July 20, 2008
Today Began the Jordan Field Trip. 6:00 Breakfast…7:00 departure. Rough, but we have had it worse. So, we loaded on the bus and began the trek. It took maybe an hour to get to the border, and as usual we were the first tourist bus in line. At Jordan that apparently means nothing, we were told to pull over to the side and watch a whole bunch of other buses pass in front of us. We did pull over right next to a sign that said, “Possibility of Mines No Passage on Dirt Roads.” How cool is that? Yeah, needless to say we just sat on the bus and waited it out. It took forever, but eventually we got through and I got another stamp on my passport. We met our Jordan guide and headed to Mt. Nebo. That was a pretty cool spot. The final “resting place of Moses” and the mount he climbed to view the Promised Land. It was cool to imagine what went through his head. Forty years! Forty years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness and as I have already mentioned before, I spent 8 hours on an A/C bus in the Sinai and I barely made it out alive. However, in all honesty, despite being like two hundred million times better than the dreaded Sinai, it is not exactly what I would describe as a land of Milk and Honey. I would give it the comparison of arriving in Blythe after trekking through the desert between Blythe and Indio. That is according to me though, and when I think about it, although it might not be the lush hills of Trabuco Canyon, it was so much better than what they had known before: Egypt and Wilderness. I suppose Moses got to the top there and said to himself, “Well, finally something we can work with.” Obviously I don’t know what Moses was thinking, but it was cool to be there on the mountain where he was and just think about it. What do you think he would have thought? So yeah, I stood where Moses stood, not a big deal. Peter and I wanted to get a picture looking like Moses with his staff overlooking the Promised Land, but all we found was like a three foot 2X4 and that just made a ridiculous picture. We spent the rest of the day on a bus traveling and taking pictures of people sleeping. We landed in the hotel, had dinner and THEN were banned from using the swimming pool…Do you not realize that we have been sweating since Easters? However, a sandal somehow drifted into the middle of the pool and I somehow ended up swimming after it in my clothes. Starting a chain reaction of people swimming in their clothes. Luckily, I got out just in time to avoid getting caught by the man and therefore will live to swim another day.