Day 6 - June 26, 2008

This morning was hilarious. We were both asleep and I was freezing from the air conditioning. It felt like really early in the morning and all the sudden we hear our door open and some guy saying hello. Well I rolled over to look, but didn't see anything. After he left, Monica got up and looked out the door. Then she got back in bed and told me it was like 5am! So then we were like what the heck, why is someone coming in our room? We layed there for like another hour and then we got our wakeup call. The funny thing was our wakeup call was at 10am so we thought it was way early, but it wasn't it was 10am and we slept the entire time. It was crazy. Then Charlie tried to convince us that he called our room as well as came and knocked on our door. We didn't believe him!

Today was a travel day. Our destination was St. Catherines Monastery, which is at the foot of Mount Sinai. The bus ride was pretty much torture since it was like six hours. We killed time by talking, sleeping, eating snacks, and listening to music. Our favorite stop of the day was to get a Magnum ice cream bar, which are the most amazing ever!

It wasn't until the end of the bus ride that Brother Gunnerson mentioned how they normally fly to our destination to make it faster, but he thought a six hour bus ride of nothing but desert would enlighten us and give us a visual picture of what Moses went through. We seriously almost kicked him off the bus. Then later we could tell that the trip was taking a toll on him as well when he started getting really excited about one tree. He pointed out that it was the only tree around and then we started seeing more and he was pretty bummed out. But they were very pretty acacia trees.

Finally we got to our hotel...well if that's what you want to call it. Monica and I felt very watched as we walked the runway to our room. This place is in the middle of nowhere, but it was creepy as all the Egyptian men were lined up watching us. Anyway we were a little scared we might be taken advantage of during the night since our door didn't lock. We ate a disgusting dinner and then sat by the beautiful pool and talked to our guide Amad. He told us about his courtship and customs of his religion. It was really interesting.

Then we headed off to bed. I wasn't feeling very good as we walked to the room and shortly after realized I had vertigo. It's not a fun thing to have ever, but especially since we were going to hike Mount Sinai the next day. I asked for a blessing and it was an awesome experience as Charlie and Brother Gunnerson blessed me. Monica and I said a prayer together and then tried to sleep since tomorrow is going to be a long day.