What am I?

I have a dirt clot for an outer shell and I am wormlike on the inside. I am about an inch long and I use my tongue to crawl along the walls and floors. What am I? Am I poisonous? Is the sole reason for my existence to pester Amanda?

The Big Walk

This year at Durban Girls' High School was the 127th Annual Pixie Hardman Memorial Big Walk. The theme for this year was 'From the ridiculous to the sublime, we shine in 2009.' So, the girls were supposed to dress up either ridiculously or sublime. This is what they looked like:

Felucca Ride on the Nile

We decided to take a felucca ride on the Nile while we were in Luxor. There were tons of boats but not many customers since summer is the slow tourist season.

Here is our captain, Mansour, and his crew aboard the 'Humpty Dumty.' Misspelled, repainted, and still misspelled.

There wasn't enough wind to get us sailing, so we had to hitch a ride from the tug boat.

So did these other boats...there were 3 of us in tow at once.

Mansour and the other captains all love Bob Marley. The feluccas all had a Bob Marley flag or a picture on the sail, and they sang some tunes along the way.
We floated to Banana Island...we didn't get off the boat, I am sure that would have been an extra charge.

The Karnak Temple

The Karnak Temple was built 1300 year ago and is the largest pharaonic monument in the country after the pyramids.

Lining the road are more sphinxes with ram heads and lion bodies, a symbol of the god Amon.

This is a huge wall at the front of the temple. People have carved their names into the side of it--some appear 1/2 way up the wall because that is where the sand level was at the time.
The temple was left unfinished for some reason. you can see how they took the rough stones and put them in place and then carved them into smooth pillars.

The hypostyle hall has 134 giant columns. You can still see some of the colors of the heiroglyphics.

This is a picture of the sacred lake.

During the height of Theban power, Karnak was the most important place of worship. Here are some of the columns and you can see an obelisk in the background.

This is a statue of a giant scarab beetle. You are supposed to walk around the scarab 7 times for good luck.

The Luxor Temple

This is the Luxor Temple and it is over 4000 years old. It is also known as the ancient site of Thebes.

Here is one of the obelisks


Here is a statue, I think it is Ramses II. You can see his wife in the lower left corner.

Here is a Muslim Mosque that was built inside the temple. It was built when sand covered most of the lower portion of the temple. You can see where the bottom of the building was and where it is now that all of the sand has been removed.
All Egyptian statues either have the feet together or the left foot forward. It is to signify one step towards heaven.

The Luxor Temple at sundown.

Sphinxes used to line the road from the Luxor Temple to the Karnak Temple. Now, a row of them remain with local roads cutting through the middle of the temples.

You can see the sphinxes lining both sides of the road.

The Valley of the Queens

This is the Valley of the Queens...very similar to the Kings, but this is where the wives, sons, and daughters were buried. Still the same desert, still very hot.

I was able to see the tomb of Ramses II's 9 year old son and a 5 mo. old fetus mummy. The bones were still mummified-it was very interesting and morbid. The tombs were very colorful and had lots of heiroglyphics on them. They were much brighter in color than the Kings tombs.

The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut

This the the temple of Queen Hatshepsut and it lies between the Valley of the Kings and Queens. She built the temple for herself, and no one was ever buried there. There are lots of caves dug all around the mountain, but supposedly nothing is in them.

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for a while and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Towards the end of her reign she changed her appearance to look more like a man. Weird. Here are some of the painted/carved walls outside of the temple.

A bird sculpture outside the temple.
A guard, perhaps.