k, so its been a while here... lets see left off in cairo.... so by now i am kinda finished with egypt, but ill give the brief overview of the rest of our time there none the less....

Took a train from Cairo to Aswan, overnighter. Pure egyptian style. dirty as hell, with awful bathrooms. our 10 hour trip took closer to 14, fun times indeed. So we got into aswan, way better place than cairo, and we go right to check out a rather boring damn, but the temple of phelae was cool. i dont know if thats spelled right, but it was a roman temple, and was pretty cool. the next day we head to abu simbel, in the middle of effin nowhere and we are up at 3 am, to drive into the dessert. its a tourist trap and rather annoying, far too busy, but cool none the less. good ol ramases II, also spelled wrong. man was workhorse in the bedroom. 82 daughters and 112 sons give or take. after that we make it back in time to hope on a little boat and sail the nile. head down to luxor. its a great time, we can finally relax, but its pretty s***ty to sleep on. luxor, we hit karnak and valley of the kings. good times, then train it back to cairo book our flights out to istanbul. by this time we are done and ready to get the fack outta egypt, especially cairo.

So istanbul, in a word, wicked. Its a really cool place, and the hostel we are at is miles above egypt ones. Most of the hostels are located in the old part of town right near hagia sofia, the blue mosque and the grand market and spice market. the mosques are impressive, hagia sofia was incredible to say the least. we hit all but them all the first couple days, except the grand market, do that the next.

The next day, knowing we are pressed for time as the boys are headin into bulgaria, we tried to figure out how to see more of the city. We ended up finding out about a ferry. it runs from our area and all the way out to a small village right at the mouth of the black sea. the ferry is awesome and the village is really cool, just a small fishing village. there is an old beat up castle way up the hill to walk to as well, despite notbeing much to look at, the view from up top is awesome. the best part is that it is a blue bird day, so pretty amazing out there, we were all loving it. The boat docks there for 3 hours before returning, so we head for a bite at one of the many local restaurants right on the ocean that serve up fresh seafood. That night there is a bellydancing show at our hostel. gotta be honest, the girl was absurdly gorgeous. In fact there alot of incredibly hot turks. alotta talent in that place to say the least....

The next day i head out to germany on a spur of the moment deal, going to visit matty, lisa, sean and nik, up where they lisa is from, and the boys play there vball. its fasching here too, which is carinval. so bascially a huge parade where people dress upand drink and yell things at people in the parade wearing the witch masks... they all throw candy and if u yell slanders at them... which is custom they will come up and grab u and face wash u with confetti. there is confetti everywhere after this thing. seriously picking it outta ur ass by the end of the day, no joke. its cool too, cuz some of the dressed up "witches" will walk the sidewalks behind u and grab ya when u arent lookin but yelling at them, can be a bit of a surpise.... that night there is a big costume party bascially. and everyone is there young and old. its a big drinkfest with 3 different rooms. different music for everyone, really a great time, alot of fun. its crazy how its such a part of their heritage to booze there faces off here, makes for a lot of great times haha

so thats about it, i have many more stories but some are better left to be told in person, im hear till the end of the week, then i fly to norway to stay with terik and andrea for about 10 days. i will become a viking and plan to endulge in some raping and pillaging with those crazy norse. not really but u get the idea, bizzler has a vball match and then a big party afterwords. i am going to be loading the booze in from germany, i hope i dont get caught, so cheap here though. 10 euro for a bottle of jag. 6 for vodka.... u get the picture. this is much better than the 50 bucks a bottle in norway. ill see what i can do, i just hope they dont check my pack under the plane!

thats all for now, hope all is well back home with everyone