The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Once upon a time there was a little girl who traveled to a far away kingdom. While she was there she discovered a magical land of ancient lost cities and 4-D movies... So this is the begininning of the next story that I'm going to tell my nephew Blake when he asks me to tell him a bed time story. The stories are usually about a little boy who loves Halloween and includes something with dragons and the forest, but I think this one is going to be so much cooler - because it's for real...and it's about me!!

I just got back from a week in the Kingdom of Jordan. It's for real a kingdom - there are pictures of the Royal Family everywhere! While we were there, I really did discover two ancient lost cities - Petra and Jerash - both of which were amazing!! Petra, I think, was my favorite. It's an ancient lost Edomite/Nabatean/everything city in the middle of a red rock canyon. It's huge! And one of the 7 wonders of the world (I've seen 3 of those so far!) We spent all day there hiking and exploring all the ruins. Everything was built right into the rocks. So beautiful! If you want a glimse of what it looks like, watch the last Indian Jones movie. The Temple of Doom is actually the treasury of Petra. The other city I discovered (I think it still counts as discovering if you have a tour guide that is telling you everything about it, right?) was Jerash, one of the best preserved Roman cities in the world. So I spent all of that day exploring the temples of Athena, and Hercules, and the collanades, and the amputheraters. Amazing!!

We also stopped at the River Jordan and saw the place where Jesus was baptized. The River Jordan is actually a really more of a muddy stream than the clear blue water they show in all the movies, but it was still incredible to see and to realize what happened there. We had a really neat devotional/New Testiment lecture while we were there about John the Baptist and his importance and the love that Jesus had for him. It was really neat to be there. While we were in Amman (the capital city), we were able to meet with the Branch President of the church over there. Their branch covers 3 different countries - Jordan, Syria, and Egypt - and each member of the presidency lives in a different country! But it was really neat to be able to hear stories of how the church is growing there, although VERY slowly because it's against the law to proscelite and the church isn't even recognized there yet, but there was still some incredible things that have happened there.

It's crazy though, because of all the countries that I've been to this semester (I LOVE being able to say that), Jordan is the most Western/Americanized. In our free time, we took a taxi one night to the mall where we watched a 4-D Haunted House movie, played on some blow-up toys, and ate icecream. Kind of ironic that we did that the same night we hiked all over Petra, but when in Jordan, do as the Jordanians. :)