26 May 2012

Saturday. Alright. After waking up, we had a huge breakfast. It was absolutely delicious, everything made right there. So much of it. I feel like I end up eating so much here. Everyone is so pushy with food. “Eat more! Eat more!” “You need this,” and from Abu Yazin (our tour guide), he continually offers food and jokingly (but seriously) tells us that it’s rude to refuse food or that we need to finish what’s there. So much food. It’s a good thing we have to walk up/down a crazy hill/mountain every time we want to go anywhere. I cannot stress how hilly Jordan is.

But after that, we headed out to Petra. I can’t say how cool it is. That is a major understatement. There’s not much to say that I’m able to say, but it’s just so… impressive? We hiked a while down a path that largely wound through a canyon-esque “area.” Then all of a sudden you look forward and you can see the treasury through these rocks. With the sun shining, it almost looks as if it glows. It’s just so tall. We went on the off-season (peak seasons are in April and October), but there were still so many people just walking around experiencing the same thing.

After that we headed out further to go to the monastery (which is up about 880 stairs). Luckily, at the last minute we decided to use donkeys. Very few people agree with me, but I think I like riding donkeys. It did feel pretty different from horses and they seemed a bit too comfortable with taking routes very close to the cliff sides. It was kind of intense. And apparently the donkeys like to play bumper cars with the wall. There were several scuffed knees in the group.

The view from the top was amazing (a little ways above the monastery). There was a little shop up there, to and it kind of made me wonder what it’s like to get to work every day, for the trip up, but also the work environment. I can barely fathom what it would be like. I imagine that it would become just an accepted part of life, but…

After making the trek down and running into someone who happened to be from Jenison (about 10 minutes from GVSU) that happened to be walking down right behind us, the next part of our adventurous weekend began. Off to Wadi Rum; the desert.

Before now my favorite place was “The Bowl,” a beautiful sand dune in Saugatuck along Lake Michigan. It’s absolutely beautiful, but after this trip I don’t think I can say that any more. Wadi Rum (granted it stretches on forever and I only saw a select part) is so amazing. This is where Lawrence of Arabia lived/stayed (we passed by the camp), and I truly can understand why he would stay there. Or maybe I just have a thing for sandy places.

This is where we picked up a ride from a group of trucks that took us into the desert to our camels. You guys, I rode a camel. I was so excited for this, and I really wasn’t let down. Something that I’ve now thought a lot about, though: camels are weird. You should go look up a picture right now and look at their eyes. Look at their feet. They are such bizarre animals. And riding them is different. You’re supposed to ride them cross-legged. I’m trying to imagine running on them. (I’m not sure if it’s the same terminology as horses, so I figured I’d be generic.)

After, we came to the camp that we were to stay at that night. It was so cool. They weren’t exactly true Bedouins, although technically they were. They became rather rich from their ties to the land and so basically go to the desert as a camping trip because they have the camp and can afford to do so. It was so nice there. They even had real bathrooms.

That night we ate food cooked underneath the sand, sang and danced around the campfire and slept underneath the sky (the clouds were hidden by an extremely overcast sky (a slightly unlucky part of the trip). I hope that one day I’ll get the opportunity to go back. I need to figure out a way back.

25 May 2012

I’m going to have to write about this past weekend in chunks because so much has happened, so here I day one. Friday.

We started off the day headed toward Wadi Ibn Hammad. The road down was a windy, one-lane road. Slowly we made it to the bottom thanks to the impressive driving skills of our driver. On the way back after the little escapade, he even managed to squeeze by another bus as both busses tried to turn around a corner.

Here, though, we took a hike through a river/stream. It was so pretty. It had an oasis-esque feel . I can’t explain the lighting, but it was dark and light at the same time. From the water through the rocks (minerals from where the water was coming from) colored the rocks. There were pal trees everywhere. Some areas were wider but a lot of the way included the water and then huge rocks walls that created a tunnel-like walk way. It’s actually kind of sad, though. A few years ago, several French tourists died because of this set up. There was a sudden flash food and there was no way to get out of the path. 

Our adventure wasn’t nearly as terrible. We hiked for a little over an hour before turning back making our way down and then back up a waterfall (20 ft?). It was kind of funny, on our way back, we went to go climb back p, and as luck would have it, there was a group of people that had just started to come down. I swear they multiplied. I first counted twenty, and then by the end there were at least forty. More and more kept coming down. It started to get really homey down there, almost like we were at a party. There were people of all ages, and this group of teenage guys provided a never ending source of entertainment as they played different “games.” For a while they would sit in the water and stack rocks on ther shoulders and head and see how long they could balance the towers. They also scaled the sides to see how high they could be and jump down. Eventually they helped us get back up afterward, though, which was a very pleasant surprise.

After, we headed over to the little village of Shobak. There’s a huge crusaders castle there, and that’s where we explored for a while. I thought that l liked to explore before, but castles kind of give adventures at Tech a bit of competition. Especially considering how we left the castle. There are several secret passageways that provide quick exits for people if, for example, the castle is under siege. There is such a good water supply to the castle that it could last out just about anything, but they were there just in case. (Another “funny” story about French tourists. One of the passageways was made specifically for the king and would crumble behind him so that people wouldn’t be able to follow. When going into one, this man decided that he wanted to see if it actually worked because he didn’t think that it could. Sure enough it did and he ended up locking his tour guide inside. It took six hours to get things straightened out and the tour guide out of the tunnel.)

But down we went into this tunnel carved under the castle. It was pitch black, an we had just a handful of small headlamps spaced out along the line of people. There were “stairs” occasionally, but those were few and far between and shoddily carved out when they were there, so most of the time it just included crab walking down hills. It was so cool. 

After getting out, we walked through the “countryside” to get back to the Bedouin camp we were staying at. (Before we left for the castle we had dropped our stuff off and had a quick lunch.) We stayed up for a while and just hung out. They attempted to teach us a new form of dubka, which seems so easy, but I still can’t seem to get the right beat. Then a group of us went to stay in the tent that they had along the side of the mountain/hill the camp was on. It was so beautiful. The sky was clear and you could see for miles (Abu Yazin, our pretty freaking awesome tour guide, has a laser that goes 7/9 (or something crazy like that) kilometers, so he was point out things across the valley.)It was really great.

25 May 2012

This week has pretty much been full of studying and the like. It’s been pretty successful. I feel like I’m really learning a lot. Verbs. Verbs. Verbs. Quite a bit of them. Words, too, though, in general. I think the highlight of the week was “adventure.” We receive our vocab words from conversations that we have in class, and that’s what we ended up talking about. This weekend is going to be quite a bit of an adventure. I can’t say much now, but be prepared. 

Like I was saying earlier, this week hasn’t been too terribly exciting. Not truly blog worthy (It’s mostly been things that I’ve already said or involve school). I have been offered so much tea/coffee, though. Particularly in shops. It’s been pretty cool. Just waiting for a friend of mine to try on shirts that she could wear to the mosque (long sleeves!), the shop owner went and got us coffee. Having a conversation with him in Arabish was really fun.

Also, bananas and watermelons are in season and so freaking delicious.

Today, though, a bit more happened. We started off in class talking about random things leading to a conversation about run-ins with the police. Jenna and I went to the library afterward to find sources for our projects. Maisel wants us to find to Arabic sources. So that was pretty interesting: navigating the catalog and communicating with the people at the desk. The system is a little complicated (which is why Maisel wanted us to go through it) so I won’t try to explain it here. After awkwardly communicating with the desk people and having the one man help us find the books, we walked around trying to find a place to write. But as a very general rule, Jordanians are particularly helpful people. Thus, seeing two American girls looking a tad lost in the library led to this two to try to help us. Unfortunately, they  also didn’t speak English. We just wanted to sit down at the table, but they kept trying to move us elsewhere. Then the found someone who knew a bit more English who was incredibly nice. There was still quite a bit of confusion, but eventually Jenna and I just gave up and ended up walking to an aisle and sitting on the floor to take notes.

Then this afternoon we went to another mosque. Unlike the first, we (the women) were able to go into the main prayer hall. It was really neat. To go into the mosque we had to wear abayas, too, and that was kind of cool. After a few more stops (the Coptic church next door, an art gallery), we stopped at a place called Wild Jordan (which is the headquarter for a conservationist organization). It wasn’t quite what we expected and seemed to be just an information center with a gift shop and a restaurant.  It had such a pretty view, though. It was on the neighboring mountain/hill to the citadel we went to a week ago. The city just stretches on forever and the citadel just sits on the hill. Down below offered something interesting as well. We saw a group of people speaking in what I presume to be Arabic sign language, which I thought was really cool.

Then we walked through one of the main neighborhoods in Amman, through the set-up of a market that starts tomorrow (It’s only on Fridays). It was such a beautiful part of town.

Then we were serenaded as we ate dinner (which is where we were walking to, through the city). People played the violin and he switched with a man playing the saxophone. They would play at us and everything. They kind of made me a laugh a little bit. J

But khalas. That’s enough for now. Early day tomorrow as we head off to our little adventure. See you on the other side.

21 May 2012

Yesterday was supposed to just be a chill out day. We didn’t have anything planned, which was good. Time to catch up on everything that we’d been putting off because we’re always so busy. It didn’t really turn out that way though. There’s so much to catch up on.

In the afternoon, Jenna and I went out to run a few errands. We successfully figured out the Arabic ATM, and my bank thankfully did not cancel the transaction on me. That might be a bad thing, but it makes things easier. At least for now. We went out to eat at this small restaurant that our group really seem to likes. We got into a really nice conversation with the store owner. He even brought us out coffee!

Last night I went with Jenna to her church’s “sister” church. It was a service entirely in Arabic, and I didn’t really understand whole concepts, but I was happy with how many words I could pick out. Church is run in fusHa which is the formal Arabic that I’ve been studying. Jenna and I were also pretty good at singing along. A woman in front of us kept helping us find the pages we needed to go to. We were a little slow for the pace of the service, so it was really helpful. Then we stayed to have tea with the parishioners. They were all really nice. They talked to us in Arabic but had enough English that we could still have a functioning conversation. One of them said that he would connect us with his children so that we could have language partners. He also said that he would show us all around Amman at some point.

Homework was a bit less productive. I finished everything that need to be done, but there’s a lot coming up. Tonight there’s even more homework for tomorrow, so there will be even more procrastination. At least I try. I have a feeling that the schoolwork is going to just continue to be this intense. At least it’s productive. But I’m off to do homework!  

19 May 2012

We went to the North today. We had to leave by 7:30, but we got to go through the Jordanian countryside. It was so beautiful. We also saw quite a few goats and even some camels. I probably shouldn’t be quite as excited about this as I am. There were several little towns along the way as well that were really cool to see as well. I think the road system (as in the scenery that you drive through and the extent of it) is a mix between the UP and country roads in the lower peninsula.

The first stop was Umm Qais. This is a little town in Northern Jordan (or really not so little. It had two amphitheaters, which strongly points to the size of city. Very similar to how we gauge the size of a town by how many high schools it has). It was originally the Roman city of Gadara. It’s situated next to Syria and Israel, and on especially clear days, you can even see Lebanon. There’s a tunnel that extends to Syria, connecting the two areas (It’s one of the longest tunnels known from ancient times). When one area didn’t have enough water, it would be carried through the tunnel to the town in need. It’s a nice little system, but I guess that if neither of they had water they both were still out of luck.

Speaking of the amphitheaters, though, in regard to Amman, it only has one. This is a really interesting little fact, now considering that it is the largest city in Amman now with a bajillion houses and people (I don’t know exact numbers). I’m not sure of the progression, but back in 1917, there were easily less than 50 or so buildings. It was tiny. A lot of Jordan was like that, though. The concept of the country lines that we know now didn’t really come about until colonization and with that, cities weren’t really developed into concrete entities either.   They did exist, and there were people, but it wasn’t like what we know now.

The Syrian land is called the Golan Heights. It’s a segment of disputed territory: It’s Syrian land, but it’s currently occupied by Israel. If any of you have seen my pictures that I posted already, I’ve already said this, but the Golan Heights are surrounded by treated territory that kills all of the vegetation around the area. This disallows people from going in or out of the territory without permission/notice of Israel.

Biblically, though, this is a pretty cool place. It’s right next to the Sea of Galilee. It also has road that goes all the way to Jerusalem. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting part of being there, but walking down the road is probably one of my favorite parts. For me, walking in historical places is one of the best experiences. I can just imagine when the city hadn’t fallen (There was a giant earthquake in 747 that “destroyed” most of these historical sites) and the city was alive. I can imagine the sounds. At one point it was so normal. It makes me wonder what things will be like in another thousand years.

After that we went to Ajlun which is a crusaders castle. A lot of people were pretty stationary, but after the main tour, a few of us got to explore throughout the entire thing which involved a lot of jumping over crumbled rocks and jumping through windows. It was really cool. I might need to find more crumbling castles. It can be my new pastime. There probably are a lot of them in West Michigan, right?

Then we went to Jerash, which is an old Roman city that is still rather intact. It’s really large, too. There are two temples (one for Zeus and one for Artemis), plus yet another amphitheater. There was a place for horse racing, and vendors, giant gates. The streets amused me a bit, too: there were cross walks. Every so often, there were strips of perpendicular lines (to the sides of the road) that would indicate space for people to walk through the passing carts and etc. Also something about the roads (which was also in Umm Qais), there are little ruts in the stones for the carts to pass through as well.

After the trip some of us went out to watch the soccer game at the little café down the hill. I had my first American-esque food so far (Turkey sandwich with French fries. Exciting, I know).

But that is all. I’ll write to you all soon. I hope that it’s not bad that I keep writing so much.