World Land Marks

Sharing some pictures of world land marks:





Pictures show: The Dome of the Rock, Israel; Little Mermaid, Denmark; Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy; and Pyramid of Gisa, Egypt

Egypt's Goddess Nuit

When we were in Cairo, we visited a Papyrus place. I forget now if it was called a "Papyrus School" or a "Papyrus Factory." It was a tourist stop, and inside a man demonstrated the making of papyrus paper. Click here to read about the process of making paper from papyrus. Apparently papyrus paper does not tear. Its wrinkles can be smoothened away. It has long life, so that papyrus from thousands of years ago still exist.

Hyped up like that our small group of 30 was eager to buy papyrus. The place had all sorts of papyrus paintings for sale. There were a lot of Egyptian gods and goddesses and hieroglyphics. I wanted to get a painting on papyrus of the Holy Family - a stylized painting of Joseph pulling a donkey that's carrying Mary and Jesus. My husband spotted a painting of a woman wearing blue. Her body was curved like a horseshoe, with her head and feet on the ground. She had gold stars on her clothing and she looked quite glorious. We were told that she was the goddess Nuit or Nut. That was all we knew about her. We bought her because her image appealed to us.

When we visited the Valley of the Dead, we saw more paintings of the goddess Nuit in the funerary chambers. There were several versions of her but always she stood on all fours, with her body curved like canopy. One image showed her with a bubble in front of her mouth. Our guide explained that Nuit swallowed the Sun God Ra in the evening and gave birth to him in the morning. She was a friend of the dead, a mother-protector. She looked magical.

The above image is not the one we own, but it's one version of the goddess Nuit with her husband Geb (earth god) beneath her. This site gives you more information about the goddess Nuit.

We haven't had time to get the two papyrus paintings framed, but we're looking forward to getting that done soon. We won't be around to see if these will last for thousands of years though.

Kaiser's Therapy Dog

I should be reading a student's novel that I'm critiquing but it's been a while since I've blogged so here goes.

I will not get into details, dear Readers, but I was in Kaiser's emergency room last week, not because of me but of someone else. The last time I had been in Kaiser's emergency room was years ago. I was surprised to find it less crowded and less frenentic and depressing. In the past there were these sick, groaning people, sometimes bleeding people, crammed in the waiting room. This visit, it didn't look like that. Maybe the sense of order was because of some changes made, such as the triage rooms. The nurses determine who needs immediate attention or who can wait, and dispatch patients in an orderly fashion to the doctors. Past reception, there were various pods or clusters of rooms ran by a certain number of doctors, nurses, and administrators. Over all, it was better this time.

Even though I've grumbled about Kaiser, I have to hand it to them. The emergency visit resulted in thorough tests, and the visit cost only $50. Surely it would have been thousands of dollars elsewhere.

The best part of this Kaiser experience was the Therapy Dog that came to visit. This beautiful golden labrador with sunglasses on and his owner/trainer stopped by to visit. The dog had a cape that said, "Riley, Therapy Dog," and his master had him do tricks. It was amusing and brightened this ER visit.

I'd read that seniors who own pets live longer, so maybe pets can indeed provide health benefits.

This sounds a bit fantastic for me to consider because our cat is selfish and self-centered, but despite her unrelenting selfishness she is amusing and lightens our lives.

A short entry this time, dear Readers, I have to get back to the novel that I'm critiquing.

For more information about therapy pets, click here, and here.

TIME OUT!!!

TIME OUT! - I started an online class (Essential Beginnings) and have a lot of things to do, so I haven't been able to write.

Bear with me, and stay tuned, dear Readers!

Here are some pictures of cool grandkids:

JERUSALEM - #4 - The Bethlehem Incident

The Bethlehem incident happened this way.

Lauren and I arranged a half-day tour of Bethlehem with Alternative Tours, a Palistinian outfit. Alternative Tours is relatively cheap; they basically provide transportation, no tour guide to speak of. This was fine with us. One could easily take a taxi or bus to the Bethlehem border, but we'd been warned that once you got into the West Bank side, the hawkers and taxi drivers were very aggressive as to be threatening. My friend Marichi warned that taxi drivers will take your money, then abandon you when you are in church; or they will jack up prices even if previously negotiated. We didn't want to deal with this hassle and therefore arranged for the tour. Alternative Tours could accompany you to Bethlehem and back to Jerusalem.


Anton picked us up at the Jerusalem hotel. There were four young Americans in the group - one man, three women, one of them a Muslim-American wearing a veil. The young man was from Utah, the Muslim-American was from Florida, and I forget where the other two came from. They were graduates from Harvard, Brown, and the University of Miami, now studying Middle East Policies in the University of Cairo. They all spoke Arabic. They had taken a bus from Cairo through the Sinai, via Taba, a 15 hour trip.

In the van, we small-talked about Egypt and Israel and looked forward to seeing Bethlehem. The tour included a visit to the Church of the Nativity, the Milk Grotto, and the Bazaar.

Bethlehem is not far from Jerusalem and in around 30 minutes we were at the border. We thought it'd be cursory check. We handed our passports to the border guard, a young woman in her early 20s who peered into the van window. She took the passports, scrutinized the pictures on the passports, matching these with our faces. Then she riffled through the passport pages, studying each and every stamp. Then, there was a problem. She spoke in Hebrew to the driver who answered, and I caught something like "Americain," explaining that we were all Americans. There was still a problem, and she continued talking. The driver answered her. Then the border guard returned to her kiosk and called someone. We asked Anton what the problem was, and he said one passport did not have an entry stamp - it was Sahara's the Muslim American woman from Miami.

We waited, remaining unruffled. After all, we held American passports. Sahara, who was born and raised in Miami of Bangladesh background, was very calm, sweet, and composed. While waiting, we looked at the wall separating Bethlehem from Israel - tall, gray, looking like concrete slabs.

Two military men with uzis showed up, peered into the van to study all of us, their eyes zeroing in on Sahara's little sweet face covered with the veil. More Hebrew between them and the driver. They asked why Sahara did not have an entry stamp. The students explained that they had traveled by bus, and they had a separate piece of paper that had the entry stamp. The military police said he had the three documents, but where was Sahara's? She said someone took it away from her. Back and forth this went, and just when I was feeling they would pull her out of the van, one of the military police shoved his head into the window and said, "Where are your visas?" In unison, we said, "We don't need visas!" Our driver said something like, "They are Americans. They do not need visas here." The police had an embarrassed look, and he straightened himself and waved us off.


Israel and the West Bank look the same - the same hills, the same olive trees, the same sheep gnawing on the grass; it's just the wall and man's minds that have separated the two places.

In any case, when we got to the Church of the Nativity, Anton turned us over to a West Bank Palistinian tour guide. He led us into the church where Christ was born. Bypassing the long line of tourists, he led us to the Exit side, and instructed us to slip in two by two into the lower area where the Nativity site was. He had made arrangements with the church to do this, otherwise we'd have to stand in line for 2 hours. I was still nervous from that border experience, and add to that having to sneak into the Exit door where another Tour Guide shouted, "This is exit only!" and an Orthodox priest saying the same - I was somewhat fuzzy when I first saw the Nativity site. Fortunately I was able to visit it a second time. Click here for a site about the Church of the Nativity.The actual site where Jesus was born is marked by a silver star, which visitors kiss. Above this is a recess containing an altar, and hanging oil lamps. There are the Manger Chapel and Altar of the Three Kings in the area, which in my haste, failed to visit.


The rest of the tour included a visit to the adjoining St. Catherine's church with St. Jerome's relics and the Milk Grotto Chapel. We did a bit of shopping - Bethlehem makes olive wood products, rosaries, Crosses, statues. We walked down the Bazaar and through Manger Squre. It was very clear that the economy in Bethlehem was in bad shape. Numerous souvenir shops were closed. Children were begging. People seemed more hardup than in Jerusalem. In the bazaar area, we saw a poster of a recent Hamas martyr. Our guide said many Christians have left Bethlehem.

Returning to Jerusalem, I worried that we'd have the same problems as we did earlier, but fortunately nothing eventful happened. But what lingered was the feeling of fear. I thought to myself that if this kind of interrogation and intimidation could happen to US citizens, how much worse could it be to Palistinians. I had the feeling that someone like Sahara could have been whisked off somewhere and possibly never seen again. That was how I felt.

JERUSALEM - #3

I will be lazy here and post an excerpt of an email sent to a friend about Israel primarily:

"I will admit I had a bit of apprehension about going to the Middle East, given the political situation. I was worried for Lauren, not for me because he's the one who looks like the "enemy." Surprisingly he didn't get any flack really. You will have heard about the Muslim-American young student who had a difficult time at checkpoints (in Israel)? She and 3 other American students attending Cairo University were in Jerusalem, and we were together to visit Bethlehem. Now these kids entered Israel via land and didn't get their passports stamped; they got a piece of paper, which in the case of Sahara, had been taken away at some point, so she had no entry record. At the Bethlehem border there was a lot of excitement over this, with the young-woman-with-an-uzi checkpoint guard calling her superiors etc. After a lot of la-de-dah they allowed her/us to go to Bethlehem. We didn't have trouble returning to Jerusalem. But these young kids joined a Political Tour and we learned that they had difficulty returning to Jerusalem; their Palistinian tour guide had to travel far to another check point to get that kid back into Jerusalem.

When we were in the Old City during Passover (we lucked out) there were numerous military people with uzis; and there were the checkpoints on the way to Nazareth and Masada. The soldiers are so young, and at the checkpoints and at the airport security, there are many young women. They were arrogant and made little attempt to be polite - I guess this is what power does. In the Tel Aviv airport on our way out, someone cut in front of us and when Lauren asked about this, this woman said, "I'm security and I can do anything."

I kept thinking that there was a reversal of roles there, where the abused is now the abuser. The Palistinians are clearly second-class citizens and I can imagine that they must need to have their IDs and documents in strict order at all times, in case they are quizzed. We stayed in a Palistinian hotel and used a Palistinian tour agency; they were fine. The Palistinian tour guide was an angry man and he went on about the shelling that killed children.

Too many stories really. I'll try and blog them bit by bit.

So, yes, I enjoyed the visit to both Egypt and Israel. It was safer than I imagined, but in Egypt we were insulated; our group had an armed guard. The tourist sites were great. The political situation is disturbing. I think the US is now the modern day Romans."

(more later)

JERUSALEM - #2

The places we visited in Jerusalem included: the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Ethiopian Church, the Tomb of David, the Last Supper Room (Coenaculum), the Wailing (Western Wall), the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, house where Mary was born, Mary's tomb, Mount of Olives, the Grotto of Gethsemane, and the Garden Tomb. We also walked around part of the ramparts.


There was much to see and do in the Old City. Each corner seemed to have a church or structure that had some biblical or historical importance. I talked about the number of people worshipping in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Wailing Wall on Passover was just as crowded. At first I didn't understand why a wall could be the holiest place for Jews but I later understood that it was the retaining wall of the temple wherein the holy of holies had stood. The wall butts up against the Temple Mount. The first and second Jewish temples had stood on the Temple Mount where the Dome of the rock now stands, and which is under Muslim control. Jews are forbidden, according to their Torah, to go to the Temple Mount because of its sanctity. It is believed that Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac on the Temple Mount. The second temple on the mount was where Christ walked, preached, and performed miracles. The Dome of the Rock had been built by Muslims to commemorate Mohammad's ascension into heaven. In short, the Temple Mount is holy to all three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

One of the places we particularly enjoyed was the Mount of Olives which is a huge stretch of hilly land dotted with olive trees. It was more peaceful there, and I could understand why Christ liked resting here. There is a grotto near an ancient Roman cemetery, and this was where Christ and his apostles liked to stay. It was here where Christ experienced His "agony in the garden." A nearby church has a courtyard with ancient olive trees, some of which were witnesses to Christ's agony.

We also enjoyed visiting the Garden Tomb which has a lovely garden and a tomb site. A British had suggested that this was the actual site where Jesus was buried, but archeologists have disputed this. In any case the place is serene and it has many sections tucked away in the garden where people could meditate or have Mass.