Overnight train ride

Now to complete my update of Egypt. Day 5 we saw King Tut and many other significant Egyptian tombs. Not gonna lie I didn't enjoy it much because I was sick and sand was blowing everywhere. We stopped at some other famous sites Hatchepsut's Temple, Colossus of Memnon, and I missed the funerary temple of Rameses because I stayed on the bus (not feeling good at all). The bus driver saw me left on the bus and gave me a pillow to sleep on the back row. The warm bus felt good and I rested until flies started landing on my face, yuk. Anyway, In the afternoon the activity was a choice between a Camel ride or a carrage ride around Luxor. I wasn't going to do either of those I had a fever and we had to check out of our hotel. The Draper's told me I could have their room. It was so wonderful, I had a nice hot shower (their shower was big and nice) and slept all afternoon. Dr H came to see me and gave me some more drugs to help me get through the overnight train, which was our next big adventure. It was a miracle how refreshed I felt when I woke up from napping, I was so grateful I had started to feel better. The Draper's told me just to take it easy on the train and let everyone help me. The overnight train ride was awesome. I felt like I was on a movie. The train station was filthy and dusty and loud and stinky. We had an hour to wait for the train to come. We bought lots of snacks and coke (the food on the train can be suspect). We bought and played cards. C even got his shoes shined! The venders loved us. We got on the right train safely. The dinner was interesting I ate the rice. Before I went to bed a huge group of students decided to cram as many bodies into my room as possible (hense the picture). Funny story: when I went to bed my roomate B was out in someone else's room on the train. The chain lock on the door was swinging and making noise so to silence it I just slid it in its lock. A while later I was awakened suddenly by B trying to get in. She could only open the door a little bit because I had left the lock on. I didn't think it would be hard to undo. We shut the door but I couldn't figure out how the lock worked. I struggled with it, it wouldn't slide. I struggled and fiddled. B was getting impatient, 'why did you lock it?' 'it was jangling and making noise.' B sat down in the hall. I tried twisting the chain and fiddled more. 'Wow how did this happen, it shouldn't be that difficult' I thought. Finally I discovered a little button at the top that released the chain so it could slide. Just then the conductor steward guy came by. 'Can I help you?' he said in his little Indian sounding accent. B was sitting in the hall "she can't unlock it." He saw me struggling "wait, wait, wait, wait" he said. At this point I had finally figured it out but I had been twisting the chain so much before that it no longer reached to slide out. I quickly tried to untwist it. He thought I was going to break it or something "wait, wait, wait, wait" he said again. Then he told me to open the side door to the room next to us so he could come in and fix it. This door seemed to be locked cause I couldn't open it. While he was figuring out how to get in the side door I finally unraveled the chain slid it out and the door swung open. Whew!
Wow, anyway, I slept really well on the train. The rocking motion was actually soothing. I didn't get to sleep long enough however. In the middle of the night I thought I heard some tapping, finally I realized it was someone tapping on our door. I thought something was wrong. I cautiously opened the door. And a tray of food was thrust in through the crack in the door, in the dark. "Breakfast!" It was our friend the steward. "You must get up" he said. It was 4:25 am.
To make a long story short eventually the train stopped and we were Cairo. It was dark and our train had arrived a little early so we had to stand around at the station for a while and wait for our bus to arrive. When we got on the bus we went straight to our hotel dropped off our stuff and had sacrament meeting next to the pool. It was so crazy to here President H cheerfully say "Welcome to the Jerusalem branch of the Israel district, meeting in Cairo Egypt, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." we all giggled a little. It was a great meeting. We were all in the clothes we'd been in basically all night. What a sight it was cool. Day 6 was lots of fun. We first went to Memphis. One of the olders cities in Egypt then the Ibn Tulun Mosque. The thing I remember most here was that we had to put booties on our feet to go in. It had a beautiful and expansive courtyard. Stark contrast to the crazily crowded city outside. Next we went to the Egyptian Museum. Saw all the stuff from King Tuts tomb we had visited the day before in Luxor. For lunch we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Most eventful thing at hard rock was a girl fainted (Our lunch wasn't until 2 pm and we'd had breakfast of 4 am on the train, maybe that was why she fainted). Also, they played some good old American music for us: 'the macaraina' and 'YMCA' and we had a dance party. In the afternoon we went to the Bazaar for some intense shopping. Before arriving many of us were stressed out because of all we'd heard about the Bazaar. We were all careful to stay in tight groups and no one got gropped. I really enjoyed shopping in the Bazaar it was cool to barter with the shopkeepers there. They gave us a lot of attention and we had fun with it.