Jordan!

Hi Everybody!

Saturday through Monday I went to Jordan for a trip in between class sessions. The highlight was definitely seeing Petra. First, we walked between huge stone walls on either side that we winded through for about a mile. Then the walls ended and opened up into a clearing with a treasury that was directly in front of us. The treasury is carved out of the face of a stone wall, with huge pillars. The inside is a single room, and the walls are perfectly smooth and pink and purple swirly colors that are natural from the stone. The treasury is actually used in the last Indiana Jones, so you should all go watch that movie and see how amazing it is. The rest of Petra is spread out throughout a section of the desert, kind of like a treasure hunt where we would hike through seemingly desolate areas and come across different carvings out of the stone cliffs. These would include caves that were carved out of the stone and served as houses, in clusters next to each other making up little bedouin communities. There would also be temples. It was really striking. We spent the whole day exploring this area, and ended it with camel rides!! The camels have blankets piled up on top of their humps and they kneel down so you can climb up on them. Its a bumpy ride and they have no sense of personal space! I thought I would run into the camels on either side of me multiple times! We had a group of six people, so we were our own caravan. Our guides were about fourteen years old! I also talked to one of the kids giving donkey rides, who was about ten years old. He told me that he was on his summer vacation for two months, during which he spent the day giving rides to people at Petra. At night he slept in one of the caves with five other people! Can imagine that life? So interesting. Our second night in Jordan we stayed at a really nice hotel, which was a lot of fun. There was a wedding while we were there, and we got to watch the bride walk down the staircase to Mid Eastern music and dancing! It looked really fun. Jordan had a really different feel than Israel and felt like more of a cultural adjustment. The food was different too...really good! We had lots of different courses, with flat bread, curries, fish, different hummus dishes, various salads. All in all it was a good experience, though a lot of driving.