Travel Day - 9/28

This is James and I am going to tell you about our 28th day of Global Semester.


The Day started out for most at 4 A.M. This was to make sure there was enough time to get 500 meters up in the air in a hot air balloon to see the sun rise over Luxor. I personally did not join them and had the luxury of sleeping in till 6:50, which if you have read about our last few days, this truly was a luxury. By the time 7:30 A.M rolled around everyone was in the hotel breakfast hall talking about their time on the balloon or how nice it was to sleep in. We had a few hours after breakfast before going to the airport that were either spent napping or by the pool. At 12:13 we were all walking onto the flight back to Cairo. After arriving back at the apartment around 3:30 we went our separate ways, some going to campus to play soccer, but most finding a nice place on the couch or in bed after the long day. For dinner, half of us went out for sushi while the other half went out for Lebanese food. While Luxor was a great time, it is nice to be back in new Cairo where it is a little less hot and busy. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(12/18) Hanging Temple and a Bus-Ride Home

Hi everyone! This is Peder, writing about our final events in Datong and the remainder of our day. After a great buffet-style breakfast at our hotel with buns and coffee, we all piled into the bus and traveled to the Hanging Temple. This temple hangs on the side of a mountain and is the only existing temple that has a combination of Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist elements. It was awesome to be there and witness it. This was probably the coldest experience of Global so far as well as an incredibly beautiful one. We spent a couple of hours touring this incredible sight, bundling up to stay warm in the wind, before jumping back into the bus to go back to Beijing. The bus ride was about six hours and people took advantage of this time to work on their final projects, read, and catch up on some rest. We arrived back to Capital Normal University about 7 pm and went separate ways for dinner. A few of us took the subway to a restaurant called Mr. Shi's where we had a delicious dinner...
Read more

HMI Final Presentations - 10/30/17

Hello, this is Rachael. Today was our final presentations for our Religions of India course at HMI. First this morning, we had devotions, which are a daily practice at HMI. Our group led devotions today so Prof. Ripley spoke about travel and pilgrimage, and then several of us sang Blessing, arrangement of an Irish Christian blessing which has become a favorite of the St. Olaf choirs. Next, we had a talk by one of our beloved hosts, Shribala, on how to continue interfaith dialogue in our lives after leaving HMI. After that, we began a long day of presentations. Our three Indian classmates presented first, discussing their final papers on peace as practiced by various religious groups, on the role of women in different religions, and on how interfaith dialogue should be carried out in our everyday lives. Then our group began a twenty-part series on the religions of India, sharing our individual research presentations on the history, practices, rituals, ethics, etc. of Hinduism, Islam, S...
Read more

St. Simon the Tanner, Garbage City - 10/9/2017

Hello! Brodie here. Today, we spent our morning touring St. Simon the Tanner Monastery which is located in an area called “Garbage City.” The informal city there is home to about 90,000 people and of those, 90% are Christians. The area gets its name from the mounds of trash around the area and from the livelihoods of the people–– they are the trash collectors of Cairo and have been for many, many years. There are no government contracts with the people of the city, and their living is made purely from collecting, sorting, and selling useable items as well as raising animals (ex. Pigs, goats). To make it through the small, rough streets of the city on our way to visit the monastery, we had to trade out our big bus and opt for two smaller buses (which may have still been a little big..). St. Simon the Tanner Monastery is home to the largest church in the Middle East (it seats 20,000 people!) and when we arrived at our destination, many of us were quite confused–– there was no church to b...
Read more