Egypt, Land of Many Adventures
The folks have been back from Egypt for a while, but I'm now getting around to posting their pix and Dad's notes:
"One of the places we visited near Cairo was a carpet weaving school. Youngsters, both boys and girls, are carefully selected at about age 10. They start out working on a loom about two hours a day and then go to school the balance of the day. As their skills develop they progress from cotton to wool to silk. Long term, the girls make better weavers than the boys because their fingers are smaller and they have better dexterity. Many of them, as adults, have looms set up in their homes and do contract weaving. I'm not sure what the men do; they probably become salesmen.
We started out touring the weaving area and then went up stairs to the sales area. I wasn't interested in buying anything so I headed back to our bus and went back down through the weaving area. These two little guys, probably no more than 11 or 12, grabbed me and insisted that I get down on the plank they were sitting on so they could show me how it was done. The smaller one was my teacher and the other grabbed my camera and took several pictures. You could tell that they were pretty well practiced at it. And by the way, their English was very limited and my Arabic totally non existent.
Love, Dad"
"The first picture is a self portrait on camelback. Camels have a lurching, rolling gait and since my shadow was somewhat behind me, it wasn't easy to capture it without falling off. Believe me, the ground looks to be a lot farther away than it does when you're riding a horse.
The second shot is of Janet and me a short way up one of the pyramids. I have one zoomed in much closer but it just looks like we're standing on a pile of rocks. Come to think of it, I guess we were.
We took a hot air balloon ride to see the sun rise over the Nile. It was a first for both of us. The next to last pic is of the ground crew lifting Janet out of the basket. I think they actually flipped her over but I missed that. The last shot is the ground crew performing a dance in celebration of a successful flight. Makes you wonder if they ever have any unsuccessful trips?
Love, Dad"
"One of the places we visited near Cairo was a carpet weaving school. Youngsters, both boys and girls, are carefully selected at about age 10. They start out working on a loom about two hours a day and then go to school the balance of the day. As their skills develop they progress from cotton to wool to silk. Long term, the girls make better weavers than the boys because their fingers are smaller and they have better dexterity. Many of them, as adults, have looms set up in their homes and do contract weaving. I'm not sure what the men do; they probably become salesmen.
We started out touring the weaving area and then went up stairs to the sales area. I wasn't interested in buying anything so I headed back to our bus and went back down through the weaving area. These two little guys, probably no more than 11 or 12, grabbed me and insisted that I get down on the plank they were sitting on so they could show me how it was done. The smaller one was my teacher and the other grabbed my camera and took several pictures. You could tell that they were pretty well practiced at it. And by the way, their English was very limited and my Arabic totally non existent.
Love, Dad"
"The first picture is a self portrait on camelback. Camels have a lurching, rolling gait and since my shadow was somewhat behind me, it wasn't easy to capture it without falling off. Believe me, the ground looks to be a lot farther away than it does when you're riding a horse.
The second shot is of Janet and me a short way up one of the pyramids. I have one zoomed in much closer but it just looks like we're standing on a pile of rocks. Come to think of it, I guess we were.
We took a hot air balloon ride to see the sun rise over the Nile. It was a first for both of us. The next to last pic is of the ground crew lifting Janet out of the basket. I think they actually flipped her over but I missed that. The last shot is the ground crew performing a dance in celebration of a successful flight. Makes you wonder if they ever have any unsuccessful trips?
Love, Dad"
posted by Linda Brown at
4:08 PM
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