Independence Day (Part I)

The 4^th of July, is easily my favorite holiday.  Why would it be my favorite holiday you ask?  Well, I feel like it combines all the best of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  First of all, you get amazing food all day long without a ridiculous amount of preparation or clean up.  I feel like it is especially American to eat delicious, fattening food, mainly the flesh of another animal, using paper and plastic dishes so that you can easily clean up and go back to eating.  Plus, the 4^th of July is about good friends and family.  It’s about blowing stuff up, going swimming, watching parades, and watching baseball.  It has yet to be corrupted by the forces of darkness that have commercialized Christmas and other holidays and is a day to spend with those you love the most.  In addition, it’s nice and warm.  You can spend time outside, and in fact, that is usual a necessity of any true 4^th of July celebration, time spent in the outdoors cooking the before mentioned flesh of an unfortunate animal.  All of this being the same, you can see why Independence Day wasn’t really Independence Day for me.

  First of all, I didn’t realize we were teaching English today and so I stayed up late and only got about 5 hours of sleep.  Secondly, I had to go to work, which no one should have to do on Independence Day unless their work involves fireworks, food, parades, or pools.  Thirdly, I am far away from all of my family and really close friends, which sort of defeats the purpose of the celebration.  All of this being the same, although I did not have much of an Independence Day, it was still a wonderful day and I believe I should tell all of you about it whether or not you want to hear it.

  First of all, I love Arabs and I love Arab food.  For breakfast, Austin bought some fresh humus and was given free, fresh, falafel to go along with it.  On the second bus ride we take to get to work we saw a man that we have met on a number of occasions and who used to be the director of our Marqez.  We talked to him a little bit and when we got off we found out that he had paid for our bus ride.  Then I went to work and had a wonderful time teaching the girls.  They are amazing (as I have written in a previous post) and make me grateful I’m here teaching English and learning Arabic.  I am also amazed at how quickly they learn and how willing they are to do homework and study on their own.  Today we talked about the past, present and future tenses of ‘to go’ and I asked them to practice speaking without papers for class on Wednesday and they agreed!  It was awesome.  We actually got to leave early because we had a meeting in Amman and the little girls walked us back to the road.  At the road we talked to a nice man, who called a mini-bus over and had them take us back to Wadi Il-Seer where we catch the second bus.  Again, the man who road with us paid for us and then asked if we wanted to have coffee or tea with him which we politely declined.  I love how nice and hospitable the Arab people are.

            Our meeting at Noon was with the director of the Jordanian Diplomatic Society, which is a society that focus on training diplomats, studying conflict and all other sorts of cool things.  In addition, it was by far the most professional and nice building I have been in in Jordan.  It was very cool, because it was professional but retained the Arab feel.  Talking with the director was a breath of fresh air as he spoke openly and frankly about the issues facing Jordan and the Middle East as well.  

To be completed... 

Petra: Under the Sea

This is where I get to learn to Scuba Dive

All suited up and ready to go for my first dive!

  This past weekend, in honor of the 4^th of July, our group decided to take a trip down to the beautiful city of Aqaba.  Now, I may not have mentioned it before because I don’t think I ever actually wrote about Petra (something I need to fix I know), but Aqaba is amazing.  It is one of the nicest coastal towns I’ve ever been to and has really helped me fall in love with the sea.  Last time when I traveled to Aqaba I went snorkeling from a boat and experienced one of the coolest experiences of my life.  However, as I was snorkeling I saw beneath me a ton of different scuba divers and was extremely jealous.  From speaking with different individuals I found that you could do what is called a “Try Dive” in which you don’t have to be certified and you are only taken down to 6 meters underwater to ensure you don’t die.  I have always wanted to scuba dive, I remember wanting to be a marine biologist when I was little and constantly drawing pictures of scuba divers, so I decided the next time I went to Aqaba I would do a “Try Dive” and see how I liked it.

I have conquered the first dive!

Well, when we go to Aqaba on Friday afternoon, after a long, hot, and very loud bus ride down from Amman, I immediately called up the diving center with the lowest price and best ratings called Sea Star, and asked if I could do the dive.  They picked me up and took me to the center that was simply gorgeous.  I met a really nice retired Naval Seal there who I talked to for quite awhile and learned more about what it’s like to be an ex-pat abroad (something I am intimately interested in).  Finally, after ingesting some delicious pizza I suited up and headed out to the water.  Now, it was sort of scary to head out to the water so quickly because it seemed like I hadn’t really been taught anything about it, but the whole time I had one of the instructors by the hand and the other was behind me watching the whole time.  If you’ve never been scuba diving, I would highly recommend it.  It is a bit scary when you realize you are deep underwater and if things go really wrong something serious could happen, but luckily a lot of work has been done to make it as safe as possible.  However, the benefits (in my opinion) far outweigh the risks because under the ocean I saw the most beautiful things in my entire life (minus of course my fiancé ;-D).  Seriously, it felt exactly like being at Petra where you see all of these fish, corral and other living things in their natural and pure habitat.  Instead of looking at them through glass I was able to look up and see fish swimming past me and around me.  I saw a beautiful sea snake and witnessed ‘nemo’ first hand swimming in his sea anemone.  It was amazing and I instantly fell in love, which is why the next day, on Saturday, I convinced almost everyone in the group to go back to snorkel and enjoy the reef.
  However, plans never withstand meeting with the enemy and when I got to the dive center they said that I could start the certification process and they would apply the money I paid the day before to the overall price of the certification.  I went back and forth for a while but then I decided that I was gonna go ahead and get certified, which is not something I regret yet and hopefully never will.  This time there was a lot more training and I had to learn a lot more about the gear, how to work my inflatable vest that controls buoyancy under water and a few other things.  When we got to the water I had to intentionally fill my mask with salt water and then clear it while underwater (it is actually a great skill for those with facial hair, as I found out, because my mask kept filling up while I was diving).  I also had to intentionally take out my re-breather throw it away and then find it again, clear it of water and begin breathing again.  I learned how to communicate using signs about how much air I had and also how to communicate that I was out of air to a partner and that I needed to use their air tank until we got to the surface.  It was scary but really fun.
  The second dive was much better than the first one.  This time I was much more relaxed and willing and able to go more slowly and take in the wonderful sites.  The place where we were diving is a huge reef right along the shore that quickly plunges about 20 meters from the floor and you get a great wall of reef and water life.  We swam along that wall, this time going down to a depth of 12 meters, and I saw all manners of amazing things once again. I saw some ginormous fish that I don’t know the name of and chased a couple schools of fish that hopefully aren’t poisonous.  The most amazing fish I saw, however, was simply chilling under a fish and it was a beautiful lionfish that I think are rare to see even in an aquarium.
  The reason I say it was like Petra is how I felt as we surfaced and saw all the people a long the shore.  There they were enjoying the surface, the waves and the sand.  They were having a beautiful and wonderful time, completely unaware of the beauty that was only a few feet below the surface.  Just like when you finally walk around the corner at Petra and see the giant treasury, as you don you diving equipment and submerge you are immediately greeted with amazing and breathtaking beauty (although, breathtaking probably isn’t what you want under water so be careful about this one!).  Also, in addition to all of these positives you feel like a total bad-a donning all the gear and simply strolling into the ocean and disappearing.  It is quite awesome and you feel cool doing it.  Anyway, Aqaba was amazing and I can’t wait to return and finish my training and maybe even go on a few dives with a digital camera (you can rent them for not a ridiculous amount).  I’ll keep you updated!

i think it looks pretty darn cool don't you?

Last week in the Internship....

Some of my amazing and awesomely cute little girls from my class on our walk down the hill to the bus.

My classroom, it ate much by American standards but it's adequate

Well, last week seemed like the official beginning of our internship because we finally began teaching English.  Last week we were told we would teach between 15 and 30 kids and were a little afraid but willing to go through and do what was necessary.  When we arrived at the Marqez in the morning we found that the number had blossomed to well over a hundred and our classrooms were just not large enough to take care of all of the children.  I taught a class of between 40 and 60 girls in a tiny room where there were so many of them that I couldn't even fit in the door.  Fatimah and Ali soon decided that we wouldn't be able to make this work and so decided to split up based on gender and age-group.  We will be teaching boys on Sunday and Tuesday.  Each one of us will have two classes a day and then on Monday and Wednesday we will teach the girls again in two seperate classes each for a total of eight classes total.  Every day we teach the class, more students show up and by the end of the week we were at probably 150 students or more with some classes exceeding 20 students even now!  Now that you know about the semantics, let me tell you about the actual teaching because it's insane.
  The boys are pretty terrifying.  I really do not look forward to teaching them because they never pay attention, yell your name out randomly and never do what you ask.  What is more, as a whole they know much less English than the girls do.  My first day of class our boss brought a broom stick into my room and told me to hit any of the kids that didn't pay attention with it.  Austin and I have found a much less, abrasive  approach and now simply kick out any kids who are exceedingly loud and disruptive.  Today we actually kicked out brothers, he kicked out the older one from his class and I the younger from mine.  Well, the older brother didn't leave and kept coming into my class and goading on the kids.  I kept telling him to leave and he wouldn't so I tried to simply ignore him which of course didn't work.  Then, the next time I saw him I told him every way I could think of in English that I wanted him to leave at which he called me "dumb-ass" in Arabic and then spit at me.  I took one step towards him, I don't feel like letting little kids talk like that to me, and he ran away and I didn't see him or his brother again.  Finally, I got so sick of them not doing anything that I simply let them go about 40 minutes early after I saw that Austin had done the same thing.

One of two giant spiders I slaughtered today
in class.  I think this spider can get as large as 6
inches across but we are having trouble
identifying it from the mass of guts on the floor

  The girls... let me just take a breathe of fresh air thinking about how awesome they are in comparison.  We teach girls that range in ages from 4 to 17 split into four classes.  I get to teach the two older classes and they are so well behaved.  When I ask them to talk with each other in English to practice what we just learned they love to do it and do quite well at it.  What's  more, they beg me for homework (even the little ones) and love it when I check their homework and they do well.  I think part of it might be that I look a lot like the famous Turkish actor Mohanned who is apparently very attractive in this culture, and if I smile at any of the older girls they immediately hide their face and forget what they were saying.  As a whole, however, they do a great job at practicing and learning what I try to teach them and from my experience so far it is no wonder that the women go to college in at a much larger rate than the men do if this segment of society is indicative of the rest.  I love teaching the girls, and I think we might start making little videos of them speaking in English so I can let you see them.  They are awesome and I honestly look forward to teaching them tomorrow.
  Besides the teaching English, we will hopefully be doing the survey for the Iraq Al-Ameer area every Thursday although I doubt it will actually get off the ground.  It is extremely likely that everyone will be very busy and then when Ramadan comes in August and Austin leaves, they'll probably just drop it for awhile.  I do hope it actually happens, however, because I think it would really help the Marqez know what they must do to help the people in this area.  Also, we have been progressing on the 3 million dollar proposal to the worldbank.  The work on it is progressing, although slowly because translation is a lengthy process.  At the end of July we will travel to the Angwhar area, which consists of all the regions along the border with Israel, and will set up workshops for them on project management as well as conduct secondary surveys to help us understand the other work we are proposing to do in those regions.  It also is going well and adds a bit of professionalism to our internship here.

The "Sanitary Amenities" this toilet as a diameter
of about 3 to 4 inches and is probably 11 inches tall
I imagine watching me try to use this would probably
be one of the funniest things an Arab could see

  Things are going well, and for the first time in two months I actually feel like I'm making some sort of small difference.  Actually, as I write this blog post, Austin is in the other room with our boss who wants him to write down all the words to a song sung by Celine Dion.  They do love her here!

ممنوع (Mumnua)

So, Mumnua means forbidden in Arabic and it was the title of an amazing film that I watched last week at the Royal Jordanian Film society.  Mumnua was an illegal film categorizing all of the things that were forbidden in Egypt and the people's unrest at the state of affairs prior to the revolution.  It was quite interesting to see a first hand account of what made the people so angry and what caused them to finally rise up and throw out the incumbent government.  What was so cool about the movie was it talked about so many issues that I can't talk about here openly because I am a foreigner and I can not pry into personal lives.  It addressed questions such as free press, wearing of the Hijjab and preferential treatment of foreigners.  It was also interesting because it delved into the world of Egyptian politics, talking about the absence of opposition parties, and censorship of media and things like.  It was simply awesome.
  One of the reasons I loved it, is because it helped me see the necessity of free-speech and freedom of the press.  For instance, at one point in the movie the people being filmed, members of an illegal political party, went to Gaza to cross the border that Egypt said had just been opened by Israel and themselves.  They went, bearing supplies, and banners and sat for over 24 hours at the border but were finally refused. They said, "It's not forbidden to enter Gaza, it's just not allowed."  They said that Egypt was curtailing itself to Israel's wishes and did basically whatever Israel wanted and had surrendered their sovereignty and what made them Egypt.  Now, if a free press had existed, this direct contradiction of an official declaration would have been splashed all over the news and the public would have been outraged.  However, with a news force controlled by the state, they could do whatever they wanted without worrying about public opinion.  I finally had my eyes opened to the need for a free and open news group that can act as a balance between the government and the people.  I have always known it was important, but it just helps me to see some of the 'unofficial' mechanisms of democracy that we have in place and must protect in America. 
 Censorship is a sticky subject.  We must decide if something is grossly indecent, a concern for national security, or simply garbage that shouldn't be put on Television but at the same time we can not worry so much that opinions and beliefs are squandered.  How do we decide what insights to violence and what is a push for democratic institutions?  Who is the judge when all of us our biased?  A man came to BYU, where I am a student, this winter semester from the Department of Defense.  When asked to define terrorism he said it was only based on actions.  At the time I disagreed with him because I felt like the motivation behind the actions mattered but he said, "We are America.  We don't police ideas."  I didn't understand it at the time, but I better understand it now.  Of course, I am not saying that everything should just be given free reign, but I am saying that if we silence every person that disagrees with us, even if it is presumed to be radical disagreement, we go against one of our basic beliefs of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  The wonderful thing about democracy, is that it protects even those we disagree with.  
 "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," Was written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall and I think that today, the American Day of Independence, we should remember this and embrace the differences that make our culture and country so great, diversity and free speaking.

Madaba, Mt. Nebo, the Baptismal Site and the Dead Sea

The Church of St. George

Yeah, you read it correctly... I went to all of those places in the same day and it was pretty darn spectacular I must admit!  I suppose I should tell you about my adventures so here we go!

Mosaic factory...

  We started off our journey in Madaba which is about an hour south of Amman and a historically Christian city and famous for it's amazing mosaics and frescoes.  We visited the church of St. George in downtown Madaba, which is an ancient Greek Orthodox Church.  It has been rebuilt many times and on the floor is a huge mosaic map built hundreds of years ago that details the sites of the Holy Land.  It has been partially destroyed multiple times by earthquakes, but is magnificent none-the-less.  After the visit to the church of St. George we went to a local mosaic 'factory' where disabled individuals from the community were given work creating beautiful mosaics by hand and selling them to Tourists like ourselves.  Unfortunately they were huge, heavy, and really expensive but beautiful and also amazing to see created.  The great thing is that anything large enough that you buy they can ship for free to anywhere in the world which means you can buy huge, heavy and beautiful furniture if you so desire.  Just make sure you love it because it's gonna be pricey!  I bought an awesome gift for one of my brothers that although it isn't exactly what he told me he wanted, the workmanship and story behind it more than make up for that.  It'll be a great ornament peace.

  Next on the stop was Mt. Nebo, the sight where Moses saw the Holy Land and passed his mantel to Joshua.  Although it wasn't an amazingly spectacular PLACE it was amazing to be in such a place and to see the Holy Land.  To know that Moses traveled for so long and to be halted at the gates of the promised land must have been horrible, and seeing the lushness of the Jordan valley below me I could definitely understand how wonderful it would have been to see that place after 40 years wandering in the desert.  Definitely a sight for sore eyes.  It was a beautiful view and only created a longing to see and experience more of what I saw before me.

What Moses saw from Mt. Nebo

The baptismal sight and me in all of my
 glorious American touristness

  The next stop was the proposed Baptismal Site of Jesus Christ.  Apparently in the past few years it has been upgraded immensely and definitely westernized.  A lot of the tour you get to see from the beauty of an air-conditioned bus while listening to an "Audio-Tour" (My wonderful friend that everyone else in the group hates immensely).  Anyway, the tour takes about 2 hours because they show you a bunch of things that no body cares about and then push you a long from the places you actually want to see.  I thought it most interesting, that the way they justified this is the baptismal sight is that there were so many old churches built here and new churches springing up.  Also the fact that the pope came in 2007 and dedicated the land from Elijah's hill (supposedly the place where Elijah was lifted into heaven on a chariot of fire).  One of the reasons they do this is because there is another purported baptismal sight close to the sea of Galilee on the Israeli side of the Jordan.  This means it's a competition to get more tourists and also to just have bragging rights.  My whole thing is that there is really no way we can know where Christ was baptized or where pretty much any of the events of his life happened exactly.  It's nice to think and speculate, but it isn't the place that mattered but the action that occurred there which is important.  Anyway, it was a beautiful tour and by far the best part was the Jordan River.

The Jordan River

  My experience at the Jordan River was quite interesting.  On the Jordanian side of the river there was a beautiful and rustic wooden structure that led down the river in two tiers.  It ended with a simple wooden stairway leading you down to the green water of the Jordan and the beautiful mud and reeds of the bank.  Now, only 10ft away was Palestine or Israel depending on who you talk to.  Since Palestine refers to the whole ancient region and I'm not sure if that was actually the state of Israel or occupied Palestine I will simply call it Palestine for simplicity.  Well, the Palestine side of the river was developed and open.  They had concrete and rock buildings, a rock sitting area in the water, and fenced off areas for individuals to walk into the water but not cross into Jordan.  In addition to the fence, there were two Israeli Guards with M-16s and one Jordanian with a British Submachine Gun.

Here is where I go on a bit of a brain adventure, if you'd like to see what about please read my post entitled "Natives, who the Heck are they?".

  Overall, the baptismal site was awesomeness squared and everyone who visits Jordan should go there and enjoy themselves while there.  Like I said, it's been westernized (including the price of 12 JD) but is very nice.

Just Chilling in the sea!

  Our final stop was the amazing Dead Sea (باحر متت) and the joys of "Amman Beach".  Now, pretty much everyone knows that the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth, has so much salt that almost nothing can live in it and it's really easy to float in but there is SOOOO much more than that.  Actually, I guess there isn't really much more than that but that makes it amazingly fun.  The only bad part about the Dead Sea is that if the water gets in your eyes or mouth you hurt like hell and have to shut your eyes tight until you can wash them out.  This may or may not have happened to me twice.  Also, the sand is so hot that if you don't have sandals you will literally (or hyper-literally Jeremy) burn your feet by walking on it.  Again, I know from experience since I have blisters on the bottoms of my feet now... not fun.  All of these bad things aside, the Dead Sea is so much fun.  You can float in whatever position you can imagine.  On your stomach, on you back, on you side, curled in a ball, sitting indian-style, with all your arms and legs in the air and everything in-between.  It's like nowhere else on earth and is extremely relaxing because the water is warm (at this time of year it still feels good but apparently later on in the summer it feels like a salty warm bath) and it is oh so refreshing.  Another wonderfully relaxing aspect is that there are no waves, and nothing living to step on or bite you.  Additionally, there are no boats or loud people playing in the water because the salt destroys engines and the kids would all get salt water in their eyes and start screaming.  Basically imagine laying on water in one of those floaty things, expect you are never going to fall off.  You are cool because of the water, it's silent, and you can lay there as long as you want without using a single muscle on your body.  Yes, it is that fantastic.  I think what I need to open now is a "Sweet Sea" where instead of salt you have sugar.  Maybe it would provide all the same properties but fewer of the problems.  Of course, you would probably get tons of interesting organisms living and growing in it so maybe that wouldn't be the best idea.

Add caption

  Anyway, the place was sort of like a resort and as such had showers and a normal pool as well.  Basically the program was to get in the dead sea for awhile and relax, shower and clean yourself and then jump into the pool where you could play and swim and be cool, then jump back into the Dead Sea and repeat until tired.  In there you can also cover yourself in Dead Sea mud (apparently very good for the skin), eat, drink, read and generally be merry until your heart explodes or you have to go home.  It was amazingly fun and relaxing and honestly one of my more favorite excursions while here in Jordan.  I would like to go back sometime and experience the relaxing loveliness of the Dead Sea.

Random huge stone at Mt. Nebo

This was an actual sign on the way into the
 Mt. Nebo site

A serpent wrapped around a cross... epic

Yeah, I was that close!

This is how women swim while still in Hijjab

That's a lot of Mud!

I promise, I'm actually floating here!

Salt deposits on the Dead Sea

Natives, who the Heck are they?

Now, the water was beautiful and enjoyable, and as such the Israelis on the other side were enjoying the water as well and yelled across this somewhat tense border and asked where we were from.  Someone from our group said England and then ask the question of them to which they said, "We're natives, we're from Tel Aviv."  Well, this was a very interesting comment to hear yelled across the Jordanian border.  Mainly because it is entirely possible this woman could have said that to Palestinians or the children of Palestinians born and raised in Palestine but forced out with the creation of Israel.  Again, I will not comment on this subject politically, but it raises an interesting question of what is a native?  Both Israelis and Palestinians claim the land of Palestine as their homeland.  The Israelis born and raised there say they are natives and the Palestinians call it their land.  How do we decide?  How do we decide a native?  In America, who are the foreigners and who are the Americans?  Does it matter about citizenship?  The entrenched population often look down on those we think of as foreigners or new-comers but also upon the Native Americans who we replaced as owners of the land.  In the history of America every wave of migration disliked the one previous to it.  The English didn't like the Germans, the Germans and English the Irish, all of them against the Italians, Spanish, Greek and other Southern and Eastern Europeans.  When other continents starting arriving the bigotry became more complex with the advent of sizable diasporas from Japan, China, Korea, South East Asia, Oceania, Africa, Central Asia and India, and much of South and Central America as well as the Middle East and Northern Africa.  We all know this, and we all see it, but who gets to decide who is a 'native' and who is a foreigner?  I don't know if subconsciously I believe simply getting citizenship or a green card makes one an American but yet I support it and love it.  I don't know how to answer this question, and the problem is that it is an important question to answer the world over.  So many wars and conflicts are fought over boundaries, land, and history.  So many hatreds are perpetrated and inflamed over issues generations before.  How do we stop it?  Who do we side with, do we even need a side?  As the world gets smaller, it becomes more divided and yet united as well.  Social contracts and understandings that have stood for thousands of years are being reshaped in less than a generation and new problems that societies have never faced are appearing everywhere.  It probably sounds like I am being pessimistic, but I am simply talking and exploring the scary recesses of my brain.  I also feel that as I write I am able to think through and understand things that were not concrete before. I wish I had an answer, or even a purpose for this other than simply to be thought provoking but that is what it is.  Perhaps, we if we are aware of these things, each one of us can work a little harder to heal the social ills, listen a little more, and work a little harder to seek out solutions and peace between cultures.  At the very least, maybe this post got you to think for a little bit about the meaning of being a 'native'.

Umm Qais, Another Adventure!

So, this week was pretty darn awesome. After doing next to nothing for the first two days (we did meet the children we will be teaching English to starting Sunday) we were told to absolutely not come back until Sunday because neither the marqez or the mudireea had any work for us. Well, we asked them a few times and then decided that if they were going to give us three days off of work we were going to use them in an epic fashion and go on an adventure. The biggest thing that I look for in an adventure is uniqueness, so as I was searching for someplace to have some fun I looked for a place I have never heard of. Hence, why we went to a random town in Northern Jordan called 'Umm Qais'.

When I looked up Umm Qais I was told that it was a beautiful "Decapolis City" overlooking the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, and even Lebanon in the distance. Also, it is a favorite destination of Palestinians living in Jordan who go to see some of their homeland where they lived and their family still live, but they are unable to visit. So, that is Umm Qais and that is what I will be describing to you today because it was epically amazing and I feel like telling you, even though I haven't posted anything about Petra, Wadi Rum, or Aqaba yet which is also sad.


To get to Umm Qais was actually not very difficult, we took three buses to get there from Amman and one of them was an hour long drive in an air conditioned touring bus (like we have in the United States) and only cost about $3.00. All together, for both of, we spent about $14 to get from our house to the city and back. When we got the ruins we were both pretty hungry and so we went right up to the local restaurant which was overlooking the valley in front of us and was shaded and breezy. I had delicious chicken and Austin had hummus as we sat and thought about the many historical things that happened within our view. It was especially cool to think about the religious significance of that area and to look at the hill where Christ is supposed to have cast the devils out of the people and into the swine who then ran off the hill into the Sea of Galilee (or Lake Tiberius as it is called in Jordan).

The city was really fun to explore. It is not typical looking ruined city because instead of brown sandstone or white granite being the building blocks, they used black basalt which brings an interesting new color to the mix. There was a beautiful museum that was extremely detailed and comprehensive where we got to see a number of mosaics that were being protected as well as a sarcophagus that we both laid in (a little weird to lay down where you know someone who was dead was and then they decomposed into it). Probably the coolest thing was an ancient 10in thick door made of solid rock that you could still open and close because it was perfectly balanced on a giant stone hinge. It was awesome. Also, the sight still has a lot of excavation yet to be done and so as you walk around you see many old arches and passageways just sitting around. You think they are nothing until you explore them a little bit and are then quite amazed at the things that are under your feet all the time in this beautiful country.


As we were walking to the edge of the cliff we saw this little house made of rock balancing precariously on the edge. I thought it would be cool to go have a look and also to see what the view is like from the promontory. Well, as we approached, two amazingly relieved Jordanian Soldiers appeared outside of the little hut and proceeded to greet us enthusiastically and then proceed to tell us what everything in the distance was including the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberius), the Jordanian/Israeli Border, and the Syrian Border. It was amazing to see the Golan Heights especially and then to release why Israeli needed to take them and the strategic position it places Syria in if they receive them again with the creation of a Palestinian State. The other interesting thing I noticed was the technological divide between Israel and Jordan. The forward observation post for Jordan was very rustic, the soldiers had a single set of binoculars and were simply asked to look for signs of movement or advance. I'm sure that on the Israeli side they employ high technology such as radar and other devices, as well as many more soldiers to watch the border. It was very interesting and again, seeing how close they are to one another, it makes me grateful their is peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. The other cool thing, was that the defenses from the 1967 6 Day war were still in place on the hill. There were extensive concrete and rock trenches, supply trenches and pill-boxes. It was amazing to be standing to something that was so important in such a modern time and to see the front-lines firsthand.

The last thing we did was head back to the city up to the ruins of the Byzantine Basilica which had a number of intact and ruined pillars. Of course, we were up for a challenge and so we were decided to scramble up a number of the pillars and take cool pictures on top of them and around them which I will include here. It was a lot of fun, and helped us be entertained for another hour or so.

Over all, Umm Qais was extremely awesome. I'm grateful that I was able to find a less-visited tourist destination and to finally see the area surrounding the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberius) and the Golan Heights. It helps understand the strategic advantage of this area and the reasons behind some of Israel's policies and procedures. Also, sitting in Umm Qais I wondered if Palestinians actually came there and looked at their homeland that they were unable to visit and the families they wouldn't know. I thought about what it would be like to be in Canada, away from my family, and refused entry into my homeland, the United States of America. I will not comment on the political situation here, but it simply made it more real for me and helped me have empathy instead of simply sympathy. I think this is one of the greatest things I have gained here in Jordan, a better understanding of the Arab people, especially Palestinians and a better understanding of some of the situations in the Middle East according to other people's eyes.

Look, I know Karate!

That's a weird center pillar!

This is the flat Chameleon I found while walking down the road,
pretty cool eh?