Petra, Jordan food and dance

8/28/09 - Two days ago

A really nice shop owner showed us how to wrap the traditional Bedouin scarf around our head (I think it's the male style) and then showed us how to do Jordanian dancing. It was hilarious!!

Afterwards we ate at an authentic Jordanian cuisine place and ate yummy hummus and other stuff I can't recall. This is Lily with Arabic Coke. And yes, I got french fries. But the sandwich was Jordanian style!

Petra, Jordan - up the mountain!

8/28/09 - Two days ago

You all will be proud of (and shocked at) us - Lily and I climbed over 900 steps to get to the monastery at the top of a mountain in Petra! The views at the top were wonderful, as was the cool carving of the monastery.

I think my favorite part, though, was that as we were hiking up a pack (horde? pride? school?) of mountain goats came down right past us! It was sooo cute...especially when there was one baby straggler about two minutes behind the rest.

Petra, Jordan - The Bedouins

8/28/09 - Two days ago

Petra's ancient city is still inhabited by about 20 Bedouin families who live in the caves. Most of them make a living by selling things to tourists. Since they are so used to conversing with foreigners, a lot of them speak English. It was fascinating to talk with them!

This old woman was a chain-smoking fiend!

The Flintstones sign says "Bedouin Accessories & More." Ha!

Petra, Jordan - Modes of Transportation

8/28/09 - Two days ago

As you walk throughout the ancient city

throughout the ancient city men and boys on camels/donkeys/mules/horses all try and convince you to take a trip in their "air-conditioned Ferrari." It's pretty funny, actually. Lily and I refused (me because I'm cheap and her for the more noble reason of concern for the animals' well-being) but we did end up climbing on a donkey just for a minute after we made friends with a Bedouin guy.

Camels are sooooooo funny-looking!!

This would have been our preferred mode of transportation:

Petra, Jordan - The Ancient City

8/28/09 - Two days ago

Petra is one of the seven wonders of the world. It was constructed by the Nabataeans in the first century BCE (BC) as their capital city. Almost all of the structures are actually cut out of the surrounding rock, instead of free-standing. It was also the setting of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...I guess I should go watch that movie now.

I suppose since the place has lasted over 2100 years the Jordanian government doesn't feel the need to restrict anyone's explorations within the site. You can climb all over the facades and columns and go up any of the ancient steps.

Petra, Jordan - Day One

8/28/09 - Two days ago

Lily and I crossed the border at Eilat and into Jordan! First impression: Jordanian soldiers are much nicer than Israeli soldiers. One guy who checked our passports pointed out my nose ring and laughed that it wasn't in my picture. They all were like, "Welcome to Jordan!" We hopped in a taxi with two other travelers and went two hours to the city of Petra.

The Jordanian landscape is absolutely breathtaking. The vast Arabian desert has powerful mountains with huge sandstone pillars dotting the countryside. The best part is that you really do see camels!! Mohammad, our cab driver, put on Arabic music the whole way. It was so much fun.

Here are what Jordanian dinars look like:

Weapons and Impatience in Israel

Two interesting phenomena


Now, before I conclude my Israel portion of this travel blog, I feel the need to discuss two interesting aspects of Israeli life.


Number One: Weapons

Most people consider Americans gun-happy, but I have never in my life seen so many guns in one week. The soldiers (18-20 year olds mostly; they have to do two years) are required to carry around their gun wherever they go. This includes the public bus, where you might have a (hopefully unloaded) gun pressing up against you in the crowd. NOT cool. I'm sorry, but I just don't trust these young kids (or anyone for that matter) not to accidently blow someone's foot off. I stayed as far away as possible.

These are not just regular little guns, either. They looked like crazy Uzis or something to me.


This is the only picture I was brave enough to take of a soldier and his gun. (Women carried them, too, though so at least there's gender equity in that case.)



It wasn't just soldiers who had guns, though. I must've seen at least a dozen people in plains clothes with a gun loosely tucked into the back of their pants' waistband. I stayed away from them too. Somehow all these guns did not make me safer.



The best part is that every 15 minutes or so there's this announcement at the Tel Aviv airport in a friendly female voice: "Please be advised that no weapons of any kind are permitted in the airport. Thank you." That totally didn't stop them, though. I saw several just in plain sight!


Number Two: Impatience

So, I have to say that I did not expect the complete lack of respect for the concept of a line. I had (naively) assumed that a country such as Israel, with so many ethnicities from around the world, could only function with proper order and fairness. Wrong. So, I ended up taking no less than twelve buses while in the country, and this is what would happen at every single one:


People would stand in a line in the gates leading up to the bus platform, only to surge forward and shove everyone out of the way when the bus actually arrives. The line completely disappears, and you have to elbow your way in. Lily warned me, but I was still shocked. I managed to get on all the buses I had dutifully waited in line for, but I would have been quite upset if I hadn't.


At the airport this morning (jumping ahead in time of these posts...) I was treated to my last Israeli line-shoving (thank God.) I stood in line at McDonald's and watched as about four different people came up behind me, pretended to need a closer look at the menu, and then next thing you know they are ordering at the counter before you. An old man in front of me yelled at two of the girls, but with no consequences. It made me feel better, though. I had already learned that saying, "excuse me, I've been waiting here" doesn't get you the result you want - just a strange look. Oh well!


Unfortunately at the times of these incidents I was too frustrated to think to document the phenomenom with a photo.

Eilat, Israel

8/27/09 (Three days ago)


The weekend in Israel is Friday and Saturday, so after Lily got out of class Thursday (and I finished a meeting with several students interested in MSFC!) we took the 3.5 hr bus through the Negev desert to Eilat, Israel. This is the southernmost city in Israel and is located on the Red Sea.






It's amazing to me how many naturally beautiful setttings are in one country. I feel like a broken record, but of course Eilat was gorgeous. It is very touristy, though (and quite pricey.) The water tastes better than the Dead Sea, so there's that!

This is the view from our hostel.

So...let me tell you about our adventure that night. Lily had been told of a unique restaurant where you eat underwater. She booked us reservations on their very enticing website, and we were excited to see that the restaurant was literately across the street from where we were staying.

Before dinner, we sat down at the beach and just took in the scenery. That's when we started to realize that nobody was walking on the pier to the restaurant. For at least an hour there was no movement in or out. That, combined with a slightly run-down look of the place made us nervous that somehow it wasn't opened, even though Lily received a personal reservation confirmation just a day before.

Finally we saw a couple emerge from the restaurant, so we asked them if it was open. They said yes, so we were happy. We dressed up at the hostel and headed over to the restaurant at our appointed time.













Oh. My. God. This had to have been the worst restaurant experience of my life. We walked in, and a girl (not dressed in any sort of restaurant worker clothes) finally stopped her conversation to look up at us. We said that we had reservations, and she motioned for us to follow her to the elevator. We went down, and emerged into a restaurant WITHOUT A SINGLE CUSTOMER! Needless to say, we were quite sketched out. We asked the waitress why no one was there, and she just kinda shrugged and said "not good publicity." Keep in mind this is a huge restaurant right on the beach visible from the boardwalk. We decided to sit down anyway (we certainly had our choice of seats) and just look at the menu.

Now, Lily has the pictures of the place so I'll have to wait to post some, but let me tell you about the decor. It felt like we were on the scene of a SpongeBob Squarepants movie. It was NOT the classy type restaurant they showed on the website.

The prices were, though! The food was astronomically expensive. My vote was to leave right then, but Lily was really excited about an appetizer that she likes a lot so we decided to just order that. I also ordered "carbonated apple juice."

Well, my drink came out first, and Lily and I decided after tasting it that it was noncarbonated, watered-down cranberry juice. When the waitress came over, I said that this was not what I ordered. She said, "yes, carbonated apple juice." I explained that there were no bubbles in it, and she said, "yes, but that's what it is." I really wasn't being rude (I hope) but I told her that "carbonated" means bubbles. She then shrugged and said that there must be a mistake in the menu.

Then Lily's tuna tartar comes out. Now, I'm not as used to food like that as Lily is, but she said that tuna tartar is wonderful and it's raw tuna marinated in something. This particular version said it comes wrapped in salmon. When it came to our table it actually had a lot of promise - there was effort made to make the plate look pretty, with vegetables and goat cheese surrounding the tuna tartar. Lily was so happy she took a picture of it. Turns out that excitement was a bit premature.

Lily peeled away a layer of the salmon and thought it looked a bit odd, but took a bite anyway. It was CANNED TUNA!! They literately scooped a ball of canned tuna and hid it under the salmon wrap.

That was the last straw, and we informed the waitress that this was not, in fact, tuna tartar. We left and went somewhere else!

The Multitude of Posts

Just in case you're wondering why I'm doing all these posts in a row, I'm sitting here in the Budapest airport on a nine-hour layover. Thank goodness for wireless!

What's up with the hair thing??

So, this is probably culturely insensitive, but I just have to ask - why in the world did this strange hair thing start? Some Jewish men (generally the more religious) have two locks of hair, one on either side of their temples, and it's curled. (I think that's because most Jews have naturally curly hair, although I've seen several that look suspiciously like the work of a curling iron.) They look similar to tendrals of hair girls leave when they have their hair up for prom. It is SO WEIRD! It's also very hard to get a picture of it, but I have a picture here of the boy sitting in front of me on this bus. He could not have been more than 15 years old. (I've seen boys as young as five or six starting to grow it out.)

This guy has a lot more hair than most, but you get the picture

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Dead Sea - lowest point on earth!

The Dead Sea

So, I was tempted to stay home (in Lily's apt in Be'er Sheva) instead of traveling by myself to the Dead Sea. I've been traveling for a while, it would be difficult to watch my things while in the water, and I (always) have a lot of work I could do.

Lily was so awesome, though - she wanted me to experience it so much that she blew off her afternoon classes to come with me. It was amazing! I'm really glad she made me go. The (really really warm) water is 30% mineral - salt, bromine, and something else I can't remember right now. Somehow (it's been a while since I've had physics) this makes anyone able to float. I have never been able to float very successfully in water before...it was really cool. It's actually difficult to walk in the water; some say it feels as if there is less of a gravitational pull. Dad, you should try it - it would be like you're on the moon!

Lily and I bought mud at a hotel and did the whole Dead Sea spa thing. Apparently this heals "everything." Not so sure about that, but it was a lot of fun to slather mud all on me.

Only bad thing about it is that the water tastes awful with all those minerals. I like the taste of the ocean. At least you know there's no whale placenta in this body of water, though!

And then we went to McDonald's...

Tel Aviv

8/25/09 - Two days ago

Lily arranged for me to travel to Tel Aviv with one of her friends, Charlene. (I've never met another Charlene other than my mom!) Best part is that Charlene went to UGA for undergrad. We had a wonderful day exploring an art market, eating frozen yogurt that really tastes like yogurt (I must have been so into eating it that I forgot to take a picture) and laying out on the Mediterranean.



Great day!

West Bank

West Bank (I would love to hear people's thoughts on this post in the comments.)

Yikes. So when I went on the 30 minute journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, I ended up having to pass through one of the West Bank checkpoints. It was more of a maximum security prison than the maximum security prison I visited in North Carolina. For obvious reasons I did not take any pictures, but just imagine a huge compound with barbed wire fences and people stationed around with guns. I walked through a maze of passages and gates (some only buzzed you through after they viewed you through the cameras above) and got to a person at the window. I watched her argue with some guy ahead of me, and in the middle of that she noticed I had an American passport and just waved me through. Didn't even look at it.

The city of Bethlehem doesn't feel much different than parts of Israel, although there seemed to be a bit more curiosity about me. Granted, there are many tourists that come to visit the Church of the Nativity, so perhaps deeper in the West Bank I may have attracted more attention. Everyone was very nice, though.

On the way back through the security checkpoint there was a long line of Palestinians waiting to be approved just to come back to their homes. (Some Palestinians are granted permission to cross the border every day for work. It is much more lucrative to work in Israel than impoverished Palestinian Territories.) As there is only one line for people both going and returning, I dutifully stood at the back of the line. After only about two minutes the soldier checking each person's creditials noticed my American passport in my hand and again waved me through without checking. I felt so awkward having to say "excuse me" and basically cut everyone in line! I apologized, and one Palestinian man said "it's okay, don't worry."

The comparisons to South African apartheid are quite relevant, I believe now that I've experienced it for only a few hours. Palestinians are denied citizenship of Israel, but their regional authority has very little autonomy. They must seek permission from Israel to leave each and every time.

I'm not trying to say I know much about this topic (although I'm really excited to read more) but I've read some material while I've been here. It seems that centuries (perhaps millenia) ago Arabs took the land from the Jews. Now, especially since the Jews had no homeland, they decided it was their right to take it back. Unfortunately, though, they forcibly removed people from their homes and placed them in very dense areas (West Bank, Gaza.)

I think an appropriate analogy might be Native Americans vs. European settlers. If the Native Americans came back to, say, North Carolina, and forced all the non-Native Americans to move into Fayetteville, NC (there's nothing attractive there...I can attest to that) and set up checkpoints around the perimeter, it would be quite similar to what the Jews have done. Yes, the Native Americans may have actual claim to the land after their people were removed and horrible atrocities committed against them, but is the solution to come back hundreds of years later with guns blazing?

I don't condone the fighting done on either side (Israeli/Palestinian) but I did have a very interesting lecture last semester on the topic. An international human rights lawyer described tenets of int'l law, and one of them is proportionality. While I'm sure it must be scary to live in parts of Israel that may have been reached by missiles from Gaza, the factual numbers of casualities and ammunition show that it is like throwing pebbles at a lion. I have spoken with people who have traveled to Gaza, and the conditions sound horrific for those people. I'm not saying that they should terrorize Israel with missiles, but that perhaps if Israel made a good-faith effort to improve those people's lives (people who still consider other Israeli cities as their true homes) the situation may not be so volatile.

I think I may leave it up to Bill Clinton to fix.

Via Dolorosa - Jerusalem

Three days ago - 8/23/09

I walked along the street where tradition has Jesus carrying the cross! Each station of the cross is marked. A tourist group was traveling the same path and singing hymns the whole time. What a great experience!