We just got back from Jordan last night. We had a 4-day field study there over the weekend. I was sick, so it really wasn't all that fun. Also I don't like Jordan that much. It is like Israel and the West Bank in a lot of ways, but at the same time it's not. We had to have a Jordanian tourist policeman with us (the fuzz!), and two Jordanian tour guides--one for the undergrad bus, one for the grad student bus. We had to switch buses at the border too, and got Jordanian buses and Jordanian bus drivers. I didn't like the Jordanian tour guide, he talked too fast and just gave us a lot of facts without a big picture. I like the big picture. Speaking of pictures, this post is going to have a lot, so hold on to your hats!
So my roommate Alison and I went camping two weekends ago now...
it was so so fun! We took a bus...
to a little town where we had to climb through a hole in the fence to get onto the path...
where we hiked for a while....
and set up camp in what turned out to be a mountain biking trail!
We had very little food...
but a lot of fun! We had planned to walk along the trail to another town and take a bus back to Jerusalem, but we realized that we hadn't gotten nearly as far as we expected to, so we just walked back to Mexico.
Er... Jerusalem.
About Jordan... I was sick, so I was heavily medicated for a good portion of the trip, which means I don't remember it quite as well as one would hope. I didn't really pay attention to much that was going on at all, actually. But I got some cool pictures... here are some good ones.
Class time in an AMAZING location... same ol', same ol'... :)
Old Testament tell of Pella? I don't remember what happened there...
Nice view from Gadara...
My friend Karin and I at Gadara
Bedouins and bagpipes at Jerash (modern name for Gerasa)
The Jabbok
I rode a donkey in Petra!
Modern-day Amman, New Testament Philadelphia, Old Testament Rabbah. That flag there is the biggest in the world.
The Treasury at Petra. It really wasn't a treasury at all, it was a tomb. Close enough.
I found an inscription! It says WO. This is Iron Age, 10th century BC, contemporaneous with King David. The Israel Museum will be showcasing my find soon...
This is the Arnon, the sometimes-contested border between Moab and Ammon (2 Kings 3 talks about Mesha king of Moab rebelling against Israel; the Mesha Stella, an inscription found at the same place that I found my inscription talks about how Mesha pushed north past the Arnon into Ammonite territory).
View from Mount Nebo (Deuteronomy 34). That's the northern end of the Dead Sea... Jericho is off the picture to the right; Jerusalem is kind of straight ahead, but definitely not visible.
So there's a little overview... Honestly I rembember hardly anything that we talked about on the trip! I had to ask friends about the locations of several of these pictures. I'm feeling much better now, but have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks. I have a week and a half of classes left, and then finals. So I'm going to be very very busy for a few weeks, so don't hold your breath for a new blog post! I leave on December 1 for Egypt, so I'll definitely have stuff to post about that! Until I get a chance to post again, love to everyone!
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