Le Troisième Jour, Jeudi. (The third day, Thursday 5/19)

 On Thursday, I woke up in a tent. Which is good, considering that is where I went to bed... And luckily I wasn't attacked by any animals or bugs in the middle of the night. I did hear coyotes or something howling when one of my roommates Jordann got a text at 5 am. Yikes. And then I woke up for good before my alarm went off because it was so hot and bright in the tent. Lame.

But then I went on a camel ride through the desert! WOO HOO! It was pretty legit. I named my camel Mogli because I thought it was ironic to name it after a character from the Jungle Book while I was in the desert. Other people named theirs after Aladdin (....unoriginal). All in all, it was really fun despite the pain it inflicted on my knees from going all around the camel's body.

There was also a little baby camel that was SOOO FREAKING CUTE! It was really still as tall as a normal sized person, but it was great because it was so small compared to the other camels. That was the one they named Abu.





After the camel ride, which cost extra so not everyone went, the whole group went on a "Jeep" tour of the desert. However, not a single one of the vehicles was a real Jeep, they were just trucks that we sat in the beds of and zoomed all around in. We got to see lots of famous sites from the desert in Wadi Rum, including the area that they filmed Lawrence of Arabia. Below on the right is the picture of the people in my truck (minus Jordann, who is taking the picture) and below right is the whole Zion group!

After this, we crossed the border into Israel and went to our youth hostel. It was the first time that I ever stayed at a hostel, but it was a "hotel-y" one, and wasn't very "hostel-y". It was right across from the Red Sea, so we went over and frolicked in the water all afternoon and later checkout out the boardwalk there. It felt more like the Caribbean than Israel though :P