Jordan Field Study Day 4: Bathroom Stops and Boarder Crossings

I thought that I would go ahead and finish up the last day of our Jordan trip because it was short and because I leave for a week long trip to Egypt tomorrow. So this is really the only time in which I will have time to post this. I imagine when I get back from Egypt, I will do a few posts about that. From here until next semester, I will be living with a family in Bethlehem. The husband and wife are the principles of a local Christian high school, and they have two young boys that love to play video games. They also like Star Trek. So, I imagine that my winter break updates will be reflecting on exciting things that I learned this semester in other classes, that I never talked about, reflecting on the semester as a whole, and the adventures I have in assisting with a large 3^rd grade Palestinian class. I'm sure the stories will be endless.

Anyways, back to Jordan. Our trip from Petra to the Medea Plateau was long and tedious. By long and tedious, I mean that it was an hour and a half and I had to go to the bathroom worse than I have in my entire life. Well... I was stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel of New York City for two hours once when I was about 12 years old... I nearly wet myself then, but this was almost just as bad. This was the situation: I didn't have to go when we left Bozrah. Not that it would have mattered, seeing as there were no bathrooms and I didn't see a decent place outside to go to the bathroom. Plus, there were two little Arab boys running around and I imagine I would have been scarred for life if they had ran into me while I was peeing all over some archeological site. Little did I know that our hotel was so far away and that there was actually a group of people that had to go to the bathroom, and they were switching off and keeping guard so that everyone could go. But me, being the solid introvert that I am, immediately went back to the bus as soon as I took the pictures I wanted. So I never had the chance to know that this potty group had formed. When I got on the bus, our professor told us that we had an hour and a half bus ride with no bathroom breaks. I passively aggressively asked, “No potty breaks?” Implying that I really had to go. She just smiled and shook her head. Minutes later, while I'm dancing in my seat, she walks to the back of the bus to see how the other girls' potty-venture went. She came back and told us that it was fine. I, once again, said, “Oh, I wish I had known that was happening.” Again implying that I really had to go. And she just smiled. I danced in my seat; I hummed; I shook my legs up and down; I tapped my feet. The professor was sitting right next to me and she was blissfully unaware that me, who is known for immediately passing out on the bus, was wide awake and practically jumping up and down and yelling to get her attention. So I finally said, “How long till we get there, because I have an emergency situation.” The girl sitting behind me had been in my position before, and started telling me how she felt my pain. All the while, our professor just smiled and laughed and seemed unphased by my distress. Eventually, the tour guide heard of my problem and was able to get the bus driver to take a detour and get us to our hotel thirty minutes faster. I've never flown off of a us so quickly.

As if a long day at Petra and traumatizing emergency bathroom situation wasn't enough, this was supposed to be the worst hotel. Supposedly, the girls that had gone the previous year woke up with cockroaches in their hair. I wasn't really looking forward to that. But, I think they must have been over-exaggerating or they must have stayed at a different hotel. It wasn't awful. The rooms were clean, the beds were tilted funny but they were made, and there was hot water. Of course, every time you ran the shower, it took a good 30 seconds for it to fully turn on, and then it would slow down to a trickle again, and then it would turn off and return to just the bathtub faucet. It was like a game. So it took a long time to shower, but, who cares? It was hot. This is what my Grandpa would call a “missionary experience.”

All that aside, I had a really great night's rest and was ready to tackle our last day so that I could leave and return to JUC. I never thought I could miss Jerusalem so much. Our first stop was within the city, at Karak Castle. It looked like a pretty cool Crusader Fortress, but I couldn't tell you a thing about it. Our tour guide talked the whole time, and it was so cold and windy that I just could not force myself to pay attention to him.

We then went to Dibon, the capital of Moab. After the exodus, this is where the tribe of Reuben was supposed to have settled. Anyone remember what Reuben did that he shouldn't have? He slept with his father's concubine, which was a serious power play in ancient times. When a son no longer felt like his father could run the family, a son may lay with his father's concubine to attempt to take over. This happened right after Dinah, Jacob's daughter, was raped at Shechem. Jacob decided not to do anything about the rape, because they probably had peaceful connections with Shechem. But Reuben and his brothers took matters into their own hands and slayed the whole town. So, when Jacob was about to die and was blessing his children, he told Reuben (Gen. 49:3-4):

“Reuben, you are my firstborn,

my might, and the firstfruits of my strength,

preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence,

because you went up to your father's bed;

then you defiled it—he went up to my couch!”

Jacob basically told Reuben that he was wrong for such actions. Therefore, the very thing that he judged his father for – being wavering and unable to control and care for his family – now he would have the same for the rest of his life. This describes the land of Moab. Moab was in between Edom and the Medeba Plateau. The Plateau is very similar in geography, but much larger and flatter and, therefore, easier for farming and travel. This Plateau is supposed to belong to Reuben, but many people wanted the Plateau. And so, the Reubenites were never really able to hold onto it.

We then made our way over the plateau and up to Mount Nebo, where Moses looked out on the Promised Land before passing away. This was truly a touching place to be at. From the heights of Mount Nebo, you can look out across the Rift Valley and look upon Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho. Now you can't see all of Israel, but you can see a good deal of it. Through Jordan, we had looked at the Abrahamic covenant fulfilled in Jacob and his children, as well as the Mosaic covenant, looking out over the land that the people were promised. What was so touching about this, for me, is that both Abraham and Moses were promised such amazing things, but neither of them saw their fulfillment. They just trusted God anyways. Everyday, I assume that I'm doing something because God wants me to and I'll eventually know what that reason is. Never do I think that I may never know what that reason is. God may ask me to do some major things with my life without showing me or telling me why. Couldn't tell you how that fits into my life yet, because it's a large concept to try and process. But, it's an interesting thing to think about.

After Mount Nebo, we had another hour or so to kill because the graduate students were running late. So we went to the major mosaic distributor for Jordan and made pottery:

After such fun, we went towards border crossing, which had the potential to be really awful. Thankfully, it was call to prayer and we were able to pass about 12 buses that were pulled over so that all the passengers could pray. Border crossings was the most unorganized thing I've ever experienced. First, you have to unload all your baggage and form a barricade of people through the waiting line so that nobody cuts in front of you. They seem to think that we're all dumb Americans and that they can just cross in front of us if they ask us to move. Then you give your baggage to a guy behind a counter, along with your passport. Then that guy sets your passport on top of your baggage amongst a field of other bags with passports sitting on top. I tried not to take my eyes off my passport the whole time. It seemed too easy for someone to steal it. Once you get your baggage, you wait through another line that funnels into a single file so that you can go up to a counter with one person checking passports and judging your level of threat. I was the third to last person in our group to go. There were two lines formed: one for our group, because it was so large, and one for everyone else. They seemed to be alternating passport checks with one person from each line. So, after the person next to me had been checked, I ran up to have mine checked. But some Muslim lady with her two kids tried to cut in front of me. After an hour of this nonsense, I was not having it and I didn't let her pass. The guy just gave me a look and took her passport and talked said something to her in Arabic. Then he looked at me, put a sticker on my passport and circled something. Little did I know that I was the only person to be considered a threat. Go me. I thought for sure, as I was sitting in the waiting room all by myself, that I was going to be stripped searched and interrogated for hours. Thankfully, they just took me into a room the size of a closet and searched me with my clothes on. It still felt invasive.

Anyways, that all sums up Jordan. I'm looking forward to Egypt, but not the 15 hour drive through the wilderness of Sinai tomorrow.

Jordan Field Study Day 3: Indiana Jones Made it Look Cool

Day three of our Jordan adventure had so much potential, for both good and bad. Let me preface the actual day trip with a story of our 4 hour drive to Petra.

We left the Palace of Tobias in Ammon just before dark, to trek 4 hours in the bus to Petra – supposedly with no bathroom stops. Being the intelligent traveler that I am, I had my first “wadi potty” experience before boarding. A wadi potty is much like finding a tree in the middle of the woods, but with a lot less trees for coverage. It's more like, “Where can I find the largest rock to hid behind that also happens to be surrounded by other rocks for coverage?” It's a lot more difficult than it sounds. But I made it work, and proudly got on the bus to fall asleep. Apparently, no one else thought of this, and my intelligent strategy was for nothing. For, two hours later, we ended up pulling over at some souvenir shop because all the girls were about to implode from having to pee so bad.

So, we arrived at our hotel very late into the night, ate a decent dinner and attempted to go to bed early, because we would have to be getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to walk to Petra from our hotel. Yes, I did indeed say walk to Petra.

Not that it was a very long walk. But, at something like 6:30 in the morning, the last thing that you want to do is walk anywhere. I kept telling myself that it would be worth it because I would be walking where Sean Connery and Harrison Ford had walked! I'm talking about Indiana Jones the Last Crusade, for those of you who don't know. I thought it was going to be magical. And, at first, it was. I guess that most tour guides want to spend at least two hours walking down the long path that leads in to Petra. Oh, did I mention we had a tour guide with us for this whole trip? You can't tour anywhere in Jordan without an official Jordanian tour guide, it's against the law. I think they just want more money. His name was Aladdin and enjoyed telling all of us to “Wakey wakey, time to get more sleep” every time we didn't pay attention to him on the tour bus. Buckets of fun. Anyways, so our job, as students was to walk as quickly as possible, through the entry path, so we could get to the Treasury – the place that Petra is known for. Maybe you've seen it:

As I said, it kind of exciting to run down the path, occasionally stopping to take pictures. Here's a few of us on a rock that we deemed “Pride Rock”. Our photographer wasn't very good. If it was more zoomed out, you could see that it actually looks like Pride Rock from the movie The Lion King.

Unfortunately, as I was racing to get ahead of everyone so that I could take a picture of the Treasury without students in the picture, my Camel Back decided to leak everywhere. It's not the first time it's done this. At least this time it had a legitimate reason to leak. Typically, it leaks when I set it down on the ground or lean it against something or just to spite me. Well, I lost a good half of my water in the process and, as you know from my other blog posts, it's not like I could just drink from the water fountain in Jordan. But I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I just wanted a picture without any intruders.

After our tour guide spoke for a while at the Treasury, we were allowed another 4 hours to explore Petra. Honestly, we couldn't have walked the whole thing if we had two weeks. We had two sites to see: The high place, where they did sacrifices (150 steps up the side of a cliff) and the Monastery, with a beautiful view over the whole Jordan Valley (800 steps up the side of a cliff). Oh, and not only do they have so many steps going up to each site, but they are on two completely different mountain tops. But I was determined! I was going to have fun and see everything!

Well, I made it to the High Place fairly easily. Here's a picture of the view off the top:

I was with a group of two guys and three other girls. We hung out for a little while, and started climbing back down the way that we came up so that we could head towards the Monastery. On our way down, disaster struck. First, I fell and slid down a bunch of steps, potentially hurting my camera. It has a pixilated crack in the view-screen, now. Then, a Muslim lady said that if we climbed back up and took a left at the coffee shop, we could climb down the stairs on the other side, look out over a theater, and still make it to the Monastery. We went wrong when we decided to listen to her. We got lost for two hours, Technically, we were still on a recognized path, but it was pretty sketchy and a lot harder to hike. And we had no idea where we were going. I suddenly had to go to the bathroom really bad, and I ran out of water. It was a horrifying experience.

Finally, some man directed us to the foot of the mountain that lead up to the Monastery and I was able to find a bathroom. Content with this, I was still ready to climb up to the top, not even remembering that I had no water. It was half way to the first set of stairs, while walking through a pit of sad that took more effort to walk through then I have ever experienced, that I started to realize that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But it wasn't until another 100 steps when I knew it wasn't a good idea. Then I went into tunnel vision where I would jog up a set of steps, try and catch my breath, jog up another set, try and remember to breathe. Meanwhile, not wanting to let on to everyone that I was with that I was in a lot of pain. I didn't want to look lazy or out of shape in comparison to them. Just after we were half way to the top, my cycle of jogging and resting wore on me and I started hyper-ventilating. At that point, I knew that if I drank any water that I would just vomit it up anyways.

All drama aside, my mini panic attack forced me to rest enough that I made it to the top and I'm not sure that it was worth all the trouble. Here's what it looks like:

It's kind of cool, I guess. I spent a few minutes there and turned my sad tired self around to drag my feet down all the steps and back to the hotel. I definitely had expended more energy than my body had.

After Petra, I slept the rest of the day until our one and only other stop, Bozrah. Bozrah was the capital of Edom. I'm sure you've heard of the Edomites. They gave Judah a lot of trouble during the exile because they wanted Judah out of their way so that they could prophet from trade. Edomites are the descendants of Esau. They're land is deep in the Negev and constantly pinched for resources. Their only chance of survival is dependent on shepherding and trade. Not that they should complain, they got filthy rich off trade because they were connected to a road that lead the to coastal trade with Phoenicia, copper trade with Egypt, and the spice trade in Asia. Bozrah was beautiful, and a decent end to an otherwise awful and exhausting day.