1. . .3. . .4. . . news from the road

greetings from Petra, Jordan!!

I've skipped out on blogging the last few weeks since they were super busy!! To summarize: I found and moved into an apartment for the year in Alexandira, finished summer classes, and said lots of heart wrenching goodbyes to those students not staying for the year!

Brent arrived safely in Cairo and it was quite the trip to pick him up. We ended up waiting an hour and a half for the driver from the hotel to pick us up and take us to the airport. the whole time we were talking to him and he was telling us really bad, but amusing jokes in english, but he was hard to understand. there was something about a rat with a golden tooth. don't ask - i really dont know!!! i picked up brent and we spent the next day wandering around cairo a little before taking a bus back to alexandria.
We were only in alex for one night before hopping on a bus with a few others from my program to go to Dahab, which is this great little spot on the red sea. It's popular for diving and snorkeling.
before i go in to describing Dahab- i have to tell you about the great race to reach dahab. Brent, Jake, Monica, and I all took the superjet bus from alex to sharm el-sheikh and then from sharm to dahab. Taking a total of 13 hours and costing 100 egyptian pounds. There was another group of Tom, Laura, and robert who were convinced they could get there for cheaper, so they left in the afternoon on saturday at 2pm (we left 10pm saturday night) and took a minibus to suez and then a mini bus to Nuweiba, and then apparently the back of a pick up truck to Dahab. the trip totaled 24 hours and cost 95 egyptian pounds. who won? you be the judge!
Anyway- dahab was awesome! it's super sunny and warm, but the water is fabulous. there was so much sea life! we saw urchins, and a blowfish, and even a lion fish!! there are also lots of good places to eat, though a little expensive. brent and I did some snorkeling and even took a 2 hour horseback ride into the surrounding mountains for an awesome view of dahab and saudi arabia across the sea. it was good execpt i asked our guide if i could take a picture of him and he suggested i jump in the picture with him. well, after that, every picture we took was one of brent and i and then one of the guide and i. everytime our guide would take a picture of us he would count in English: 1. . . 3. . . 4!!! Thus the title of this post.
brent said afterwards he thought the guide was going to push him off the cliff and carry me back to town! I have some really great pictures now with brent and with a random egyptian man. what could be better from a horseback tour??
in general we spent time lazing about in the sun and snorkeling. It was a great trip except that i had to say more goodbyes to friends who were only staying for the summer.
After Dahab brent and i split up from the group and took a bus to Nuweiba and then took the ferry to Aqaba. the ferry was one of the most frustrating experiences i have ever had. we arrived plenty early to make sure we had time to get through the customs proceedures. to buy tickets we gave our passports to a man through a little window and then waited until he called "americans' because he wasn't going to try to pronounce our names. then we had our passports checked again at the gate to the ferry terminal and encountered little trouble.
we sat down in the ferry terminal and a helpful man guided us to sit with an Arabic family, where we would be safer. they were amazed that i spoke arabic and i had a good conversation with them for about an hour. they took pictures with us and asked us to write in arabic so they could see our writing. they even filmed part of our conversation on their cell phone. it was really interesting and a little awkward.
then we settled down and waited. and waited. and waited. we started to worry that we had missed the departure of the fast ferry. But alas, the ferry was just running late. how late?? well, we finally borded and departed six hours later than we were supposed to. 6 hours. seriously. we were not happy but there really wasn't anything you could do. the ferry itself was clean and comfortable, a big change from the wood plank benches and wretched bathrooms at the terminal. there was even a movie- the first movie that started playing was depicting some American in egypt yelling at a store owner (in a british accent) and then some egyptian guy calling george w bush at the white house and then the group at the cafe viewing september 11th on tv. then it shut off and a new movie was put on instead. interesting.
we arrived in Aqaba and the customs proceedures in Jordan were much more efficient. Jordan in general seems much more efficient and ordered than Egypt.
We grabbed a room at a hotel, had some great kebab and hummus at a restaurant nearby and then went to sleep.
this morning we woke up and took a minibus to Petra in Jordan. along the way our driver ran various errands, and we stopped in several places, such as a hotel and a dentist's office to drop things off. we arrived in petra, got a hotel room, and then took a taxi down to the park.
Ok- Petra is the location of the city carved by the Nabateans into sandstone cliffs. You know that crazy temple at the end of Indiana Jones and the last crusade?? Yep- Petra. Or, for a more recent reference- the temple in Jordan were sam found that key of life thing in Transformers 2? Yup- petra. except, unlike in transformers 2, petra is not an hour away from the pyramids.
petra is absolutely beautiful. the sandstone cliffs and carved facades are gorgeous. i took lots of pictures which i will post later. we hiked around all afternoon visiting of course the famous treasury (the building pictured in the movies), the ampitheater, and the monestary (and lots in between!!). it was a really long, hot hike, but definitely worth it. petra is one of the most beatiful areas i've ever seen, especially once the sun started to set and the rocks became a rosey-pink color. it was absolutely fasinating.
tomorrow we are hoping on a mini bus to Amman where we will stay for the weekend before we try our luck crossing into Syria.
I really love Jordan so far. Like i said before, it seems more organized than Egypt. The police look a lot more serious here. in egypt, most policemen have a pistol and some may have a rifle. in jordan, we've seen police with automatic weapons. brent knows the type and was pointing them out to me. we've also had some really great food- better kabab than i've gotten in Egypt yet. i'm continuing to use my arabic, but i find it a little difficult to understand the Jordianian dialect. we're still making our way around ok though!!
More to follow as we continue our backing across the Middle East!!!!