Luxor/Aswan/Abu Simbel Pics

Before Egypt began its anti-Mubarak rampage, I did manage to travel to Upper (Southern) Egypt with another ETA and a couple of his friends from home. It's really too bad that Luxor and Aswan are so far away from Cairo. I think all of the monuments down south make the Pyramids look like a Sunday afternoon project with Lego's. I was way more impressed with the hall of columns in Karnak than anything in Cairo. But I guess I'll stop trying to influence everyone's opinion and let you all decide for yourselves. I'd also recommend a quick Wiki search for some general info on the areas.

Luxor/Aswan
Karnak Temple (in Luxor)
Abu Simbel  (surrounded by Lake Nasser, a completely man-made lake that crosses into Sudan)

Next post will be about the good stuff: the revolution. Promise.

April 6 Youth Movement

This video was brought to my attention by another Fulbrighter, and I think it's worth sharing. I'm sure everyone is on Egypt information overload, but the piece does a great job showing the mindset and efforts of one of Egypt's most organized youth movements.  

On Jordan

For those of you who may not have heard, I have indeed been evacuated from Egypt. I'll speak more on my experiences later, but needless to say I'm once again enjoying some Americana. And by that I mean macaroni-and-cheese and trashy TV. I missed you, Jersey Shore.

I finally uploaded pictures from my trip to Jordan. I'm way behind on uploading posts, but I'll go ahead and join the bandwagon in blaming Mubarak. After all, he did flip the internet switch to 'off.'

In my 8 days in Jordan, I managed to see quite a bit of the country. I spent 3 days in the capital Amman for a Fulbright-sponsored ETA conference and the rest of the time moseying around the Hashemite Kingdom. Here are the links to the albums:

Dead Sea / Jordan River (Now featuring the site of Jesus' baptism)
Petra Day One / Petra Day Two (Rocks are, in fact, not just for jocks)
Wadi Rum (AKA where Transformers 2 was filmed)
Jerash and Ajloun (Castle-mania!)

More to come later, including maybe the only existing video of protests in Zagazig.