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.