My Jordanian Experience
I'm sitting in the departure office of the King Hussein Bridge Border between Jordan/Israel thinking how I'm going to royally screw this up. I'm traveling by myself, crossing international borders, and visiting/exploring a non Western Country. I know something is going to go wrong. But to prevent thinking about that I might as well write this blog I'm a few weeks behind and there's a good reason for that. Not much as happened aside from weekend excursions to churches here and there. But before I get to that we have to go back to the beginning of my Jordanian experience.
You know when you're on a flight path that goes over a large body of water, you depart on land, see land for a long time, and then all of a sudden you only see blue for miles and miles on end? Well that happened when I left Athens, cool. Nothing I haven't seen before but the next time I looked out it was yellow. For miles and miles in every direction. I knew I was going to the desert but seeing it is different. The carpet of sand and dust has covered the land below extending limitless like the ocean. The say LA is in the desert but it's got nothing on Jordan. We land and immediately have to pay the Jordan Visa to enter. Once we make our way through airport security, the director of the dig is there and recognizes the two of us, we are the last of the arrivals so we quickly depart. We arrive at the city we will be staying in for the next 4 weeks, Madaba, about a 50min drive from Amman and a 40min bus ride from the dig site. The boys and girls are split among two houses about a 15min walk from each other and naturally all the meetings, events, lectures, lab work, etc. will be held over at the girls’ house. We also don't have beds: meaning everyone sleeps on a 5in thick foam mattress.
The first few days the directors had us get acquainted with the surrounding area, we had a walking tour guide of the city, a quick work day on the dig site and then explored a couple of ruins nearby. All of that took 4 days. On Sunday (as our work week is Sun-Thu) we began to remove all of the backfill. It typically takes a few days in a regular digsite, ours took a week, which was packed with dirt, stones, cobble and random trash. Our regular schedule is to wake up at 4am, be on the bus by 5, start working at 6, take a breakfast break at 9, shade break at 11:30 (because there is null shade except the ones made by rock piles) and then be back on the bus headed back to the apts by 12:45. Lunch is served around 1:30-2. We are fortunate enough to have a personal cook who not only cooks very well but can cook for +20 people and still have leftovers. We get a 2h break before lab time begins, which is supposed to be 1.5h but depending on the days it can shift to more or less time. After lab time we are allowed to spend the rest of the day however we want. All in all, with breaks included, we work from 6am~5pm.
The work is boring and repetitive. We dig, we remove dirt, we catalogue everything we find, we stop for the supervisors to sketch the new found areas, and repeat. The exciting times are when we're free to roam. There's a local shop owner who's, funny enough, cornered the archeology niche of Madaba: anyone who’s come to dig something knows about and visits Youseff. A group of us went to visit him in his retirement and found an amazing man with great english. As amazing as Youseff is, his wife got exasperated with him at the house so he decided to set up a boutique gift shop. Everytime we visit he offers us delicious tea that I've become addicted to, I brought a bag with me to see if I can find it in the States.
Once the weekend finally arrives, I sleep in, waking up at 7... I know super late right? On Friday we just took the day off. Saturday we went to check out Mt. Nebo where Moses was promised entry to the Holy Land but died before he could get there. The view was amazing, and the ruins at the top had mosaic tiles which were fantastic. No dead biblical body though, 7/10 experience. Second weekend I got a terrible flu, must've been the 20% beer I had the previous night. Unfortunately I missed out on traveling to the Dead Sea but hearing the horror stories my digmates were telling me I may have dodged a bullet. On our third weekend we went to Jerash & Amman. Jerash is an ancient Roman city that is one of the most well preserved standing cities in the world. "Most well preserved" still means it's all in ruins but there are a lot of them and you can see proper structures of the churches, houses, temples, etc. After exploring that city we moved on to check out the capital of Jordan, Amman (or rather its ancient archeological features). Our day featured more ruins, museums, and amphitheatres. The Amman amphitheatre has 3 levels of seating rows, which is a lot, typical amphitheatres house 1 to 2 levels.
My 4th weekend however, was a special one, we had a three day weekend. We left Friday and saw Kerak, a Roman fortification, then stayed the night 5min away from the entrance of Petra. Saturday we entered Petra, and thankfully they let us roam around free for the day. I promptly walked away from the main group and found a smaller group to head straight for the furthest archeological feature: the monastery. Everything from The Treasury at the entrance to the Monastery was built to be monumental and awe-inspiring. We saw a distant sign that said "best view in the world" and we just had to test it. So we climbed a little higher and decided it was worth changing it to "best view of The Monastery". Then we walked back down and had a short snack break. 3/5 wanted to go see the Palace Tombs but not the High Place of Sacrifice, 1/5 wanted to see the opposite, being a rebel (and a total geek) I wanted to see both. At the end of it all, I think I was the only one who visited the three major sites of Petra, feels good to have done something others had the opportunity to do but chose not to. That night we stayed with the Bedouins, the nomadic tribes of the Sahara who roam around with their camels. The night sky was remarkable, not only were we able to see the stars clearly, we could also kinda see the milky way galaxy. So far nothing has the farm beat for the best view of the night sky.
On our last weekend with the dig crew we checked out several desert castles, these were fairly intact and we were able to walk in them and explore it all. It was enjoyable but a short trip. By then we already had a few people leave and shortly one by one more digmates headed off back to their country of origin. By the 8th only 3 students were left including me, but by nightfall I will be in a hostel somewhere in Jerusalem patiently awaiting my next adventure.
You know when you're on a flight path that goes over a large body of water, you depart on land, see land for a long time, and then all of a sudden you only see blue for miles and miles on end? Well that happened when I left Athens, cool. Nothing I haven't seen before but the next time I looked out it was yellow. For miles and miles in every direction. I knew I was going to the desert but seeing it is different. The carpet of sand and dust has covered the land below extending limitless like the ocean. The say LA is in the desert but it's got nothing on Jordan. We land and immediately have to pay the Jordan Visa to enter. Once we make our way through airport security, the director of the dig is there and recognizes the two of us, we are the last of the arrivals so we quickly depart. We arrive at the city we will be staying in for the next 4 weeks, Madaba, about a 50min drive from Amman and a 40min bus ride from the dig site. The boys and girls are split among two houses about a 15min walk from each other and naturally all the meetings, events, lectures, lab work, etc. will be held over at the girls’ house. We also don't have beds: meaning everyone sleeps on a 5in thick foam mattress.
The first few days the directors had us get acquainted with the surrounding area, we had a walking tour guide of the city, a quick work day on the dig site and then explored a couple of ruins nearby. All of that took 4 days. On Sunday (as our work week is Sun-Thu) we began to remove all of the backfill. It typically takes a few days in a regular digsite, ours took a week, which was packed with dirt, stones, cobble and random trash. Our regular schedule is to wake up at 4am, be on the bus by 5, start working at 6, take a breakfast break at 9, shade break at 11:30 (because there is null shade except the ones made by rock piles) and then be back on the bus headed back to the apts by 12:45. Lunch is served around 1:30-2. We are fortunate enough to have a personal cook who not only cooks very well but can cook for +20 people and still have leftovers. We get a 2h break before lab time begins, which is supposed to be 1.5h but depending on the days it can shift to more or less time. After lab time we are allowed to spend the rest of the day however we want. All in all, with breaks included, we work from 6am~5pm.
The work is boring and repetitive. We dig, we remove dirt, we catalogue everything we find, we stop for the supervisors to sketch the new found areas, and repeat. The exciting times are when we're free to roam. There's a local shop owner who's, funny enough, cornered the archeology niche of Madaba: anyone who’s come to dig something knows about and visits Youseff. A group of us went to visit him in his retirement and found an amazing man with great english. As amazing as Youseff is, his wife got exasperated with him at the house so he decided to set up a boutique gift shop. Everytime we visit he offers us delicious tea that I've become addicted to, I brought a bag with me to see if I can find it in the States.
Once the weekend finally arrives, I sleep in, waking up at 7... I know super late right? On Friday we just took the day off. Saturday we went to check out Mt. Nebo where Moses was promised entry to the Holy Land but died before he could get there. The view was amazing, and the ruins at the top had mosaic tiles which were fantastic. No dead biblical body though, 7/10 experience. Second weekend I got a terrible flu, must've been the 20% beer I had the previous night. Unfortunately I missed out on traveling to the Dead Sea but hearing the horror stories my digmates were telling me I may have dodged a bullet. On our third weekend we went to Jerash & Amman. Jerash is an ancient Roman city that is one of the most well preserved standing cities in the world. "Most well preserved" still means it's all in ruins but there are a lot of them and you can see proper structures of the churches, houses, temples, etc. After exploring that city we moved on to check out the capital of Jordan, Amman (or rather its ancient archeological features). Our day featured more ruins, museums, and amphitheatres. The Amman amphitheatre has 3 levels of seating rows, which is a lot, typical amphitheatres house 1 to 2 levels.
My 4th weekend however, was a special one, we had a three day weekend. We left Friday and saw Kerak, a Roman fortification, then stayed the night 5min away from the entrance of Petra. Saturday we entered Petra, and thankfully they let us roam around free for the day. I promptly walked away from the main group and found a smaller group to head straight for the furthest archeological feature: the monastery. Everything from The Treasury at the entrance to the Monastery was built to be monumental and awe-inspiring. We saw a distant sign that said "best view in the world" and we just had to test it. So we climbed a little higher and decided it was worth changing it to "best view of The Monastery". Then we walked back down and had a short snack break. 3/5 wanted to go see the Palace Tombs but not the High Place of Sacrifice, 1/5 wanted to see the opposite, being a rebel (and a total geek) I wanted to see both. At the end of it all, I think I was the only one who visited the three major sites of Petra, feels good to have done something others had the opportunity to do but chose not to. That night we stayed with the Bedouins, the nomadic tribes of the Sahara who roam around with their camels. The night sky was remarkable, not only were we able to see the stars clearly, we could also kinda see the milky way galaxy. So far nothing has the farm beat for the best view of the night sky.
On our last weekend with the dig crew we checked out several desert castles, these were fairly intact and we were able to walk in them and explore it all. It was enjoyable but a short trip. By then we already had a few people leave and shortly one by one more digmates headed off back to their country of origin. By the 8th only 3 students were left including me, but by nightfall I will be in a hostel somewhere in Jerusalem patiently awaiting my next adventure.
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