Jordan Day 1 10/26/09

Yep...we're doing this again! Here I am, trying to catch up on my blog, yet again...

But, luckily for you......I don't know what is lucky for you guys. But you get to read it!

So here we go!

The first day we woke up early (I finished packing my bag...whoops!) and we boarded the bus around 6:45 a.m. Kinda fun, right? And we were on our way!

We always enjoy when we get to sleep on the bus when we're starting our long trips, but this time we didn't really get that. We talked a bit. Not about anything in particular, but just you know, teacher on the mic. Great times.

We got to the border crossing and we had to sit and wait for it to open, which wasn't a big deal. We weren't really allowed to take pictures, and so I don't have any of anything yet, but...I will describe it for you. Here goes: A gate. Umm...that's about it. It turns out that there's a bit more to it though. There was a gate into this complex, and then we gave our bags to these bellmen and they took them through scanners and everything and saw that they got back on our bus (but we all checked to make sure, luckily. Mom, can I just tell you that the bright orange bag I brought helps me out so much with 40 bags getting thrown off the bottom of the bus when we get to our hotels and stuff, and trying to locate it. I love it!), and we had to walk through the checkpoint to get an exit stamp in our passports.

So we did all that, and this time I got a nice lady. I am really glad about that, because scary people at borders make me feel like I'm going to get detained and have to stay in foreign countries where the governments are all over the place and nobody can get anything done...by my self. But that didn't happen, I got a nice lady, and I was one of the first back on the bus.

Can I just say that I have really loved learning Arabic, at this point in my tale? I love it, because the two bigger trips that we've been on have been to arabic-speaking countries, and it has paid off so well! It's so easy to communicate to the store owners that I don't want things, and it also gets them off their goods and gets them onto more of a "you speak arabic?!" craze. It's nice. Then I just slip away. Anyway, I have really liked it, and I use it in the city all the time. It's the best. I wish I could've done both, but I think Arabic was the way to go!

After the Israeli checkpoint we got back on our buses and we drove through a demilitarized zone. It looked like a barren wasteland and was a few miles long. It was crazy, like the governments can't even play nice enough to have checkpoints for border crossings close to each other.

On the Jordinian side, we just pulled our bus up, and were told that we only had to take our luggage off the bottom of the bus to have it scanned, and could leave our backpacks on the bus... You may be wondering right now, as I was then, what would stop us from putting our...let's say....explosive...materials in our backpacks rather than our suitcases. Well. I guess they don't like to worry about that. The next awesome thing about the Jordinian crossing, was that we just had to put our bags through this little scanner, and there was one man whose job it was to check the bags on the screen. Nobody else in site, nobody to help him, and he's smoking a cigarette, standing causally, and mostly missing what's on the screen and checking out the American girls streaming by him to pick up their bags. Yep. Love border crossings in different countries. Love them. :)

After that we had our official first site stop on our Jordan Trip! Mount Nebo! (Hopefully all of you went....what? where? when you read that.) Yes. Mount Nebo is actually a biblical site. It's in the Old Testament, where Moses and the Children of Israel are coming into the promised land (which is the Jordan Valley and Jericho area). Moses is taken up to Mount Nebo, shown the promised land, and then he was translated on Mt. Nebo. Cool, right? So I got to see what he would've seen. Except my view was most likely a little smoggier.... But, still very cool. It says in the scriptures that Moses wasn't allowed to enter the promised land, but really what that means is that the Children of Israel weren't righteous enough to have the priviledge of having Moses come into the Promised Land with them.
This is a monument to Moses...You can kind of see the profile of a mans face, and then if you look closer there are three smaller faces that are supposed to be Moses, Caleb, and Joshua...I think. Caleb and Joshua were the only two spies that brought back righteous reports of Jericho for the children of Israel, and so they were the only two people to survive the full 40 years in the wilderness and come into the promised Land with Moses.

This is the overlook of Jericho from Mt. Nebo...when I said smoggy, I meant smoggy. Kind of sad, because they told us that on a clear day we would even have a great view of Jerusalem from the Mount. Oh well!

This is a monument for the burial of Moses. Anyone catch the problem? Yep...Moses wasn't buried, he was translated. But nobody knows that but us...whoops! Thank you Pit Tomb #33 and Joseph Smith for the Book of Moses! Let's see if I can do this... It's (from left to right) (on top) Kelsey, Ally Beifuss, Lexi, Me, (on left bottom) Leanna and Allison, and (Right top) Megan, Kathryn and Maurie, and (on bottom) Michelle. :)

Next stop was a town called Madaba. I was unsure why we were going there to visit at first, but it turns out that there is an awesome church with and awesome mosaic in this town that is really, really famous. It's a sixth century Byzantine (Katy I hope you're on the edge of your chair, make mother wood proud!) mosaic map of the Holy Land that historians have used to piece together what the Holy Land and Egypt and everything in between looked like back then. It not only shows modern demarkations, but also has which areas belong to which tribes and etc. It was really cool to see. It has the place where John the Baptist lived, and his parents, and it also marks other religious sites. It has been very, very helpful in piecing together the Holy Land. Very cool!

The church was a little stark looking from the outside...its very old...

Just me and the entrance, for your viewing pleasure.

Inside...

And, finally, this is the map! This view is of the dead sea...you can see that at the top, it's the blue blob... and then in the middle, kind of at the point of the shadow, the Old City of Jerusalem is there. It was really cool.

This is the Old City! It doesn't look like much, but the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is there, as well as the old Cardo, or the mainstreet/marketplace! This helped archeologists find it and uncover the pillars for it!

This is the southern part of the map. If you haven't noticed, all ancient maps were oriented with east at the top, and then west at the bottom, and so on. Interesting fact, right?

Me and the map! I was just happy as a clam. I also had Brother Brown explaining everything, which was amazing. He is just so knowledgeable!

Our last stop of the day was to a crusader castle! We were told that the site closed at sunset, and if we didn't make it before then we wouldn't be able to go. We got there when it had 20 minutes until closing, and we ran up the hill that it is built on to be able to go. I thought of Dad on the way up, and how he'd be proud of me for sprinting up that hill to have the opportunity to see the whole site. Thanks Dad, you have taught me well!

It was really cool though. Very un-regulated, too, if that makes sense. There weren't many guards or anything. It was almost like finding a big empty ruin of a castle that we could explore. We could go anywhere we could get into. There were caves and ruins everywhere, and arches and everything. It was so awesome. For those of you who don't know, crusaders were Christians who came during the Muslim era of the area and tried to reclaim the land that was sacred and holy to Christians. It was a systematic war, pretty much, and they weren't hugely successful, but in some areas they were. Anyway, crusader castle.

The Castle!

Just some cool arches that we found..

We went a little picture crazy..

:) Picture crazy, right? It was a really cool sunset while we were up there, though :)!

Allison and Me!

This is the castle with the moon behind it as we all were walking down. It was very picturesque.

That was our day! That night we drove on the bus to our hotel in Wadi Musa, which is the little city outside of Petra! That was our next day, and I was so, so excited. Our hotel was described to us as "not a 4 star hotel" before we got there. We definitely didn't get the royal treatment, like we did in Egypt, but it was still great. They were pretty nice, and not super, super creepy or anything, which was good. So, there you go!

Oh and we went out to get ice cream at this little shop that night. It was delicious! And then when we went back to the hotel a bunch of us were just sitting and talking out by the pool and about 6-8 girls from our group ran and jumped in it with their clothes on...and it was freezing, so they all came up and screamed and made everyone around us mad. They had a lot of fun, which I'm sure it was fun...but we all got a slight talking to the next day...

The last thing I want to touch on about our first day is our guide that we had in Jordan. Sumir, was his name. He was....not as good as our other guides that we've had. In fact, I give him last place. He loved to talk, which isn't a bad thing...but he kind of had an inferiority complex. He liked to be the last one to talk, and the one to be the most esteemed. It led to him being slightly disrespectful to our leaders, which was sad. Especially to Brother Brown, who is so knowledgable and goes on tours and has been to all these places and studied them. He'd cut him off, or one up his stories, etc. (Dad, I know how much you love one-uppers. So much. Just like me.) Not only was he disrespectful, but he'd just keep talking on the microphone on the bus about nothing, just random stuff, and so eventually all of us would just tune him out, and then we'd miss the stuff that we really needed to know about meeting times and etc. We finally told Brother Manscill about it, and when we needed to hear something about meeting or what not, Brother Manscill would announce it, and we'd listen. It was bad. I will tell you more as they come along, but for the most part I was really missing our guide, Islam, in Egypt. He was great. I think we took that for granted. Oh well, we did still learn stuff, but just not as much as I think I would've if the guide had been great. I did learn from him, but most of the things that he said didn't sound like he knew very well what he was talking about. Oh well!