So I'm feeling like a terrible person for my recent lack of blogging, especially because so much has happened. But in my defense, I had two midterms this week and a ton of homework. I studied really hard and actually did well, so that's a huge relief and was worth the lack of blogging!
Last week we spent four days in Jordan, and it was incredible. I didn't have a lot of expectations for the trip but it was so much fun and such a bonding experience for everyone in the program. Due to the fact that I don't want to spend forever writing about it, I'm just going to copy and paste my journal entry of the trip I wrote the last night in Jordan. I hope that's okay with everyone!
Journal entry from 1/30/13:
I'm starting to fall in love with the Middle East, something I never in a
million years thought would happen. I guess we'll go in chronological order:
The bus ride to Jordan and crossing the border was no bueno.
The border crossing took FOREVER and a lot of time was spent patiently waiting
in our bus. Luckily, the people in my class who ride a bus with me are awesome
and we love spending time together. After we got across the border we had to
switch busses and got a Jordanian tour guide, both of which are mandated by
Jordanian law. Afterwards, we drove through the "fruit basket" of
Jordan which was really green and is where most of the fruit in Jordan is
grown. All along the way, Bedouin tents and shacks dotted the countryside.
Sometimes it's hard to even imagine how so many people live in these little
run-down places with no running water, and they've been living that way for
thousands of years. We continued on our way up Mt. Nebo where Moses was shown
the Promised Land and translated. I got pretty motion sick on the way up the
mountain and the only thing I could think about when I was up there was where
the nearest bush was in case I needed it haha. As soon as I got back to the bus
I took some Dramamine and we headed to Madaba, a little city near Mt. Nebo. We
went to a really pretty church that had this mosaic on the floor that's a map
of the Holy Land. Before we could go in and see it though, our tour guide was
going on and on about every place on the map and it took forever and meanwhile
the Dramamine went into full effect and I started getting dizzy and really
ridiculously sleepy. I definitely slept through parts of his broken English
lecture and remember most about visiting the church being really dizzy. The
mosaics were really really cool though! Then it was time for lunch and we
walked pretty far across Madaba and into this really nice restaurant where they
had a buffet. I can't even begin to describe how many pitas I consumed on this
trip and in my time in the Middle East in general. There was this delicious
beef stew thing served on rice that I loved most about the restaurant. We then
boarded the bus for a 4 hour bus ride to Petra!
We all
got really cozy in the back of the bus on the bus ride to Petra. The funny part
is that my seat was in the second to last row and the back was broken so if I
put any weight at all onto the seat it would fold all the way back onto my
friend Spencer's lap who was sitting in the seat behind me and whose seat
didn't go back. So that got uncomfortable really fast. There
isn't much to see in the Jordanian countryside to be honest. We finally made it
to Petra which has a little town full of hotels. We were greeted at our hotel
with a downpour outside and madness trying to unload the bus and get inside.
Once inside, I was pleasantly surprised by delicious orange drinks and a nice
lobby- way nicer than I had expected our hotel to be! We went straight
downstairs to the hotel restaurant where we consumed all sorts of good food and
listened to this really cool Arabic-sounding music a man was playing for us in
the restaurant. We dropped our things in our hotel rooms and a bunch of us congregated in the lobby and headed out into the rain
because my friend Mikkel somehow managed to leave all of his toiletries at the Jerusalem
center. Even though our teachers advised we didn't go out that night because we
needed sleep, most of us went out anyways and I did not regret that decision.
We went down the hill and into some little shops and talked to the friendly
shopkeepers who I'm sure were bored because the rain kept customers away. The
coolest shopkeeper was this guy who made sand bottles with dyed sand from Petra
and showed us how he made them- the designs and patterns are super intricate
with camels, the sun, sand, etc. There was also this man at another shop who
tied a scarf around my head the way they do it in the middle east and also put
this eyeliner on me. It was really fun. That night, I experienced the strangest
shower of my life at the hotel because the bottom of it with the drain was way
smaller than the curtains so water went all over the bathroom. It was kind of
funny.
Morning
of day two started with a 6am wakeup call and breakfast at the hotel. We then
walked just down the street to Petra- one of the seven wonders of the world!
How do I even describe this day? It was freezing cold in the morning and really
wet out because of the heavy rains the night before. The canyon leading into
the site that you had to walk through was washed out in places. We had to
listen to our tour guide talk for a long time while we walked through the canyon,
which has all sorts of cool carvings all along the way then finally the
treasury started to appear and then all the sudden I was standing in front of
the treasury which is carved completely out of rock and was amazing! The first
thing I did was ride some camels with a bunch of other students. We just went
on a short ride in front of the treasury. We then walked and saw a bunch of
other tombs carved out of the side of the mountains and it was absolutely
astounding. There are all sorts of Bedouin merchants along the way selling
jewelry and camel rides and little Bedouin kids selling things too. Next a
group of us went on a hike up to the monastery- the coolest thing EVER. It was
especially cool because I didn't even know what exactly we were hiking to and was
so surprised when it was so huge. The hike up there was actually really long
and was full of stairs carved out of the rock and got pretty tiring but was SO
beautiful. We made friends with a little Bedouin girl name Timone who hiked up
it every day to sell jewelry. There were merchants all along the hike up. We
stayed at the monastery for like two hours, took a ton of pictures, and had a
great time. Some of my guy friends, especially Preston, dressed up as Indiana
Jones which made the experience even cooler. Up at the monastery, there's a
hike you can take further up to a lookout point. We did this and it was
absolutely stunning up there. We took a video of us dancing up there which was
really fun. We then hiked all the way down and ate lunch at a nice restaurant
in the middle of Petra and I ate lamb for the first time (I have now eaten it
3x this trip). We get taken care of like royalty here at BYU Jerusalem, it is
so great! I didn't have to pay for any of the meals on this trip. Next we
walked and shopped at the Bedouin merchant stands. My friends Lindee and Hannah
and I were bartering with this older woman for a really long time and finally
made an agreement. She went to go get change and it took a really really long
time and we were running out of time before we had to be back at a meeting
spot. So then we had to run through the middle of the super rocky path, uphill,
past all of these boys yelling trying to get us to ride camels and donkeys and
cat-calling us, through a ton of Asian tourist groups, and finally met up in
front of the treasury. And Petra is HUGE. Way way way bigger than my
imagination saw it before I came. We then walked with our group out of the
canyon and met up with horses which we got to ride back to the busses. The
horse guide gave me a whip to whip the horse and as I was attempting, I managed
to whip myself a few times as well haha. It didn't hurt too bad but the marks
were funny. I got the horse to go faster and lost the horse guide but parked
the horse myself- having a ton of fun along the way. We then did some last
minute shopping outside of Petra and loaded the bus for a 4 hour bus ride to
Amman!
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| We made the motto for the trip "Jump on it in Jordan" for obvious reasons |
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| Just hanging out with Indiana Jones |
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| Bedouin Merchant |
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| Lookout Point at Petra |
Amman was shockingly really nice. I guess I didn't know what to expect but a really nice and huge city was not exactly what I had imagined. Our hotel managed to be even nicer than the last one and the funny thing is that when we arrived I had to use the bathroom SO BAD. I got off the bus and ran around the hotel trying to find a bathroom because my roommate had taken off to the hotel room with both keys and I didn't know which room was ours. Finally after meeting up with her, I was able to get situated in the room. That night we enjoyed a really good dinner at the hotel and I went out to the city twice! Even though I am in the very middle of the middle east, where Americans don't usually imagine American stores and friendly people, that's exactly what I found. I didn't feel unsafe at all and there were lots of little ice cream shops and even this Nestle store which was really nice, had great cookies, and an awesome seating area some of us hung out in. It was fun because I think the store had just barely opened for the first time so they gave us lots of samples and after we'd been there awhile and some of us had bought things, they came out and gave us two big bags of cookies for free! I went back to the hotel and found out that my friend Preston had gotten his mission call and was able to Skype his parents. He wouldn't tell us yet where he was going, but he wanted to go see the city so I went out with him with two other girls. We ran around, he got a shake, and we came back just before our 10:30 curfew. I was absolutely impressed with the city of Amman and how nice everything was. Of course, we only went to one street of it and I'm sure it was the nicest street in the whole city so maybe my perspective isn't representative of the entire city. People in this city often have traditional Muslim clothing on and some of the women are fully clothed so that only their eyes can be seen. I used to view this as kind of scary before I came here but after seeing this a lot it doesn't even seem strange anymore- it almost seems strange not having my hair covered.
Thursday
we had a 7am wakeup call but both me and my roommate went back to sleep and I
luckily woke up at 7:45 and we rushed to get ready. We made it on time and I
even had time for a quick breakfast at the hotel. The first site we saw was the
citadel of Amman and it was freezing cold that early in the morning. There were
some cool ruins, including the ancient temple of Hercules! We then drove quite
a ways up to Jerash. On the way, we stopped at the Jabbok River and had a
devotional. This is the river where Jacob split his family into two groups
prior to his return to Esau, then wrestled with an angel who changed his name
to Israel. This was a really cool place and I loved being able to sing hymns
while sitting on rocks next to a river that had such biblical significance. Our
next stop was lunch at this BBQ restaurant where we could see them making this
giant pita bread we got to eat. There were all sorts of hummus and dips for it
and I had a lot of fun trying them all out. The BBQ meats were really good too.
From there, we then went to Jerash- which was so much cooler than I ever
thought ruins could be! There were just so many intricate designs all over the
columns and two big amphitheaters and a hippodrome. It was one of the ten big
roman cities and was the best preserved out of all of them. It was surprisingly
huge and there was so much to see! Our tour guide talked and talked but we came
to a amphitheater and listened to these guys bagpiping and they were really
good. Then a bunch of the students including myself went down and sang a hymn
because the acoustics were awesome. It was really cool because other tourist
groups loved it. After listening to our tour guide for awhile, we were let free
to roam! Some of us did a dance in an amphitheater which was fun, then we just ran around with other
people taking pictures at a lot of ruins and I had a blast. There was a really
green grassy meadow with goats roaming and ruins and the city in the background
and it was just really really pretty and sunny too. After seeing lots of things
we finally came upon a bathroom and I had to go so bad that I used the
squatter- the only stall available! It was quite the experience. There was a
bathroom attendant who put soap on my hands and gave me paper towels, which is
a normal thing here. Everyone had to run to get to the busses on time and we
didn't have nearly enough time at all of the ruins because believe me when I say
this place was huge! I loved every
minute of that stop. We had like an hour on the bus and everyone was exhausted
and I wasn't but I got some really good video of people sleeping haha. The next
place we went was the royal automobile museum, where King Hussein of Jordan's
car collection is on display. There were definitely some cool cars! It was
absolutely pouring rain when we got out of the museum and we were supposed to
go see a mosque but it was too rainy so we were in traffic for a long time
(because of the rain) then had some free time at the hotel to relax. Dinner at
the hotel was once again great and then a bunch of us went back out to the city
to Rainbow Street again. I had Nutella ice cream which would blow your mind
it's so good, then we hung out in the same Nestle store and they were cranking
American music in there and loved that we were there. We were doing some
dancing which might not be socially acceptable here but I don't think it
mattered all the much because the store seemed so American (although maybe it
did, I don't know). After getting back to the hotel, I discovered the roof of
our tall hotel with some friends and was blown away at the view of the entire
city! It was unreal. Definitely an awesome end to an awesome day. That brings
me to right now and I should definitely be asleep. I have to say that I have
been so pleasantly surprised at how much fun this trip is and I have moved from
friend level with my class to family level. This trip has totally bonded us and
I can't even imagine what the next few trips are going to do to us!
(end of journal entry)
The next day, we packed up and headed out during an intense rainstorm. There was a lot of time spent on the bus and I was getting pretty sick of being on a bus at this point. But on our way out of the country we got to do the coolest thing ever- go to the Jordan River where Christ was baptized! By then the sun was peeking out and it was really pretty. There was a muddy path we had to take to get down to the river and I totally ate it in the mud while walking down haha. Luckily I didn't get too muddy and was able to enjoy the devotional we had there and loved the peace and Spirit we felt there. This was really a cool experience and one of the highlights of the whole trip.
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| Jordan River |
Overall, Jordan was really fun and packed with memories. I'm so glad I was given the chance to go and hope to remember it forever.
Sarah this is amazing, I'm so glad you're having a blast! Excuse me while I continue to stalk the rest of your blog...
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