6/4/09

            I woke up on my own around 7:30 a.m. and went to get breakfast.

            I brought my laptop with me to check my email and update my blog.

            Of course, I went onto Facebook too but the site was in Arabic.

            Amazingly enough, I had used Facebook so much that I was still able to navigate around the web site because I was so familiar with it.

            “I wonder if I could teach myself Arabic this way,” I thought.

            The drive to Petra was about twenty minutes.

            We stopped on the way at an overlook of the valley that Petra was located in.

            I couldn’t believe that somewhere buried in the cracks and crevasses of this mountain valley there was an ancient city.

            As we approached the entrance to the park, we were offered donkey and horse rides for our journey.

            These men clearly knew how to influence tourists as they said all the right things as we passed them.

            “Donkey ride with air conditioning!” one man yelled with a toothy smile.

            “Five dinar! One dinar! Free for you,” another man said as he offered the guys rides before noticing one of the females in our group.

            Further down the trail, we were ambushed by a little kid selling postcards. He had been waiting in the shade behind a rock and jumped out in front of us when we got close.

            “Postcards! One dinar!” he yelled as he stood in the middle of our group as we walked by him.

            As we began to wind our way through the narrow passageways of the mountains, Mo told us the story of the Nebateans.

            This ancient civilization had carved cities into five valleys in Jordan.

            We would be visiting the most popular one.

            The Nebateans built the city around 100 B.C. but the Romans poisoned their water source and took the city over years later.

            An Israeli couple overheard Mo’s explanations and decided to invite themselves along with our group. Not only were they listening to Mo, but they also stood in the middle of the group and blocked other student’s views as Mo pointed out different carvings and features in the rock.

            “Maybe they don’t realize Mo is our personal guide,” I thought.

            But Mo didn’t seem to mind our new honorary group members.

            He showed us the area where they filmed scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

            I was more of a Star Wars fan growing up so this attraction didn’t resonate with me much.

            The rock turned a darker red the deeper we walked into the valley.

            Eventually, Mo asked that we all step to one side of the narrow canyon. He then ushered us forward slowly.

            I walked around a bend and saw a glimpse of a huge tomb carved into the side of a cliff.

            The canyon I was in was shaded and dark but the tomb was sitting in direct sunlight, which helped expose the intricate carvings.

            I could see more of this huge structure as I emerged from the canyon into an open valley full of tourists, donkeys and camels.

            The Israeli couple separated from us and Mo sat down to explain the significance of the tomb.

            He told us that the tomb was called “The Treasury” but that it never actually had any money and treasure inside it.

            Merissa pointed out holes in the rock where British soldiers had shot at the tomb in the hopes of getting the treasure.

            Mo pointed out the Gods and inscriptions on the outside walls, which had both Aramaic and Roman influence.

            After resting for a bit, we continued our hike to a Christian monastery that was built on the top of a mountain.

            As we walked further into the city I was in awe of how large it actually was.

            Caves, tombs and carvings were on the sides of every rock I saw.

            Before our trek up the mountain, we stopped for lunch.

            Everyone looked exhausted.

            Not only was walking under the desert sun difficult but most of us were dealing with some stomach problems as well.

            As uncomfortable as it was, it was kind of fun trying to figure out what same food all us had eaten as we tried to pinpoint what could have made us sick.

            But I decided to be conservative and only ate pita bread and rice for lunch.

            While eating lunch, President Obama made his speech to the Arab world in Cairo, Egypt.

            As a member of the White House press group, Merissa was sent a transcript of the speech and read it to us.

            So in the ancient city of Petra, where the Romans had whipped out an entire civilization, we sat around a table and listened to President Obama’s call for peace between all religions.

            Merissa read the speech almost as well as how I would’ve imagined President Obama delivering it.

            She inserted her own opinions, which were all positive, as she read out loud.

            “This is huge,” she said as she read the part about both Palestinians and Israelis needing to recognize the other side’s right to exist. She was happy with the speech.

            I was feeling better after lunch and was ready to conquer the 800 steps it took to hike up this mountain and get to the monastery.

            Men with donkeys lined the trail and offered rides up to the top of the mountain.

            I had to be alert when hiking because I never knew when I was going to have to dodge a donkey flying up the trail or barreling around a corner.

            I also didn’t want to step in donkey shit, which littered the trail and smelled horrible.

            On the way up, we passed a young couple riding down the trail on donkeys.

            A local Jordanian was holding onto the girl’s donkey and slowly guiding it down the stone steps.

            The guy was desperately trying to balance on his donkey and had a look of shear terror on his face.

            “See, it’s fun,” said the Jordanian as he guided the girl, whose big smile showed how much she was enjoying the ride, down the mountain.

            “Oh no, it’s really not,” said the guy in a shaky voice as his donkey wobbled down the trail.

            We all laughed at the couple’s situation and continued upward.

            All along the way, Bedouin women sold crafts and jewelry at stands.

            It was obvious that all these people survived off of what they could make from tourists.

            When we reached the top of the mountain, I saw the monastery.

            It looked almost exactly like The Treasury except it didn’t have any carvings of Gods and this structure was three times bigger.

            I couldn’t tell how large the monastery was because it was built into the side of an even bigger mountain peak.

            I had to approach the entrance and look up at this towering building to fully understand its immense size.

            After taking tons of photos and video, we headed back down the mountain.

            One of the perks of being a guest of the Prime Minister was that our bus got special permission to drive on an access road inside of Petra.

            Instead of walking all the way back to where the kid had ambushed us with postcards, we hopped on our bus where we had eaten lunch.

            That night, we ate at a place called Petra Kitchen.

            It was a very unique restaurant where we were taught how to make traditional Jordanian food and did the cooking ourselves.

            Everyone contributed to the cooking and enjoyed the meal that everyone was involved in making.

            We separated into cooking stations and made different parts of our meal.

            My group was in charge of making meat pies that had tomatoes, onions, peppers and lots of cumin.

            Our chef gave me the onion and laughed as she said that she was going to make a boy cry.

            “Oh I’ve cut onion before,” I said with an air of confidence, “my mom is a home ec teacher.”

            She put me to work after that comment and made me chop the onion into tiny pieces.

            I did so without a complaint or a tear.

            My mom would have been proud.

            Everyone was having fun making their specific dish but there was one empty station with all of its ingredients still wrapped in plastic.

            That’s when a TV crew showed up and started to set up their cameras and lights.

            “Are we going to be on TV?” I wondered.

            But it turned out that our group was supposed to be cooking with another group that had not arrived yet.

            We had all finished cooking and were sitting around with cocktails as we waited for the arrival of this mystery party that had their own TV crew.

            I was getting pretty hungry.

            Finally, this tall, dark man walked in the restaurant. He paused in the doorway and ran his hand through his hair as he survey his surroundings.

            A few more attractive looking people showed up as the restaurant staff tried to prepare them for the meal that they needed to make.

            They didn’t seem too interested in cooking and contributing to our meal. They just stood around talking and laughing while a frantic camera-girl recorded their antics.           

            “What’s going on?” I thought to myself.

            I was getting very hungry.

            Someone in our group found out that they were soap opera stars from Brazil who had been filming episodes in Jordan.

            While most of the girls were fawning over the tall, handsome Brazilian, I was not amused.

            Showing up over an hour late may not have meant anything to these Brazilian celebrities, but I was pissed.

            The worst part was that they never even apologized.

            A Jordanian official, who was traveling with them, came over an apologized as the Brazilians took their time preparing their food and making stupid jokes in front of the camera.

            One of the actresses leaned across the able and looked at me.

            “Thank you guys,” she said while flashing a flirtatious smile.

            But I was not swayed by her lipo lips, heavy eye makeup and fake highlights.

            I flashed her a grin, tipped my glass and looked the other direction.

            That’s when the tall Brazilian, Thiago, tried his hand at diplomacy.

            He decided to interview one of the girls in our group in front of the camera.

            She handled herself well as he flashed her his pearly white smile and winked at her.

            He glanced over at me but was met by a hard glare staring back at him.

            I had become the leader of the resistance against these Brazilian superstars and nothing they could do would win me over.

            Unless, of course, they picked up our bill, which I thought would have been the noble thing to do.

            We finally sat down to dinner and I was relieved to discover that we did not have to share table with them.

            The meat pies we made were delicious and all the food we had cooked was very satisfying.

            But in a sign of protest, I chose to avoid the cucumber yogurt that the Brazilians had made.

            The manager of the restaurant came over to Merissa and apologized for the long delay. He said that the first round of drinks was on the house.

            While some of our group took this to mean that their first drink was free, I took it to mean that I didn’t have to pay for my next one.

            “That was respectable,” I thought as I had assumed the Brazilians were picking up the bill.

            I was even more upset when I learned that the restaurant did it out of their own courtesy,

            “It’s not their fault,” said another girl in our group.

            A little farther into the meal, the manager came over again and told us that the whole meal was free.

            Again, the kind staff at the restaurant, instead of the Brazilians, felt bad about the situation and wanted to correct it.

             Every time I thought about the fact that these inconsiderate soap opera stars were eating food that I had cooked, I got angrier.

            “Maybe they’re coming to the cave bar afterwards too,” said one of the girls in our group.

            “They better not,” I said, “Two countries will go into the cave and only one will come out.”

            The whole table laughed.

            We finished our meal and left a generous tip as a sign of appreciation for the staff’s kindness.

            The cave bar wasn’t a real cave but rather an ancient tomb that had been turned into a bar.           

            While some of us raised objections to the ethics of such a development, we all sat down and ordered drinks and hookah pipes, or “arguile.”

            I was feeling pretty good from all the beer I had drank at Petra Kitchen and was in a better mood now that I was away from the Brazilians.

            I ordered an Al Wadi, which was one of the few drinks on the menu that had more alcohol than fruit juice in its ingredients.

            It had rum, triple sec, blue caraco and lemon juice, which was mixed and served in a martini glass.

            We were having a great time smoking the “hubbly bubbly” and teaching those who had never smoked before how to do it.

            A D.J. inside the cave was pumping upbeat music and Merissa requested that they kept playing Arabic tunes.

            I looked over my shoulder and saw two waiters holding hands and hopping in unison to the beat of the music.

            As they pranced towards our table, some of our group got up and joined.

            I sat in my seat and laughed as I watched them try to learn the steps of the dance.

            They circled around us and Mo said that all the guys now had to do a customary dance.

            So Mo and us three guys on the trip got up and tried to learn the footwork of this traditional dance.

            We all laughed as we knew the steps weren’t too difficult yet somehow none of us could do it properly.

            I thought of the booty call as I hopped my left foot over my right, kicked, stomped and repeated.

            We finally started to get the hang of it, which the waiters noticed, and the dance sped up.

            The dance was the same but we kept moving faster and faster around in a circle.

            We must have looked ridiculous and unbelievably uncoordinated but our onlookers were still clapping along with the music and cheered us on.

            The song ended and I sat back down with my Al Wadi in one hand and hookah pipe in the other.

            We sat outside until the bar closed and headed back the hotel.

            We had to leave early the next morning to head to the Dead Sea but I managed to do all my packing before going to sleep.