Petra, Aqaba, etc.

I could continue to apologize for slacking on my blog, but you probably won't believe me. I legitimately have had homework issues since the last post! And I don't have time to catch up on weekends because I'm always traveling. However, I opted to stay a little closer to home this weekend, with a small shopping trip to Amman tomorrow with Anne to break the monotony and buy a few important clothing items.

Why do I need important clothing items, you might ask? I am happy to report that our semester break begins next Tuesday afternoon, and I will be spending the entirety of it in Beirut!!! I bought my plane ticket today (along with several others of our Beirut travel group) and now I need to go buy some Beirut-appropriate clothing/cute bathing suit. If I dressed in my conservative clothing while in Beirut, I would be the object of much ridicule. An excuse for shopping is always appreciated, of course, so Anne and I will be spending part of tomorrow at the Mecca Mall in Amman (yes! mall!), and then some more traditional shopping downtown.

So last weekend we traveled to Petra and Aqaba with the whole program, which was AMAZING. Petra, if you don't know about it, is an ancient Nabatean city (later also Roman) entirely carved into the stone cliffs in the area. It's super old and also is one of the new wonders of the world, so it was great to go see it. We left on Thursday morning, because it's a several hour drive down from Irbid to Petra. Our hotel was definitely nice, and I think all of us went directly into the pool area as soon as we dropped our stuff in the rooms. Honestly, the first night was pretty uneventful for me (not so much for others, I think)- I went to bed at like 10:30 because we had to leave the hotel at 6:00 AM in order to beat the heat at Petra.

When you enter into the city, you walk for a little ways until you reach the first real building- the Treasury. It's very large and imposing, which you can vaguely see from my pictures. Khaled suggested that those of us who wanted to see the monastery should go directly there after the treasury, because it's like an hour's hike up to the top, and we only had so much time to be in Petra. So I went with a group and trekked up the mountain, which was much worse than the scrambling I did in Wadi Rum, I must say. However, the view from the top WAS pretty stellar, and I didn't regret the excessively tiring climb. It was good that we climbed in the morning, but it was already really hot. I tried wearing my kuffiyeh Tupac-style to keep the sun off, but I was even getting too sweaty to do that, and it was quickly abandoned.

After the monastery climb, we went to look at some really cool mosaics, but then I and two of the guys decided that we were tired, hungry and disgusting and wanted to head back to the hotel in order to eat/shower before going to Aqaba. Remember how I said you walk for "a little ways" before you hit the Treasury? So it doesn't seem like such a short walk when it's 100000 degrees outside and you've just hiked all morning. Everytime I thought we were almost out, it was a false alarm. I told the guys "Listen, we're going to actually die in Petra." and I was only very slightly kidding.

Nonetheless, we made it out. I showered. I ate a burger the size of my face at the hotel bar. We left the hotel in the afternoon, arrived to Aqaba 2 hours or so afterward, and upon seeing our Aqaba hotel I no longer thought that the Petra hotel looked quite as nice. We were living in total luxury at this new hotel. Oh my goodness. The hotel has its own lazy river-style pool that wraps winds around the whole back of the building, private beach access, room balconies, large beds, hi-tech bathrooms (and nice robes!), and is for sure the nicest place I've ever stayed. As we did in Petra, we dropped our stuff, paused to be amazed by our very nice hotel rooms, then hit the pool/beach area.

And if you don't know Aqaba, it's a resort city at the bottom of Jordan on the Red Sea, and it's right across the water from Eilat in Israel. It was wonderful to hit the beach- I'm definitely an ocean kind of girl, and I haven't been in salt water for so long! Also, it was totally over 100 degrees outside, so being in the ocean was so so so nice. I also tested out the pool and hot tub, with similarly relaxing results. We didn't spend too much time frolicking in the water because there was much to be done during the nighttime in Aqaba. Khaled and Allison (our program leaders) had arranged with the hotel bar for our group to get a 25% discount from 8:00-9:00, so Anne and I went to join the two of them there after dinner to get some fun fancy drinks.

And of course, a bunch of the others in the program decided to go out and experience Aqaba nightlife after that. I somehow always get sucked into these things. Nobody ever listens to me here when I repeatedly tell them "I can't dance!". So my bad influence friends found a way to bring me with them to various locations throughout the night. I had fun watching some of them have progressively more alcohol-influenced fun as the night went on. The night was capped off at a bar/club which was above a McDonalds. If that's not one of the shadiest things you've ever heard... But it was not actually a shady place. Some of my friends danced themselves silly while I just sat and had some good conversation. We ended up meeting up with two of the other members of the large going-out group which had split up earlier in the night. Genevieve had made a new Jordanian friend, who forcibly dragged me and the rest of the guys out of our seats and onto the dance floor around 3:00 AM, but we ended up leaving not long afterward.

Oh, and then we went to McDonalds. What? The club was kind of above McDonalds and you expect people to not pick up some fries on the way out? As I said before, it was very entertaining to hang out with my drunk friends and have some very interesting conversations. And even though I went to bed so late, I got my butt out of bed at 9:30 so I could have several good beach hours before we had to leave in the afternoon. So I enjoyed some delightful sunbathing and swimming, ate another ridiculously large burger, and then before I was ready it was time to go. I was never so sad to get back to Irbid.

The one negative aspect was the severe sunburn that finally caught me. You know that movie "Final Destination" where Death follows those kids who avoided dying? I think that's what went down with the sunburn. I avoided getting burnt in the rest of my Jordan trip (including a day in the freaking desert), so the sunburn finally caught me in Aqaba. I was pretty uncomfortable. At the first rest stop we hit, I changed out of my shirt and asked Anne "Oh, is my back red at all?", to which she only replied "OH." That, as you can imagine, is not a good response. Small price to pay for an extremely fun weekend, but still painful.

The ride back was very long. We went by the Dead Sea to see the sunset (gorgeous!), and then stopped at McDonalds in Amman for a late dinner. I've never been so excited for chicken nuggets in my whole life. It sucked that we didn't get back to the university until like 11:30, because we had class the next day (for which none of us had done any homework, obviously). Needless to say, the next day was LONG. But, all in all, the weekend was by far the most fun I've had here, and I've had some pretty good trips in general! I only wish we could have spent several days in Aqaba rather than just 1-ish. Ah well.

I will make an effort to do more posting, but homework calls during most days of the week. Trying not to fail, you know.

Pictures are on Facebook and can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2609410&id=12458491&l=95594a6531