Sinai

Sunday morning we had a wake-up call at 2 am to set out for Mt. Sinai. It was the most incredible experience of my entire time in Egypt. It was perfect.

The wake-up call consisted of a brief knock on our doors at about 2:05. I actually only barely heard it, and I was glad I did because I hadn’t set my own alarm or anything. I thought they would keep knocking til we answered, but by the time I had made a conscious decision to get up and do so they were gone. I was awake and ready to go almost instantly. It’s been so odd, this entire trip my tolerance level for lack of sleep has been steadily increasing, and after 4 hours I was totally good. I think I was also really excited about this hike. :)

Breakfast consisted of some pretty gross hot chocolate and a sack-lunch style assortment. The only thing I ate were the 3 rolls but they were kind of amazing. They tasted like my mom’s homemade stuff, no joke, I was exceedingly pleased. We ended up not leaving until a little after 3, because 2 apartments (both containing the teachers’ daughters… lol) didn’t wake up. But it turned out better that way, because the sunrise was I think a lot later than they were expecting.
When we got to the base of the trail it was, of course, freezing. I already had a sweatshirt and my big winter coat but since no one else had taken the extra jackets and sweatshirts our teacher was offering I yoinked one of those too, so I was pretty adequately prepared. And like, they told us we would be sweating on the way up and I totally didn’t believe them, but by the time I got to the top I definitely had got down to one sweatshirt and I was carrying my gloves and scarf. But then I was shivering again once I had already put everything back on up at the top.

The hike was incredible. I will never forget hiking under the stars like that. It was high enough and far enough from any city that you could see like, all of them. I love seeing stars like that. You can sometimes get them like that in Utah up in the mountains in summertime. I kept tripping over my feet because I was looking up at the stars instead of down at the trail, lol. But it was just so incredible. The guy I hiked up with (his name is Mike) commented that this was probably the kind of view that Abraham had when he was told his posterity would be as numerous as the stars in heaven. I’ll tell you, it’s truly an awe-inspiring thought. And then there was the mountain looming up over us. I felt like I had stepped into The Ten Commandments. It was just this impressive mass over our heads and you could really only barely see the outline in the dark and it just felt almost like being in the presence of God, in that I was looking up into the magnificent manifestation of his power and felt like Moses when he said, “For this I know that man is nothing.” In the dark everything was just so much more mystical and monumental, and I’m not even doing a very good job of describing it, once again. It was so neat to look back the way we’d come and see the mountains closing in on the distant lights of the little Bedouin village at the bottom and the lights of everyone winding up the path behind us.

But it was a hard hike. I kept telling myself that if 100 year old Moses could do it alone, I certainly could that morning. The most hiking I’ve ever done is Y mountain (about halfway up I was thinking longingly of those mornings when my roommates went hiking over the summer and wishing I’d gone with them to kind of prepare myself…) and Sinai is about as high as Timp. Which still probably isn’t that bad, I’m just a wuss. Mike had no problem whatsoever, he even carried my backpack the second half of the way up (about the time I started stopping every 2-3 minutes I think we both realized it would go faster that way, lol). And we actually made pretty good time. We were within about the first 30 people to the top. A few people had gone up a little further but the place where we stopped is where everybody ended up and there were only about 10 people there when we got our seats. Which, by the way, were the best seats in the house. Since we were some of the first people there, we sat on a shelf that was about 5 feet from the cliff but it was like a real seat, so I had someone leaning up against my legs, keeping them warm, Mike on one side of me, and girls in back and on the other side. Plus a completely unimpeded view of the sunrise. What was great, too, was that as everybody started filtering in, they kind of crowded in around us so that we had enough body heat that, although I was still shivering, it wasn’t completely miserable, but we were close enough to the edge of the *pile* :) that we weren’t squished.

So the hike took us a little over two hours. We got to the top with like, an hour and a half to spare. Like I said, the teachers kind of overestimated the sunrise (I guess this is the first time they’ve done it in winter, and sometimes the days are shorter in January than they are in September… weird) so we all sat and kind of shivered in the dark for like a long time. I think it was pretty miserable for some people, but like I said, my spot was perfect, and I was glad I had some time to look up at the stars without worrying about hurting myself (which I definitely did, and I have the bruises to prove it- I really should have paid more attention to my feet). And then when the sun came up, oh my gosh, it was amazing. First we started to see kind of a haze of light above the clouds, and it got brighter and higher, and then we saw the very top edge of the sun globe and it was just this tiny pinpoint of light, but once it started coming it came up quickly, so in a matter of a few short minutes it was dawn, and you could see all of the mountainous terrain around us. It was breathtaking. You couldn’t even see civilization from where we were. It was just us and God’s creations, in all the splendor and glory He intended. It was the most glorious thing I’ve ever seen. I thought the pyramids were cool. And they are. But nothing of my experiences in Egypt can even compare to my experience on the top of Mt. Sinai.

The way back down was a completely different view, because it was daylight, obviously. Not nearly as awe-inspiring, but it was certainly a lot easier. We realized on the way down how far away from the base of the mountain the trail actually starts. I swear there was as much level trail as upward. St. Catherine’s monastery- the fortress/church that kind of manages Sinai and apparently is pretty neat itself- was closed, as it was Sunday, so we didn’t get to go in there. That would have been kind of cool, but we were all pretty exhausted by then. I definitely failed at not getting sick. I had a scratchy throat on Saturday and I’m pretty sure I would have been fine if I had been able to sleep it off properly. Unfortunately, getting up at 2 am to climb a mountain in 30 degree weather does not qualify as “sleeping it off”… It was so worth it, though. And it’s actually been the least sick I’ve ever been that still qualifies as sick, so I’ve not been too miserable.

Speaking of Saturday, I guess I should recap that quickly. In the morning we went to the Mohammed Ali mosque, which is a pretty sweet building, actually. It almost reminds me of Dormition Abbey, in a way. I’ll post some pictures eventually. But Mama Pharaoh took us up there and gave us kind of a crash course in Islam and then we took some pictures of Cairo from the overlook up there. And then we went to the place where Mary and Joseph are thought to have “taken refuge” when they fled to Egypt with the baby Jesus. There’s a nice church there and you can kind of peek down into the cave where they stayed (which is really more of a nice cellar than a cave), and it’s also right next door to the oldest synagogue in Egypt. And let me tell you, this synagogue was pretty sweet. Maybe I just haven’t been in very many synagogues, but it was really beautiful and ornate, even though it was small. Actually, it was kind of interesting to me to note how similar mosques, synagogues and cathedrals are in style and like, architecture and stuff, after having been in one of each that morning. Just a little food for thought.

Then we got on the bus and began our trek *home* by way of Sinai. I basically just sat up at the front of the bus and tried to think healthy thoughts the whole way there. I slept a little, too, but I mostly just literally sat there and concentrated on not being sick. Which, like I said, I kind of failed at. At one of the rest stops they were playing some Egyptian pop music, which is amazingly similar to the kind of Latin music we use for ballroom, and some people started talking about ballroom (some of them have taken like, 180) and then they asked me and Matt to dance for them, so we did. Lol. We just did a little bit of a Samba routine that I taught him. I dunno if I mentioned Matt by name before, but he’s the teacher’s son that I’ve been dancing with. So that was pretty fun.

There were all kinds of creepy guys at the Morgenland hotel where we stayed at Sinai. I got hit on by a waiter again. I actually finally realized what it is on Sunday when we were crossing the border that bugs me so much about it, and it’s that when they smile at you, it’s not friendly, it’s like, dirty. And then one of the hotel personnel asked what room I was in, and like, in Cairo they had been asking so they could show us where it was, so I totally told this guy and then when he didn’t point anywhere I was like, “I definitely should not have told him that, should I?” But I didn’t get any unwanted visitors during the night, so it all turned out ok.… Sketch.

Well, that about sums it up for my trip to Egypt. I love Egypt. Really. Even despite the creepy men. Lol. Although, the story I just told is about the extent of sexual harassment I encountered, so I guess all the precautions they made us take did their job. :) Now we’re all just back at the JC recuperating. We have a free day tomorrow. I think I’m going to go out to Ein Kerem, which is where John the Baptist is supposed to have lived, and it’s supposed to be really pretty.