Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Photos

My dad put some more pictures up so click on the photo link. I think the new ones are at the end.

December 3rd

December 3rd
Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la la la la la.
I will tell you our routine for our last five or six days.
One, go to Al Capone's for breakfast. Go snorkelling. Go to Koshary House for late lunch, then Al Capones again for a thick shake, come to El Salam for the fire.
The coral reef is really cool. Teh fish just swim around in and out fo little doorways in the coral. There are two special places to go and my favourite is the Islands. The Islands is a place where you swim out for five minutes then get over a big wall and POOF! Fish galore!
The reason it's called the Islands is because there are little islands that pop up out of the ground. It's the same drop off thing with the Blue Hole only it drops off so far it's just blue.
The El Salam camp was a very nice camp. I really liked the fire at night and the puppies, but my absolute, absolute absolute favourite was....SMARTIE! Smartie is a cat and he is very cute. But one time he got kind of annoying. We were eating a nice supper of salad, chicken, rice and Bedouin bread. I was working on my chicken and Smartie came and even though I had my elbow out somehow he got my chicken and ran away with it! (I didn't really like the chicken anyway.)
El Salam Camp is the way to go when you're in Dahab.

December 6th
We woke up at the Sara Inn and then we went to the Egyptian Museum. It was pretty cool. It was long, though, REALLY long. I found some cool hieroglyphics. I drew a bunch of them in my journal.
It was very interesting to find out that they used exclamation marks back then. In Syria, we were told that there was going to be no Tutankhamen stuff in the museum because it was all going to be in London! but...we...lucky! The Tutankhamen stuff was pretty cool. It's amazing what the Egyptians did for their pharaohs - gold masks, earrings, necklaces, almost anything imaginable.

Matthew

November 25th

November 25th
Petra
PETRA!!
We went to Petra and we saw Peter (somebody we met in Damascus)! We walked around with him for a while and we saw the Treasury. It was really cool but you couldn't go inside.
There always seemed to be a camel outside.
We wandered around lots of tombs. There was one kid that wouldn't leave us alone when we said we didn't want a donkey ride.

Petra Day 2
Today we saw the Monastery. I liked the sand stone. You crush it and there are tons of different colours - light blue, blue, red, curry, purple, white and lots of others. Light blue was probably the rarest colour because we only found it once but purple was everywhere.

Petra Day 3
Today we went to the High Place of Sacrifice, Palace of the Pharaoh's Daughter, museum, churches, and last but not least, the (drum roll) bathroom. I forgot, we also went to the Nabatean rubbish dump. We found lots of cool pottery shards. The Palace of the Pharaoh's Daughter was pretty cool too. There were some neat passageways.
My favourite was the Nabatean rubbish dump.

Matthew

November 19th

November 19th
Today we left Damascus. We ate breakfast at a restaurant I really like. I wanted to get pancakes but Mama said we had to get omelettes. I guess it was pretty good. After we ate, we got our bags from the hotel and then we went to get a TAXI! ..bum bum bum!! Please note the following sentence or two may not be completely true. One, because the taxi driver didn't speak english but this is what he probably said.
Papa went up to the stopped taxi and asked, "How much to the bus station?"
"300", said the taxi guy.
"Uh uh," Papa replied. "Our hotel guy said 150."
"250," said taxi guy.
"150," Papa said.
"Alright, 200, 200," said the driver.
Just then another taxi pulled up.
"No, 150, 150!" he said, so we went with him to our misfortune! When we got to the bus station, he pulled us right past all the service taxis (and screaming service taxi drivers). One said, "Where you want to go, Beirut?"
"No, Amman," said Papa.
"AMMAN!" shouted the guy.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!", yelled all the other taxi drivers who charged our taxi.
Our taxi guy drove us right past to another guy who negotiated a good price so we got going and then the police stopped us. The guy had done something wrong because you have to get a permit before you go. so we got another guy who was good.

November 22nd
Today we went to Jerash, a Roman city. We got a trustful taxi driver who drove us there. When we got there, Mama told us that the arch there was built far away because they thought the city would grow. It did, but hundreds of years later. There was a little Roman times battle show that showed how the Romans fought. They had a special formation just for attacking castles. I drew a picture of it in my journal.

November 25th
Yesterday we went to the Wadi Rum. We climbed up a HUUUUUUGE sand dune. It looked pretty big at first but once you started climbing it, it just never ended. When you took a step you slid down half of what you just climbed! We went with some New Zealanders that we met before in Damascus and Madaba. Isaac (the New Zealander) and I had lots of fun running down the dune. When we got to the campsite we found some big climbing rocks and Jonas had a great idea....we filled up bottles with sand and poured them over the side of the rock and it formed a sand stream. It looked really cool because the sand came down at weird angles.
We also played Rush and Tumble. It's a free for all - you run around and push people over and it's really fun especially because we were playing on sand so it didn't hurt when we fell, but sometimes you got a mouthful of sand.

Matthew