i realized yesterday that i have less than 2 weeks until i come home. despite the endless papers and tests awaiting my attention, i thought i should write at least one last blog entry before i go home.

i never finished telling stories from egypt, did it? oh well, they can wait. right now, i will talk about jordan.

about 2 weeks ago i went with my physical settings of the Bible class to jordan for 4 days. we saw the ancient edomite, moabite, and ammonite lands, as well as a few random stops that had nothing to do with our class. one of those stops was, of course, petra. you cant go to jordan and not see petra. it was an incredible day of hiking, taking pictures, climbing rocks, and humming the indiana jones theme.




because we were a large 'tour' group, we were required to hire a tour guide. our tour guide's name was zafar, and he was one of the most ridiculous men i have ever met. his lectures were memorable if only for quotes like referring to the demon possessed man in the story of jesus sending the demons into the pigs as "the freaky man", talking for 15 minutes about a forest that had been cut down in a war, and replanted, and blah, blah, blah, and ending the speech with "and the whole point of this is... wood!", labeling a room in a crusader castle "the frontal, front, army front chamber... in the front", hiking through a canyon and referring to the boulders we had to climb over as "serious bitch obstacles" in a bible class. this man was amazing!

so, that was the first trip to jordan. then this past weekend i went with my cultural backgrounds of the bible class back to jordan, for 3 days this time. the first night we stayed with a bedouin family in wadi rum. they killed 2 sheep for us, and we ate them. they had camels, and tents, and kids, and it was all very interesting. we had question and answer time with our host, and talked about everything from genealogy to his oldest son's studies.

the next day we went to meet a sheik and he spoke to us about his four wives, his nomadic lifestyle, his role as a leader of his people, and the translator gave us a demonstration on the many ways to wear a kafia.

afterwards, we went to the translators village, and saw how people made cheese by putting milk in a sheepskin and shaking it for 3 or 4 hours, and how they formed it and coated it in salt to preserve it. then we saw how they made bread, and sifted grain and ground it into flour. i haven't looked at my pictures yet, but i'll post some at some point, when i have a chance to get myself all sorted out.