We're HOME!

Final Team photo at the Temple of Philae---Aswan, Egypt

Step Pyramid Cairo, Egypt

Build site Maghada, Egypt



Peter's preferred mode of transportation in Egypt

We loaded lots of these limestone blocks that looked like giant pieces of Feta cheese

Meeting some of the children at a local school

Ronnie aka "Joseph the carpenter"

Rachael, Sherif and Steph sanding walls. Very dusty, dirty work.

Peter with the Habitat Egypt folks (limestone blocks in the background)

The Women putting the roof on the house!

We're all safely back home and right smack into Christmas! Above are some photos from our trip that we weren't able to post before. Thanks for all your support for our team. We'll be meeting soon to determine our next Thrivent Builds trip for 2009. Blessings!

Will miss....won't miss....learnings....

Greetings from Amsterdam. We're almost home. We have collected our final thoughts from the trip and have categorized it into three areas

Will miss:

• Sherif, our Habitat for Humanity engineer.
• Christine, our Habitat for Humanity coordinator (from Michigan!)
• Some of our guides.
• The amazing temples that were 5000 + years old!
• Egyptian food was amazing!
• The synergy of our team.
• The people we met along the way from other countries.
• Stella Beer
• Playing Phase 10 cards (Stephanie won with her good luck charm Bob, Ronnie sand-bagged and made up his own rules!!)
• Every hotel we stayed at had an Egyptian wedding or engagement party going on and they asked us to be in their photos.

Won't miss:

• Negotiating for EVERYTHING---including a Diet Coke
• Tipping to for 3 sheets of toilet paper
• Constantly being told we would get the "Obama Price" in the markets
• The dust/smog/flies
• Smoking---everyone smokes in Egypt
• The Egyptian driving made LA look like drivers training!
• The call to prayer 5 times a day (the person singing the calling was not chosen for their singing skills...)
• 5 am wake up calls

Learnings:

• Muslim religion
• Volunteerism is a foreign concept in Egypt. Very fledgling idea.
• The country is 90% Islam and 10% Christian
• Buildings like the Pantheon and the Colusium are "babies" compared to the temples we saw.
• The presence of Jesus here is evident in the hierogliphic language.
• Perception of America is very favorable.
• Pigeons are a delicacy....we are thinking of franchising this concept.
• English is phoenically spelled on menus, which was a great source of laughter for us.
• The Egyptians read right to left.
• Never accept the initial price. Everything was negotiable.
• Crime is very low in Egypt because of the Muslim culture of helping the poor.
• Muslims can have up to 4 wives, but we heard from Egyptian women that they prefer the American way of marriage.
• Men are served first, so women must assert themselves to be recognized.
• Strong women are very threatening to Egyptian men.

We'll be adding photos when we return home.

Greetings from Aswan!

Sorry for the lack of posting....we haven't had internet access on the Nile. We left Monday and flew to Luxor to board our ship for a cruise down the Nile River. We stopped at several locations along the way and saw some amazing temples. In Luxor, we were fascinated with the Karnac temple as well as the famous oblisque that we all know when we think of Luxor. We are currently in Aswan, in the southern part of Egypt, and this is our final stop. The cruise has been very relaxing, however, we've all been up between 4:30am and 5:30am every day to begin our tours. Our cruise included guided tours at each stop and in order to beat the enormous crowds, our guide asked us to rise early, which we were very thankful to do. It allowed us to have a relaxing afternoon where we either layed in sun on the sun deck, played cards (Phase 10) or napped. The food on the cruise has been wonderful and we've met some great people---a family from Dubai, sisters from Oregon and another sweet family from Abu Dabai. We concluded our day with a trip to the market bazaar in Aswan. We are literally exhausted from bartering in the markets!!! There are not very many tourists here and the business owners are extremely aggressive. We head back to Cairo tomorrow to conclude our two week trip here.

It's been a great trip and a great team and we've each acquired a key talent for the team as a whole. Bob is entertainment---everything from buying $8 apricot to having underware stolen, which we think we spotted in the market today. Stephanie is our money handler---she handles all tips from our group kitty and keeps us in budget. Sarah is our resident cinamatographer and handles all staging and lighting for group photos. Her laugh is infectious! Ronnie is our team photographer and has offered to catalog all photos in a spreadsheet complete with pivot tables and sorted by temple. Peter handles all our libations and went to great lengths to smuggle beer on the ship for our team, which required riding on a motorcylcle down a dark alley with an Egyptian. Helen handled the distribution of probiotics to allow our teams digestive tracts to stay on tract during this trip. Rachael organized the trip and resident scout leader. She was also the team pharmacist, providing drugs for those ailing.

Fortunately, we all got along famoulsly and without illness or injury. It's been an amazing journey and we're all blessed to have this opportunity.

Saturday...We visited a market in Cairo in the morning to buy some"junk" to to take home. Bob and Sarah took honors for best bargain makers. From the market we went to the Citadel where we spent time in the Mosque with our tour quide who was Muslim. He was very informative in their culture and religion. Had a buffet lunch (more cucumbers and tomatoes). Then on to a perfume factory. Wow! We all needed to get fresh air after that! On to the Egyptian Museum. It is hard to comprehend artifacts that are 4000-5000 years old. So very much history, so many artifacts and so little time. King Tuts tomb was a highlight. Our tour then took us through the "real Cairo" with VERY narrow streets, donkey carts, camels actually being used as a means of transit, markets, BMWs, motorcycles with dozens of eggs stacked on the back, and a glimpse of life in the outlying areas. Then a short stop at the Egyptian Cotton store. The prices of bed sheets are comparable to the USA for this fine long-staple cotton. Our tour guide treated us to a cup of tea in a local tea house (men were served first!) Our day continued with a neat "sound and light" show at the Giza pyramids. This was an informative historical narrative of the early Pharaohs of Egypt. Seeing the pyramids lit up at night seemed to impress on us the true size of these ancient, amazingly straight-line structures. We ended our day with dinner at our hotel, devotions and good discussion of our day!

What do Mickey Mouse, Michael Jackson, Magic and Banana have in common?

We are back in Cairo--arrived last night. We finished yesterday at a couple of homes, mudding walls. We had interesting last day--not only did Bob get mud sprayed all over him by our Habitat for Humanity Coordinator, he received a marriage proposal from a local Egyptian woman in the village. He insisted she meet Stephanie---the end. Needless to say, we were filthy for our long ride back to Cairo. We ditched our security entourage because their car broke down. So, we gave them 3 bottles of water for their radiator and waved goodbye and good riddance. Then our bus driver made double time and made it back ahead of schedule to Cairo. We had our "thanksgiving dinner" at the hotel.

Today (Friday), we visited the Giza pyramids and went down an extremely narrow and tight shaft (11 meters) into the Queens pyramid. We then met Minnie Mouse, Michael Jackson, Magic and Banana, who were our stinky, gurgling, farting camels that we rode through a portion of the desert, behind the pyramids. We then visited Memphis (not Tennessee) where a significant statue of Ramses is located. This is where a kookie Egyptian insisted on a photo with Bob, and then wanted a tip. We lost Ron for a moment, then found him wearing a Egyptian headdress....does this sound like a tourist or what? We couldn't find him because he blended in like camouflage!

We spent the remainder of the day in downtown Heliopolis, with the masses of Egyptian youth, hanging out like normal teens. We had a great meal, then went back for our daily team devotions over dessert and wine.

We're looking forward to some bazaar shopping tomorrow.

Tastes like Chicken

After a couple days without internet access, we're back, alive and doing well. We've had two busy days of working on a couple different homes about 1 hour from El Minya. We've been loading, sorting and moving limestone blocks (about 1600 yesterday), sifting sand, sanding walls, plastering walls and nailing roofs onto homes. The work has been very rewarding the people of the village are so very thrilled to see us, especially the children. They love to get their photo taken and tell us "he-lo", which is the only English that they know. The ladies of the village have graciously served us tea every afternoon, which we've enjoyed, and they've also lowered the sugar content to our liking.

We still have our entourage of security and today we had to wait for the lead officer to finish praying (he's Muslim) before we could leave. We have gotten used to the calls for prayer that happen 5 times a day in the village as well as the animals freely roaming and the never ending dust.

For dinner Monday night, several in the group ordered stuffed piegon, which we were told is a delicacy in Egypt. The overall impression is it "tastes like chicken".

Dinner Tuesday night was on the Nile River on a boat tied to the shore. Massive amounts of food there were wonderful! A fun night that included our own security boat watching out over us on the Nile. The security guards are now warming up to us...smiling more and saying hello.

Poverty is still overwhelming to us. These families are so incredibly poor and we want to do is give all the small children a good bath! They are so pleasant and we'll be sad to say goodbye to them, as I'm sure they'll miss us. At dinner tonight, we discussed how thankful we all are of our houses, families, good health and how being here does make a difference in their lives.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is our last day of the build. We'll be heading back to Cairo tomorrow night.

Monday, November 24

The drive down to El Minya was about 5 hours on a small bus. To our surprise, we were even more popular than we ever imagined! We had our own personal security detail. The first guy looked like he could work for the president! Half way down we picked up a total of 3...count them 3 trucks of soldiers to escort us to Upper Egypt. (lights and sirens were a bonus) As anticipated, we made it without incident...other than the crazy driving and the sirens.

We had dinner last night at the hotel and then got up this a.m. and headed to the community which is about 1 hour from our hotel. The scenery changed dramatically from big city to desert to small village. And I mean small.

We were most definitely on display! Our mode of transport, load of security, dress and overall coloring/hair type made us super stars! The men were all wearing the traditional galabeya and the women were in dresses. Kids wore pretty much whatever they could get their hands on. Our blond hair, especially the women, made our team a huge hit!

We started out by visiting with the local partner of HFH. They gave us the history and work that they are currently doing. They talked about how HFH has made a difference in the community offering new homes as well as work for many of the local men. We then went down to visit a nursery school and greeted 100 little kids. They sang 3 songs for us. One was Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes. We only know this because they did the motions. We handed out little gifts to them afterward and they were thrilled!

We then gathered up our gear and headed to our houses. We were split into two groups. One group worked on wood roofing 2 different homes and the others moved limestone blocks (yes, they are as heavy as you think they are) and sifted sand. It was dusty work, but very rewarding to see the amount that was moved in such a short time.

Just before we left we were served hot tea by the owner of one of the houses. It was super strong and super sweet. Got a nice little buzz from that.