Jordan and the Jewish Quarter

So much has happened the past few weeks! Most importantly, our group went to Jordan for 4 days this past week, and it was marvelous. I had not really learned anything about Jordan before coming here, so I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be a really fun trip. On the first day, we saw Mt. Nebo, where Moses was taken to see the Holy Land before he was translated, and then we stayed in a city that night called Wadi Musa. That translates as "Moses's river", which people believe originated when Moses produced water from a rock in the area. Anyway, that night we had some free time, so a group of us walked around the town a little bit and did some shopping. As we were coming back, we passed a group of Jordanian boys playing soccer, and one of them kicked a ball our direction. Fortunately, there were several capable soccer players in our group (not including myself :-)), and soon, we had started a full soccer game. I sat on a bench and watched with a few other girls in the group, and some Jordanians came along and started watching too, and it just felt like being part of the community for a little bit.

The next morning, we saw Petra, which is one of the new 7 wonders of the world and is difficult to describe in words. (I took tons of pictures, though!) It is basically a city of tombs built by the Nabateans in the 5th century, and it is tucked away behind a slot canyon in a red rock area that looks a lot like southern Utah. I talked to a 9-yr.-old Bedouin girl there named Tamam--there were lots of Bedouins in the park, mostly selling souvenirs. The kids are all really sharp and have picked up on the adults' lines for selling things: "I'll give you a special price because you are student! Normally it's $20, just go ask down there in the market, but I give it to you for $5 because you're American and I like Obama..." The kids were cute anyway, though.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was the next day, when we visited the ruins of a Roman city called Jerash--it is so well preserved! We saw temples for Zeus and Athena and a "gladiator show" and chariot race in the hippodrome. It was amazing! We also saw an amphitheater with amazing acoustics (you can see it in the picture here). One boy in our group stood on the floor of the theater and sang, and we could hear it all over. There were also a group of Italians visiting there, and one of them went to the stage and started singing opera! (Is that typical, Mom?)

 

Our last day in Jordan, we saw an incredible archaeological museum. It was just this tiny old building sitting in the middle of the ruins of old Amman, but they had some extremely important artifacts inside! Statues of Daedalus, Icharus, and Nike, the hand of Hercules, parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls (!), ancient human skeletons, and every artifact you could think of from the Stone Age, Ammonites, Greek/Roman civilization, and Islamic civilization--all the different inhabitants of Amman through the ages. The picture below is, as far as we know, the first sculpture ever created in human history! I couldn't believe I was seeing all these things with no fanfare, in an old building with no air conditioning and little aesthetic presentation. Things are so different here from how they would be in the US. (Overall, though, Jordan is a fairly modern country, especially compared to Egypt.)

The week before Jordan, I went on several other fun excursions. On one of our free days, my roommates and I went to Ein Kerem, which is a little suburb of Jerusalem where they believe John the Baptist was born. We went to a beautiful church there called the Church of the Visitation, which houses a cave where they believe Elizabeth and Zecharias lived. This is the spot where traditional Christianity believes Mary met Elizabeth, and their children "leapt within the womb." Because of this, one of the chapels in the church was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. This was a painting on one of the walls:

Then there were other paintings all around the chapel depicting different scenes throughout Catholic history when the Virgin Mary has been defended and glorified. Later, our group also went to the Church of John the Baptist, which has the rock they believe John the Baptist was born on. 

For another free day recently, we toured through the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. I really loved it! I think it helped me to understand the Jewish population here in a new light, now that I know what their part of town looks like. In the morning, we went on a tour of the Kotel Tunnel. Basically, the part of the Western Wall that is now exposed aboveground is only a small portion of what the wall looked like before the city of Jerusalem was built up to a higher elevation. The Kotel Tunnel goes under the city and allows you to see parts of the Western Wall that used to be exposed, but are now hidden. Our guide for the tour seemed to be a fairly religious Jew, and I liked hearing her talk about the Temple Mount. There was a Jewish family on the tour with us, and I heard the father talking to his son about Jewish history and asking him questions along the way--I thought that was neat. Later that day, we saw an ancient Jewish house, and they showed us a video there that dramatized the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The video was pretty cheesy, but it helped me understand the history quite a bit (even though I've been over it in classes here already.) While we were eating lunch that day, a group of school boys passed by us and I had to take a picture of them! Notice their hair, if  you can see it... 

We also went on a field trip last week to Neot Kedumim, which is a biblical landscape reserve near Tel Aviv. It is a park that a group of people planted with vegetation mentioned in the Old Testament, to try to recreate that environment. While we were there, we got to herd sheep! They really do all follow each other--which makes for easy herding, as long as you can get one sheep to follow you. They were also very soft and adorable. :-) This is a picture of me and my roommate Jessica with some of the sheep.

The next adventure is final exams! This whole week will be studying and test taking, but then after that, we'll only have 3 classes to worry about for the rest of the time we're here!