the hashemite kingdom of jordan

we spent last week in jordan and it was a blast! to be honest, the only expectation i had about jordan is that it would be a lot like israel. it's definitely not! my expectations were exceeded, a lot. here are a few pictures from our week. 

we spent one day in the ancient city of petra! yes, the one of indiana jones fame. it was great, i kind of felt back at home. it's like southern utah, but with massive ancient buildings carved in the rock. in the middle of the desert. how cool is that? it was so beautiful.

this was so funny. one day, we went to an ancient roman city called jerash, and we were standing in this roman theater when all of a sudden, this arab man came out of nowhere with a bagpipe and started playing scottish folk songs. we were filming him and two other bagpipe players and a drummer came out and we all started dancing around the theater together. if you know me, you know i love the bagpipes so much, so i was laughing so hard the entire time, i was so happy! and then they just left, it was so random. 

we went to the royal automobile museum in amman, it was super cool, but one of the administrators admitted we were going just because he likes cars and it has no historical value haha. i'm not a car person, but even i can appreciate a room full of beautiful, expensive cars. 

that night, a few of us wandered around amman, trying to find a bar to watch the eurocup semifinals. blake served his mission in portugal, so for the past few weeks, whenever they played, blake would run around the center with his portugal jersey and flag and try to get people to watch with him. so we got permission to stay out past curfew to watch the game and the only place we could find that had room to watch was a hookah cafe haha. it was definitely the best night of the trip. we don't spend very many nights out in israel because the places we can go are very limited, so it was fun to go out. we sat next to a bunch of americans while watching the game and found out they are all byu students! after the game, we all smelled so badly of hookah.

geoff and i took pictures of blake during the shootout. he was so nervous. 

on our last day, we went to the jordan river, near a site where christ might have been baptized. a group of spaniards came to get baptized, that was cool to watch. we sat under the shade as a class and read about john the baptist. it was a highlight of the trip. 

after that, we went back to home sweet home! going to jordan was so good. i have a new teacher now that we are studying the new testament for the last block of the summer, and the more i learn, the more i realize i don't know, secularly and spiritually. it has been a huge humbling experience. i don't know anything. beginning to comprehend the scope of the scriptures and things like politics in the middle east can be overwhelming. i've never realized so much how little my knowledge is.