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Egypt: A Country of Contrast and Beauty by Juan Lopez,11R2, Deputy EditorIt is all well and good watching movies like“Team America” or reading a textbook page togive you an idea of a country. However, if youwant to smell, touch and taste, hardly anythingbeats visiting, or even better, living, in theyou also get to experience the majesty andmagnitude of what are the pyramids of Giza.Wow. There really is no point in me trying toget the message across through ink on paperusing the words of a Year 11. WI’m trying tosay is: if you only have time to do one thingwhile in Egypt, then visit the pyramids.place. I have been fortunate enough to do bothwhen it comes to Egypt.Let’s get the formalities over and done with:the capital is Cairo, it is about one and a halftimes the size of London in terms of population,the country is one of the leading economies inAfrica, the world’s longest river (the Nile) hasits mouth in Egypt, the main language and religionare Arabic and Sunni Muslim respectively,and last year there was a little dispute betweenmost of the population and former PresidentHosni Mubarak.As a tourist, you get to experience the beautyof Egypt. The hotels are ornately decorated;the weather is spectacularly hot, sunny andclear all year round and everyone is willing tohelp you no matter what your query. The storyonly gets better, thanks to the current currencyexchange; everything is very cheap, from thefood which is delicious and full of flavour andcolour, to the petrol (filling up a Land Rover isabout the equivalent to £3.50!). As a tourist,The capital, Cairo, is full of life. It never stops,not even at half past midnight on New Year’sDay. There is, of course, more to Egypt thanCairo and neighbouring Giza. Sharm-el-Sheikhis also breathtaking with its historic city centreand glistening coastline with golden beaches,or at least that is what my parents told me. Butwho could deny the splendour of the remainsof the once great Egyptian Empire at MemphisAlexandria, Aswan, Thebes, and Karnak andthe Valley of the Kings outside Luxor? The sadthing is that they are only ruins and apart fromthe occasional mummy discovered back in the1920s, the Empire is largely forgotten in everydaylife both for us in the West and Egyptians.When I said this was a country of beauty, I reallywasn’t kidding; its magnificence is boundless.It is only when you live in Cairo, and as a resultEgypt, that you start to notice the contrast. Inall honesty, I have only lived in Cairo for justless than a month at the longest period; myparents are the ones who live there perma-26