Back From The Future... almost

Brave little Bedouin woman

Last week we played host to my parents, Kim and Lea Ann who flew into Amman on a bright Sunday morning. Sunday is the beginning of the Arab world's work week, but that did not stop a big portion of it from taking the morning off to crowd the reception area of the airport. Equipped with drums and noise makers, various groups welcomed family members home from abroad in a deafening chorus of screaming, pounding and second-hand smoke. Remember the scene from The Two Towers where the Urkiai army is about to attack the people of Rohan at the stronghold of Helms Deep, and they are stomping on the ground and chanting all aggressively and waving their torches and swords in the air? Do you remember that? The airport scene was kind that, except there were no elves to save us from the mob. My mom and dad had to push through the crowd where we were waiting with a taxi.

We went downtown that day and did a bit of shopping and listened to the friendly Amman locals greet us with "welcome in Jordan!" It was a good time. But what I didn't tell my parents is that we were walking around a place where a week previously, a gunman opened fire on a bus load of tourists. We were shopping next to the King Hussein mosque where other white-ish people have also been stabbed in the past. Apperently this area is where the Muslim Brotherhood has set up shop and performs various financing operations. I don't even want to know how many of our dollars-cum-dinars have gone on to fund the Brotherhood, Hamas or Fatah during our stay here.

The next day we took my parents to the Citadel. Since Lindsey and I have already been there (see previous blog post), we were able to show them the popular points of interest. But the main event was the next day when we rented a car and headed down to Petra. I guess I shouldn't just gloss over the fact that we rented a car and that was that. I actually called the Thrifty Car Rental office here in Amman and was told they had a car available. I notified them that I would be there in 20 mintues. So of course upon arrival they claimed they had no idea what I was talking about and that there were no cars. We got "A-rabbed." The good news is I found out how good my Arabic is when I argued with them and told them they were rediculous and that someone else was going to get my money because they don't know how to run a business. And someone else did get my money. Avis did.

Then we went to Petra. The pictures are posted here. Petra is possibly the oldest and coolest place I've ever carved my name into. According to the history books: "Petra is the ancient Nabatean city where Indiana Jones found the holy grail and thereby saved his wounded father, Henry."

But honestly, the city was absolutely breathtaking (and no I didn't actually carve my name, or anything else into it). The pictures truly speak for themselves. The juxtaposition of Nabatean and Roman architecture was truly a sight to see. My mother actually walked around and explained the different parts of columns and their various stylistic periods. Something that needs mentioning though, is that one old Bedouin man showed me a ceramic oil lamp for sale that featured a sexually explicit imprint. Our day got better and better... and explicit-er, especially upon our 800 stair ascent to the massive monastery. The hike down did quite a number on my parent's knees, so much so that it caused my dad to walk like a sassy robot (his words, not mine).

The next day we went to Madaba, which is a city that has ancient Christian churches and wild floor mosaics. They are brightly colored and tediously pieced together. They depict scenes from the bible, maps of the holy land and/or principles of the gospel. Also, Madaba is the most rediculous city I've ever navigated. There are signs pointing to attractions that tell you to turn down one-way streets that are going the wrong way. Or, the signs face the wrong way and you can only read them if you look in your rear view mirror and can make out the backwards lettering (but of course by the time you decipher it you've already missed the turn and you want to crash your car into someone's falafel stand).

The same day we also saw Mt. Nebo (Deuteronomy 34:1) and the Dead Sea. It was a succesful week and a nice visit from my parents. It's also nice to be able to get back to reality and wrap up some things that matter in this century. My parents left the saturday after they came. I think secretely they were sad to leave us to our plight here in Jordan. But we're surviving. Less than three weeks to go, now. We'll be back in AZ on the 19th of August at 11:29pm. We're ten hours ahead of you all in the United States, and although it has been fun living in the future for the last 2+ months, it will be good to get home. I listened to America the Beautiful while garbage blew around my feet on the way to work this morning. Three more weeks...

والحمد لله على نهاية هذه الرحلة

Also, this:

Let's take a stroll...

down memory lane.

It seems like this is the cool thing to do right now, and since I don't want to be left out, I'm posting this.

Here are the directions:
1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. (I think most of you have already done this)If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Also, although Lindsey is posting this, feel free to leave memories about me, Brett, and/or us as a couple or whatever. :)

Be thankful...

This blog is pretty much off the cuff out of frustration... Just be thankful if:

1. You have running water. This is a big deal!

2. You have a washer and dryer. We have somewhat of a washer, no dryer.

3. When you go to church in a skirt, you don't feel like you are getting too much unwanted attention. I suppose if a guy wore a skirt to church in the states, he might get some unwanted attention though...

4. You have reliable internet all the time.

5. You have your own vehicle to get around.

6. You understand what people are saying around you.

7. You didn't go crazy last night after taking some sleeping pills to try to drown out the loud Arab men and other various noises. (Apparently I did a lot of funny things, but Brett didn't think they were so funny since I kept him awake till 4:30 in the morning)

8. You get to use a vacuum instead of a bunch of tape to try to clean your carpet. (Yep, that's right I said tape. You gotta be real creative here sometimes.)
9. You can eat all the tortillas you ever wanted.

10. If you don't have to yell at your landlord consistently. (This is Brett's job.)

11. You've never been woken up by fireworks, the call to prayer, a drum circle of some kind, loud Arab men gabbing about who know's what, honking cars, or the gas man.

12. Ants and fly's aren't regular visitors in your home.

I just wanted to get that out there. But, at the same time, I know that we are blessed to be here. We've sacrificed a lot to be here, but it has been a pretty good experience. There have been some ups and downs, but overall, it has been a very eye-opening experience and it is sure to help Brett's career in the future.

And now here is random picture just for the sake of adding a picture...

This is me on the way to Books@Cafe. It's a really cool cafe, but also touristy. So While we liked it, we probably won't visit too often since the touristy places are the ones you want to try to avoid.... they are the ones that get bombed or attacked. It was nice the one time we went though. :)

Aqaba, the 4th of July, and everything gross in between

I personally think it was a nice change of pace for Brett to be doing the blog writing, but I suppose it was only a matter of time before he made me do it again. At any rate, here is what we've been up to lately...

A couple weekends ago we went to Aqaba...

We didn't actually take this picture. In fact, we only took one picture the whole time we were there and it wasn't even a picture at the beach. Sorry. (We just didn't want to take our camera down to the beach and leave it sitting there on the public beach.) We headed down there via the public bus on a Friday with a bunch of BYU kids. We had planned on staying at a place called the Bedouin Gardens. It came highly recommended by one of the people we were with, so we figured we would give it a shot. The original plan was to just pay to stay in a tent and then sleep on the beach. But, once we got there, Brett and I decided to get a room with air conditioning because sleeping in that heat would have been near impossible, even with the breeze. So while Brett and I slept in a room, the five other people we were with attempted to sleep outside. Around 3 a.m. something went awry for everyone in our group. Brett and I were awakened by some stomach problems with explosive results and the outside people were awakened by some uninvited guests. Gnats are apparently at their best in the middle of the night... So three of the people got a room around 4 a.m. and two of the other outside sleepers tried to win a loosing battle with the gnat-stys. We later found out that they had even tried sleeping in the pool to get away from the bugs, but it was to no avail.

The next morning all of us were tired and some were worse off than others. Brett and I felt like someone had poured acid in our stomachs and then proceeded to punch us over and over again and the two people that didn't sleep were pretty much delirious and on the verge of insanity. One of them even had intermittent fits of laughing/crying. It was funny, and yet oh so sad. Determined to try to enjoy some of our trip, we all rented snorkel gear and headed out to the beach. Of course, before actually getting the gear we had to convince the Arabs renting it to us that we had used snorkel gear before and knew what it was supposed to work like. (They thought that the leaky goggles were our misuse of them…) The water was a little cold for my liking, but most things are. The coral was really beautiful and we saw a lot of cool fish including a little puffer fish. After a good while of snorkeling, we decided to head into town because we didn't want to stay at the Bedouin Gardens again. (Brett has declared the Bedouin Gardens to be the worst gardens ever.) Here is that one and only picture I mentioned:

Saturday night we got a hotel in town and it was a much appreciated change of pace. From there on, we took it pretty easy and just tried to survive the stomach problems that plagued the rest of our trip. We headed back to Amman on Sunday and just when we thought our troubles were over, we found that they had just changed from internal to external...

You see, for a while now we've been dealing with this family of pigeons living in our ceiling. I don't know what they did up there, but it was super loud and kept us up at all hours of the night. We told our landlord about the problem and he went up there and took care of the problem by killing them. We thought that this was great and that our troubled sleep was no more. What we didn't count on was the pigeons coming at us from beyond the grave. With the pigeons gone, their little lice friends needed new hosts, so they came wandering into our apartment. We, or rather I, came home one day to find them all over our walls and all over my suitcase with all of my clothing. It was one of the grossest things I have ever seen. We quickly got some raid and went to work. Brett even went up into the attic/roof area to spray where the pigeons used to live. We haven't found any in a few days now, so I think we are in the clear.

The 4th of July was pretty mellow. We went to church then we went to Fuddruckers. (An American classic, right?) When we were at Fuddruckers Brett made us go around the table and read our favorite amendment from a pocket edition of the constitution and say what we love about America the most. After that we were invited over to a member's house where they fed us again (gluttony is also very American, right?) and Brett got to shed some guitar American style. Then we headed over to a small "married people" get together. This was the first time that Brett and I had ever hung out with just married people. It was interesting. We did get to see some fireworks on the way over, so that was good. I would have made Lee Greenwood proud with my singing of “I’m Proud to be an American” while we watched those few fireworks go off. So, that’s pretty much that. This last weekend we took it easy, but made sure to keep the American theme going. We watched the Hulk, Hancock, and ate at TGI Fridays. We're alive and doing well now and to try to make this blog a little more interesting, we've included a video of our living room... I'm not sure how that will make things more interesting, but just enjoy. Don't sass me.