In the past week I have had at least a half a dozen ideas for blog posts. I spent half the week writing them in my head, and the other half deciding which one to write first. Now it's a week later and I didn't post any! So I'm just going to pick one and go for it. We went to Memphis and Saqqara 2 weeks ago on a trip with AUC. As I think I've said before, one of the perks of Ira working there is they schedule these days trips and weekend excursions each semester. This one was nice, it was hot but not unbearable. It was our first time taking Ramona on one of these adventures and she did pretty well! Mama was super freaked out about the sun and loaded her up with sunscreen, a hat, long sleeves and pants. I am somehow convinced that this little angel is going to leave Egypt one day looking like a vintage leather handbag. Anyway, we loaded up the diaper bag and off we went. Our first stop was Memphis. Yes, I made tons of Elvis and Graceland jokes. I was also the only one laughing at them.
It's kind of a sparse site, with a few nicely preserved column bases, statues, and a sphinx. I don't know how many of these trips I have to go on before I figure out that there are thousands and thousands of pieces of thousands of artifacts and all the sites kind of look the same. This one was a little different because there is a pristine Colossus of Ramsesses II, it looks as if they dug it up yesterday. There was a crew filming there, which was kind of interesting. They were NOT happy about the tourists interfering with their shot. Maybe next time they won't shoot in the middle of the day on a Saturday! It was nice that they had all their big fancy lights set up because it made my pictures really nice!
We didn't spend too much time there before we were off to Saaqara. We arrived and were about to go underground into a well preserved Old Kingdom tomb when Ramona started fussing. I was hoping I could wait until we were on the way home, or better yet all the way home, before I had to feed her. But apparently that wasn't going to happen. So I asked Louise (the woman who organizes all the tours) if I could hop back on the bus and feed her. I could tell she was overheated and hungry. I decided to unbutton her shirt a little bit to let her cool off. She was really fussing at this point and in my haste I accidentally pinched the skin of her neck. I have never heard a scream like that in my life. Not at birth, not the when she was up all night with tummy troubles. Never. It almost made me cry. And then there was the bus driver. The well meaning, but really annoying bus driver. He kept coming back and asking "can you help me?" (translation: can
I help
you?) At first I was so frazzled and overheated myself that I was thinking
"what the heck does he need help with and why is he asking me now??!" It was sweet of him to want to help, but at that point it was just making things worse because I couldn't give her my full attention and by now I know she was starting to feel my tension as well. So I had her lying on the seat next to me, I drank a little water and started over. I picked her back up and she was able to nurse a little bit and calm down. Of course by the time Ira and the rest of the group came back, she was back to her smiling self. I'm sure I looked like a bad version of a Cathy cartoon. Ira carried her the rest of the time, we got some fun pictures of her and got to see some wonderful stone buildings. The first in the world, in fact! I hope you enjoy the pictures...
