The Dead Sea & Petra

I apologize for my lack of blogging but life is quite boring when you’re in an intensive language program. I have managed to take two trips over the past few weeks.

The first trip was to the Dead Sea- the lowest place on earth. As we all know, you can float in the Dead Sea because of the high salinity. What you may not know is that your skin will not wrinkle in the Dead Sea- it’s quite amazing. Other than that, there’s not much to say about our trip. It’s relaxing, salty, and hot. We stayed at a nice resort and had a lovely time.

Our second trip was to Petra. Petra is one of the New Wonders of the World and it’s absolutely beautiful. It is a massive city built by the Nabataeans more than 2000 years ago. To enter the city you walk through a narrow canyon with huge rock walls.

What truly adds to the experience is the strange encounters with Bedouins. Sexual harassment is notorious in the Middle East but Jordan has fewer problems than most countries. In Amman we just get a lot of stares and the occasional comment. The harassment in the desert is significantly increased. Men will follow you, make overtly sexual comments, and offer free services in exchange for sex. We even heard some extremely obscene comments from young children- it was quite disturbing.

A lot of movies have been filmed at Petra so you might recognize it from Indiana Jones, Arabian Nights, or Transformers.

The Treasury





On a another note- I’ve decided to stay in Jordan until December. As I’m sure you can imagine, Arabic is extremely difficult so I’m going to increase my proficiency by staying another semester (Insha’Allah- God willing).