Hi! We just spent five days in Jordan!

The first night we arrived in Jordan, we went straight to bed. The next day, we went to St. Georges church in Madaba, to see the most accurate mosaic map, of it's time. It is located on the floor of St. George's church. The guards put rope around it, so nobody can walk on it.

After we got a few pictures of that, we went to Mount Nebo. It is the site of a memorial for Moses, and it is the presumed location of Moses burial. Nobody knows the exact location of Moses burial. It is also the location where Moses viewed the Promised Land and God told him to go no further. Plus, it is a great "bird's eye" view, of Jerusalem and the Dead sea, which by the way is so salty that no marine life, can live in it!

You know the Grand Canyon?Well guess what… we saw it in Jordan! In Jordan there is another version of the Grand Canyon and they call it Jordan's grand canyon.

Still day two, we went to Karak Castle. Karak Castle was used to protect the crusaders from Saladin, the great Muslim war leader, who fought off Richard the Lionhearted (1171 a.d.). After we saw the castle, Ian and I played a couple of boys, in a quick game of street soccer.

On the way back,we saw full (dead) donkeys with their head still on, hanging at the front door of the butcher shop, to show that the meat is fresh. Ewwwwwwwwww!

On day three, we went to the lost city of Petra. The way into the city is a gorge, 12,000 meters long! It was discovered in the 1800's. The city though, dates back to 1200 b.c.(3500 years old) and it held 30,000 people! It is carved completely out of rock. To get around Petra, we rode horses and Donkeys - it was a lot of fun! Part of Indiana Jones the last crusade was filmed in Petra. A couple years back, 23 people were killed in a flash flood, because there is no way out of the gorge! Later, though, they built a dam to redirect the water. The city was carved from the top down, because the bottom rock was soft and when the rock at the top would fall off, it would hit the bottom and the thing would collapse. There once was a point when the local Bedouins lived in the tombs, but it became a tourist attraction, so they left. In Petra there was also an amphitheatre. Take a guess at how many people it held 5,000, 10,000... try half the population - 15,000 people!

After that, we went to the Roman ruins in Jerash. It was a large Roman city. At the city we saw a cheesy show, about the Roman legions. It was really korny, but it did show the Roman techniques. Goodbye!

RS