A piece of advice: if you're going to Jordan for a month, start by making sure there's nothing wrong with your teeth. That way, you can eat without crying, and you won't have to see a dentist when you get there, and have a root canal done with no anaesthetic. Lad point. On the plus side, the dentist I saw was lovely, spoke good English, and I have had no further problems since.

We spent the first week (ish) in a hotel in Amman. The hotel was small and modest, but the staff were very friendly, which just about made up for the air conditioning not working. We had a few days of teacher-training at the British Council, and went to the Ambassador's house for a drinks reception. Ambassador = very friendly and interesting. Might consider becoming an ambassador after all. Hmm. In his garden were 2 cactus trees in flower, and apparently they only flower once every 23 years, so that was pretty cool but what kind of bonkers plant only flowers once every 23 years? Needs its head checking.

On the second or third day, when we bought lunch from a falafel and shawarma place down the road, we ate it sitting on the pavement outside the hotel, thinking it would be rude to eat it inside the hotel as they had their own cafe. But the staff desperately encouraged us inside - evidently things work differently in Jordan.

A trip to the Citadel was worthwhile, we saw some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and some ancient cave paintings (or maybe grave paintings?), but there was no shade anywhere, and it was boiling hot. A mosque we tried to visit in down town wouldn't let girls in without headscarves or wearing trousers, but didn't mind letting boys in shorts and tank tops in. Hmmm. Just caught the end of the apricot season with a bag of 8 delicious apricots from a market behind the mosque, which we ate in the Roman Nymphaeum (public water fountain?) which was completely open to the public and utterly un-protected, entertainingly. No management, no notice-boards, barely even a fence round it, just a little man sitting on a chair outside a portacabin, who completely ignored us as we pranced across the ruins. On to the amphitheatre, but it was just closing and they wouldn't let us in, so we scuttled round the back and found somewhere which we thought would have a good view but turned out just to be a grubby corner. We had a mini picnic there before we realised it was actually someone's private yard. We promptly left, and an angry-looking woman shut the gate behind us, but Ben was still in the bizarrely-positioned toilet at the back of it...

While hunting the Hashemite Square and the Clock Tower I got talking to a nice Palestinian man visiting his friend, who informed us that the Hashemite Square was closed for renovation and the Clock Tower no longer existed, but we had a nice chat and he gave me his prayer beads.

Kunafa. Cheese crumble. That's right. Huge slabs of it with extra oil drizzled over the top, in the upstairs of a sweaty sweet shop. Tasty, but much moaned-about. Unbelievably filling, portions are much too big. While drinking tea in a typical grubby coffee shop, I was asked by some staff if I was Egyptian. Win.

Argument with a taxi driver, who told us we were stupid for not wanting to pay his ridiculously high prices. Which doesn't explain why he was still around 15 minutes later to goad us about having not got a taxi yet, just as we got into one willing to accept our more standard price, and he was left with no passengers...

The following day, another nightmarish taxi incident, but this one caused by no one in the whole of Amman knowing where the National Gallery of Fine Art was, except us, and we hadn't noticed that we were asking to go to two different places at once. Never mind, we got there in the end, were delighted by the free entry and the air conditioning, and very much enjoyed the gallery - especially as there was no one else there except a few staff clearing up the aftermath of what must have been a school activity day.

Second attempt at storming the amphitheatre, much more successful this time, in that we managed to get in. The boys all tried to kill each other by running and jumping up and down it, Alex managed to fall down the amphitheatre, but by some miracle nobody died. The museum of popular culture in the corner was good too - lots of regional dress etc.

Most entertaining meal in the world at a Lebanese restaurant - not a clue what was so funny, but we were all in hysterics for the duration of the meal. Probably something to do with the unexpected enormity of the portions, and we had ordered several each. It would have taken a small army to eat all that food. The meal the following night was less rowdy but (in my opinion) infinitely better as it was a fraction of the price, closer to the hotel, and absolutely delicious. After that a few of us went to find a shisha bar, and ended up on a rooftop with a spectacular view over Amman.

One day we went to the Dead Sea, which was about 40 minutes' drive away. It was rumoured to be 47 degrees that day, and whether or not that was actually true, it certainly felt like it. We paid £20 each to use a private beach with 3 pools, showers, changing rooms, various other facilities, and unlimited mud. The Dead Sea is odd. There is the famous effect of floating very high up in the water, but it's also very difficult to maintain your balance. That seems an odd thing to say about swimming, but if you stop deliberately controlling the position of your body, you sort of spin round and flip over. Odd. Oh and you really don't want the water in your eyes. There was a sort of jetty thing built out into the water, and Alex did a running jump along it. Idiot. He had to be escorted blindly by the hand back up the beach and have bottled water trickled carefully into his eyes.

After a late-night packing session, we were done with Amman.