SPRING BREAK!!! and Regional Security

Hey all,

I have enjoyed a great many adventures of late. I visited Petra this weekend, which was breathtakingly spectacular. Below is a truly enormous building known as the Monastery, which the Nabateans carved out of a mountain side. It was a bit of a hike to get there, but it was totally worth it (Especially since as most of you know, I relish any chance to get away from the books and go hiking)

With adventure on the brain, I continue to fine tune my Spring Break travel plans. The regional security situation continues to evolve and situation remains very fluid. In some ways, revolutions and revolt have really found a way to mess with my travel plans. Last week, I had very much hoped to go to Damascus for a view days before touring Israel. Recent events have made me rethink my plans to visit Syria much as they have also prevented me from swinging by the pyramids.

I am not sure what news is being covered back home, as I was immensely disturb to see that Elizabeth Taylor's death took the front page away from much more important events around the world. However, I assume that some very mediocre reporting and simplified coverage - always with the lurking threat of "Islamisinsts" - has appeared in the Estados Unidos. So, let me briefly detail the situation:

- Syria (which borders Jordan to the North and shares strong cultural links) has a harsh authoritarian regime.

- As in other Arab states, some of the Syrian people have begun calling for reform, and like other authoritarian regimes in the region the Syrian government has responded with violence.

- As much as cable news shows may group disparate nations together, Jordan is not Syria, it is not Libya, nor Bahrain, nor Yemen.

- Jordan is Jordan

- Jordan is an absolute monarchy

- Some people wish it was a constitutional monarchy. This combined with tensions around Jordanian identity means that interesting political developments are happen here. If you have seen scary protest pictures from Jordan in the last few days it is safe to say that the captions attached were probably misleading. Jordan remains a very safe place to live. The craziest thing that could conceivably happen here is that the people be awarded the right to elect their Prime Minister. This remains unlikely in my opinion.

- In very stark contrast, Syria is currently a less safe place to live... So, I am not going to visit Syria next week instead I am going to Occupied Palestine/Israel.

Here is the current plan:

Friday: Amman to Bethlehem

Saturday: Bethlehem to Jerusalem

Sunday: Jerusalem

Monday: Jerusalem

Tuesday: Jerusalem to Tel Aviv

Wednesday: Meet up with my Friend Kathleen, travel to Tiberias, bike half way around the Sea of Galilee, attempt to walk on water, fail, then camp along the lake, love life.

Thursday: TBA

Friday: Head back to Amman

I am very excited!!! It shall be a wonderful adventure and allow me to check a whole bunch of amazing stuff off of my bucket list.

IN SUMMARY:

Oh hey, I am alive and safe! The biggest threats I face are exams... that and crossing streets. Traveling is really fun!

Love, Michael

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.

The Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is in the words of David Coggan "REALLLY COOOL!"

I went there today with CIEE and got to play at this swanky resort place for free, but mostly just enjoyed being in water that makes it physically impossible to sink. It is one of thee strangest experiences I have had in my entire life.

That is all. Homework calls.

Dead2Red

I have been pretty stoked about running the Dead2Red Marathon for a while now. The race is REALLY cool. "The run starts from Wadi Moujeb Bridge on the shores of the Dead Sea at an altitude of -415m below sea level. From there teams make their way through the Wadi Araba to an altitude of +120m above sea level before descending towards the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba 242 Km away at sea level" (http://dead2red.com/about_dtr.php). It is run in teams of ten which means that everyone runs about ten 5k sections and you must finish in 24 hours to make the party in the beautiful coastal city of Aqaba on the Red Sea.

Unfortunately, my team Cool Runnings is battling this one without me. I have been dealing with an upper respiratory infection for a while now and yesterday saw me return to the doctor. I didn't call to announce that I was backing out until I was physical on the way to the hospital, and only at the prompting of the CIEE official who accompanied me. It still was not easy for me to give up on the desire to participate in a race, which covers half the distance of Jordan in one night and a day. The idea of running that 11th or 12th brutal mile climbing out of the lowest point on earth as the sun came up over the desert really made those Forest Gump-like chills, that I gets in in my strange lanky legs at the thought of things like the PCT or a fateful night at Interbay, start going. But, alas, had my temperature spiked during the race I might have really ruined the race organizers use of the term Dead... and had I not collapsed miles from a hospital at the very least I would have soiled my pants more than once. T.M.I.? Almost certainly, but given that I once ran 12 miles of a marathon 26 and half mile run to Snoqualmie Ridge in a snowstorm in my short shorts before yielding to my father's offer of hot chocolate, I feel a great need to justify myself.

So, I should be on the side of a desolate highway tonight, but all I can do in support my teammate in spirit and say,

"FEEL THE RYTHME, FEEL THE RYHME, ALL TOGETHER NOW! IT'S BOBSLED TIME!

Oh Hey Holy Land

So last weekend I went on a grand tour of tourist attractions God created to make sure that, Jews, Muslims, and Christians would always have enough places to pray, make money, and argue about. God did a really nice job so he has been resting for awhile, and as a result most of the holy stuff around here is really old.

But anyway, irreverence aside, sites in Jordan appear in the Torah, Bible, and Qur'an a whole heck of a lot. Madaba a city I plan to visit again tomorrow (this time to find a hot spring) is mentioned more times in the Bible than Jerusalem (Moses sp

ent a fair bit of time hanging out there). Plus, Jesus is believed to have been baptized on the east side of the river Jordan at a place called Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan, thereby helping invent a sacrament that I like to refer to as Hanley family job security.

So anyway, last Saturday I did the tourist thing at:

Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan - see above

Mt. Nebo - For those of you who haven't studied your Old Testament lately, Mt. Nebo is where Moses looked across the Jordan valley into the Promised Land known variously as Israel, Palestine, The Land of Canaan, or Disneyland depending on who you ask. The last one is used by overly sensitive American college students afraid of offen

ding Palestinians who might be eavesdropping on said Americans discussing travel plans.

Madaba - City of churches best known for it famous 5th century mosaic map.

& Herod's Castle ruins - John the Baptist is believed to have lost his head here. I stayed cool and thought it was just a really cool mountain top fortress.

So yeah, Jordan is neat... And religious too!

This is the site that major Christian churches have agreed is the site of Jesus' baptism. The ruins around it are part of the 5th century churches that were built around the area. The river has changed course dramatically in the last 2,000 years and it now runs about a thousand meters west of this picture.

Interestingly, this particle site wasn't found until 1998. Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 and the whole area had to be de-mined before archeologist could look for this long hidden site. I am pretty convinced that this is where early Christians thought Jesus was baptized. Whether this is really the spot or not, who knows? But lots of people, including everyone's favorite Communist fighter (who isn't David Hasselhoff) Karol Wojtyla, think this is the place. So anyway it was neat... and I ate a really good lunch afterwards in Madaba.

Escape to Jerash

Once upon a time (approximately last Friday),

I took off on an adventure (technically I drove... and technically I didn't personally drive as that is a big no-no with the Council for International Educational Exchange).

But anyway aft

er meeting my friend Kathleen at the North Bus Station (and drinking a delicious nescafe (a favorite Jordanian sugary instant coffee drink))

We negotiated with a cab driver to take us to

the village/ancient city of Jerash (By negotiated I mean we stood around while Arab men yelled different prices at us and at each other).

After a 45 minute drive (Jordan is a small country) through the beautiful (jamera) countryside we arrived in Jerash.

It was pretty FREAKING SWEET.

I LIKED IT A WHOLE LOT.

Later in the day we met up with some more of are friends who had opted to sleep in (namely Tommy, Lizzie, Charlotte, and Sam (see picture))

We ate Lebanese food at a highly regarded restaurant (Late King Hussein, King Abdullah II, and Nelson Mendela have all eaten there)

It was really good! Unfortunately a big bus load of German tourists showed up while we ate.

(I also caused a minor scene by photographing my food

. A Jordanian man thought that I had photographed his wife who was veiled from head to toe (which I had not (though it would have made a curious

orientalist picture as it looked difficult to eat kebab with one's whole face covered)).

Thankful, the asshole Germans's arrival seemed to make my photo of lettuce a minor issue in comparison to the raucous and he accepted that I might not be quite as big an ass as he believed me to be.

(I tell this story because a) I was embarrassed by the whol

e affair and b) I think the man's assumption that a flash in his peripheral vision was that of an exploitive tourist... when in reality it was an attempt to document a hilariously large salad (complete with whole uncut green pepper) tells us something interesting about the socio-political assumptions that are attached to

me as a camera carrying Western tourist)

But anyway, after our late, long, and immensely satisfying lunch we headed back into town and rode back to Amman. We were all quite satisfied with the day's

adventures. (Did I mentioned how cool Jerash is?)

PS (in case you are wondering, why I have opted to use so many parentheses it is because I find it difficult to put a wonderful day away from the busy city and general hubbub into a linear narrative (I also feel that if William Faulkner can write a six page sentence in Go Down, Moses, I can do whatever the heck I want (it is my blog)))

Love you all, Michael

Regional Security

Hey friends, I just wanted to quickly update you on the happenings in the Eastern Mediterranean. It has been a busy time to be in the Middle East. Long time President (some might say dictator) of Egypt Hosni Mubarak has declared that he will not seek reelection following the massive street protests around the country over the last 8 days. The events in Egypt are being closely watched across the region. Today, Yemen’s long time president vowed not to seek reelection and yesterday King Abdullah dismissed Jordan’s unpopular Prime Minister. Both moves are seen as steps to prevent unrest. Jordanians had long expected the King to remove Samir Rafai, as he was charged with implementing immensely unpopular austerity measures. Contrary to what one might assume, the removal of Prime Minister Rafai is not a deviation from the norm in Jordan. King Abdullah has dismissed the cabinet 9 times in the last 11 years.

The images coming out of Egypt are scary because of the tremendous uncertainty and rise in violence, but nothing similar has occurred or is expected to occur in Jordan. I was on the University of Jordan campus today, and despite it 30,000 students I did not encounter a single sign or protester of any kind.

The internet is really poor here so I find myself unable to easily put up pictures. So instead I have added a single photo of my peers on the University of Jordan campus. For more pictures just imagine me hanging out in front of a limestone clock tower with a dozen Americans who painfully stick out among several thousand Jordanian students. It is almost as good, right?

Love you guys lots, Michael