Thursday, December 21, 2006

Qasid term is over and I'm now on a bit of a Christmas Break. It's been a rough few weeks, but the last week has been fantastic! After our finals/graduation ceremony we went to Fuhais, this small Christian town outside Amman. It's really strange to be in a Muslim country for Christmas, there's almost no signs of it as you walk around the street. No Christmas songs, no trees, no lights, no red and green decor. So we retreated to fuhais where the houses were strung with colorful lights, the town had a large Christmas Tree at its center and we even found a shop selling little lit up plastic santas. We ate at a small restaurant known for its fatteh, (yum) followed by a narguila session with arak in its vase instead of water. PHOTOS HERE.

The following day I headed up to Damascus with Lillie. We walked/shopped around Old Damascus, saw the Ummawi Mosque and one of hte oldest still operating covered souq's in the world. The city was charming, beautiful architecture, small streets and old houses, and so much green. We ate at Beit Jabrii in the old part of town and even got to watch what looked like some sort of food show taking place. Old guy in a hat raving about the dishes in front of the camera. I bought some gifts and an adorable little sheesha :P We wandered around the city for some time, got lost a few times, took a bus and ended up in who knows where LOL all in all a great time. We took the service car back to Amman the same evening and ended up with this older muslim woman from Salt who spent the whole time muttering to herself and asking us to repeat after her, all i could catch was something about the sky above nad the earth below, LOL. At the Syrian Border our driver went to buy a bunch of duty free cigarettes which she proceeded to hide from him by stuffing them one by one down her chilbab (full black robes they use over their clothing). :) otherwise uneventful border crossing. SYRIA PHOTOS

Saturday-Monday, Lil, Amanda, and I took our little road trip. Amanda had won a free 3day car rental..unfortunately we all only had moderate knowledge regarding driving a stick shift :P it was an interesting drive to stay the least, esp getting through Amman's crazy driving scene. We headed up towards Madaba in the West and to the Ma'in Hot Springs. This place was amazing, one waterfall was sooo hot, about 65C we ended up in the slightly cooler one. It was so nice sitting in the warm springs and standing under the waterfall, it was like the highest waterpressure shower I could imagine :P MORE PHOTOS

The evening was spent in Madaba in a cute little motel with "the most comfortable beds in Jordan"
according to the Lonely Planet guide. THey were quite nice :P we slept well after our feast at Harout Jdoudna Restaurant.

Day 2 was spent driving out to the dead sea. Driving in these long winding paths down into the valley is awesome, although a bit frightening at times. Especially with the sheep crossing and the bedouin dogs trying to "herd" our car towards their sheep. We ended up at the public beach at the Dead Sea. It's the most hilariousexperience to float in that water, you're just so buoyant :P it's difficult to keep your feet down, they keep wanting to float up. :) good times.

Day 3 we drove back down to the jordan valley up the road by the border crossings. It was strange seeing Israel/the West bank just across the river. We stopped at Pella, wonderful ruins of the former decapolis cities of Rome along with several other layers of occupation. We ate St. Peter's fish...divine. A whole fried fish with lemon MM it's supposedly the same fish that Christ used to feed the multitudes. EIther way, it was fantastic fish. We ate lunch watching a couple bedouins grazing their large herd of sheep :P The pictures are quite entertaining. THen we drove north to Umm Qais another ruins site, large ottoman village (19th c) along with Roman ruins including 2 theaters. Its situated near the borders of Lebanon, Syria,Israel, and Jordan...so lots of checkpoints and lots of security. From the ruins we were able to see the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee into the Golan Heights as well. We had just enough time to wander around the ruins and even catch a sunset before we headed south to Irbid to visit a Fulbrighter colleague on our way back to Amman. PHOTOS

Yesterday Was our Christmas Party, thrown together with 2 days of planning, but a smashing success :P. We had such a great time cooking lots of food, making eggnog, roasting chestnuts, exchanging some hilarious white elephant gifts which include a beanie hat with tufts of synthetic hair, ninja turtles uno (my contribution :P), and nunchucks. We even had a tree and some santa hats...PHOTOS here

to View all Photo Sets CLICK HERE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home