Our first day onsite was today. Because I can’t actually touch anything, it was pretty chill. We went around the site with Nadine, and then toured the temple. Then I took a nap. I’ve been sick for a few weeks now, and it’s gotten worse since we made it to Egypt- I can hardly speak at all. Not being able to work is probably for the best. Nadine asked me to stay home tomorrow if I’m still not feeling well.
We had some fun last night that I should have mentioned. Before dinner, Aslam (the reis, our chief workman), took us “girls” to the bank and shopping in Edfu. I’d never been walking around the town, despite having been on the Edfu team last year. It was very interesting. You feel almost like a movie star, because everyone stares at you. We had Aslam plus one of the Ahmeds with us to discourage too much attention being paid to us. The children are funny, because many of them have never seen a white person before. Boys followed us trying to convince us to buy their food, and little children stared at us like we were aliens. Two little boys chased each other with nunchucks outside the Vodafone shop which we were waiting outside of. Once, two women walked by and said we were very beautiful as we were waiting outside a phone shop.
Edfu certainly is very different from the US. Everyone walks in the street here, and there are no crosswalks, so you just run across the street when it looks safe. Horse-drawn carrages and donkey-pulled carts canter through the street alongside cars and motorbikes. Cages of chickens sit outside shops, and whole cows or water buffalo, butchered, hang in front of other shops. There are small little shops for everything, and a big open-air market. At 9pm the town was just coming to life, and it stayed loud until past 2am. Almost everyone had trouble sleeping because of the noise. It will definitely take some getting used to living here again!
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