Le Quatrième Jour, Vendredi. (The fourth day, Friday 5/20)

 Friday was our first full day in Israel. We kicked off the day by going to a reserve called Timna, which is a place that the Egyptians had copper mines. There are all sorts of really cool sandstone rock formations in the park area, and it was really beautiful. There were all sorts of little green copper rock pieces on the ground, and I picked up a few while I was there.

Mushroom rock.

Solomon's Pillars.

Sphynx rock formation.

 

Some sort of altar and sacrifice place.

We also got to climb down into one of the shafts, though it didn't go very far down it was still cool to see all of the caves and interconnections. I wasn't brave enough to climb through the really tight, sandy, dark parts even though those were the coolest. I just stayed in the main, bright and open area. But it was still cool.

Inside the Ark of the Covenant.

In Timna, there was also a recreation of the Jewish Tabernacle. It was really interesting. Especially since the woman running it turned out to be a Messianic Jew. She was talking all about how the Tabernacle was set up to point toward Jesus. It was really interesting and powerful. I just wish that I had the experience before I wrote my paper on the same topic for Hebrews class. Bummer.





In the afternoon, we went snorkeling in the Red Sea. It was totally awesome! I never got the hang of it perfectly, but I was surprised by the fact that I was decent at it. And the water, though it seemed only about the same saltiness as the Atlantic ocean must have been much saltier, because we floated really easy. There were tons of jellyfish in the water and it was totally freaking me out, even though they didn't really sting us. The water was totally gorgeous there and the coral had some really cool colors in it, too.

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

Le Deuxième Jour, Mercredi. (The second day, Wednesday)

These are a few random pictures from the bus ride to Petra:

These prices are in dinars...$1 = .75 dinars. Do the math :)

Crazy scorpion-like bulldozer thing!

 On Wednesday, we went to see Petra, which was named the second wonder of the world in 2007. Yea, I guess it’s a pretty big deal. For me, it involved getting incredibly sunburned. Fuuuun. But really, Petra was cool. It took us about three hours to get there from Amman, it is an area that just fully survives on the tourism industry there. In fact, tourism is the third biggest industry that Jordan has, and they think that in a few years it will be number one.

Petra is this old Edomite city, then Nabatean city and eventually Roman as well. I’m not really sure of the significance of it, other than it’s like all mostly intact down there… It was pretty awesome. It took like an hour and a half to walk into the main part, and then I didn’t even go in as far as I possibly could have. I went up instead, and didn’t even make it all the way up the cliff thing that I was climbing. But it was far enough. Because I was totally exhausted by the time I got back. I did get to ride a horse some of the way back, which actually wasn’t even faster than walking, because a man was walking me along anyway. But that’s okay, at least it was a change of…something other than pace, anyway.

An altar for making sacrifices from

The temple, the first thing you reach in Petra.

A greyhound at our lunch location :)

After Petra, we went to a Bedouin camp for the night in Wadi Rum. It was a long ride into the middle of nowhere and it seemed a little bit strange. Not to mention I guzzled a ton of water after getting back to the bus in Petra, so I had to pee on the stinking bus!! It was dirty and dark and gross and there was a cheetah print fabric seat cover in there—talk about germs! Ew. But I did it because it was that desperate of a situation. 

This wasn't actually taken on the mountain though.

When we got to the camp, Jabal Rum, we got there just in time to climb up and watch the sunset. Except I really kinda missed the sun setting part…. Oh well, the colors were really pretty anyway. That night we ate dinner that had been cooked in a way that was sort of an underground barbeque pit, which was interesting, and then we had an imitation of a wedding. I’m pretty sure that we were worshipping Allah at some point during that ceremony, but I really have no idea what was going on, so I can’t be sure. 

Jordann, Carina, and I had put on skirts for the evening, and I was wearing a scarf tucked over my head and shoulders so that I could keep my sunburn from getting cold, and when I got pulled into the middle of the dancing circle, the man plucked it off of my head and wrapped it around in the traditional Muslim way so that my face was properly covered. It was simultaneously fun and weird/embarrassing. After that, we went to bed in our little tents with our three beds and barely enough room for our suitcases. It was actually pretty good sleeping, but just really bad heat and light that woke me up in the morning.