Day Seven

This morning had a hectic start-Karlee and I did not get our wake up call that we specifically ordered the night before and instead woke up to Brother Manscill calling for the bus asking us where we were haha. We were miraculously able to get ready, throw on clothes, and pack in a grand total of three minutes though so it all turned out okay.

We headed out to the Cairo Citadel and Muhammad Ali (no not the boxer) Mosque. This mosque was built by Ali to house his tomb in 1830. The outside of it has not been kept up very well, the limestone was cleaned for the first time in decades when Obama came to visit a little bit ago. Its actually pretty funny because whenever you tell anyone here that you are American they yell "Obama!" afterwards and say they will give you a special deal on whatever they are trying to sell you at the time. Well, haha I am glad that somebody likes him! Anyways, now that I am done with that complete tangent, the inside of the mosque was absolutely beautiful. The incredible domes and lights strung up everywhere really were breath taking. Our tour guide Islam taught us all about the muslim prayers and the proper procedures followed in the mosques. It was great to learn about the religion from someone who actually practices it and can give us a first person perspective.

The rest of the day was mainly spent on the bus as we drove to our hotel located right by Mount Sinai. Bus rides get extremely entertaining when you get forty three 20-something year-olds together for extended amounts of time who are running on very little sleep with no real form of entertainment present. Games of would you rather, truth or dare , and what if... get absolutely hilarious! Laughing until you can't breathe and your abs kill is nothing out of the ordinary.

We did make one stop though at Rephidim, which is where the Israelites fought with Amalek. This is the battle where if Moses stood on top of the hill and held up his hands so that the Israelites would prevail, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands when they grew heavy. Brother Brown, Manscill, and Jackson were kind enough to reenact this for us. The greatest part that I sadly did not get a picture of was that there was a group of a few little Bedouin kids standing right behind them that reenacted it as well haha. We then were taught a great lesson about how holding up the hands symbolizes the cross and how the atonement is what saves us.

We hopped back on the bus for a few hours and drove to our hotel. It was a pretty low key evening and we all went to go to bed early to get ready for our 2:00 a.m. hike up Mt. Sinai the next morning!