Sorry! Not sure why I didn't post this earlier. Um. I was going to embed photos, but that's a lot of work, so I suggest you just follow along at my flickr. Sound good? Okay thanks.
So Friday morning we headed out to see the ancient sites in Siwa. Cool cool. Also saw lots of villagers, donkeys, et cetera. Anyway, we bounced from place to place as follows.
(1) The Old City of Shali, and its mosque. I guess nowadays the city is used only three days a year, during the full moon in October or something like that, for tribal gatherings/reconciliations maybe? I could be way off … it’s SO HARD to remember all the information they give us :/ … um, also the guy either said the mosque was in use until recently or is still in use. Not sure. Either way, cool.
(2) House of Siwa Museum. Basically a model of old Siwan houses/life. We were shown traditional clothing, jewelry, other stuff. The guy spoke in Arabic and Dr. Randa translated, but I could understand an encouraging amount of what he was saying, so that was nice. Also, hey Mom and Dad --- does the oven remind you of the scary fiery water heater thing that used to be in Paati and Paata’s old large bathroom downstairs? Because that’s definitely the first thing I thought of…
(3) Gebl al-Mawta (Mountain of the Dead), a huuuuuge burial site. Just, tombs and tombs and tombs everywhere. (One of which Dr. Randa fell into, haaaahahaha. That maaaaay have made the trip.) But also there were just bones, everywhere, which was fascinating in a kind of creepy/awesome way. Like bits and pieces of human skeletons everywhere. Seriously. Probably the coolest thing we saw Friday. I maaaay have thefted a couple of small bones. I'm probably cursed. Oh well!
(4) Lunch! Mmmmm. Oh I forgot to mention the people here are Amazigh (Berber in non-PC terms) and speak a dialect of Amazigh they refer to as Siwi. Cool cool. That combined with eating couscous for lunch was very reminiscent of our Sahara trip in Morocco, which, heart. Only as you’ll see later (Saturday), this journey to the desert was maybe a little crazier.
(5) Temple of the Oracle. The oracle here was a statue rather than a person that moved left or right and answered only yes or no questions, I guess. Weird. But apparently it was pretty famous and Alexander the Great visited here and everything. Neat.
(6) Temple of Amun (Umm Ubayd). Not sure what this was, really. We only stopped briefly. Most of it’s not there anymore because someone decided he wanted the stairs for his house and tore most of it down.
(7) Cleopatra’s Bath. Supposedly Alexander swam here. Dr. Randa was super enthusiastic about going back to the hotel to get bathing suits and then returning to swim here haha. More so than any of the students. However, upon returning to the hotel people decided they’d rather just swim there than return to Cleopatra’s Bath … so they did. And hung out with random cats, et cetera. Y’know. Lounged around.
Then, shortly afterwards, we headed to (8), Lake Siwa. Basically just sat by the lake and watched the sunset, but it was one of the most beautiful, peaceful things ever. Pictures are better than words here…but yeah. Wow. After that, we came back to the hotel for dinner, which was delicious, and hung out by a fire and drank tea and chatted and listened to music. Also wonderful.
So that was Friday. <3. Great day.
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