The show on our way to the Karnak light show

We spent the past few days in Luxor. Here we are standing in front of the Nile. The valley of the Kings, and many other sites are in the mountains on the other side of the Nile

These are the ruins of the Karnak temple. This was Nile's favorite site. It is very big and quite diverse. Many kings and queens of Egypt added their own part to the temple.

This is inside the Temple of Luxor. It was burried under sand for many many years. While it was under the sand a mosque was built on top of it. The door here used to be at ground level.

This is the Temple of Hatepshut. They carved out part of the sandstone cliff for this temple.

We had an adventure on our way to the Karnak Temple Light Show. Hiring transportation at a reasonable price always requires negotiation.@@Takashi is good at negotiating with taxi drivers, but he decided to stay home because he is coming down with a cold and he saw the show 3 years ago when he was last here.
We got the impression that Luxor is less expensive than Cairo, and in Cairo we were able to get across town by taxi for 5 Egyptian Pounds (a little less than 1 US dollar). Here in Luxor we were able to hire a horse drawn carriage for LE 5 to get us from our hotel into town. We thought that we should be able to hire a cab for LE 5 to get us from our hotel to the light show, across town. There are always cab and carriage drivers waiting near the hotel and they approach you as you walk down the street. We started negotiating for a ride in either a carriage or a taxi for LE 5. The first person that took us up on our offer got us into a carriage, but then asked a younger driver to take us, and he refused, so we got out and walked on. A few meters down the street, I hailed a cab who said he would take us for LE5, and at exactly the same time, Nile hailed a carriage and negotiated the deal g5 pounds to Karnak.h Since Yoshie likes carriages, we took the carriage. The driver was very nice and chatty, but not honest. After a few blocks he started changing the deal. He said that there are two Karnaks, the hotel, and the temple and said that the temple was too far for only LE 5. So, Nile said, gfine, take us to the hotel for 5 pounds.h The driver said, g5 English pounds, yes?h Five English pounds is about LE 50. When we said, that it was Egyptian Pounds, he started trying to negotiate other prices. Nile wouldnft let him have it. She insisted that he either take us to Karnak hotel, or Karnak Temple for LE 5. He refused. At that point, Nile pulled on my coat and we all jumped out of the carriage. Fortunately for us the horse was slow, so this was easy to do. Unfortunately for the driver, we jumped out right in front of a policeman who we heard giving the driver a hard time. A minute later the same carriage passed us and offered to take us for LE 15 to Karnak Temple. We refused and he drove on.
In the end, we got a taxi for LE 10.

Egyptian pancakes today!

These are the mail boxes here. They are labeled "Poste Aerienne" and "Ordinary Mail".

This is a pond outside the Egyptian museum. Matt saw the mummies there and we all saw the artifacts that used to be in the pyramids.

This is an ornimental garden in Cairo.

We had Egyptian pancakes today. This guy is stretching the dough. The dough is stretched very thin, and then folded over and restretched several times to make a filo like dough, but softer and not as flakey.

We left early on new year's eve

Crossing the street in Cairo is perilous. Takashi is pointing out a person crossing this busy street. Everyone has to cross when the street is this busy. 2/3 of the cars don't have their lights on either, making it harder.

We visited the pyramids. Here we are in Giza near the Sphinx. These are the "newest" and largest pyramids.

This is a display garden near the pyramids. We thought Nile's co-workers would like a look at their competition in Egypt.

This is the countryside near the pyramids. They grow some sort of root vegitable under the palm trees here. The harvest the tops as fodder for the camels and mules.

Here we are in front of the Sakkara pyramid.

This is the red pyramid. Matt went inside and it was really really smelly.

Packing for the big trip!

Natalie sent us some Canada flag patches to put on our bags. Thank you, Natalie!

Pokie and Ellie helped Nile pack today.

In completely unrelated news, they have been replacing the mortar between the bricks on our building. Most of our windows are covered in plastic on the outside so it's very dark all day.

Christmas Day

What's wrong with this picture? No, the car is not illegally parked. Note how dark it is, it's not even 7am yet. Hint: This was taken on Christmas morning. We were tempted to resuce the tree if it were still there when we got home.

Before it was even "bright and early" we went to Nile's work to water all the plants on display before we opened the door at 10am.

This is one of the plants on display. There are a lot of blooming flowers in the bromilliad house.

These are the two cats at Nile's work. They eat in separate rooms because Ivan, the fatter cat, would steal some of the food from Frank, the fat cat. Here is Ivan wishing he had more food. We tried fixing Ivan's "green-eye" problem in the photo, but the red-eye function just made it worse. There are more pictures of Ivan and Frank at ShopCat.com.

This is Ivan's bed. The bed is made of Spanish moss. Spanish moss is a rootless plant that gets its nutrience from the air and water that lands directly on it. Nile waters his bed (only when he's not sitting on it) so that it stays alive. Yes. The bed is alive.

The wasabi plants we got at the beginning of the summer are doing really well now. Thank you David!

This is a pitcher plant with a pitcher. Notice how the pitcher comes out of the end of the leaf, not off a stem. Matt was baffled.

They have a lot of orchids. This one is a cross between a "Spotted Wings" and a Voodoo Magic "Purple Potion". Matt just thought the names were funny and doesn't know anything about orchids.

While Matt was checking out the orchids, Nile was busily wattering. Today we had 300 visitors at the conservatory and they were all very nice and thankful that we were open on Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve

Tetsu came over from Bainbridge Island to watch Polar Express with us. After the movie, being a 12 year old, he was hungry and ate a s'more composed of a marshmallow, raspberry truffle chocolate, and two Christmas cookies. After the first bite he said, "This is the bomb!" Before the last bite he said, "This is too sweet. I don't think I can finish it." But he finished it anyway.

The next morning, we made Munlies. This is a Christmas tradition from Matt's dad's family. We have now successfully spread the tradition to Nile's mother and Jim. Munlies are people shaped sweet breads eaten for breakfast. This year we didn't have the traditional nuts and raisins for decorating, so we used egg white to adhere colored sugar and coconut to them.

We all decorated our own Munlies. Here is Nile with Munlie dressed up in Christmas colors.

Since it's a German tradition, Matt made his Munlie wear lederhosen and a white shirt.

We had Christmas Eve dinner at Shima, the best vegitarian sushi restaurant ever. Here is Sussy putting together our dinner.

We brought a yule log. We've attempted a yule log several times before, but we've never been able to get it to roll correctly. This is the first time we succeeded. We put the pears we poached this summer in the middle. Matt did the decorations with help from Tetsu.

Dinner was phenomenal! Here is Nile chowing down.

Holidays

We opened our presents today for two reasons. One, because Nile is going to have to work on the 25th, and two, because we couldn't wait any longer. We look sleepy because we haven't had our coffee yet.

Nile got lots of nice presents. One of which is a camel that Nile's boss gave her to get us ready for our Africa trip. She also gave Nile a journal to write in on the trip so that we'll have stories to tell when we get back.

Matt's dad gave him this knife rack which we modified slightly to hold screw drivers instead. We think this made the whale happier. We mounted it above the craft desk to motivate Matt to work on his robots more often. (See the parts on the desk.)

Before we went to see Polar Express in Imax 3D, we had a yummy "Christmas Eve" dinner. (See the Christmas candel in the background.)

Razelle called us that evening and told us that she can read the packages that Jennie sent us from Israel. We think the one on the left is a falafel mix and the one on the right is some sort of pudding. Maybe pistachio flavor? We'll keep you posted for the real answer.

Santa brought this really nifty game for Matt. You build electrical circuits. Here is a picture of Nile with her winning circuit. This is Matt's new favorite game.

Nativity Scene

Nile set up the Nativity scene. She even included the star of Bethlehem being played by an invention by Nile's family friend.

Cookie Baking Party

We had a cookie baking party this weekend. Our friends from work came and we baked and decorated a lot of cookies.

About half of the cookies were pretty traditional, but there were some that were more for fun. Here we have an evil bunny made out of an up-side-down teddy bear cookie, a red chalk outline of a skinny bear, and rudolf with a "bummer of a birth mark."





These were our favorite cookies. From the top, headed clockwise, a shooting star, planet Earth, rudolf, polar bear after eating a seal, blinky, reindeer in sheep's clothing, three wreathes. In the center is a pineapple. The cookie is cut with the wreath cutter. We thought it made an equally good pineapple.







It was also the first time we had friends from work over, so Nile called it a house warming party. Stephanie brought us this very cute goose cookie jar.

... and Giselle brought us these potted bulbs. They are doing a lot better than the ones we tried to force.

On Sunday we went to Bainbridge island. We had a rare view of the mountains in all directions. This picture is taken to the West of the Olympic Peninsula. Also visible that day were Mt. Reineer to the East and Mt. Baker to the North.

Shima is almost ready to open. The interior is pretty much complete. The gas is being hooked up on Tuesday and Sussy will be training his staff this week.

Christmas at the Conservatory

It's Christams at the Conservatory now. Nile spent days with her co-workers decorating the seasonal house for the occasion. There are hundreds of poinsettias around everything.

In the middle of everything is a gigantic Chirstmas tree. The theme this year is Victorian. It looks a little out of place with the other plants in the house, but it's still very nice. I think they did a great job. :-)

This is a closeup of the ornaments. You can also see that it's a really beautiful tree.

Patty, one of Nile's co-workers, gave a wreath making class this weekend. All of the greens were provided by the parks service and are trimmings from plants in the parks. It's the first time we've made a wreath, and we got a lot of help from Patty and Leonard.

Here is Kimberly and Patty together with the wreath that Kimberly made.

We hung our wreath up on our door. It smells really nice too.