Wadi Rum

On Friday morning I took a trip with other Arabic students to Wadi Rum and Aqaba. I had been waking up really early every morning so I didn't set myself an alarm to wake myself up because I figured that I would have plenty of time to get to the bus by 8:30 when it was scheduled to leave. I woke up at 8:25 and luckily I had packed my bag the night before so I grabbed it and sprinted all the way to the university where the bus was leaving from. Luckily they were planning on waiting until 8:50 and I got there with plenty of time to spare. The bus ride was about 3 hours but I enjoyed it because it allowed me to meet new people and get to know the people in my class better. I'm usually hesitant to talk to people that I don't know and to make friends but I'm certainly getting more comfortable with it as the trip goes on. We finally arrived in Wadi Rum and we were allowed 2 free hours until our scheduled jeep tour of the desert. The desert there is beautiful and some of my classmates and I decided to climb up the mountain behind our camp so that we could hang out up there and get a better view. We hung out on the mountain for about a half hour at which point we saw some Bedouins bringing their camels for us to ride and we got down the mountain as fast as we could to ride them. Riding the camel was amazing and I thought that I was going to fall as the camel was getting up because it makes you almost perpendicular to the ground. Luckily I was able to stay on the camel the whole time and I had an awesome time. After the camel ride it was time for our "jeep" tour of the desert. Naturally, I expected that we would be taken around inside of jeeps however what the Bedouins had in mind was a little different. Instead, we sat on makeshift benches in the backs of pickup trucks as the Bedouins zoomed around the desert racing each other ad driving up and down sand dunes that felt like roller coaster drops. The desert landscape was beautiful and it was filled with a distinct red sand and there were spectacular mountains on either side of us. Side note: for those of you who have seen Lawrence of Arabia or who started to watch it but were discouraged from finishing it for various reasons, the movie was actually filmed in large part in Wadi Rum and it really is as spectacular as it appears on screen. We were dropped off next to a small mountain and we concluded our tour by climbing on top of it to watch the sunset as we sat on a cliff. It was one of the best sunsets I have ever seen and it was truly incredible to watch the sun drop below the crest of the mountains as the desert was filled
with color. To finish off our trip at Wadi Rum, we ate a delicious traditional Jordanian meal prepared for us by the Bedouins. It was really nice to talk to people in my group and learn new things about Jordanians and, in particular, Jordanians and politics. I learned that for the most part, Palestinians do not like the king because his father was not very good to them. Additionally city folk tend to not like the king as much as Jordanians living out in the country do. However, most importantly, I was given the tip by many of my classmates not to talk about the king to Jordanians as it usually does not end well as it is a very sensitive subject and often makes people tense and uncomfortable. Jordanians will talk about the politics of the region as long as they are external issues, but once you start to ask about domestic issues the situation changes. Additionally, I was told that Jordan has a very large secret service that is very effective though it is nothing like the KGB or anything of that sort and their intelligence work does not result in things like that. You may be wondering how these guys had any real or credible information about the government SECRET service and I'm not sure that they did but I though it was an interesting proposition so I wanted to share it.