Just to warn you guys.. this will be a really long post. This past weekend was one of the best ones I have experienced so far. It was truly incredible.
Let's start with the engagement party.
This was so much fun. The whole thing - getting ready, getting our hair done, getting dressed and the party itself was a really good time. Not to mention, it was an awesome cultural experience. The only down-part of it was that the two boys who are being hosted by the mother of my host-sister ended up not being able to attend. I was really sad because we were all extremely excited for it. So it ended up just being me and Evelina (the other Clarkie!) who got to go. But we still had a good time.. our hair was done way more exaggerated than either of us expected and everyone got their make-up done but us.
The party itself was a blast. It was basically straight 4-5 hours of eating incredible food and dancing to really fun Arab music. Their music here is very similar to Turkish music, same with the dancing, so I had a really good time and definitely channeled my previous Turkish weddings I had attended. It was really an awesome experience, especially since all of the people there were really excited to have Ev and I dance with them as much as possible.
The next morning we woke up extremely early to depart to Wadi Rum.
Now, this day... really blew my mind. I had had no idea what to expect before arriving in Wadi Rum. I knew we were going to see desert and I knew it would be pretty. But I had no idea how much fun I would really have.
So we all met at the university at 730 and set off on our buses by 8. The way there was filled with fresh baked goods CIEE provided for us, lots of excited chatter, sleep and listening to ipods while gazing out onto the scenery. We stopped for a half hour at a reststop/tourist shop where they had many incredible authentic gifts one could buy. Then it was back on our way. We arrived at the visitor center in Wadi Rum about 4 hours after we departed for a well-needed lunch. The food was incredible, but of course. Also, we began realizing that Jordanians really like open buffets... because they seem to have them everywhere we go.
We had a little bit of free time after lunch to go outside and explore a little bit. I couldn't believe the place in which I had arrived! It was absolutely gorgeous, especially in the bright sunlight. There was yellow sand everywhere I looked and ginormous rock-like hills or mountains or cliffs all around us... whatever you want to call those. I couldn't wait to go explore them! We took lots of fun pictures and then were dragged into a really cool room to watch a 10 minute video about the history of this particular desert. We found out that there had once been lots of water flowing through this area, sort of like the Grand Canyon, but more massive. This, of course, left lots of amazing patterns in the rocks all around us.
Finally, the time came for what we were all waiting impatiently for - the ride through the desert on the four-by-fours. They called them jeeps even though none of them were actually jeeps. Just small pick-up trucks that fit about 6 people in the back of them. We split into our groups of 6 and chose our trucks. Me and my friends got on and then the race between us and at least 30 or 40 more trucks began.
This was probably one of my favorite parts of the weekend - for 2 hours we raced around on the back of these trucks, trying to pass each other. We stopped several times to go explore in the sand. Here I had my first experience with the desert sand. We climbed up this large dune up onto one of the hills... let me tell you, running in that sand was not easy... but so much fun! When we got up there it was extremely windy, but we had an incredible view of the desert all around us! It was breathtaking, really. The most fun part about it was running back down the dune. I even took my feet off (we all had about 5 pounds of sand in our shoes) and ran down barefoot. It was so exhilarating!!
We made a couple more stops like this along the way to go climb and explore. The more adventurous and brave of us climbed up this really amazing piece of rock... it was really tall and filled with lots of little crevices to explore. I have a great fear of heights, so I only made it up to a certain point, but it was still incredible.
On our third stop, we had our first sight of camels - we all freaked out about this. There were bedouin men just galloping in on them, which, I found out later, is an extreeemely hard thing to do. Here we also received our Keffiyeh's, which is the traditional Arab head wear that you see all the men wearing on their heads. We received those and even had our tour guides put them on us in the proper way.
Our next destination was one that we were all dying to reach - the camel rides! We came onto a clearing with at least 80 or so camels lounging around. Definitely a sight to see. Bedouin men grabbed us in groups of 2 or 3 and led us to our camels. My friend Phillip and I went together and when we arrived at our camels got helped on by our bedouin guide. The second I got one of my legs around the camel, it decided it was time to stand up. This took me by surprise and I started freaking out! I had noooo idea the camel was going to be this tall!
What came next, scared me even more. The camel that Phillip got on (which, by the way was tied to my camel) seemed in a pissed off mood from the moment that we reached the animals. If you know anything about camels at all, they are not creatures to be messed with. If they're angry they will spit at you, throw you off and basically just throw a tamper tantrum. So it was really no surprise to us when Phillip's camel (named Gus) started bucking around and resisting the leadership of our bedouin guide. Phillip, the strong man that he is, managed to stay on through a couple of temper tantrums. But the last one ended up being one too many. Gus, who seemed extremely pissed, bucked around until he reached his goal - throwing Phillip off.
Poor Phillip fell and landed on his shoulder/neck. But he was a real good trooper and got right back up, without seeming to be in too much pain. He decided to walk to rest of the way - a natural decision in my opinion. I was left to freak out and clench onto my camel for the rest of the way. It was sooo scary! Those creatures are tall, temperamental and really really really hard to balance on. Combine this with my fear of heights and the fact that I was still tied to an angry camel that had just thrown my friend off, I was scared as hell.
Luckily enough, my camel (named Ernest) was really sweet and patient and didn't even make a noise the entire hour or so that I was on him. I was still extremely relieved when we reached our destination and I got to put my feet on the ground, though. I think I'll stick to horses only from now on.
We had arrived at our bedouin campsite that we were going to stay in for the night. It was basically made up of a collection of tents that included a common area, a girl's camp and a boy's camp. It was really beautifully located in between more giant rocks in the middle of the desert. Once everybody received a tent and put their stuff down, we were told we had about 3 hours to go and explore before dinner would be served. We all took this opportunity to go climb some more and to find a good place from which we could watch the sunset.
Here I did something that I was extremely proud of - I managed to conquer (at least in part) my fear of heights. We climbed up, at first, to a ledge that wasn't too high. But when my friends wanted to continue up higher, I decided I wasn't going to let some stupid little fear stop me and I joined. We climbed up even higher, getting some really fun exercise in at the same time. It was definitely worth it. Sitting up high, looking at the gorgeous scenery around us and watching the sunset from that spot was one of the nicest things we could have done after that exciting day.
The climb up wasn't that hard, but it was the climb down that I was extremely afraid of. But my friends didn't disappoint me and helped me down the entire way down. I was extremely glad and proud that I had managed to do something which I would've been afraid to do in normal conditions.
We went down to the tents in the common area, still having some time before dinner, and warmed up near the fire pit. This was really nice, as desert nights can get extremely cold. Nearly as soon as we arrived, the group of bedouin men began playing music and singing. It was really nice. Soon enough, they also pulled us and other tourists that were staying there up to dance with them. This was soo much fun once everybody joined in. We danced in a big group, with most of the men standing on the side and encouraging us to join in. At one point, one even took my keffiyeh and tied it around my waist and made me belly dance - it was truly a really fun experience.
We did this until it was time for dinner. Once more, it was an open buffet. This one, though, was so much better than the ones before. So much food, all cooked in their naturally heated stoves. It was incredibly delicious. One guy who was making the bread, took some dough, stretched it out and heated it up on the round, wide cylinder shaped black surface that was heated. It created this really thin, delicious tasting bread that I had never tasted before - it was to die for.
Once our bellies were filled with some of the best food I've ever had, we returned to the tent to digest and chat by the fire. It was so nice after a long, exhausting day to just lounge around and chat all together. The warmth of the fire and our filled tummies immediately put us into a relaxed, slap-happy zen mood. It was really amazing.
But our adventure didn't stop here. We decided that this was probably one of the best places in the world to experience some stargazing. So we left the tents in a big group to march out into the middle of the desert in the pitch-black and look up and the expansive, star-filled sky above us. This was, of course, incredible, just like everything we had done that day. We walked out as far as we dared and laid down. We stayed there for a while, talking and laughing at how incredible of a day we had had. After a while of this, though, we decided we were way too cold to continue, and returned. We went back to the tents and continued where we had left off, chatting until we could no more by the warm fire's heat.
One by one, people left to their tents for some well-needed rest. We were prepared for a really cold, frigid night. Good thing too, because it was extremely cold in our tents. It was painful to change into our pajamas and wash our faces in that kind of weather, but I think we all were too tired to care too much. After some chit-chatting in our tents, we all passed out.
Or tried to, at least. My friend Liz and I, who were sharing a tent, had a minor panic-attack at some noise we heard outside of our tent. Right as we were going to sleep, we heard some creature clawing at our tent, stomp around some, then growl! We pretty much died of fear of some rabid animal coming to attack us and immediately called one of our CIEE guides to come help us. Of course, by the time they sent a guard over to check what was out there, the noise was gone. But it was still a frightening experience.
After we had our little freak out, we finally managed to go to sleep, completely wrapped up in layers and layers of blankets - it was really freezing. I don't know if I really got any sleep at all during the night, as I kept waking up to either my toes, fingers, or nose feeling like they were about to fall off. It was all part of the experience though.
This wraps up the story of the first of two most wonderful and life-changing days of this past weekend. I hope that this explanation can even do the experience I had just one ounce of justice, as it is nearly impossible to explain in plain words the exhilaration and happiness I felt that day. I think I should probably stop here, since this already is an incredibly long post. I'll continue the story about our amazing journey to the ancient city of Petra the next day in another post.
(Also, I will add pictures in a different post later, to show you just a snipped of some of the beauty).
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