Bedouin Bytes

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First of all, thank you so much for all the great updates we've received from many of you all...if you haven't sent yours yet, we're still waiting and would love to hear!!!

Second, if you'd like to see photos, we've added some to the last three of our entries. Check them out! They're are fun! Also, we are adding another entry dated right before this with a picture. Check it out as well.

Now for our most recent adventures. We are still in Egypt. Our Egypt trip has been longer than we originally planned, but it has been great fun.

We left from Cairo on Tuesday, and a '5' hour bus rie turned into an 8 hour bus ride. WE got to St. Catherine's, a small village at the bottom of Mt. Sinai around 6:30pm, in the dark, which made it feel like 10:00pm. But, we were received on the other end by a Bedouin host (unexpected) named Salla who invited to come check out his 'Bedouin Camp' to sleep for the night. WE pictured tents and no running water when he used the word camp. But we got there and it turned out to be inside and nice hot showers. And the price was right! $12 for 2 nights! cheapest yet! The only problem was that there was NO heat and it was pretty chilly up there in the mountains. That night, we slept in our sleeping bags with 2-3 blankets piled on top of us. (Katy, camping this summer in Montana and S.D. prepared us well!)

Wednesday we woke up chilly, but opened the door to a BEAUTIFUL clear, blue sky and a ring of beautiful, rocky reddish mountains surrounding us! We enjoyed our first of SEVEN cups of tea (in all that day). Then we packed up for the day and walked to ST. Catherine's monastery, about a 3km walk down the road. The monastery is built on the supposed site of Moses' burning bush. Which they claim is still there today. Which we saw, along with the fire extinguisher next to it (in case the fire gets out of hand again?) SEriously, the bush was not on fire, but the extinguisher was there and ready. It seemed like we were the only ones there who found this VERY funny! It was a good laugh!

After this, we hiked for about an hour, about halfway up to Mt. Sinai, or as the locals call it 'Moses Mountain'. (For those of you who don't remember, Mt. Sinai is where the Israelites were camped when Moses received the 10 Commandments from God.) While lunching at our halfway point, it was amazing to look out and see the valley where the Israelites might have been camping, as well as read in Exodus about what actually was happening. It is great to now have a real picture in our mind of the WILDERNESS. It is definitely wilderness, only rock, dirt and the occasional shrub. See our picture for more detail. The whole Sinai looks like this. It's amazing to think that the Israelites were traveling for 70+ years in this wilderness. A real testiment that God will provide for our needs, even in the 'wilderness'.

Last night we had a 'genuine' Bedouin dinner. (For those that don't know, and we are NOT the experts so correct us if we are wrong, Bedouins were/are nomadic people in Egypt and we think most of Northern AFrica. \\most of them (men too) wear scarves on their heads, kind of like what you'd think the shepherds wore if you are dressing up as a shepherd for a christmas pageant.) Anyway, we ate chicken, rice, soup and bread, which we hypothesize was actually take-out from the local restaurant, and not home-made by our Bedouin host or his wife. However, we enjoyed dinner and afterwards played a fun game of UNO with Salla. Later, he invited us into his home, where we met his wife and 1 1/2 year old daughter. We taught her to play UNO too, and drank 3 more rounds of hot beverages. We also looked at a HUGE pile of their wedding pictures, which got a little repetitive after a while but was very interesting as we learned about Egyptian/Bedouin culture.

Today we took a 2 hour bus ride to Dahab, Egypt, on the east coast of the Sinai peninsula. It is a great town, with a small board-walk type thing along the beach, lots of restaurants, and dive shops. We are paying the cheapest yet: $3 a night for a private room, in a 'camp' that has a great atomesphere, nice courtyard, and is within a 3 minute walk to the beach. Can't get better than this! Highly reccommend it for a cheap honeymoon location. (Although flights might be a little expensive!) Food is cheap here too, and we enjoyed a great meal tonight while lounging on the ground around our table by candlelight.

We are looking forward to a great day here tomorrow, and possibly snorkeling some if the wind and waves and temperature cooperate. This is definitely about as far from 'Christmas' spirit as you can get.

We love you all! Ali and Trevor