Umm Qais

I am sorry that I am so subpar at blogging.

When my sisters were abroad I followed their blogs pretty carefully and was always really excited when Erin put up a picture of some hut she was living in, or Megan made an intellectual-loaded comment about potatoes in Peru. I promised myself that when I was cool and living overseas like them I would blog frequently and have piles of interesting things to say. Needless to say I have failed in that regard, but I will attempt to do better. In my defense the internet can be really slow so it takes a great while to upload pictures and blog entries, which causes me considerable angst.

I am sorry, but if you ever really need an update that I am in fact safe you can always call me directly. (My # in Jordan is 962 0795168220, but you will definitely want to use skype or an international calling card. I am rather far away. I am ten hours ahead of the West Coast, which is a long ways.)

But yes this post is labeled Umm Qais - not Michael rambles about being out of contact with his relatives - So, Umm Qais.

This last weekend I went to the village of Umm Qais in the very Northwest corner of Jordan. It was spectacular. Getting to the town is a bit of a task because one must take a bus from Amman to Irbid. Transfer across the million person city to another bus station and grab a second bus 30km further north along stunning mountain roads.

Buses are great! They are cheap (it cost about $4 for the 3 hour trip and most of that was the taxi in Irbid) and generally pretty efficient. Noteably, they are also cramped and dated automobiles and don't really resemble buses in the States. The only real downside is the lack leg room and enduring a lot of judgement from locals becasue Wylie was carrying his guitar on his lap and we are silly white informal imperialists. Though it probably doesn't help that only silly Americans hold spontaneous jam session in bus station in Jordan. (Sometimes you just have to sit on a curb and play guitar)

But the point of this is to say that Umm Qais is far enough off the beaten track that in the off season the only tourists it sees are the hop-on-hop-off tour bus kind. As we rolled into town just in time for sunset we were an unusual sight. And as a result lots of children yelled greeting in Arabic to us. Lots of men yelled greetings in Arabic at the three beautiful women I happened to be traveling with, and we were invited to perform our guitar/dueling harmonica music for a group of locals and enjoy the weekly pleasure of sitting around and watching WWE wrestling. It was wonderful.

Umm Qais is lovely and green. It looks out over the Golan Height/Syria and the Sea of Galilee in Israel. For the later reason it is very popular with Palestinian Jordanians, who drive to the village to gaze back at the homeland they either aren't allowed to visit or refuse to travel to. For us it was just a great way to get away from the city for two days.

I had a great time!!!

I then returned to Amman and finished two research papers, which I turned in and presented this week.