I'm going to bed at 3 a.m. after a quick koshary dinner—and I’m a long way from where I started this morning!

Still in El Fayoum, we visited a women’s group making olive oil soap and a community of basket makers.We had to cut that last visit short (which is not easy to do in Egypt where even this brief stop brought out bowls of juicy honeydew melon and fresh apricots).

I really enjoyed the soap making group.The women were waiting for us when we got there and we soon were talking and laughing together.They told us that they learned to make soap as an offshoot of an education initiative in the community.They have tried different recipes, and were interested in the sample soaps Carrie brought from the US (they remarked "ours is better" when they smelled the olive oil soap sample!).It was obvious that they felt empowered by their commercial venture, and sales were good.Carrie had some suggestions for improving production and adding some pizzazz to their packaging.I love watching the looks on faces as new ideas are introduced.

We got lucky on the traffic returning to Cairo considering it was Saturday afternoon and the end of the weekend, so we had an hour or so to spend back at Ramses College before flying to Aswan for our Upper Egypt leg of the tour.Amr joined us at Ramsis and off we went.It was only an hour flight, following the Nile all the way. I love where we are staying tonight—the Paradise Hotel.(Now I can truly say I’ve been to Paradise when I get back home!)We walked the corniche looking for a place to eat before realizing we all wanted koshary instead of a sit-down meal.

So look on your maps and you will see that we are down, down, down—make that up, up, up!—about as far south as you can go and still be in Egypt.That’s where I am for the next several days