Petra Adventures

In front of the Treasury in Petra

This weekend marks the start of AES' official winter holiday. The past two weeks have been filled with creating, administering, taking, and grading exams. But now, there is no more school until February. One of my college friends, Jackie, decided to help me start my holiday off with a bang by coming to visit me. She arrived on Thursday evening and our adventuring started early Friday morning. We caught the 6:30AM bus out of Amman on Friday morning. Three and a half hours later we arrived at our destination: Petra.

Exploring

Upon our arrival in the town, Jackie and I first made a pit stop to get a hotel room. We dropped off her bag, empty my backpack of non-necessities, made sure all important things (food, water, money, ID, etc) were in my bag, and then headed off to the ancient city. The first stretch of the walk, where there is the option of walking or taking a horse, is framed by some hills which have caves carved out of them and the first sign of amazing ancient hard-work and talent displayed in Petra- a multistory building with a beautiful facade. Jackie and I walked and explored the caves and buildings.

First view of the Treasury

We continued down to the second part of the walk, which is through a canyon known as the Siq. We trekked upon this path, oohing and ahhing, until we got to the end because at that moment we had to pause in wonder. Right at the end of the canyon, where it opens up, is the Treasury. The Treasury is enormous and breath taking- it's the building that you might have seen in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Jackie and I took pictures and decided to rest there for a quick lunch of tea, apples, and granola bars. Then we continued on, passing offers of camel and donkey rides. We explored a bit as we walked, and noticed a set of stairs going up the side of one of the hills. We spoke to a young Bedouin man, who suggested we take the stairs up to the High Place of the Sacrifice, then return down the other side of the hill. So we did.

Heading up to the High Place

Jackie and I started up the stairs- excited and full of energy, blissfully unaware of what we actually just decided to do. When they call it the "High Place" it isn't a joke. It is very high up. After we had stopped for our first rest on the stairs up, another young Bedouin man on a donkey passed us. He told us we were doing well, we were "almost half way there." Jackie and I looked at each other in horror. We concluded that it was too late to turn back, and continued on. The trek up featured regular rest breaks from then on, one of which included feeding a very social kitten.

At the top of the High Place

Finally, we made it to the top. The view was amazing. I was later told that from that point you can see across the Jordan/Israel/Palestine border. Some Bedouin young men had a tea shop set up at the very top and invited us for tea with them, but we decline and continued on our way, after enjoying the piccolo playing by one of them for a few minutes. We were given some simple directions and started our walk down the other side of the mountain. This path was much less clear than the original one we had used, and included some places where the stairs turned abruptly leaving us facing a steep drop off. It was a slow trek down that included some scooting, clinging to the wall, and a stop to eat some more. We made it down to a lower elevation where some more building were cut out of the stone, a tomb for Roman Soldiers and a Garden House, along with other smaller, plainer structures. We continued on. At this point there were several options of paths and we took the one that seemed to get up back as close to the entrance a possible. A passing Bedouin man on a donkey told us a path to take, and we followed it for a while- before realizing that it would take us farther away from the entrance- we were exhausted and mutually agreed that flopping on to our hotel room beds as soon as possible was necessary. So we changed directions and took a path that led us close to where we had originally mounted the stairs. 

How Bedouin women wear scarves

After a brief stop to use the toilet and another at a stand to buy some scarves, we made our way out of the ancient city. We walked back up the canyon, ignoring offers to take a cart along the way. But, by the time we made it to the next section of the walk, we were too exhausted to imagine walking anymore. We took some horses. Jackie is not a fan of animals in general, especially not ones larger then her, so she was a trooper to agree and follow through despite her displeasure. I on the other hand was ridiculously happy to be riding again, even if it was a short ride. The man leading me allowed me to take the reigns and steer for myself. Another young Bedouin man rode up beside me and took me for a trot- I was happy to allow him to take the lead rope while I re-acquainted myself with riding. After thanking and tipping the gentlemen for their help, we made our way back to our hotel where we didn't move from our beds for about 30 minutes. After that we went to dinner at a near by restaurant, where we were the only customers, and then went through some souvenir shops in order to keep ourselves awake. We were in bed by 9PM.

I got a pony

The next morning, today, we were up and about at about 8:45, though we took it slow eating breakfast, packing, and getting ready for the day, so we entered the tourist site around 10:40. The demographics in the site were very different this morning. While yesterday there had been a high number of seemingly Jordanian families, today there were large tour groups of elderly British people. Jackie encouraged me to take a horse in since it made me happy, while she befriended some of the British tourists on her walk down. I some how managed to take the same horse, though I was accompanied by a different young man, though the owner who had lead me the day before greeted me. This time I trotted along on my own, and then impressed the man by controlling the horse on my own when it wanted to continue while I was planning on stopping.

Jackie with the mosaic in the Byzantine Church

Soon enough Jackie caught up and we were on our way down the Siq again. We stopped for more pictures in front the Treasury, then continued walking down the main path with the goal of going to the Monastery. We walked and took a side trip to some ruins excavated by Brown University, though we didn't go far because we were both terribly sore. We stopped for lunch at a place we thought was near the Monastery, then we continued. After asking for directions we were informed that the Monastery was still at least an hour uphill trek away. We looked at each other in horror. Our aching muscles screamed no. Our hearts reminded us that we might not get this chance for a while. I looked at the time and reasoned that we didn't have enough time if we wanted to catch our bus. We both sighed in relief. We checked out a near by Byzantine Church near by instead.

Hanging out on a hill

After that we acknowledged that we didn't have the energy to do anymore adventures, and sat on a hillside enjoying the view and chatting for a while. Several Bedouins who live in Petra stopped by to chat with us while we relaxed. Then we slowly made out way back out. This time we walked the whole way. After retrieving the rest of our belongings from the hotel, we boarded our bus back to Amman. Jackie flies out tomorrow evening. I will stay in Amman for an indefinite amount of time working on projects at the MCC Office.

I'm definitely going back to Petra again. Next time the Monastery is a must.

Jackie and me at the Treasury

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Merry Christmas from Jerusalem!!!

Snow in Jordan

Snow in Amman

Jordan gets cold in the winter. Really cold. Which is a struggle because the buildings are designed to be cool on the inside, since it's blazing hot for most parts of the year. Most winters, I've been told, it snows once or twice, normally in January, and because it's only one or two snows the country has not invested in snow removal equipment. This partically explains why schools have a month long holiday spanning from the first or second week in January until early Febuary. This year though, the snow came early. Snow covered much of the Middle East, including parts of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and even (briefly) Egypt.

Starting early last week, everyone kept talking about how it was going to snow. It was cold, but I wasn't sure I believed them. Then, on Wednesday, it was pouring rain. None of the nursery aged students came to school, and only about half of the kingergarten and first grade classes showed up. It was a cold, wet miserable day. Around noon, the Headmistress announced that the school would have a three hour delay the next day, and would be opening at 11 because the news was calling for the weather to get worse. The news was calling for snow. I was excited for the chance to sleep in, but I was worried about getting transportation to Amman after school on Thursday- one of the other SALTers, Christine, was coming to visit me and I needed to meet her.

"Snow" in Husn

I woke up the next morning to my phone ringing. It was the teacher I car pool to school with, letting me know that school was canceled for the day because of snow. Snow? I looked out the window of my bedroom- nothing. I walked down to the big window down the hall, that has a beautiful view from it- ok there was a little bit on snow on some metal. Ok, fine with me. I needed to go to Amman anyway, so I called the bus service that I normally take, they told me that they had buses going at 12 and 2. I rushed to get packed and convinced a friend with a car to drive me to the bus station. I just missed the noon bus, so I used the time to check out the brand new Carrefour grocery/department store. Soon enough I was on the bus, on my way to Amman. I still hadn't seen very much snow, just a bit on cars or in deep shadows; I found it funny that it was a snow day.

Upon stepping out of the bus in Amman though I found that it was much colder in Amman than in Irbid, and it was snowing. The snow wasn't sticking to the ground, but it was falling. I caught a cab and met up with my Reps. We had dinner and then headed off to the airport, which is about 45 minutes, on a normal day, outside of the city. The farther we got out from the center of Amman, the more snow I saw on the ground, I felt a small amount of cognitive dissonance because the last time I had gone to the airport it was been at least 90F degrees outside, at the time I would never have imagined that there would be snow in just a few short months.

The morning snow/slush

We successfully received Christine from the airport, and had a relaxing evening in at the Rep Flat. It continued to snow throughout most of the night. The next morning, there was a blanket of snow on the road and sidewalks outside. I called the school Priest and found out that they had already canceled school for Saturday even though there wasn't any snow in Irbid. I decided to just stay in Amman for another day, even though I had originally planned to return to Irbid on Friday evening. Christine and I took the morning slow and had a relaxing brunch with the Reps before we trekked out into the weather, hoping that something would be open since the snow was melting. We made our way to downtown, and ended up in the Roman Ampitheater, then made our way to Rainbow Street and had a late lunch at an American style Waffle House (no relationship to the chain), since it was the only thing open. After that we headed back to the Rep Flat, where we spent some more quality time with the Reps before heading out to have dinner at a reasurant with some traditional Jordanian foods. It had started snowing again, and the roads were getting icy so we were one of the few cars on the roads, and earned some "are you crazy" looks from the locals as we climbed some hills.

The next day there was even more snow outside. We talked to some locals and found out that the roads were closed, and the government was encouraging everyone to stay inside. So that's exactly what we did. The Reps, Christine, and I spent the day playing card games, talking, and drinking delicious homemade hot chocolate in the apartment. The school Priest called me to encourage me to return to Irbid so I could attend the teacher's Christmas party, but there were no buses running. On Sunday, I finally caught a bus back to Irbid, with a little bit of rushing and panic since it was the only bus leaving. When I left, there was still snow in Amman but there wasn't any in Irbid still. Christine stayed another day, then took a bus to Israel/Palestine.

Playing in the evening snow

The snow effected schools and businesses all week; schools across the country could not open until 9. There is still snow in Amman and other places with high altitudes. It was in the news that one town up in the mountains needed food to be airlifted to it because of the roads were so impassible.

There is still no snow in Irbid. I'm praying that the weather stays like this, because I'm hoping to have a safe, easy trip on Tuesday, aka Christmas Eve. I will be following in Christine's foot steps and meeting up with her and another SALTer in Jerusalem where we are all going to spend Christmas together.