Night 41: Jesus Lost His Sandals Approximately... Here!

So I came within about 15 feet of Israel today.

Let's back up a bit and address the "Frustration" blog post. I'm feeling (mostly) better now, guys. I really do love Jordan and today was a pretty good day to remind me of why it's so great. Except the taxi ride home (I TOLD the cab driver, in Arabic, that he was going the wrong way but he wouldn't listen so I had to walk a ways). I still hate the transportation system here and that will likely never change. But the scenery and the history here is so worth the hassle of transportation, and the people (not including the men that stare at American girls) are pretty fantastic.

Anyway. Up until yesterday, my week was kind of uneventful. But I went out shopping with some girlfriends yesterday, which was a pretty great way to start my weekend. We went downtown (which is awesome when you're there deliberately and with a bunch of other people) where everything is pretty cheap and there are things to buy everywhere. Oh man, guys did I spend a lot of money this weekend. After shopping and walking downtown for a solid three or four hours, we went to Hashem's for dinner. Hashem's is a local place that has become somewhat famous due to the fact that King Abdullah once (allegedly) ate there. It's pretty tasty and has all the standard food (ful, falafel, meza...) and it's pretty cheap, so I liked it. My friend Elizabeth got her third marriage proposal at dinner; our waiter offered us five camels for her. I'm not even kidding.

Today, about twenty of us went on one of CIEE's trips called "Biblical Jordan." Besides the Dana/Wadi Rum/Petra trip, CIEE also has smaller day trips that we signed up for at the beginning of the semester. At the time, I thought Biblical Jordan would be a good one because it was something I wouldn't be able to do on my own, and I had friends that were going. I'm glad I went, but it was a little awkward at times. Most of my friends on the trip are Christians, and I'm distinctly not. I'm just a history nerd interested in religious history. It was a good trip, though. It was a great reminder that we are in a country that is really, really old. You don't get much of a sense of it in Amman because it's a very industrial city that has a had a giant technology boom and population explosion in the last ten or so years, so it just feels like a big city. But Jordan is ancient--the culture and the tribal system here has existed for thousands of years.

To be more specific, today we went to four biblically significant sites: Mukawir, Madaba, Mount Nebo, and Bethany beyond Jordan.

Mukawir: We climbed a giant hill/mountain in order to get to Herod the Great's fortress, where his son ordered the beheading of John the Baptist. It was a hard trek, but we saw some cool caves and the ruins of Herod's fortress:

 Big steep mountain/hill. 

 Cave, in which I realized the awesomeness of being short.

Herod's Fortress itself. 

Next we headed to Madaba for a trip to a Greek Orthodox church and lunch. The church was pretty nifty, and very decked out in gold and mosaics. Apparently Madaba is the city of mosaics here in Jordan--everything is covered in mosaics, and we even visited a workshop where they make a whole bunch of mosaics. The church itself had an incredible mosaic map on the floor, although it's been mostly destroyed by earthquakes. It's about 1500 years old and it's one of the oldest (if not the oldest) map of the area in existence:

 The inside of the church; I thought the arches were really cool.

Remains of the mosaic map. 

We went to lunch in Madaba at what is apparently the "best restaurant in Jordan." I don't know if I'd call it the best, but it was definitely really good. Since I forgot to take pictures of our ridiculously epic lunch on Day 1, I took pictures today to show you guys just what going out to lunch at a fancy restaurant means here. This is a picture of the appetizer course: 

Yeah. This included salad, bread, a lot of veggies, cheeses, hummus, baba ganoush, some sauce thing I didn't recognize, and possibly chicken wings that I didn't eat for fear of being full when the real lunch came around. I've learned a thing or two since Day 1. Then, the real meal (we actually asked our waiter if it was the main course just to be sure): 

After we all took bread... : 

Yum, yum. 

After lunch we headed to Mount Nebo, where Moses died and possibly was buried. It was pretty neat, but we didn't spend much time there. It was beautiful though, and basically when I think of an image of Old Testament days, the views at Mount Nebo are what I think of. Also, there was an excellent view at the top where we could see Israel off in the distance: 

Last, but definitely not least, we went to Bethany beyond Jordan, the site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, kickstarting his career as a Prophet. It took us forever to get in because Bethany beyond Jordan is right at the border between Jordan and Israel, so there are a lot of guards that didn't really want us there, but we got in anyway. They like to keep the area controlled, so they only let a few tourist groups in at a time. We saw what remains of the Jordan River here: 

Where did all the water go, you ask? To Israel. I might post more on that later... To be fair, this is the dryest part of the "river"--there was another bit that might just qualify as a stream. Seeing this was just an obvious reminder of why we can't throw toilet paper in the toilet here (we use trash bins), why all of our water is bottled, and showers are few and far between. Jordan is the land of no water. Further along the path, we got to the official site of the baptism, and right across the river from us was Israel: 

I was literally 15 feet away from Israel, guys. There were people on the other side that we talked to and waved to. It was bizarre. There was a river rat swimming in the river in front of us, eating reeds from the Israeli side of the river, and then he swam over to our side and started eating reeds from the Jordanian side. I thought that was pretty cool. I wish I could have swum to the other side without getting shot by soldiers on both sides of the border...

Also, side note because I don't have anything else to end with and blog endings are awkward--does anyone else think that this guy looks like a velociraptor? :