James' flip off the Ledge

James jumping off the ledge at Wadi Mujib, Jordan. James was a flipping machine. This is only one of his great acrobat moves.

Egypt

This is at Luxor the Luxor temple. Jannica and I visited it at night and the lighting made the place look really amazing. It was a lot cooler at night than during the day when it was just blisteringly hot.














We thought this sign was pretty funny. Imagine, a no honking sign in Egypt. What a joke!









This is Jannica riding the bike that we rented, I am on my bike taking the picture. We rented bikes two days and rode around the Valley of the Queens and Valley of the Kings looking at tombs. That was a great idea even if it was hot. We rode up to the Valley of the Kings, about 10-15 km up hill! It took us a while getting up but it was a great ride coming back. At one of the tombs we had to leave our cameras outside with a guy who was going to "watch" them. Jannica teased him that she wanted her camera to be there when we got out. He just grinned and started chuckling while placing her camera in his robe. He was so funny!


Behold the pyramids at Giza. There are actually nine pyramids here. The larger three, the medium size three in front, and then there are three smaller ones along the right that you might be able to see if you enlarge the picture. What was great about our Giza trip was horseback riding tour we took. We spent about four hours there looking at things and riding around. Very fun.






This is the Bent Pyramid. It is not at Giza but further south. I don't remember the name of the place. It is called the Bent Pyramid because the egyptians began consructing it at too steep an angle and had to change it on the way up. This pyramid is one of about three or four that we say down south and much older than the Giza pyramids. As represented by the Bent Pyramids, the Egryptians were still perfecting the fine science of pyramid construction.



Here we are back at Giza with the Sphinx. We were a little rushed at this point and we only had about a minute (literally) to get up close to the sphinx.












This is the police officer coming to chase us out of the area. The area closes really early in the day-something like four in the afternoon. We had no idea and did not get to Giza until later in the day and that is why we were rushed.











This is one of the tombs that we visited. There are the stairs leading up to the casket area. Behind that on the wall is the false door. Understandably it is called a false door because you cannot go through it (no really a door at all). But, it is said it is the passage way (to heaven, I guess) for the dead. At some point, the dead raises and walks through the door. If anyone has anymore detail about it I would be interested to know.

Roman Amphitheater Report

So, here are some pictures of the Roman "Amphitheater" that we went to while in Amman, Jordan. And here is a link to a news report that Heidi just sent me. Notice the similarity of the trees in the front of the left picture and the trees in the picture from the MSNBC news report!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14666741/

Wow!

This is just an amazing shot that I took while Jannica and I were on the road. It is somewhere in the United States. I don't remember. If anyone can identify this exact spot then I will give them lots of money.

Back in Provo

Well, Jannica and I are back in provo and we did not kill each other so that is good and we had a lots of fun with a little bit of work.

So, I ran into Alicia on campus and she commended me for starting a blog but said that I needed to do a lot more work to maintain it. I really like posting the pictures and that will take me a while to weed through them because I have 6-7 thousand pictures from our trip. And that really is 6-7 thousand, no kidding around here! All thanks to the digital camera.

That means all you eager beavers that are just chomping at the bit to find out all you can about me and my little adventures are just going to have to wait a bit. School starts in a couple of weeks and then I will be in business. I mean, because i am just SO busy right now!

Florance, Italy

This is a bridge that I really liked near by where we lived when Jannica and I were in Florance. I must say that I really liked Italy. I highly recommend it to anyone that has any inclination to go there. We were there just a few days and there was so much more for us to see. While we were there we also saw the David. I uploaded a picture of that but once I previewed him I was reminded how graphic it is and decided it was not suitable for publishing. The David was impressive though. And all these years I heard about the David and just thought Mic just picked a random name to call his statue. I never realized...until I actually saw it and someone mentioned it to me...that THE DAVID is actually the "David and Goliath" David. Who knew?

This is a picture I took early in the morning one day while I was on a run. I am quite proud of it. It is just a bunch of houses as far as I know.

I also really liked the steak dinner Jannica and I had the day we left. And there were the excellent pastas. The waiters were quite funny too. I should have taken pictures of them. There are so many things I wish I had taken pictures of. I have rectified that situation and am taking as many pictures now of Jordan as I can. One waiter responded "by all means" to everything we asked. A waitress was really funny when we asked her what she recommended on the menu, she said, "oh, that is too much responsibility for me, I mean, what if you do not like it!" or something to that effect. She also would take random leap size steps while going back and froth from the resaraunt and our table. Oh, and did I mention how beautiful sounding Italian is. That is one languange, if you are thinking of learning another languange, that comes highly recommended. Especially for all you Spanish speakers, I am sure it could be picked up in no time at all. Which reminds me of a story about Jannica, she was listening to some girls speaking outside a Basillica and telling herself, "Wow, I really know a lot of Italian words and this or that word is really close to Spanish." She was surprised at the fluncy with which she understood what they were saying and becoming quite impressed with herself until she realized that they were actaully speaking in Spanish and not Italian! Silly Jannica. Jannica actaully was quite impressive with the Italian phrases she knew. Well, I will write more later about the chaotic Egypt and then about Jordan.