March 15, 2008 - Our family visited my sister Elizabeth in the Middle East where she was teaching high school for a year before med school. You better know which movie features this Jordan landmark, Petra.
Thanks to President Bush adjusting daylight savings, I missed my connection and spent a day in NYC. Manhattan really looks different ever since Guliani left.
This is Jerash, an ancient Roman city (yeah... I had to look that up on Wikipedia - all these ancient ruins run together in your memory over the years).
One of the coolest parts of Jerash (not pictured here) are that you can see ruts in the stone ground left from chariots thousands of years ago,
This is my sister's class. Can you guess which one is a young prince?
My Dad likes to overdress for every occasion. This is the high school were my sister (middle right) taught.
After a day in Jordan, we all traveled to Cairo! I am rabid about our 30 minute trip on the Nile River.
Here we're looking up the skirt of Ramesses II here - and that is one large skirt. Please Egyptian gods don't kill me for my mockery...
...or the mockery by my Mother...
..or my sister for that matter.
This is a tomb below one of the smaller pyramids. It involves walking down a steep ramp ~20 meters into the ground, single file. I'm a bit claustrophobic so this was scarier than it looks.
My Dad never fails to embarrass and single-handedly support the local tourist economy.
Just like in Pisa where you take those "leaning" photos, in Cairo everyone takes these "touching" photos. It is interesting to note here that the Egyptians hadn't figured out yet how to make the pyramids smooth when they built this one.
The step pyramid up close and we got yelled at for climbing on it (the Egyptians aren't particularly careful with their ancient monuments).
Ah ha! I bet you know what that statue with the nose missing is!
Ironically, I'm wearing my "Google World Engineering Tour" t-shirt here.
This guy ran into our photo as a penalty I think for not paying him for the privilege.
A little hands on camera training by one of the locals - so helpful they are!
After 5 failures by me to get this shot, Caroline nails it first time with Liz in the air!
Even my Dad got in on the pyramid touching action.
Pyramids as part of the skyline... just another normal occurrence in Cairo. There are about 50 of them in total.
Back in Jordan on the last day - the campus looks similar to Stanford I think.
A great trip - thanks Liz - can't wait for the 14 hour flight back to Chicago.