Michael "Indiana Jones" Westover

That's him. Yep. Saving me from the wrath of the Holy Grail. :D

(The props are courtesy of Matt Huff- I'm pretty sure everybody took at least one picture with them, but ours were the coolest, lol.)

Today we went to Petra. For those of you who don't know what that is (like me until about a week ago), it's the place where they found the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The huge awesome facade cut into the canyon in Petra, as you can see in my picture there. The inside was a soundstage. Sorry.

Petra was seriously the coolest thing I've ever seen. And, as you know, I've seen my fair share of cool things. But Petra is like an entire valley full of building facades like the one you see above, which is the treasury, btw. The treasury is the best one, altho the monastery at the other end of the valley is pretty dang sweet too. But Petra was only fairly recently discovered, because you have to go down through this canyon to get to it, and then it opens up onto the treasury and you seriously feel just like Indiana Jones. Actually, it's kinda like coming out into El Dorado or Atlantis, like I was talking about with Hezekiah's Tunnel. Way awesome.

So, Petra was built by an Arab people called the Nabotaeans. All of their architecture is Greek, tho, because I guess they were heavily influenced by the Greeks. According to the tour guide. It was also later occupied by Romans, but the Romans couldn't even think of building something so cool. The buildings are all pretty much just facades, with a pretty decent sized room cut out of them, but by no means the entire building. (I'm not really sure where they actually like, lived and stuff... Well, they had some smaller caves cut out of the rock where I guess they would have lived.) They're carved straight out of the rock-- I guess sandstone is really soft. Well, you know, comparatively. The most incredible thing was the detail. I mean, not only were these things huge, they're exquisite! Even with all the wear and tear of 1000 years or so, it's amazing.

The weather was much more cooperative today. I think I mentioned that there was snow on the ground as we were driving to our hotel. And it was definitely freezing at 7:30 in the morning as we descended into the valley. But by the afternoon I was kinda wishing i had remembered my trip to the Grand Canyon six years ago. When we were there it was snowing at the top and 75 degrees at the bottom. As we were hiking around during our free time, I was wishing I had worn a sweatshirt/tshirt combo instead of my sweater. But the important thing is that it was sunny and beautiful, just like I imagined Petra to be.

So we spent a few hours with our guide, and then when we got to the very bottom of the valley they set us loose. First we went up to the monastery. It was a pretty substantial hike. And the other bus finished like way before us (with their tour) so Mike was already long gone by the time I started. It was not nearly so fun hiking up by myself. And because I was in a sweater and carrying my heavy coat I got really sweaty and gross. But the monastery was pretty impressive, and Mike did hike down with me. Lol, he walks super fast, so I had to hold onto him pretty much the whole way down just to keep from tripping at the pace he set. It was also kinda cool coz you could see the mountains with snow on them in the distance from the trail.

So then we had lunch at the restaurant at the bottom of the valley. It was good. Not as good as Bro. Huff talked it up to be, but sufficiently tasty. After lunch, we missed Bro. Huff's group, coz they just took off, nearly without warning (Mike had to finish his second round of dessert, lol) so we went with Matt Huff, since he kinda knew where stuff was and was planning on going to the same places. Well, we hiked up (not really hiked, prolly climbed is a better word, it wasn't long enough to be a hike) to the cathedral and some of the other facades that you can see from the main valley. We had wanted to go up to the high place of sacrifice-- from which you can apparently see all of Petra, but we ended up spending more time at the cathedral than we realized, so we decided to just explore around there rather than trying to book it up another 800-stair hike (at least, that's what our guide said it was) and get back in time.

One of the most amazing things about Petra is the color of the rock. It's this amazing ripple of blue, red, white, and purple. It was so beautiful. And all of the rooms inside these facades were carved outta this stuff. It's incredible. We also sang in one of those big rooms. I think that getting a really good echo has a lot to do with number of people, because we got the same kind of great sound as in the cistern under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And we busted out a pretty sweet rendition of Amazing Grace. I definitely made up a descant on the spot. :)

So we mozy-ed our way back to the treasury. We were supposed to be there by 2:15 in order to have enough time to get back to the buses, and we were a little early, so Mike and I just sat on a bench and took in the view. We figured we could wait up by the buses, or wait by the treasury- we picked the one with the better view. Then we got to ride horses back up out of the canyon. That was kinda fun. The guy let me take my own reins. Until I started trying to get it to canter and I then I hear from behind, "Wait! Lady!" and he was all running to catch up, still leading someone else's horse. I forgot that I had to stay with him... lol. But that horse did not want to canter, anyway. It's hard in a foreign country, coz I don't think they really respond to the same commands that I'm used to I couldn't even get it to trot by kicking it. I had to click my tongue just to get it to do anything. I really wanted to get a picture of Michael on his horse, but I couldn't do it while mine was moving, and his guide made him get off like, 50 feet back, at the same time I was getting off. It was sad.

And then we got back on the bus for the 4 hour ride back to Amman. Well, actually mike and I got ice cream from the Huff-famous ice cream place. It was actually kind of amazing. My chocolate was about equal parts like, crushed chocolate and like, actual ice cream. It was yummy.

Then after we got into Amman we went to a $2 DVD store. Lol. All, pirated, of course. One girl asked Bro. Huff about how we morally justified buying pirated DVDs. That stopped him for a minute, but I heard that he and Bro. Wilson have bought like, hundreds from that place, so I guess it has some kind of moral ground... I'm thinking of getting Twilight, but they were out tonight and we checked one girl's copy on Mike's computer and it's pretty bad quality. Like, filmed in a cinema. Plus, all the girls got it, so we can still watch it at the Center. Mike says he wants to see what all the hype's about, lol.