Sydney's Fieldwork Blog

Saturday, April 29, 2017           TODAY WE GOT A BREAK!!!!!! We flew out of Cairo, and now we are in Europe!! I've never been anywhere in Europe so I'm very excited for it. We got to our hotel in Brussels, Belgium around 4:45pm, and we were all at our (thank god!). This next leg is going to be RIDICULOUS!!! There is going to be so much traveling, trains, and I'm am assuming not a whole lot of sleep. There will also be not as many Asian tourists around, (except us) which I am definitely okay with. Because we flew out in the morning, and arrived late afternoon we didn't do any scavenging today. However, because we got our books today we were allowed to start planning out everything. Getting this book of 8 countries, multiple cities, over 250 scavenges, and having until Wednesday to get done as much as we can, was very overwhelming, and my stomach dropped past the floor. I sat on the floor and just curled in a ball for about a minute trying to process it. ...

Friday, April 28, 2017           Today is our last day in Cairo, which makes me sad and glad. Sad because Egypt is a cool place to be and I've made a lot of memories here, but glad because we are going to a new place, and because some of the memories aren't exactly what I would call pleasant. But I made sure I made the most of it. We did a lot today, and there are definitely some great highlights worth sharing.           This morning we were out by 7am (after a very good breakfast) on our way to the Giza Pyramids. It was not as far as Alexandria, which was nice. We were given this guide and we went all around Giza for a good 2 1/2 hours. I got to ride a camel for the first time!!!! It was super cool and fun to do. It was definitely harder than riding a horse, just because they are more lumpy I guess. It was totally amazing to see the pyramids!! They were HUGE!!!! We saw the 3 main pyramids and the sphinx. All of them were amazing and...

Thursday, April 27, 2017           Today was fun, but definitely felt like a blur. We were in a taxi by 6am going for 2 hours to Alexandria. We got there, and we did a bunch of things. We visited a palace, catacombs, a giant pillar, a citadel, and a huge library. The library was definitely most notable. The library is called Bibliotheca Alexandria. It is this huge library with books and scrolls and tours, and lots of security. It is a very modern building on the inside. The outside looks like glass with a huge rock wall with hieroglyphics on it as the front of the building. Overall it was very nice, and they had free restrooms which made it even better.           Once we left Alexandria it was another 2 1/2 hour drive back to Cairo. I slept through almost the entire drive BOTH ways. I was/AM so tired and even after all that sleep I was still tired. We were going to take the train but when we asked people about it they said it was uns...

Wednesday, April 26, 2017 So 24 hours of rest and transition actually means 24 hours of no scavenges. It does not mean getting lots of sleep and relaxing. We were up at 1:30, (AGAIN) and off to the airport for two flights and a short layover. Getting up at 1:30am is restful right? Our first flight was to Abu Dahbi, (which I did sleep on) before having our 1 ½ hour layover. While we were on the shuttle, my ADULT team partner (my dad) realized he had left his phone in the convenient phone holder on the plane. So he spent the whole layover talking to the desk, and he has emailed them all of his information. This unfortunate turn of events is inconvenient for both of us because he needs to have a phone to contact me if we get separated. And, if the airlines doesn't find his phone (aka if they don't care about finding it) it will not be passed down to me. Which was the plan we had agreed to ON THE PLANE before he left it. So we are hoping there will be a lo...

Tuesday, April 25, 2017 Our sleeping schedules are officially back to crazy. Today was our last full day in Sri Lanka so we thought, “Hey, why not wake up at 1:30 in the morning and climb one of the highest mountains in Sri Lanka.” So that's exactly what we did. We slept for around 5 hours before we woke up, and started walking. From our hotel to the mountain was a good 30-40 minutes, so we got to the mountain around 2:30am. We spent the next 2 ½ hours climbing Adam’s Peak. It is a very religious mountain meant for Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. I think I forgot to mention it's 6,500 stairs and it goes above the clouds. We actually went up pretty fast for what most people do at 3am. When we got to the top it was 5, and we had to wait for sunrise for us to get points for this scavenge, so we had to wait a good 45 minutes at the top where it's very cold so we could get a picture of the sky as proof. This scavenge was by far one of the hardest ones...