How 'bout "Jordan" for a Title?!

While waiting for a ferry from Egypt to Jordan, we began a couple new friendships with other travelers heading in the same direction. Of course the primary objective of our project is to make connections with local people, but it's been quite insightful to speak with other travelers on things to look out for. And so we plunged into the Middle East as a group of Americans, seven strong!

On our way to the ferry, we met Danielle, a gal from California who just quit her fancy pants corporate job to explore the world and learn a bit about herself. She hasn't left our side, and has been very welcomed company along our journey.

On the ferry, we connected with the Chang Gang, a mother and her three boys who are taking 8 months to explore the world and incorporate what they learn into their education. Denise (Mom, a teacher), Josh (16), Steve (14), and Ben (11) were a bundle of different kinds of energy and a true inspiration! The kids are still enrolled in school and receive homework from their teachers. Moreover, their classes back home have incorporated the Chang Gang's trip into the curriculum, using their eyes to relate the parts of the world they're encountering back to the classroom! How's that for alternative education?!

We stuck together like glue, and called ourselves Team Awesome! Our first mission was to explore Petra. We spent a full day walking through the old, abandoned city turned tourist attraction and one of the seven modern wonders of the world! We explored caves, talked about our life experiences, marveled at how nature had created such a beautiful place and man had manipulated it in such a fantastic way, and tried our best to control our shock at how magnificent a site Petra truly is! We returned to our hotel, exhausted... but not too tired to gorge ourselves on a delicious Jordanian feast and enjoy each other's company for a bit longer.

In the morning, we set out for Amman, the capital. The Chang Gang had a couple homework days scheduled so they retreated to a hotel to complete existing assignments, coordinate with teachers back home, and read up on their next sites. While they worked, Tim, D, and I met up with our couch surfing host, John. He's a British fellow who's been living in different countries for past years in two year stints with English teaching contracts. We had some fantastic conversations on what he's learned in the world, and his perspective on the way things are.

We learned the state of things in Jordan through John's eyes. We dearly wanted to set up a discussion group to talk about the Israeli/Palestinian/Arab conflict and then contrast it with a similar discussion in Israel, but John said it was such a sensitive topic it would be dangerous to bring it up. We learned this to be more or less true in talking to the few locals that we did indeed connect with. It seemed most of the people in Jordan were not Jordanian. They were displaced Palestinians, local Palestinians, displaced Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and loads of Egyptians. And even though the Egyptians come here looking for work, there exists a 40% unemployment rate! But apparently not all of this is from lack of available work. Life is expensive in Jordan - the Jordan Dinar is stronger than the U.S. Dollar, even though that doesn't say much these days. Despite the high cost of living, people seemed generally happy. They were even pretty welcoming to the fact that we were Americans in their country.

While John was at work, we took a day trip to the Dead Sea - the lowest point on Earth! It's 420 meters below sea level! The lowest point on the surface of the Earth! In case it's not part of your common knowledge - the Dead Sea is A TRIP! It's a big ole lake between Jordan and Israel that has such a high salt concentration that nothing can live in it! So the water is crystal clear, very stingy, and people are abnormally buoyant in it! I performed all kinds of scientific tests on it! Such as:

• How far can a person walk into the water before floating? Before the water passes your shoulders!
• How long can I keep my body vertical while floating? Not long! It was tough to keep my feet from floating to the top!
• How far out of the water can a person float horizontally? 'Bout half way.
• Can a person swim down below the surface of the water? This test was inconclusive because when I tried I found out that the water burns my eyes more than any other chemical burn I've ever felt. When I asked if Tim and D saw me go below the water, they laughed and told me my ass never made it below the surface... I was crying, but not because they had hurt my feelings. It was because I couldn't wipe the salt from my eyes. I cursed my positive buoyancy while I ran for the showers on the beach.
• How bad does the salt water sting a person’s eyes? Very bad! Ouch! It stung my tongue too!
  

At the beach were a couple of pools filled with fresh water. The water was very refreshing, but I felt like I was an awkward rock with limbs trying to swim. I pretty much went straight to the bottom. No more cursing my positive buoyancy skills!

We also tried out the natural skin cleansing and enrichment of Dead Sea mud. It just seemed like hippie cosmetics to me, and it smelled like sewage... hippies...

We hitched a ride back to Amman and met up with the Chang Gang for Steve's 14th birthday party! It was a night of celebration and future planning! We discussed how we were going to get into Syria. Problem is that Syria requires a visa to enter, and the only way to obtain a visa was to go to a Syrian embassy in our country of residence. Well none of us were going to fly home to jump through those hoops so we just went straight to the border, smiled as big as we could, used our cutest Arabic, were the least obnoxious we could have been, and waited. And waited. Our other Peace Corps friends had tried this maneuver before - one pair had to wait 10 hours, the other guy was temporarily detained and questioned in a holding cell!

In just a hair under 3.5 hours at the border we were welcomed kindly into Syria - a characteristic which proved prominent of this misunderstood nation.