The 'Education Experience' (May 21)

This is where the trip turned educational... so get ready to be educated!

This is at the Luxor temple, in Luxor. The city was known as Thebes when the ancient Egyptians lived there. The capital was here and "city of the dead" was in the Valley of the Kings where we saw King Tut's tomb. (When the capital was in what is now Cairo, what was then Memphis, before this period their pharaohs were buried in Saqqara and then Giza). This obelisk is cool for two reasons. 1. It's cool. 2. There is another one just like it that used to be on the other side of the entrance of the temple but is now in the center of Place de la Concorde in Paris. I loved it when I saw it last year, but I had no idea what it was or how old it was or how it got there. I still don't really know how it got there, some trade between the Egyptians and French but it's cool that I was standing in front of that one exactly one year ago.

Voila! May 2008 in Paris.

The entrance to the Karnak Temple. This is the temple of Egyptian temples. It is a sister temple to the Luxor. They're a few miles away from each other, connected by the Avenue of the spinx. It was built by 4 different main architects and it's incredible!! Moses grew up in a great palace such as this, surrounded by the grandeur of men- no wonder he never had supposed that man was nothing. I recommend learning more about this temple. It's incredible! Of course testimony is not built upon such things, but it is amazing to see our ordinances practiced by an ancient civilization. Joseph Smith was not making this stuff up, and God really is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Subtract the blue wheelbarrow and this is probably exactly what this scene looked like 3,ooo years ago.

The Holy of Holies. The altar is just behind me and on the wall is a depiction of the washing and annointing, the new robe and the sacred embrace- necessary to enter into the next life. I have never been more excited to go to the temple. All of the guys thought that this was so incredible and I wish I knew why. I feel like this has made me more prepared and I can't wait to go through!

More ankhs. Just so you believe me that they really are everywhere.

Behold the mud bricks. These were used as scaffolding in great building projects. They were built up as the wall was built, and then as the wall was painted or sculpted from the top down, they were taken down again. These are the bricks that the Israelites would have been making. Ramses II was involved in many grand building projects (such as this temple) which is one of many evidences that he was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I saw his mummy in Cairo. He was pretty ugly, so I think he was the guy.

We all wear dresses in Egypt! I keep asking myself, "Is this cool in real life, or just Jerusalem life?" and usually the answer is the latter... We're being brain washed quickly though. It's going to be quite the culture shock coming home.

Don't be fooled by the tourist traps. These carriages were terribly uncomfortable and the horses smelled weird. But it was fun.

Oh, Egyptian laws. I think it's kind of like trying to figure out women- "No Parking" sometimes means "I really want you to park here" and sometimes it means "Seriously, don't park here". Or maybe it's simpler than that and the laws just don't mean anything, that seems more like the case.

Sunset on the Nile. This was incredible! We walked through the town that night while everyone else got sucked back into the bazaar. It was a beautiful night- one of my favorite things from the trip. And I loved Mandy's insight about the Nile. There is something absolutely spectacular about standing on the edge of the Nile (or swimming in it as the case may be) not because it's a particularly cool body of water, but because of its name and it legacy. We're not exceptional people (not REALLY exceptional anyway) but because we have the name of Jesus Christ and because we have the legacy of being Footes... people like to stand by us? Alright, surely there's a better way to finish that thought. I'll let you think about it.

The Luxor temple at night- magnificent!

Heather and I are stoked about the overnight train back to Cairo!!

Andy had a little bit less energy. A bunch of us stayed up late in one of the rooms on the train (those of us who hadn't been hit by the plague of Egypt yet) and Andy climbed up where the pillows are stored and fell asleep. We fit four girls up there at one point! The picture is on someone else's camera, but I'll be sure to put it up, because I know that's hard to imagine. Fun, fun night!! And once I finally did go to bed, it was perhaps the best night of sleep of my life. I loved it!

The most frequent thought of the trip was "I can't believe I'm actually here!" I don't want to bore you by typing that under every picture, but that's what I was thinking with everything that I saw. It was incredible and extremely humbling to be in such an incredible place. And it was really inspiring. They really believed in eternal life and they lived their whole lives around that belief. And this is our heritage! Ephraim lived his whole life in Egpyt. Abraham had an Egyptian wife (Hagar) as did Joseph and of course Ephraim. So really, we're Egyptian. Home sweet home!