The Egyptian Museum

In the Egyptian Museum there are statues and artifacts that date back as far back as 4600 B.C. There is a ground floor and an upper floor, and every room is packed. There is a little organization to the King Tut exhibit (everything found in King Tut's tomb), but everything else seems to have been thrown wherever there was space.





We took the metro to the museum and a kind man named Mohamed helped us know which direction to go to get to the Saadat stop. Not everyone speaks English, but we try to look for the men or women in business suits because they're usually more educated. In the metro we made friends with two little kids, Mohamed and Maah (I think). So cute and only 5 and 7. (Dee, Maah reminded me so much of Tere's little girl. I can't believe I forgot her name!) We soon could tell that a few of the men around us could also understand English when we were practicing out Arabic numbers with the kids. Lori was joking around about how since the Egyptians read backwards (right to left) maybe they counted backwards too! It was pretty funny to us, and then Mandy caught some of the men laughing too. People can't help but love us. :)

And boy did the security guards love us! You'll have to get this story from Lori's perspective because I'm sure she thought her life was over and she was going to be thrown in jail, but she got caught taking a picture in the museum. There are no signs saying not to take pictures, so we'd been doing it with the flash off. Then after a while a guard told us to stop. Well . . . Lori got caught taking another picture, and the guard came running over and grabbed her camera. I thought he was going to delete the picture or all of the pictures, and then he really looked like he wasn't going to give her back her camera. But really all the guard wanted was some money. Hey, why not? Yes, its ridiculous, but for Lori to get her camera back she had to pay 5 L.E. (pounds), which is about $1. So now we call this picture (right below) the 5-pound picture.












We also made friends with the security guards on the way out of the museum, and one of them offered to buy us cheese (and cucumber) sandwiches for only a dollar each. As we were standing there making our order, Lori's mean guard came walking out. She said, "Hey he has my money, my 5 pounds." He turned around and looked like he'd been caught, and then laughed but didn't give her back her money.









As I went through the museum entrance, I started talking to the guards and a lady was standing right next to them. She said, "Hey, you from America? I'm from Virginia." She asked if she could tag along with me, and I said sure and that I was with two friends. She'd just come from Israel where she'd gone a tour with her Baptist group, but she was a little tired of her friends so she came to the museum on her own. She hung out with us until 11:30 p.m.! Her name's Joann, and she's so cool! We had some awesome discussions about religion, and by the end of the night she knew pretty much everything there is to know about our church and wanted to know more. She really loved that she met us, and we're definitely keeping in touch. She has a few assignments we have to check up on. :)