Egypt Closing Ceremonies

On the last official day of the Imagine Cup competition, we gave out awards at an outdoor venue that we built from scratch near the Pyramids. So the backdrop to the awards ceremony was the Pyramids. The night was warm, and the mosquitoes weren't too bad. Our students ended up winning five awards; more than any other country except Brazil. This doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize we have never won more than one.

This picture was taken from the award ceremony venue with my point-and-shoot. Many people have asked me for it since. I'll probably use it as my computer desktop this fall.

These are most of the US kids at the ceremony before it got dark.


This is the stage with the "Imagine Cup" on the stand.

These are my fellow US Microsoft Evangelists that came to Egypt

The stage from my seat with the Pyramids in the background as night has fallen.

Kathy Pham and Marc Pare were one of the winning teams. They won $8,000 for designing a computer program and reads the news on the Internet and rates the positive/negative sentiment on whatever subject you ask about.

Shot of the Pyramids from the stage

After the ceremony we had a closing (good-bye) party back at the hotel. Kathy and Marc and the two girls from BYU (Rachel and Tara) arrived and no one was dancing so they grabbed some random guys standing around (most from Africa) and got it started. After about 30 minutes they were surrounded by admirers who must have thought they were the coolest Amercan girls ever. Rachel and Tara totally take credit for really making the party happen. Notice all the guys filming the girls. So funny! Afterwards Rachel was surrounded by guys asking for her Facebook or e-mail or whatever. Tara had to leave earlier to catch her plane home to the despair of her many admirers.

Egypt Day Three: Pyramids and the Sphinx

Today (Monday) was "cultural" day, where we visited the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and a beautiful garden in Central Cairo called Al Azhar Park. The Great Pyramids are in Giza, about an hour bus ride south east from Cairo and across the Nile River. We arrived about 8:30am and it was already quite hot. There were lots of souvenir vendors and people with camels offering rides. They were very agressive and would even grab you and try to put you on a camel and then insist that you pay them a bunch of money. It really got to be annoying. We spent about a half hour at each pyramid, then a half hour at the Sphinx, which is only about a 1/4 mile away.

As you can see the smooth stucco finish is all but worn off, except for the top of one of the pyramids.

This is a pan shot of the Sphinx. You don't appreciate the scale until the end of the first pass when you can see some horses in the background and a guy's head.

This is a mosque taken from Al Azhar Park where we had dinner.

Just at the moment when the sun slipped below the horizon, there was this racket all over the city that was louder than New Years. It was all of the calls for prayer from all of the mosques and minarets. It went on for maybe ten or fifteen minutes and then stopped.

I actually took this picture tonight at our closing ceremonies at the Pyramids (more about that in the next post), but I stuck it in here. Our desert stage was surrounded by armed security guards on camels. I couldn't resist taking this picture!

This is the building where we had our dinner. There are over 800 students, judges, mentors and staff attending this event.

This is the folk music that was playing when we arrived at the park for dinner

Egypt Day Two: Night on the Town

Today most of the students took much earned naps and relaxed while a few finished projects. In the late evening I took a group of 16 students out. First we spend an hour sailing on the nile in a gaff-rigged sailboat called a "felucca". Then we drove to a touristy area call Khan El Khalili for dinner and shopping at the bazaar. It was pretty fun and crazy. Sort of like old Tijuanna but with Eyptian junk instead. One kid about 15 years old tried to sell one of my young mail students some hashish, and another tried to show a student pictures on his cell phone of some action he had upstairs. Mostly it was just some semi-agressive but polite street vendors. I ended up buying some perfume essence and a papyrus scroll depicting the judgement in heiroglyphics.

Mosque on the way to the Nile River

Another mosque at night

We went sailing on a felucca

Group photo on our felucca. We had another eight students on another boat

Dinner was flat bread, hummus dip, cinnamon rice, lamb sausage, grilled veal and steamed vegetables.

This little music combo was playing in the restaurant. Notice the guy smoking the water pipe next to the zither player

This was us walking through the bazaar on the way to the restaurant.

Cairo, Egypt Day One

Every year Microsoft sponsors an international student technology competition, and the world-wide finals are in Cairo, Egypt this year. Microsoft has ten student teams (23 total students) that qualified for the finals and I am the lead for the US presence. I left Denver on July 1st at 8pm and arrived in Cairo at about 1am on July 3rd. One of the things they screen for at the airport is H1N1 flu. They use an infrared camera, and if they think you have a fever, they don't let you go out into public; they take to directly to a hospital and test you.


This is the lobbly of our hotel

This evening we toured a mosque in a fortress called "The Citadel" where we had our opening ceremony. The following pictures were taken in and around the Citadel tonight.