We began our trip by driving north to Umm Queis, an ancient Roman city which has quite a few intact structures, such as a tomb, the base of a massive gateway arch, and several buildings reconstructed by the Turks. I honestly don’t have great recall about Umm Queis because I hadn’t had anything to drink all day and it was stiflingly hot up there, so I started to have some symptoms of heat stroke. Mostly I remember the first few things we saw, and then I just remember being way overheated, tired, and having a headache. When we got back to the bus I guzzled an entire 1.25 liter bottle of water and then slept for the ride to Jerash.
Jerash is the most well-preserved Roman city in the world because for most of the time since it was left uninhabited it was buried entirely in sand. The sand preserved the details of the structures extremely well, and so when we got off the bus to explore (myself feeling considerable better) we found a whole skyline of Roman ruins waiting for us to explore. We saw Hadrian’s arch, which was constructed by the Romans in anticipation of a visit by the Emperor Hadrian. Once entering the city we visited the main forum area followed by the Temple of Artemis and what many believe to be the first machine ever built: a wooden stonecutting machine which used water to cut pillar stones. We visited another theatre where several locals entertained us with bagpipe and drum music.
Tuesday was spent having lectures at JETS about Arab culture. During a break I visited the Safeway next door and discovered a drink that would get me through the whole of the remaining week: Mint Lemonade. Tropicana makes it in Jordan, but unfortunately not in the States. We returned to JETS and finished the day of lectures while enjoying another amazing meal cooked by some of the ladies at JETS.
Tuesday night the guys watched Top Gear (Fletcher had finally stopped hanging out in the girl’s apartment all night watching Australian soap operas) and Ben Baldwin discovered that he could play Pokemon on his laptop. These were all warning signs that for us, culture fatigue was setting in. I loved being in Jordan and the Arabic culture was fascinating, however, after two and a half weeks of it we were really starting to miss the casual, irreverent, and laid-back culture of the states. Constantly being aware of cultural cues and developments was far more exhausting than we’d expected.
Wednesday we hopped onto the tour bus for one last day trip. This time we drove south into the Jordan valley to visit one of the possible locations of Jesus’ baptism. We walked through a winding path into the unusually lush greenery around the Jordan until we came to the river itself. Though most of the water is now used for drinking and thus the river is considerably smaller than it once was, standing on the banks of such a historic river was an exhilarating experience, made even better by the visit of some Anglicans performing Eucharist at the spot while we were there.
Later that day we also visited Madaba, a town south of Jordan which housed one of the more impressive collections of mosaic art in the area. The centerpiece of this collection was a church floor which had been “mosaic’d” so that it formed a massive map of the whole holy land. Though parts of the mosaic were damaged, the whole thing was simply spectacular.
Our final two days of lecture began on Thursday and were filled with much learning, more mint lemonade, and one very security-filled visit to the U.S. Embassy to talk about the State Department. Friday afternoon we spent a good 3 hours or so doing what Chris called “preliminary processing.” We went over and had group discussion about the major things about biblical geography, Arabic culture, and Israel which we had noticed during our weeks in Jordan.
Saturday was to be our “free day” where we could pretty much do whatever we wanted. Ben Baldwin and I decided that first on that list was “sleep” so we didn’t get up until 10:00AM. After we’d gotten ready for the day we jumped into a taxi and met the rest of the group (who’d been wandering university campuses and buying coffee) to grab lunch with some Muslim friends of Hannah’s she’d met while working at Yellowstone. They took us to an Arabic restaurant and ordered us Mindee, which is basically chicken on top of some really fancy rice. We ate until we were stuffed, and the whole meal demonstrated the Arabic sense of time since we didn’t get our check and leave until 2:00PM. Following that we split up to shop and get one last taste of Amman before we left.
At 8:00 that night we set off for the airport, and after spending some time at the gate chatting with world travelers and one R+B band, we boarded our flight back to New York. I watched a movie, and then, after a long trip filled with crazy stories, profound moments, amazing sights, fantastic food, and other travel clichés… I fell asleep on the way back home.
And now I'm not in Jordan anymore.
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