FROM STEAV AND BILL:

At 5:15 AM the local Imam sang us to sleep after arriving at our hotel about 4:30 AM. Interesting to listen to the "Call to Prayer" from a half dozen mosques nearby: one of which is directly outside our hotel window. We woke up circa 1 PM and readied ourselves for the day. Upon opening our door we found Bill C, Lisa and Tom standing outside our door preparing to leave us a note! Undoubtedly bored from waiting for us to wake up.

Lisa is our unofficial Cairo guide and shepherded us to food and showed us how to navigate Cairo streets. This was no small feat since:

• 1) traffic signals are only for decoration
• 2) lane streets serve twelve lanes of traffic (okay 6 to 8 for real but seems like 12 when you trying to cross on foot)
• 3) driving is accomplished with an array of light flashing, horn blowing, hand gestures (none involving a middle finger) and the most intricate merging of traffic one can imagine.

We had a great lunch of something made with rice and pasta wonderfully seasoned for EP5 ($1 USD) and caught up on everyone's activities so far.

In the evening off we went to Giza for the "Sound and Light" production. Yes, it's cheesy and overly dramatic but I (Steav) felt tears realizing just what we were seeing and where The Pyramids were spectacular: more than when I visited them in 1966.

This is such a centerpiece of human civilization and art and architecture and beauty. Once you dismiss all the tourist trappings, you are left knowing you are in the presence of monuments truly fit for the gods. I will be forever awed and humbled by the works of a people intent on honoring their god. The Great Pyramids, the lesser ones for family members and the ultimate guardianship of the Sphinx require a word that far exceeds "magnificent". But in a day and age where computers serve up modern miracles in nanoseconds, these structures prove the miraculous mind of mankind in achieving what should have been impossible to construct. In my mind, all else we have built in the thousands of intervening years pales to these: they are truly the birth construction of a modern civilization. Their god was REALLY an awesome god and they knew it!

Again, true to form, Lisa guided us to a splendid restaurant (Alfi Bey) where we dined on lamb, mutton, rabbit, duck and a host of other non-Ameican treats. I am nearly as excited by the food here as I am by the artifacts of civilization: it is everything I had hoped for!

Tomorrow we shall visit Tut and his goodies at the Cairo Museum: how glorious it all is.