June 23, 2012

Ancient City I Forgot the Name Of

It's been a pretty busy week for me, so now I finally have some time to sit down and relax for a bit. Yesterday around twenty of us went to a few different locales in Jordan, namely Madaba and the Dead Sea. On the way to Madaba we stopped by an ancient city that was dated to be around 3,000 years old, which was pretty sweet. Our faculty said it dated before the Arabs were even an ethnic entity in this part of the world, and it may have been closer to the Mesopotamian time period if anything. After all, I *am* in the fertile crescent of the world. The view was also pretty solid, and I forgot to snap a picture of a cool looking mosque at the bottom of the hill we were on, oh well.

Byzantine Era Church

After departing from the aforementioned, we stopped in Madaba for a few hours. Madaba has a lot of Byzantine influence, which was most notable in the Church of the Virgin Mary that we visited. The whole place is littered with mosaics as well, a lot of them relating to Christian themes. The city is one of the more Christian areas of Jordan, and they practice a form of Christianity closer to Greek Orthodox than anything else from what I gather. The mosaics were the coolest part of the area I'd say, and I got to see one of the oldest mosaics in the entire Middle East. On an unrelated note though, this whole day was yesterday (Friday), which is the Muslim Holy Day much like Sunday is for most Christians. When we arrived in Madaba, there was NO ONE in the streets but you could hear the Friday prayers over the speakers set up on the minarets in town, which offered a very strange experience for someone like myself.

The Land of Milk and Honey, AKA an arid
stretch of unusable land

After Madaba we got back on the bus and made our way to Mount Nebo, the site where Moses is said to have first seen the Promised Land (and then died I guess. Noob.) Apparently God buried him in the mountain somewhere but no one has found him or the Ark of the Covenant so we'll just chalk that one up as the Nazis having already nabbed them. One thing of note, all these historical sites have a special Jordanian police force at them all called the "Tourism Police", which seems slightly excessive to me. These guys are all younger men probably around my age with sub-machine guns and all sorts of lethal force for if sometimes tries to steal Moses' corpse or something. Maybe they're just slightly more badass versions of park rangers at American national parks, but it's sort of strange nonetheless.

The last stop of the day was the Dead Sea, and on the way there I had some pretty delicious schwarma. Milwaukee needs to get on its A-game and get a good schwarma place because it's fantastic -- I'd eat it every day if I could. I don't have any pictures of the Dead Sea right now unfortunately, one of the guys I'm here with snapped a bunch on his camera so I'll see those eventually. I'd always heard that the Dead Sea was cool because you just float in it with no effort and it's 100% true. The water is so unbelievably filled with salt and other minerals that you just float on top of it. One thing that sucks though is getting water in your eyes, it's probably one of the more searingly painful experiences I've had in Jordan since I've been here. I had read beforehand that a lot of people with skin conditions go to the Dead Sea so it was really comforting to know that I was swimming in a pool of psoriasis and leprosy also.

That's basically what I ended up doing all of yesterday; the rest of the week was pretty much just a slew of homework. The pace here at Qasid is very fast, and we covered one lesson in Al-Kitaab in just five days. In comparison... my Arabic class at UWM last year went through one lesson in about 2-3 weeks. I've had to do a bit of catching up since my third year of Arabic at UWM was pretty bad, but I sort of have a grasp on what's going on. One of my teachers speaks at about a mile a minute so she's tough to comprehend a lot of times and I hate being put on the spot in that class, but my other teacher is really solid and I don't have a lot of issues with her which is good. We had a test on Thursday that I'm pretty sure everyone failed but whatever, pretty par for the course in my experience with this language so far. The thing I absolutely detest about Al-Kitaab is how the examples they always give you are of the easiest principle they teach you, then you get drills that go completely off the deep end and make little to no sense. Minor complaint, but it's lame. My Reaction to Test #1

Outside of academics and travel, the apartment I live in has steadily gotten filthier over time but we did some cleaning up today to get rid of the garbage hanging around. Also, our water ran out yesterday, which is a huge bummer until we get it refilled. Apparently they refill the water today at some point, but I'm not really holding my breath. Anyways, I suppose it's time to try to prepare for class tomorrow before I inevitably become clueless around twenty minutes into it. Massalama ya asdaqawi