Jordan!

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where some believe Christ was crucified and buried.

Me touching the middle of the world! or universe?...

Me with my shekels and dinars( jordanean money). I'm a rich girl.

Head stand in Machaerus!

Just enjoying some tea at a rest stop in Jordan. Actually those cups are ash trays, we had no tea. EVERYONE smokes here.

The Siq in Petra!

PETRA

Finding our inner selves.

Cool view of the Monastery.

Strikin' a pose.

Funny lookin dog on a horse. So funny.

Me during my buckwild horse ride.

At a Muslim Mosque. Us girls had to cover our heads and wear these black robe things. We looked like dementors from Harry Potter.

Band pic in Amman.

In Jerash!

Just performing some Shakespeare in Jerash. We're really famous now.

The River of Jordan. Crazy to think that this is the river the Christ was baptized. What a special place. You'd think the water would be a little cleaner though.

This last week we went to Jordan for 4 days! Oh my gosh it was so much fun! Some of the girls and I were joking around and acting like we were going on some crazy party trip so we kept saying MARDI GRAS 2012! So that's what we considered our trip. haha Turkey will be Spring Break and Galilee will be Senior Trip. Anyways we left early Monday morning to go to Jordan. Jordan really isn't that far from Jerusalem but since it's a different country it took a while to go through the border and stuff like that. The first day we stopped at a bunch of different sites, one of them being Machaerus, where John the Baptist was beheaded. That night we stayed at a hotel and had live cultural music and got to dance with the workers! It was so much fun!! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera then so I need to get those pictures from everyone else.

On Tuesday we went to PETRA! That was so interesting and fun! We hiked up to the monastery and dang, that was quite the hike. I was seriously sweating and it was really hot. We took tons of pictures then ate lunch. FYI every meal we had this whole trip was buffet style. I seriously are TONS and am almost positive I gained like 5 pounds. But hey, YOLO (you only live once, another popular phrase said among us here). Leaving Petra we got to ride some horses back to our bus, that was pretty fun. Although my horse didn't go as fast as I wanted it to go and the guy leading me didn't really understand me when I asked him if he could make it go faster. Sometimes it is just so hard to communicate here. I don't talk THAT different right? I'd say Arabic and English are pretty similar... Ok fine I'll admit it, they are totally different. Anyways Petra was amazing. I loved it.

Wednesday we went to many different places. Amman, Jabbok river (where Jacob wrestled with an angel), and Jerash. All these places are pretty amazing and have so much history behind them. It's so crazy that I get to go to all these places! It is surreal.

Thursday we went to a cool Roman Theater. It was pretty cool cause our teacher Brother Huntsman has a great voice so he sang to us in the theater and one of our Arab guides sang for us too. Then us girls planned a dance and performed it. So much fun! In brother huntsman's blog he should be posting those videos soon. After that we drove and went to the River of Jordan where Jesus was baptized. That was a very special place. We sang some hymns and that truly brings in the spirit so much. One thing I love so much here is that on the field trips we'll sing hymns at a lot of the sites; songs that have meaning to the site. It really gives you a better understanding and appreciation for the places.