Goin' South

I apologize that it's been so long since my last blog post, things have been pretty busy since Egypt.
We've finished up classes and I had all my finals in Arabic and finished up all my papers for our Modernization and Social Change seminar. As a little end of classes break we travelled to the south of Jordan. The main cities are Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba.
Petra was really cool. Based on guidebooks, I was under the impression that Petra was just one main building carved into rock (it's a common image I'm sure you've all seen). I was surprised to discover that Petra is a whole ancient city of carved buildings and tombs. The city was carved hundreds of years ago and the builders started carving from the top down so there was no need for scaffolding. At the top of the city is a mosque and there are 1,000 steps going up to the mosque. I decided to be lazy and rode a donkey up the hill. I had a very interesting "donkey driver". He said he doesn't agree with Islam (which is extremely uncommon and I have never heard anyone in Jordan say this) and he wants to have the religion on his passport changed from Islam to Christianity. He said this wouldn't be a problem but I can't imagine changing the religion on your passport is easy. I'm not even sure if religion is listed on Jordanian passports so I took this conversation with a grain of salt as interesting as it was. Coming back down the hill I had a bit of a fall. I'm grateful that I didn't walk up because the walk down was challenging enough. I landed pretty hard on my shin onto the rock. No serious injurious but I think this is the biggest bruise I've had to date.
The next night we camped in Wadi Rum which is as "desert" as you can get. We went for Jeep rides through the desert and watched the sunset. There's something very spiritual and enlightening about being in the desert. I hiked up a few sand dunes which is more difficult than it looks...this resulted in sore calfs. The night ended with a great view of the stars and a campfire. Camping is not always my first choice but this was a great experience and I survived.
Next was Aqaba which is on the coast of the Red Sea and a nice resort town. A little bit like Ocean City minus the tacky boardwalk. Soon after getting there we went snorkeling which again was another interesting experience. It took me a little while to get the hang of breathing through my mouth for prolonged periods of time. But the coral was beautiful and the fish were very colorful. I didn't realize how close the coral was to the surface and at one point I kicked the coral. This left a set of weird looking scratches on my foot which is just now starting to go away. Later that night I did a little shopping a market where there was minimal harassment and very nice shopkeepers!
We ended our southern travels at the Dana Nature Reserve which is a protected area in Jordan. The environment was totally different then the desert in Wadi Rum which was amazing given that they're only 2 hours away. Dana had lots of stone and greenery and a much milder climate. There was a little hiking in Dana, I chose to do some of the easier hikes. One included a few other students and some of the academic staff. Ahmed is the assistant director and has a very tough, almost mob like aura about him. He makes sure everything runs smoothly with the program, renews our visas and acts as a "bodyguard" on our trips outside of Amman. Us students often construct stories about his job on the side as a drug lord and his mob activities (these are all just stories of course). On this hike we all found a nice place to sit and suddenly Ahmed goes philosophical on us and asks if we can have a 10 minute moment of silence to relax and collect our thoughts. As difficult as it was to be silent for 10 minutes with a group of giggly girls, it was nice to see that side of Ahmed. That night we camped out again and played a great game of charades. My shining triumph was guessing "neo-liberalism" within 3o seconds and acting out "phenomenon" successfully.
After Dana we headed back to Amman. We don't have any classes this last month and we have the whole month free. However we don't have complete freetime. We're all required to do an independent research project on the topic of our choice. My next post will be about my research and any suggestions and input would be greatly appreciated!