Good times in Jordan

Jordan far exceeded my expectations. I was thinking, “Cool. I’ll get to see Petra and the rest will probably be kinda cool too”. Um, yeah. I was very wrong. The rest was much more than just kinda cool.

I took a ton of pictures. I wish I could share them all, but I could only pick a few so that I wouldn’t bore my blog readers with pictures that probably all look the exact same to them. Your welcome. However, I’m still going to end up sharing tooons of pictures. So bare with me here. 

We left on Monday. Luckily, every one got through customs without any trouble and we made it to the country of Jordan! We went to Mt. Nebo (no pictures I took were worthy of making this post) then to Madaba. Madaba is believed to be the place that John the Babtist was beheaded.

  

We drove to our hotel and we were greated by camels, flute players, Orange Juice and bread. First class treatment…not bad.  After dinner the chefs, staff, and students threw an unexpected dance party to the beat of Jordanian drums.

We woke up bright and early Tuesday morning and began our walk to PETRA! We are talking one of the seven world wonders here. One of the best parts? There were camels. EVERYWHERE! I love camels. I just love ‘em. Interesting fact: camels can growl; who knew?

On Wednesday we went to the King Abdullah Mosque. All of the women had to wear scarves to cover our hair and had to wear cape/dress things. We learned about the religion of Islam. It was interesting to see how similar their religion is to mine, but so different at the same time. 

Highlight of the day was Jerash. You are probably wondering, “What is Jerash?” (I say this because that is what I was saying until I saw it). Jerash is one of the best reserved Roman cities. They gave us some free time to “rome” the streets of Jerash. The weather was perfect and I felt like I was living in the Disney movie Hercules. 

Oh yeah, I also ate one of THE best pitas. Hot, fresh, delicious, topped with hummus. I was pretty much loving my life. Until I ate so many I felt like my life would soon be over due to hyperpitaness (a disease common to Jerusalem Center students; right, Doctor Chapman?).

 I went to a safeway on Wednesday night and bought oatmeal! Living without Oatmeal makes me miss America, but on Thursday we were fed KFC…a reason for me to remember why I don’t miss America.

Thursday morning we went to downtown Amman to a Roman Theater. We sang hymns as a group. After that we headed to the Jordan River.  The Jordan river was very muddy, flies were flying around, and the scenery wasn’t too picturesque. But Brother Harper reminded us that it is a good example of Christ descending below all to the lowest point in the world—typologically and literally—from a state of perfection to something as common and lowly as a muddy river.

So now it’s back to reality. Actually, no I don’t think I’ll be back to Reality until April. Now it’s back to normal life in Jerusalem (which means school tomorrow). Luckily we have the weekend coming up J

Props to who ever made it this far and read everything.