wadi rum and petra

We've all been a little tired of Amman lately.  Or maybe it's just me and I get tired of seeing the same streets for too long, but I've been restless.  So, it couldn't have been better timing last week to take a trip down to southern Jordan to Wadi Rum and Petra.  

Wadi means "valley" in Arabic, but that's a bit of an understatement as to what this place really is... but of course, words don't really capture it.

We were taken around the desert by Bedouin in pickups and on camelback:

And we spent the night in a Bedouin camp under the stars.  The cooked dinner for us in a traditional way: underground, surrounded by coals.  It was delicious: chick and rice and carrots, plus salads and bread on the side.  Here they are pulling it out of the ground:

I slept outside along with most of the group.  It's been years since I've seen so many stars, and I saw more shooting stars that night than I've ever seen before.  It was beautiful... Too beautiful to sleep, really.

We woke up early the next morning and ate breakfast in an open tent against a cliff face.  Then we piled in the back of another pick up truck, climb into our bus, and headed north for Petra.

I never saw Indiana Jones growing up, so I'm really not sure where I first heard of Petra.  I think it was from National Geographic magazine, or maybe Smithsonian, but regardless of where I first saw pictures, ever since then I've wanted to see it.  Who wouldn't?  An ancient metropolis carved out of red sandstone in the styles of the Nabateans, Romans and Byzantines is about as romantic an image as can be imagined.  Of course, since deciding to study in Jordan instead of Egypt, I have been holding my breath for the moment when I first saw Petra.

This was the first ruin we saw.  It's an ancient tomb:

This is the Siq (long, narrow passageway):

  

and finally after trekking through layers of standstone and ancient carvings, I caught my first glimpse of the Treasury:

The Treasury is the most famous view of Petra, for obvious reasons:

After seeing the Treasury and completing our tour of the main areas, we had lunch in a shockingly delicious restaurant... They had a wide range of greens and vegetables, which I ate voraciously, as such things are not as common  as I would like in Arab culture.  

After lunch, we had two hours to wander about, so a friend and I explored some more tombs and took a slow stroll up to the exit.

My feet were pretty unhappy by the end of the trip.  Next time, maybe I'll invest in more camel rides.  

life here goes on as usual. I'm just starting to get genuinely comfortable with my life here:  study, eat, walk, class, eat, class, walk, study is how my days go most days, but I also fill out my days by spending time with other students from my program, hanging out with some new Jordanian friends, reading Anna Karenina, exploring, meeting with my tutor, and playing my mandolin.  It's a very sweet life.  This city is a fascinating array of faces and traditions, as well as modernity.  For example, I live in a very normal urban neighborhood, but about twice a week, I see this in the empty lot across from my family's apartment building:

My Arabic is improving steadily.  I think I fall more and more in love with it every day.  It's an amazingly complex and detailed language. I am starting to understand Jordanian dialect pretty well, and my Modern Standard Arabic continues to improve at a pleasant pace.