See You Soon, Jordan

The last week was not the most difficult. Nor was week 2, 3, or 4 from the end. Week 5 from the end I cried everyday. I knew it was coming to an end: new adventures, experiences, relationships with people who invited me into their homes, to weddings, to hikes and new experiences and to places I never would have found myself in at home in the US. The end did not come without some pain of a few things that I never would have thought would affect me so much. Sometimes it’s the simple things that strike you down, things that had always been easy before. Put yourself in a foreign environment and difficult things are made simple, easy things are made to feel impossible.

I have to admit, before I came to Jordan I imagined desert. All the way. Flying into Queen Alia International Airport in Amman brought me over a landscape with shades of red, nothing of what I imagined a desert would be. Wadi Rum showed me mountains of red and orange sand, as beautiful as the Grand Canyon or the Ozark Mountains. Northern Jordan showed me hills of rolling green and wildflowers. The Jordan Valley showed me a warm fertile lowland with orchards of fruit and citrus trees grown at the summer houses of my host family’s relatives. Jordan is a diverse environment where it snows in the desert south, rain in the green north, and there are palm trees dusted with snow in the capital of Amman. I never would have through. The green pictures attached to their post show a day-long hike to the north of Jordan. We walked 10 kilometers.

And then I walked 75 more. A four-day hike from the Dana Reserve to Petra was the most incredible hike I’ve completed. With a friendly and laidback guide and native of Petra, me and eleven other foreigners and Jordanians hiked and camped out together for four days and three nights. We walked through green, sand, over hills and cliffs and through a wadi (valley with a water stream). We met locals, spent a sleepless night on a mountain top with relentless wind, and ate home-cooked meals around a campfire each night. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed a lot of laughter and breaks, but also a lot of silence and serenity in the nature around us. We entered Petra through “Little Petra” on the last day, walking through the back entrance to the monastery, making our way to the famous treasury. It was my second time to Petra since the first visit at the beginning of my abroad experience. I had learned so much more about Petra and Jordan since the first visit and it felt like a nice ending to such a fruitful experience abroad.

Iraq El Amir, translated to “Caves of the Prince,” is a small town with historic caves in the west of Jordan. Our small Arabic class took a day trip to Iraq El Amir, to the Noor Al-Hussein’s Women Cooperative Society (See a previous blog to read more about the former queen of Jordan, Queen Noor). The society started as a project engaging women in making, marketing and promoting homemade products like clay and ceramics, paper, and fabric and continues successfully to this day. We spent a day learning how to make paper and ceramics, exploring nearby ruins and caves, and making lunch with the staff.

In Turkey, I found a great joy in visiting various mosques around the city. With their intriguing architecture and welcoming atmosphere, visiting a mosque is both comforting and interesting to me. I was able to visit three mosques in Amman during my last few weeks. I went with Jordanian friends to the King Abdullah I Mosque, King Hussein Mosque, and the Abu Darwish Mosque was able to catch glimpses of the larger prayer spaces and learn more from about the beautiful black and white checkered Abu Darwish Mosque.

The day of the visit to the Abu Darwish Mosque was an end to a wonderful few days with some of my dearest Jordanian friends whom I continued to visit throughout the semester. I have never met such kind and welcoming families in all my travels and the girls with remain wonderful friends to me for the rest of my life. We had many adventures together and I look forward to many more on my future visits to Jordan.

I can’t end my last blog without mentioning the group in the last few pictures of the image gallery. I was able to make a few foreign and Jordanian friends through the internship that I began back in October of 2016. Without these friends I wouldn’t have seen Jordan the same because a country is not defined by its landscape, the number of hikes you take, or the number of pictures you take. Jordan has been defined by its people, who will always be the best part of my experience. They’re people I’ll never forget: kind, caring, and generous people who made me feel welcome in a place that was new and foreign, showed me it’s cozy, quirky, strange, eye-opening, and resilient characteristics, and made it feel like home. Thanks guys.