I'm sorry this letter is so late! It's been a busy week, despite having only 2 classes.
The Jordan trip was great! I wasn’t sure what to expect from the week, but all the sites were interesting to see and fun to learn about. Monday morning, we crossed the border into Jordan and proceeded to Mt Nebo, where Moses saw the Promised Land and “died” (translated, according to us). Of course, it has a great view of the Jordan River, Dead Sea and Judean Wilderness. There was also a monastery that was under renovations. From there we drove to Machaerus, the place where John the Baptist was imprisoned and where Salome danced for Herod then requested John the Baptist’s head. We hiked up the hill to the ruins from the palace there. The hill was cool because there are caves all over the place, which makes this a very likely place for John to be kept. We then drove to Madaba where there is a church with a floor mosaic of the Holy Land from the 6th Century. We had lunch before driving to our hotel in Wadi Musa, the town where you find Petra. En route to Wadi Musa the other class’s bus broke down (stuck with no A/C in the middle of the desert). We waited for a while until the tour company had a bus coming, and we went on. We got a call an hour later from the other bus saying that their replacement bus broke down, too! It was a crazy day for them. They didn’t get to the hotel until 11:30pm, 3 ½ hours after us.
Tuesday we went to Petra. The entrance was a 5-miute walk from our hotel. We walked there, down into the canyon, a little over a mile to the famous Treasury, as seen in Indiana Jones. It’s huge! Then we were set loose to explore Petra for the rest of the day. I hiked up to the High Place of Sacrifice, walked by tombs and the theater, and hiked up to the Monastery before lunch. The High Place had a great view and walking up in the morning was really nice, because we were in the shade the whole way up. There are tombs everywhere! The walls of the canyon are covered in holes. The hike to the Monastery was really hard and long. It wasn’t so bad on its own, but it was a lot of stairs and trudging through soft sand. I was never sure which was worse: the sand or the stairs. It was totally worth it, though! The Monastery is much bigger than the Treasury and you’re allowed to go inside still (the Treasury was made a Wonder of the Ancient World in 2007 and since then people aren’t allowed to go in). There’s not much inside, just a big hole, but it was still neat. We hiked a little bit further to the Top of the World! I know it was the Top because there was a sign. It was also the Best View, also known because of a sign. But that one is under debate. There were 2 signs claiming to have the Best View on their hike, just a few yards from each other. We went down to lunch and then had 2 hours to get back to Wadi Musa. So we slowly made our way back past the tombs and Treasury, up the canyon to town.
As we were driving to Amman, we had bus incident #3. Our bus broke down this time, but our bus driver just needed a half hour to replace something before we were on our way. A short while later, we had bus incident #4. The other class’s 3rd bus broke down. They had just enough power to get to our rest stop. We all waited at this gas station for the new bus and, while we were waiting, the tour company did damage control and gave us free snacks, drinks, ice cream, and postcards to keep us happy. And we were happy. We actually had a pretty good time just hanging out. (And while the class was broken down the day before, they walked to some ruins, had a bonfire, and made the best of their situation.) It was mostly just funny and everyone was in good spirits, especially after the free stuff.
On Wednesday we saw the Amman citadel, the one David’s army was sieging while David was committing adultery. There we saw the Temple of Hercules, a mosque, and the former Jordan National Museum. We went and saw the Jabbok River, where Jacob wrestled with the angel. It was one of the grossest looking rivers ever. We went to lunch before going to Jerash. It’s a pretty big set of ruins, well-reconstructed because the modern city of Jerash uses the theater and plaza for events. They were set up for their annual week-long Jordan Festival when we were there. We went from there to the Royal Automobile Museum, where the Royal Family of Jordan keeps their collection of cars and motorcycles (they had a whole room full of motorcycles). They love their cars! When we got back to Amman, we had free time to explore. I went with a group to see Rainbow Street. We got ice cream, listened to street guitarists and chatted with some of the locals. I learned some great Jordanian pick-up lines from them. The girl was telling us how lucky we are to not speak Arabic because men from Jordan think they’re really suave.
On the 4th of July, we spent our morning in Philadelphia! Philadelphia, Jordan. Philly is the Roman name for Amman when it was part of the Decapolis. We started our day by singing patriotic songs on the bus and sang a few more to test out acoustics at the Roman theater. We stopped at the Souvenir Store to wait for our KFC lunch and got our last minute souvenirs and spend the last of our dinars. We ended our trip by going to one of the baptismal sites of Christ on the Jordan River. I can see why John would have hidden out there. No one would want to expend the energy in that hot, muggy jungle trying to find him amongst all that trees and brush. We had a really nice devotional at the baptismal site where there is an actual branch of the Jordan River. It’s also one of two spots in Israel where people are allowed to be baptized (the other is on the Jordan River in Galilee).
We crossed back into Israel in record time (at least, we went through in about 2 hours, much faster than the expected 3 or 4). The kitchen staff greeted us with a good old American-Middle Eastern barbeque. Along with the usual pita were hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, cole slaw, jello salad, and apple pie (actually, more like apple cake-streudel, but they tried). We had a great celebration of America, complete with guest appearances of American greats, like Abe Lincoln, Paul Ravere (not to be confused with Paul Revere), the Kennedys, Harriet Tubman, Monica Lewinsky… It was pretty funny and loud. We heard the Gettysburg Address by Abe, I have a dream by MLK Jr., and a new song by our classmates on the unfortunate bus about our Jordan trip. After the party, I called home and got to talk to Devin briefly. So it was a pretty good week!
This letter is already too long, so I’ll finish it and let you know what happened the rest of the week in the next letter. We have two papers and a midterm this week, but next week we’ll be in Galilee!
Have a good week!
Love, Kelby
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