International Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! I you are all enjoying a wonderful holiday season with family and friends : ) Celebrating Christmas in another country is always difficult for me as I would rather be home surrounded by loved ones and yes, even snow, but Drew and I did our best to make the most of the holiday in Luxor.

Drew was very nice and had kept the small Christmas tree that we had bought in Cairo a few years ago, which we were able to find some new decorations for, in addition to our awesome Egyptian snowman! He comes complete with a desert color scheme and sparkly galabeya (a traditional outfit for most of the men in Luxor… minus the sparkles).

In addition to our decorations, we were even able to find snow in a grocery store. Yes, you read correctly. You never know what you're going to come across in grocery stores in Luxor… it's sort of like a treasure hunt to see what goodies you can find hidden on the shelves. A jar of peanut butter here, a container of cream cheese there, OR a can of Funny Snow! Drew and I decided that we had to have two cans of Funny Snow and after buying it we promptly rushed home to try it out on our roommate's doors : ) Now we assumed that this snow in a can would be just like the stuff you can get in the US. You shake it, spray on windows until it looks suitably snow covered, repeat. So we set about spraying snow to our hearts content until…. sniff, sniff, sniff…. sniff, sniff, sniff…. why does this snow smell like roses?? Turns out that Funny Snow is in fact nothing more than aerated soap and sadly it dissolves into a rose-scented film in about 30 seconds. But we had a great time playing with it none the less.

As for the Christmas celebration itself, we had quite the international holiday. Christmas Eve was spent at the Marsam Hotel, which is owned by Klaus and Claudia… the same lovely people form the camel trek. They invited us to celebrate a German Christmas with them, which was absolutely lovely! Claudia completely out did herself with decorating thanks to LOTS of imported decorations that had been transported from Germany by their son. The food was absolutely phenomenal as well! The entire staff at the hotel went all out in preparing dishes and even made fruit and vegetable sculptures! The highlight of the dinner though was Klaus' sheep, which had come from his own flock and was soaked in three bottles of red wine before being slow-cooked in the over for 6 hours. Melt-in-your-mouth does not even begin to describe how delicious it was. And in case 3 bottles of wine in the cooking process wasn't enough, there was a delicious red wine sauce to pour over the meat. Needless to say we left there very well fed and very thankful to have had the opportunity to share Christmas with them.

The dinner table had this awesome veggie sculpture

And the dessert table had so many different kinds of carved fruit I lost count

Abd-allah and Drew getting in to the Christmas spirit!

Our Christmas Day dinner was spent with our roommate, Abd-allah, at a British tea room on the east bank of Luxor. It was his first Christmas celebration and he was a very good sport about getting into the spirit of things. Chris, the owner of the restaurant, prepared a full roast turkey dinner which was super yummy, but I have to say I think the highlight of the evening was the traditional Egyptian band that was brought in as entertainment. In addition to being an excellent cook, Chris is also an excellent belly dancer…. I am not.

So there you go, for those of you wondering how you celebrate Christmas in a non-Christian country, now you know : ) In the end the important things about Christmas can be found regardless of what country you're in: good friends, good food and good memories… and that's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.

Merry Christmas!!

Camels and Campari

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving Everyone!! I hope yours was full of family, friends and wonderful food… and maybe some football : ) Never fear I did get to celebrate Thanksgiving in Luxor and even had a turkey dinner that I think you will agree looks very similar to what we would eat back in the US of A… OK maybe minus the kebab. Our Egyptian colleagues were very upset however that this was not like a typical Egyptian feast/major party, i.e. there was no music and belly dancers after dinner. Maybe this could be a new tradition??

The great part about this Thanksgiving is that I got to celebrate it with Drew and our colleagues at Chicago House. What is a Chicago House you ask? It's the mission dig house for the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. They've had a continual presence here in Luxor recording the sites since the 1920s. I'm sure Howard Carter had lunch at Chicago House at some point in his career, as did MANY other famous Egyptologists. It really is like stepping back into colonial Egypt. There's a beautiful open courtyard where we had appetizers and cocktails, then dinner in an enormous dining room… wing would be a better way to describe it…. and then pie and coffee in front of their massive fireplace. I understand it hasn't been lit in quite some time, but I did manage to snag it as the backdrop for an ARCE staff photo. (This is only a few of us btw.)

From L to R: Drew, me, our boss, John; our lead conservator, Khadiga; 3 of our archaeologists: Saad, Sayed and Mohamed Hatem; and the ARCE office manager, Adel

There is no such thing as Black Friday shopping in Egypt, so Drew and I opted to have a very lazy day recovering from the week and preparing for a big Saturday adventure… my first camel trek!! Before I bombard you with pictures, I have to admit prior to coming to Luxor and meeting the lovely people who took us on the camel trek, I did not like camels… I did not like them at all… I did not like them Sam I Am. The only camels I had experience with were at the pyramids and they were the dirtiest, smelliest, meanest looking things you'd ever want to come across. I am now proud to say that I have been reformed and am no longer a member of the camel haters club. This is all in thanks to Klaus and Claudia, our lovely hosts on our adventure. Klaus has loved camels since he was a little boy and living in Egypt on and off for the past 30 years has afforded him the opportunity to collect his own gaggle of camels. He is really something like a 'camel whisperer' and you can tell that the camels wouldn't have any other owner.

In any event, my camel for the day's expedition was Krum, while Drew got to ride the gigantic, stallion who Klaus refers to as "Big White". 

Krum is very good at posing for pictures I found out

Big White getting ready for the journey

After loading up the camels with snacks, drinks and blankets, we headed out into the desert for a nice walk. It was only about half an hour out but that was more than enough for someone was not used to sitting on a camel! We rode out to one of Klaus and Claudia's favorite spots to watch the sunset and started setting up camp. Now for those of you who are not familiar with camels (and Drew and I certainly are not) we were in for quite a surprise once we unloaded everything off our four-legged friends backs. Turns out that camels LOVE to roll around in the sand of the desert… at times it looked like they were trying to make sand angels. There's no way I could very well describe what it looks like to watch a camel kicking its spindly legs all over the place as it plays in the desert, but hopefully the pictures will give you a better visual…

Camel play time!

When they're all done rolling around to their heart's content, they end up looking like this…

Since the camels were enjoying themselves so much, it seemed only fair that the adults should have some fun. So we set out a picnic of chips and Campari and then discovered that Klaus had brought along a boule (bocce) set! For the record, playing bocce in the desert is exactly what you would expect it to be… insane! 

The small dark brown blob in the middle of all the silver balls is what we were supposed to aiming for…riiiiight

It was a great end to a Thanksgiving weekend with wonderful new friends… both of the human and camel variety. 

Me, Claudia and Claus