31 May 2012

We finally got the chance to meet Jordanian students today, which was rather exacting. It’s a little late in the trip, I know, but I talked to a lot of really nice people. Ties for the future now! This one girl that I talked with is studying English literature and is only in her first year in school (granted, she studied English a bit in high school). She spoke better English than I did, though. I swear (maybe not, but she as well have). She really liked my Arabic accent, though, which was a really nice feeling. Then they all asked me if I had ever been in a movie. I apparently looked really familiar to all of them. They were all rather insistent. I told them that I hadn’t, but then accidentally told them about the movie I was sort of an extra in in Howell. I think I just gave them a really skewed impression if the US although I tried to fix it. After all, we all live in Hollywood and know all of the actor and superstars.

We also went to the Jordan River, too. We went to the original baptism site (at least supposedly). Being around that much history in a place that is so important to so many people was really interesting. The Jordan River is also the border between Jordan and Israel, so I was about 15 feet from Israel, too. I wonder how many people have tried to cross. Bad idea. I’ll be there soon enough! 

Then the Dead Sea. Wadi Rum is still my favorite place, but the Dead Sea is definitely ranked number two. For those of you that don’t know The Dead Sea is known for its ridiculously high salt concentration which makes everyone float. To sink you would have a mixture of really mad skill and really bad luck. It has a whole bunch of oil and minerals in it too. It’s really good for you. Dead Sea mud and salts are sold all over the place. Next time you go to the mall, take a look. It kills if you have cuts or bad skin (or if you get it in your eyes. Can tell you that from experience), but if not, you can just float for hours. We were in there in the afternoon after we arrived, but then went up to the pool after a little while (Yup. We were at a resort). There were two levels of pools, and as a crazy story of the day, some guy dove from the top pool to the for foot deep bottom pool (15 foot jump?). The lifeguards were betting with him and urging him on. So strange. Somehow he survived perfectly unscathed.

We went back out later for the sunset later. We just floated out. Made it almost half way out. Wit the sunset, you could just see the sky line for Jerusalem. We “swam” back as the sun was setting, but let me tell you. Swimming in the Dead Sea doesn’t really exist. The only way you can sort of do it is if you’re on your back, but I have a theory that it’s just a lot of hoping. It’s really funny to see people try. For a while, despite trying to make it, we seemed to not go anywhere. Maybe even pushed out further to the side.

I also got the chance to have a nice little conversation with someone in French today. He found out that I spoke a little Arabic and then he said that he knows French and it just went from there. For a lot of this trip it’s been nearly impossible to switch over to French quick enough to actually have a conversation. Arabic always comes out (even if whenever I need to use Arabic, I always seem to think in French). It was really cool to actually speak a language I know well enough to speak.