Jordan on my mind

AHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jordan was so stinkin' AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Words can never tell, but I will do my best.
Day 1: We breakfasted early and hit the road in our giant busses that look like large, large caterpillars. I’ve decided I really have to take a picture of our busses to show you all because they seriously look like gigantic caterpillars. It’s pretty dang rad. Sometimes I call our bus “Dim” like the huge bug in “Bug’s Life.” We have a good relationship.
Anyway, we headed for the border and got across in a smooth and timely manner. It’s funny—the Jordanians don’t really have any desire to see us or interact with it so one person just took all of our passports inside the crossing check while we stayed on the bus, they looked at our passports and we went on through. We could have had George flippin’ Bush on our bus and they never would have known. I kinda wished I was an illegal Mexican immigrant or something so it would have been more exciting, but being a big white American sufficed I guess. We crossed the border and our itinerary changed unexpectedly. Originally, we were supposed to go to Bethany Beyond Jordan on our way home from Jordan. But we were there and there was time and we could get a tour right then so we went to the traditional baptismal place of Christ. And boy was that cool. I loved it. The traditional spot is actually not in the actual Jordan River because in John it says that Christ was baptized beyond Jordan. The Jordan River has a bunch of smaller wadis coming off of it and it’s in one of these that they believe Christ was baptized. Anyway, we had this wonderful little devotional on John the Baptist and our teacher talked about his role in Chirst’s time and then his role in the Restoration. It was beautiful and the spirit was really strong there. It was a nice little start to the day.
We kept going and next hit Mt. Nebo. Mount Nebo is where Moses was taken to visualize the Promised Land and where some people believe him to be buried. It was pretty cool. After Mt. Nebo we went to Madaba where there is a very significant tile mosaic of a map of the Holy Land. Historians have used this mosaic map to reconstruct the Byzantine Near East. It’s huge, covering a good portion of the floor of the church it’s in. I touched it. Shhhh, don’t tell.
After Madaba we lunched at this shady little restaurant and then started our drive to Wadi Musa. I think Wadi Musa is about 3 or 4 hours from Amman, the capital. We arrived in Wadi Musa after dark and ate dinner at the Petra Palace Hotel we were staying in. They tell us to only eat fruit we’ve peeled ourselves, but they had these delicious-looking apples there that I really wanted to eat. So I took one, cut it into quarters and looked like a crazed rabbit eating only the flesh and scraping it off the peels with my teeth. I realized halfway through how I looked hunched over my plate, baring my teeth at anyone who looked at me strangely and gave it up. I think it was for the better. Some people went out that night, but I was pretty tired so I cozied down in my hotel room and did some homework. Can you say LOSER? But it was nice to not get behind at least.
The next morning my roomie and I went back to sleep after our wake-up call and so rushed around trying to make it to breakfast on time. You know, it’s funny, for some reason I always end up on the bed closest to the phone and so I usually take the wake-up call. The wake-up calls here in the Middle East aren’t friendly or happy little desk people that kindly tell you it’s your wake-up call—It’s a loud, harsh, and extremely obnoxious beeping. I think they probably just hold up the phone to the world’s most annoying alarm clock. Anyway, I’m usually so tired that I would say I am definitely not in my right mind. So the phone rings, and in the back of my head something knows it’s the wake-up call, yet I always answer in a voice striving to sound like I didn’t just wake up, “Hello?” And then when it just beeps at me I respond, “Okay, thank you.” My roomie likes to make fun of me for that. But you know, how many grateful thank you’s does that hard-working annoying little beep get everyday? Probably not many. I just like to think of myself as similar to the tenth leper.
We assembled in front of the hotel after breakfast and tromped down the street to the entrance of…PETRA! Oh man. There’s really just not much I can say to do it justice. We entered through the gates and walked down a long path until we started coming across caves and carvings in the sandstone. These were homes to the Nabateans who built and inhabited Petra. The first major thing we saw was the tomb with the obelisk façade. It was so cool! Our guide told us that the Nabateans just took a bunch of ideas from other cultures and mixed them into their own, so their culture was kind of a mish-mash of a bunch of other cultures. This particular tomb has tall obelisks on the top, similar to those of Ancient Egypt.
We kept walking until we entered the ravine. It’s this huge long and winding natural ravine that leads through the mountains to the center of Petra. The Nabateans were smart, carving waterways, gutters and cisterns and constructing dams and such to avoid flash-floods. The sandstone is beautiful in all its various shades of orange, red, and tan. It’s very similar to national parks in Utah. Anyway, at one point our guide had us look up high at a cliff face and told us there were some significant carvings up there and that we had to look very carefully to see them. So we were all looking really hard in this one direction and then he was like, “Oh, wait, I guess it is actually behind you.” So we turned around, and there, shining through the ravine in the morning sun was the treasury of Petra. Holy stinkin’ COW. It was incredible. The treasury is probably the most famous of the carvings at Petra and for good reason. It’s so detailed and awesome. It wasn’t really a treasury for the Nabateans. It got its name because back in the day people used to think the Pharaohs of Egypt used it as a treasury and had buried all their wealth within, which was completely wrong. Archaeologists nowadays think it was a temple/place of worship/possible burial tomb. We spent a while at the treasury with people bursting into random spurts of Indiana Jones Theme Music. It was funny. When we finally left the treasury, we walked to where many of the homes of the Nabateans were. The Nabateans lived there in the 4th century BC, by-the-way. We also saw the Roman cardo and theater from when they took over Petra. While by the Roman Theater we took a bathroom break and while I was standing in line, I lifted up my leg to try to stretch out my pants a little more and I TOTALLY RIPPED MY PANTS! All the way across my leg…you could see it from the front and the back. Thank goodness I had a little zip up sweater on that I could pathetically tie around my waist. I waddled around for the rest of the day a little awkwardly. Anyway, this whole time I had been planning on taking a donkey up the mountain to the monastery. When I ripped my pants I decided I probably wouldn’t take one up because I thought it would probably rip my pants more. But when we got to the bottom of the ravine my friends were all hopping on these donkeys and I could not resist. And boy I am glad I took a donkey…for multiple reasons. First, my donkey’s name was Jack. I kept talking to him in an encouraging voice saying things like, “That a boy Jack. Easy does it Jack. You’re a good donkey Jack. STAY AWAY FROM THAT EDGE JACK!” But oh man, that donkey ride was so stinkin’ fun! I got on and he just jumped right into action. The boys riding donkeys around me thought it was funny to try and get my donkey going really fast by coming up next to my donkey and making the little clicking noise that made him go faster. And then they’d laugh as he’d jump into a run and I would be screaming my head off intertwined with spurts of laughter and shouts of, “This is so cool!” It was really fun. The donkey ride up to the monastery really made the experience that much cooler, I highly recommend it to anyone ever going to Petra. Except one of my friends was riding on a donkey behind me who had gas problems the whole way up the mountain. No joke. Almost every step up he’d rip one off and I would turn around and look at my friend Bethany and say, “Bethany! My goodness!” And she could not stop laughing. I guess I’m not completely positive that it was the donkey, but that’s what Bethany kept saying so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. J
Okay, so finally our donkey’s made it to the top and we had about a five minute hike to the monastery which was absolutely awe-inspiring. It’s way up high in the mountains so you can see breathtaking vistas of the surrounding sandstone mountains, colored with patches of trees and greenery. It was GORGEOUS. We went inside the monastery and sang some hymns and then explored around for a while. It was so, so cool. But my camera died after getting a few shots of the monastery. So I was camera-less for a few days.
When we were done at the monastery we walked back down the mountain and lunched in the basin of the ravine at this restaurant they have down there. They had some delicious bread pudding…I’m all about the desserts. We had to start walking back to the entrance after lunch. But we were able to meander along and stop in all the little tent shops and such along the way. It was a perfectly beautiful day and I highly enjoyed it. When we got to the busses I changed out of my ripped pants and we started the 4 hour drive up to Amman, the capital of Jordan.
We arrived at the Ambassador Hotel in Amman and ate dinner. Then most of us headed over to the Mecca Mall by way of taxis. Dude, this mall was out of control. It was by far the biggest mall I have ever been in. We explored around and I got a blended crème at Starbucks, which was delicious. Then we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.
And there I will leave you for now…I only have two days left to go! Woot woot!