Spring break ended monday, and I spent the remainder of mine in Jordan with my friends Alex, Mara, Julie, and Lisa. We had a really great time doing a whirlwind tour of the country. In general, the people there were tremendously friendly and welcoming. Every time we said we were from the states, they were very excited to talk to us, and immediately mentioned something American to try to be friendly. People mentioned things from hip hop music to the author Dan Brown, and more than a few times we just got an "Obama!" Jordan's an interesting country---it's a parlimentary monarchy, but unlike England or Norway, in Jordan, real power rests entirely with the king. The Jordanian citizens absolutely love their king and queen. Every little shop, every taxicab, every hotel, has at least one picture of the king and queen in it, everytime a different picture and there's no requirement of any sort for them to have these pictures.

We started our trip in Amman, the capitol of Jordan. We stayed in a nice little hostel there and wandered the city a bunch. We found that there isn't a whole lot to do in Amman. We spent one of our two days in Amman actually in in Jerash, an amazing city of roman ruins about an hour north of Amman, well maintained almost in its entirety. We were originally going to stay 3 days, but after 2 we were ready to leave and do more exciting things.

After Amman we traveled south to Petra, stopping in Tawfil where we met 2 guys from the US State Department who studied at American University in Cairo a few years ago and had just run a marathon in Jordan. Together we got a driver to Petra, a one armed Jordanian man who shoved 8 of us into his pickup truck and frequently drove while smoking and talking on the phone at the same time. Very impressive. We stopped en route at a nice little nature preserve called Dana where we got to walk around for a bit. We proceeded onwards to petra where we stayed in a nice little hostel in Petra with an amazing dinner buffet where they watch the movie Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (which features petra) every single night.

Petra was one of the most amazing things I've seen in my entire life. It's a city built by the Nabateans starting in about 100 BCE, expanded by the Romans, and then left almost entirely alone for almost 800 years, known only to the local Bedouin tribes until a European, posing as a holy man found it and revealed it to the western world. The truly amazing thing about Petra is that instead of building structures, they just carved right into the sandstone. The structures are mostly religious in nature, and have facades almost 3 stories high in many cases with intricate carvings into the stone. Truly something to behold. Our first day in Petra we just hiked around and looked at many of the important buildings there. Our second day in Petra we took a long (like 12 mile) hike to Aaron's tomb, that Aaron, Moses' brother...kinda crazy... It was a long hike through the desert with a steep climb up the mountain at the end, but it was worth it, views from the top were amazing and we had lunch and a little nap up there, avoiding the hottest part of the day.

The next day we went to Wadi Rum, an amazing desert nature preserve. We spent the night with the Bedouins there. The Bedouins are a traditionally nomadic people that live across much of the middle east including Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. It's interesting how differently they're treated in different countries. In Israel the Bedouin are generally respected, being extremely loyal to the state of Israel, they serve in the army and are highly respected as excellent soldiers and trackers. In Egypt the Bedouin are very much discriminated against and many of the problems with violence and hostility to foreigners there have to do with Bedouins. Very different from Jordan where the Bedouins are practically legendary for their hospitality to foreigners and are given complete control of wadi rum and petra, ensuring that they profit from the tourism in their land. Experiencing their hospitality was wonderful, at every turn the Bedouins offered us tea and coffee. We got to eat the food they cook under the sand---they bury it in special contraptions and put coals on top---it's delicious.

The following day we went to Akaba, the version of Eilat just across the Jordanian border, significantly cheaper than Eilat, and much quieter. While there it became much more noticable that almost every Jordanian women wears either the ha'jab (traditional muslim headscarf) or a full burqua (you know, the head to toe business). The one very notable exception to this is the queen herself, who dresses very much like a westerner in all the photos of her. When we went to the beach the jordanian men were wearing swimsuits, the little kids were running in the water, and the jordanian women were wearing head to toe black robes including headcovering. It made us a little uncomfortable politically, but even more so when mara and lisa got looks from a lot of the people around ranging from looks of strong disaproval to leering stares from some of the guys. I also had rather serious stomach problems while I was there---traveler's stomach issues, but even so, Akaba was beautiful, and after such intense tourism, a few days on the beach was very very relaxing.

Since we've been back in Israel we've had יום הזיקרון לדשואה ולגבורה (Yom HaZikaron L'Shoah V'L'Giburah-Day of Rememberance for the Holocaust and Heroism). At 10 am on yom hashoah (and yom hazikaron, on tuesday) there's a siren that goes off and literally everyone stands still for a full minute or two. We also had several speeches and ceremonies to commemorate the day.

This weekend has been nice and relaxing---did absolutely nothing on friday apart from making lunch, saturday went down to the beach and got work done and relaxed today.

This is us during the drive from Amman to Petra--from left to right--Mara, Me, Julie, Lisa, and Alex. As you can see, Jordan is beautiful, it's interesting how different it is from Israel, even though it's just adjacent, Jordan is much craggier and rough than Israel, I don't know whether this is natural or due to the Israeli efforts to "tame the desert".


The monastery in Petra. It was a nice little hike to get up here but pretty worth it. As you can see, it's rather big---that's Alex, Julie and Mara standing in front and Alex is tall. In fact, from some little kids we met along the trip Alex got the nickname il taweelee which means just the tall one in arabic.
A little past the monastery we got to the end of the world. Alex a little ways ahead is just a dot against these mountains. Israel is dead ahead although you can't really see it because of the haze.


A place in Wadi Rum called Lawrence's spring named after Lawrence of Arabia, he traveled right through here! Apparently he watered his camels here. As you can see the desert is beautiful red sand with these giant rock formations just jutting up everywhere.

Mara and I on top of a really cool natural rock bridge, it's really hard to tell, but we're standing just on the other side of what is open space under the rock. A little scary to cross, but very cool.