're on the second floor and our men live on the first across from the owners. On our floor, there's also more of the apartment across the hall (a bedroom and a common room), but it's full of junk right now so we don't use it yet. When we get visitors later in the season, we'll clean it out so they have somewhere to sleep.

The walls are a bit dirty, but overall it's large and airy and seems to serve our purposes well for the time being. Sure, it'd be nice to have a second bathroom, but just that second sink outside the bathroom means that we can brush our teeth while other people use the bathroom, and that's a huge help.

In case you're curious about what that green thing on my bed is (under the sheet), it's a camping sleeping mat and I'm so thrilled I brought it. The mattresses here are about 4 inches thick and stuffed full of old rags. This means that they are super hard and super lumpy. Stick that mattress on a frame that is literally planks of wood and cardboard between a wooden frame (no box-springs or metal frames here) and you've got our beds. Not a good combo for someone with a sore back. Thankfully, my in-laws gave us a ton of camping equipment a while back, so with a little creative packing, I've been able to sleep quite well and my back is very happy. The travel pillow was a must, as well. The beds come with pillows. The pillows are a lot like the mattresses, though. They are rock hard and would probably break your neck if you laid down too hard. They do make a nice barrier between us and the nasty, dirty walls, though.

- Realtor

PS. Did you happen to catch those beautiful paintings on the walls? They seem to be printed on cardboard, then glued to the wall. It is surround by what looks like sprayed-on stone look-alike? We have several throughout the apartment, including a large view of the Swiss Alps next to the kitchen, Italy near the dining table, two creepy little kids dancing near Greg and Nadine's room, and... some landscape on the back of the main door.

PPS. The dance party last night was a lot of fun- we got to see what music we all knew (though to be honest, we were a little ADD with the music, since we had people ranging from mid-20s to mid-30s and 3 of them were foreign). It was an odd collection of music, but we all danced and had a fun time. Of course, since we were up at 5am that morning and our normal bed time is usually 8:30 or 9, we were pretty much done by 10pm.

Payday

Today is Thursday, which means it's payday! Well, not for me. I'm unpaid slave labor. But for the 70 guys who spend their days hauling buckets full of dirt away, it was time for the pay.

That's Nadine in pink, Lindsey in blue, and Ahmed (my buddy who tries to teach me Arabic, but has really bad English) right above the column in the green with the yellow scarf.

Tonight we're having a dance party, then tomorrow is our day off (and my skype date with my hubby).

- Slave laborer and payday photographer

PS. I forgot to tell you that Tuesday night we had dinner with the 12 guys that live with us that we brought from Luxor. Our reis chooses them (usually based on family relations) and they do the more specialist things, while the locals do most of the heavy lifting and other tasks they can't screw up. It was a huge feast and a lot of fun. One of the guys even did impressions of several of the other guys.

Oh the Weather Outside Is Frightful

Guys, the weather here is weird. Everyone knows that Egypt is hot. It can get to the upper 90s in the afternoon, and was well over 100 last year the girls tell me (but honestly, it really is a dry heat and is only unbearable if you’re in the sun). But I’m not interested in talking about things you already know. Let’s talk about that evil thing known as nighttime or early morning. It. is. cold.

My sweatshirt made its site debut on Halloween, and my sleeping bag was pulled out that night. I know that cold is only 70-something degrees, but when you’re starting to think that 95 in the direct sunlight is fairly pleasant, it might as well be snowing at 70. Luckily, I’m prepared:

That’s right, my sleeping bag has zippers so that I can both stick my arms out and walk around. Plus, it’s perfect for Egypt since it’s a mummy bag. It also unfolds to be a nice blanket, which is how I’m currently using it. It’s a 55+ bag, so I stay nice and toasty at night, even when we keep the fan on to combat the noises of Edfu.

Going back to Chicago in the middle of winter is going to be interesting.

- Frostina the Snowwoman

The Wheels on the Box Go Round and Round- Until They Pop

It was another drawing day with nothing really exciting to say, so how about some more info on how we live here. Curious about how we get to work? Forget stretch limos, we have something called a “box”:

Basically, it’s a pick-up truck with the back end covered. It holds about 10 people in the back, then several of our workers hang from the step on the rear. The seats are just planks covered in a very thin pillow, and seated, my head just barely clears the roof. But it’s cheap and effective and is essentially the local taxi service. It gets us, our stuff, and the workers that live with us to the site about 5 minutes away each morning and home in the afternoon, so there’s no complaining from me.

Tasha in the box.

Tasha and I had an interesting experience the first day we stayed late to the tell. We are supposed to have hired the box for us and us alone, even though many of the boxes you just hop on and off of at your leisure, and you’re often in the box with several other people going any number of places. When our box came to pick us up in the afternoon, the local boys saw two pretty young foreign girls (caked in dirt and completely covered with long sleeves, pants, head coverings and sunglasses- sexy, huh?) and they had to come say hello. Several boys hopped on the back until our driver kicked them off. Then, as we were only a few doors from our apartment, we got a flat tire! I thought someone had fired a gun, it was so loud. Naturally, everyone on the block came running out of their houses. Hello Edfu, if you didn’t know we lived near you before, you do now!

- Box rider and tire popper

PS. The box really isn’t that bad. We don’t look dumb like all the tourists who ride a “kadesh” onto the site (Dan and I took a stylish motor coach, which gets far fewer laughs). The kadeshes all line up near the entrance and thankfully, all the horses get some shade for a while.

Back In Edfu

After our 3 mile hike on Saturday, we decided to take it a bit easy on Sunday by sleeping in (well, until 6:30, which is about the latest any of us could sleep). We then had leisurly shower, breakfast, and TV watching time (we watched both Déjà Vu and Birth since they were on the only English station, and an episode of Pokemon in German).

Once we were packed and checked out of the hotel, we had lunch, then Lindsey, Susan, and I headed to the Luxor Museum. The stuff there is GORGEOUS, and I got to see the mummy that might be Ramses II! After the museum we hit Snack Time again from some more cinnamon rolls and crappy Arab-pop music videos. I got a cinnamon rolls so that I could compare them to Toby’s in northern MN. It was a very tough call, but I’m going to say Toby’s were slightly better.

Then it was back to Edfu, where we had dinner, unpacked, and basically crashed. We were up again at 5am to start work once again. I’m back to being a rasama, which is fine by me. Getting dirty was fun, but I’m glad I only had to do it for a few days. One of our men did the rest of my section for me, and even though it was slightly larger, it still only took him a few hours to do, instead of the 3 days it took me. It’s probably best left to the experts.

Due to a slight miscommunication with our workers, work ended at noon today since it’s still the Eid holiday. But that still left me enough time to see some British tourists that had eaten breakfast by us at our hotel in Luxor (and who we’d seen at KV)! They were really excited to talk to Lindsey and me, since most tourists don’t get to. Now I might start digitizing my profile from the other day, or I might read all afternoon- it depends on whether or not my drawing gets scanned.

That’s all for today- sorry this one isn’t as exciting as my previous posts. How about a few more pictures from our hike?

The smiley face we found. The pyramid shape in the background is what the pharaohs used to mark the Valley of the Kings.

Oh tiny Bahri- I shall step on you!

- Rasama Once Again