Not dead yet.

We have been in Jordan for the past 5 days, far away from the internet. Our way home included a ferry boat ride, and a 6 hour drive from the Sinai into Cairo. On the drive home, our fellow traveller Leilani recived a phone call from her mother informing her that a car full of canadian tourists were killed in an accident on the road between Cairo and the Sinai...urk! It wasn't us!! We are all safe! Althought I can't say I am surrprised to hear of the accident, the driving here is insane and on a daily basis we pass evidence of horrible car crashes in the desert.

We have had some interesting adventures over the last few days here are some of the highlights:

Getting into Jordan
We had arranged to catch a ferry from Egypt into Jordan, unfortunetly there was a communication break down and our travel agent had arranged for us to walk across the border between Egypt and Israel, and for us to catch the ferry from Israel into Jordan. This was a major problem because the teachers who were with us didn't want a stamp from Israel in their passports because it makes traveling in the Middle East very difficult, some arab countries will refuse you entry if you have that stamp. Soooo we had to hop back on the bus that we had just spent 6 and a half hours on and drive another hour to a port called Newauba (I have probably spelled that wrong) where we were finally able to board a boat.

Symmetry
In an earlier post I had complained about the drunk Australians on the plane, well when we arrived at Newaiba we ran into a lovely group of travellers from...Australia!! Two of them spoke Arabic and they helped us negotiate some of the trickier parts of travel between Egypt and Jordan, we shared lunch with them and chatted about world politics. Our first day in the ancient city of Petra, Valerie and I were royally ripped off by a Bedouin woman, it was a nasty experience. The next day as we explored further we came across this elderly Bedouin gentleman who had a home on one of the cliffs looking over Petra, he gave us some tea and let us sit on his balcony, he had bar none the best view from a balcony, I have ever seen. Just goes to show, there are angels and assholes everywhere :)

Petra
In Jordan is the most amazing ancient site named Petra. Some of you may have seen it in the Indiana Jones film the Last Crusade. Anyway it is the MASSIVE ancinet city of caves, and stone facades, and really there just aren't words to describe it. You have to walk into the city (or travel by horse drawn cart) through this narrow canyon, and as you come around the bend at the bpttom, you are greeted by the sight of this gigantic building carved into rock, it is breathtaking, and the city just goes on and on and on...

Theatres
In petra there are two theatres, one is a large Hellenistic theatre, and the other is a tiny theatron. We weren't allowed in the theatre because excavations were taking place, but I did get to test the acoustics in the theatron, and I made a bunch of German tourists jump. So my theatre history classes came in usefull after all, who knew.

Car Problems
After petra we had a day planned of driving from site to site on our way back to Aquaba the ferry port. We hired two drivers, and the day started off smoothly enough , we all got in the trucks and were enjoying the country side, when we stopped to get gas. Our driver wanted to check his oil, but when he turned something under the hood it broke off in his hand, so those of us travelling in his truck squeezed into the other truck and drove off to look at a Crusader Castle (very cool). He picked us up from there and on our way to the dead sea, we swerved violently into the middle of the road, so we had to pull over and he had to fix the axel or something or other. After we visited the dead sea (also very cool, lots of floating people and hairy Europeans) we all piled back in the truck, took off and then BOOM our windscreen fractured, we You could barely see through the mess of glass, so we pulled over and the driver used clear packing tape to secure the glass and drove with us to Aquaba for 4 and a half hours!! It was a little bit scarey, I don't know how he could see! We went through 4 army check points and they laughed and waved us through but a police officer saw us and pulled us over. It turend out that the driver wasn't licensed to carry passengers so we had to lie for him, but the police officer reported him anyway! Poor guy.

Tomorrow I start working at Valerie's school. I am quite nervous, wish me luck!