Back in Egypt

I arrived in Cairo last week, narrowly missing an ice storm back home. Though the weather has been much more pleasant in Cairo, it has still been on the chilly side, with highs in the upper 60s and lows in the 40s and 50s. This sounds warmer than it is. It has always seemed to me that whenever the temperature gets below 80 in Egypt, it starts to feel colder than one associates with the same temperature at home. So, while I would love 70-degree weather at home and think it quite warm, here it feels chilly unless you're in direct sunlight.

The best part of my view at the ARCE residence

I settled into the ARCE residence, where I spent 3 nights while making arrangements and running errands during my days. By Thursday (2 days after arrival), I had my permissions from the SCA in-hand and an apartment to move into (though only temporarily). However, the head curator at the museum will not be in for another week and all of the libraries and other main institutions will be closed for the Eid el-Adha for the rest of the week. So, I'll be cooling my heels at home, working on my computer, and running errands at the places that will be open for the next several days.Nighttime, when the buildings and streets don't look so dirty, but the traffic never stops

A sad return

When the German team arrived at Abydos to take up residence in their house, the police rolled a tank out to their house and ran over our phone line, snapping it in two. So, we had no internet access for the last week at Abydos.

We departed Abydos Monday evening, October 22, arriving in Cairo the morning of October 23. At our first check of email, we discovered sad news had been waiting for us. We spent several hours crying before deciding to return to Philadelphia a day early in order to get to Boston in time for the memorial service in honor of our friend, Stine Rossel, who was an amazing light in every situation.

I will not recount the details of her tragic death here. For those who don't know about it already, there are many newspaper articles available online, one of which you can see here http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-102307-newlyweds,0,6074391.story

Luxor problems strike again...

A couple of hours after my previous post, we went out for a tasty and cheap dinner at the Amoun restaurant. On our way back to the hotel, I twisted my ankle on stairs leading down from the restaurant. It promptly swelled to the point of not looking like an ankle anymore. Antonio ran to a pharmacy for an ACE bandage and something to kill the pain while Jane and I managed to move me down to the ground floor.

We were up late icing my ankle and feeding me ibuprofen before going to bed and getting up early to catch the train back to Balyana. Hopping around train stations on one leg (where would one find crutches in Luxor?) is tiring work, but we made it back without more of an incident than being stared at a lot while hopping down the platform (I called this the "bouncing hawaga show"). Once back at the house, Hasan promptly made me some makeshift crutches from some wooden poles that were at the house.

Breakfast the next morning (ankle up, of course)

Getting around was pretty hard for a couple of days, but I'm back on my feet now with only a little pain and swelling remaining.

Update: after we returned to the States, I discovered that I actually had a fractured fibula, which I had walked around on for a couple of weeks before we came home. However, as of December it is all healed and doing very well.

Luxor...again

While I had pretty much sworn off of visiting other locations, especially Luxor, after having been out of commission for a day and a half after getting back from Luxor last week (I went over a month without any stomach problems before that!), we are back in Luxor again. With Ramadan ending this evening and the eid (feast/festival) going on for the next few days, we decided we needed to go somewhere and do some sight seeing, since there would be a long weekend during which we cannot work at the site.



We spent the day trekking all over the West Bank, from the Valley of the Kings to the Ramesseum and then back to the East Bank to visit Karnak Temple and walk around its sprawling monuments for a couple hours. Having now exhausted ourselves, we've retired to an internet cafe to check email, put out fires, and, in my case, make a blog post.


We will return to Abydos tomorrow, having not stopped for McD's food before getting on the train this time!