Monday, November 28, 2011

Night 83: In Which My Mom Comes to Visit and I Can't Come Up With a Clever Title

How can you tell you're in Jordan? When almost every photograph on your blog is beige, beige, and more beige. It's difficult to write a blog about how awesome one's weekend was when the color of the pictures does not accurately portray what the beige places actually look like. 

Anyway. My mom came to visit me this last week! It was fun, despite the beige-ness of the photographs. She got here on Wednesday night and I ended up skipping class on Thursday so that we could go exploring together. It may or may not effect my overall grade because CIEE is stupid. I told them that my mom was in town and I wanted to skip one class so that we could leave early in the morning for Petra, but they were like "No, only if you're sick." Even my Arabic teacher thinks this rule is stupid. I should have listened to the people that told me to just fake sick. :P 

Again, anyway... We stayed in a nice hotel in Amman that night (having a mom that works in the travel business is great--all of the hotels we stayed in were paid for by someone not us), then the next day a driver picked us up and took us to some of the sites along the way to Petra. We went to Madaba and Mount Nebo, both of which I've been to and blogged about, but we also went to Karak Castle, which I hadn't been to before. It was a Crusader castle, a lot like the one I visited way back when I first went to Petra, Shobak Castle. This one was in the middle of a city though, and arguably cooler. It also had lots of climb-y bits: 
 
The entrance to Karak Castle. 
The view from a precarious ledge of Karak Castle. 
The Crusaders seem to have been big fans of windows.
After Karak we got to Petra, but didn't actually go inside until the next day ('cause we got there after dark). We stayed in a really, really nice hotel and let me tell you guys: luxury makes me uncomfortable. It's not a case of feeling like this is a poor(ish) country and feeling frustrated by the luxury, not at all. Jordan depends on its tourism business, it wants/needs more people to come here and spend money on luxurious hotels. That's a good thing. I just don't like all of the attention they show you at fancy hotels. It makes me feel weird. But anyway, on to the next day... 
We got up at fuck o'clock in the morning so that we could have Petra all to ourselves and our guide. At first I was like "Meh, I've seen Petra and wasn't terribly impressed by it, why do I have to get up so early?" But it was definitely worth it. The first time I saw Petra I had basically just done a two-day nature trip out in the middle of nowhere, and then we went to Petra with like 4,000 tourists and it was busy and hot and loud and crowded and I didn't like it. This time, it was cool and empty and I liked it significantly more. It's still not my favorite site in Jordan (I'd say that's probably a tie between the Dana nature reserve and Wadi Rum), but it was ten times better when it had about a tenth of the people. So, pictures, because my camera had battery life this time!

The obligatory Treasury picture. 

There are lots and lots of houses within Petra. They look a lot like caves, but they were houses in the Nabbatean days. Apparently, they were also houses for Bedoins until 1985. They got kicked out by the government so that Petra could be a tourist destination. Now they live in a separate city that you can see from Petra, and they have special selling privileges in Petra. They don't need a permit to sell things to tourists, and I think it's reaaaally hard for anyone to work there who didn't live inside of Petra (or who isn't descended from someone who did) when the government kicked them out.
My mom! 

Adorable donkey is adorable. 
More caves/ houses. 

Old city walls and columns, kind of falling apart. 
The largest (or maybe only?) free-standing building in Petra. It's also sort of earthquake-proof. Or something. I wasn't entirely listening to the guide at this point, heh. 
I don't remember what this is, but it sure looks cool, huh? :D To be fair, we saw this bit of Petra without a guide. The guide took us through the Siq at the beginning of Petra, past the Treasury and through the city to the place where you start the hike up to the Monastery (there's also a restaurant at this point, but we didn't eat there because of a stupid mis-communication on my part). After the guide left us, we wandered around Petra unguided which is just as much fun, but less informational. They're not really into signs over here. So we climbed around and explored a lot. I liked being able to show my mom just how much you can get away with here that you just can't do in the States. I have climbed on so many things here that would be barricaded and hidden away by barbed wire and giant KEEP OUT signs in the States. 
"Strong bridge!" 
So after Petra we left for the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth. I'd already been, but I know that my mom was pretty excited about bobbing and floating the Dead Sea. She also managed not to get any of it in her eyes like I stupidly did the previous weekend... Other than the stinging, it is a pretty cool experience, and the mud actually does make your skin feel good. For the most part, we just relaxed at the Dead Sea. We ate great steak and watched some belly dancing, and we got massages on Saturday morning... It turns out massages are nice, but I can honestly say that I've had better neck massages from friends than the full body massage I got at the Dead Sea. It was a cool experience though, I had never had a professional massage before.

The Dead Sea and a random person floating. The hotel that we stayed at had a beach with a view of the sea, but you had to walk down some stairs and over some rocks to get to the water, so I left my camera up at the beach, so no pictures of the two of us in the water. 

I had school on Sunday, so we had to leave the Dead Sea on Saturday afternoon. We had dinner with my host family and I'm so glad that my mom got to meet them because they are basically the best host family that anyone could ask for. We had chicken and potatoes for dinner by the way, very zaki. Sunday (after I had class) was mostly spent wandering around Amman. There's not actually that much to do in the city. It's such a residential city and there aren't that many cultural sites to see or museums or basically things to do. I took my mom to the Citadel (see one of my first blog posts for more) and over to Rainbow Street (the ex-pat center of Amman), and we had coffee and tea, and then I took her downtown to explore some of the shops, and we ate dinner at Hashem's. I don't remember if I've mentioned Hashim's here before, but it's a tasty and fairly famous restaurant in Amman. It's vegetarian and is basically just street food (falafel, ful, hummus, pita) served at some plastic tables, nothing impressive. But the King ate there once, there's a gilded framed picture and everything! 
Yeah, so that was my weekend. Thanks for coming to visit me Mom, I had a great time! :) 

Also, reason number 240 that I love my host family:


Lara brought a plate full of candy to my room today because she was eating candy, so I had to eat candy too. The Ghiradelli and the candy corn were actually gifts from my mother to my host family, but they don't really like dark chocolate so I'm going to end up eating most of the dark chocolate. I am okay with this. 

1 comment:

  1. I'm happy to see you're back in circulation. I was really missing an update! I'm so pleased you had such an excellent visit with your mom. She is so proud of you! It's lovely to hear. Lots of love from GD and me. xxxxx

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