Hi everyone,
I can’t believe
I’m almost halfway through my stay in Jordan already! Time has been seriously speeding by. I
remembered this week that I need to go to a police station to renew my visa
sometime in the next few days. American citizens usually only get a 30-day visa
when you enter the country and you have to renew it at a police station if you
want to say longer. Hopefully this will
be a pretty simple process. I was
talking to my friend Dana about it and jokingly told her that I hoped they didn’t
deport me. She replied, “Sarah, you can
buy [bootlegged] copies of DVDs all over this country for 1 JD. They like
Americans. They will not deport you.”
Hopefully this is an encouraging sign.
Last Friday I
went to Jerash and Ajloun with Dana and my coworker Farah, and it was one of
the coolest experiences in my life. Jerash is about a thirty minute drive from
Amman, and Ajloun is only 15-20 minutes farther than that, but they feel like a
world apart. They’re both in northern Jordan, where the ground is much more
fertile. There were so many produce
stands on the way up that sold amazing fruit (I bought some plums and figs and
they were so delicious!), and there are so many more trees around, especially
in Ajloun.
Jerash is known
for having some of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world. When you first
enter the city, it doesn’t look like anything special – the modern part looks a
lot like Amman and there isn’t much to see. But there’s a huge archaeological
site with all of the ruins that is enclosed in the ancient city walls on the
one end of the city. Immediately when you enter, there’s a huge forum encircled
with Roman columns, which is a pretty cool site. My favorite part was walking down the Cardo
Maximus, which is a long colonnaded street that goes from one side the other of
the site. It’s lined with tons of
amazing ruins, like a huge fountain, cool gateways and lots of columns, some
still standing and others in pieces along the side of the road. There are two
Roman theaters in Jerash, at least one of which is still in use. Every summer they have a cultural festival
held in one of the theaters. As an
American, I’ve always found Jordan’s treatment of their ancient artifacts to be
a bit weird, because I imagine that in the United States they wouldn’t allow
anybody to touch these artifacts or actually use the structures in order to
preserve them. In Jordan, you can just
walk right up to a column that is thousands of years old and touch it, or sit
on a piece of one. You can attend a play in the crumbling ruins of an ancient
theater. Part of me hopes that tourists
aren’t destroying these ruins so that they’re around for many more centuries,
but another part of me thinks its cool that you can really live in history
around here and make use of these structures. Just different ways of
approaching historical artifacts, I guess.
Farah, Dana and I at the Forum.
The Cardo Maximus
Me and a really cool gateway.
Amazing fountain
After spending a
few hours walking around Jerash and climbing ruins, we headed to Ajloun, where
there is a castle built by Sala’Addin during the Crusades. The area around Jerash
and Ajloun is really hilly (or mountainous? Not sure what constitutes a small
mountain vs. a large hill), and the castle is built waayyy up at the top of the
tallest hill in the area. You can see
for miles at the top, and the view is stunning.
The northern part of Jordan is really beautiful.
The castle at Ajloun
The view from Ajloun Castle
We headed back
to Amman at around 5 pm because Farah had to be home to attend a wedding, and
then Dana and I went out to dinner at this American restaurant in Amman. She had a philly cheesesteak and I had a
burger, and I introduced her to the concept of mozzarella sticks, which she
greatly enjoyed. All in all, it was a
pretty fantastic day.
On Saturday, I
went exploring around the downtown area and spoke to a couple of hotels about
trips to Wadi Rum. Apparently one of the
coolest things you can do in Jordan is go on an overnight camping trip in Wadi
Rum and sleep in a Bedouin tent in the desert. Although the entire concept of
camping in the desert makes me a bit nervous, I really want to go, but I don’t
want to go by myself. There are a few
hostels in downtown Amman that run tours to the area, so I’m hoping I’ll be
able to join one of them and go. It sounds like an incredible opportunity but
it might just be a bit logistically complicated to arrange. This weekend I’m hoping to go down to the
Dead Sea for at least a day. I’ve heard
it’s supposed to be an incredibly relaxing experience and that will be nice
after all this running around for the past few weeks.
Anyways, I’ll
keep you all posted on my adventures.
Talk to you soon!
Sarah
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