Madaba

Friday was an adventure; a group of us decided to hop on a bus and go to Madaba, sort of midway between Amman and the Dead Sea...only...not? I don't know, only about 40 minutes outside the city, and like 75 quirish (about 1$) by bus.

When we got there, we picked up some lunch and then walked around, trying to find the churches and the mosaics. There were lots of cool shops, and I think I might go back towards the end of the trip to check out the souvenir selection. We ended up finding St. George's church; the mosaics were so crazy...teeny tiny bits of ceramic, with shading and everything.

It was a very cool place; though one of the guards came up to me and told me it was disrespectful to cross my legs in a holy place. Who'da thunk it?
After the church, we decided to head to the hot springs. I hopped in the car with Chris and the 3 Iraqis, Noor, Haydar, and Senan. The others took a taxi to go the 30km. Along the way we stopped and took some great photos of the countryside, which I like to tell people is the same place Moses walked around :-P
(Blog has for some reason started hating my uploading pictures, so will have to show some other time).
We ended up arriving first, and had to pay to get into this place; we Americans were totally charged 5JD more than the Iraqis!! Went in, headed to the (one) hotspring, and were totally disappointed. All it was was a relatively large hotspring, which was (surprise!) disgustingly steamy on such a hot day and at such a low elevation. What hurt most was the fact that it was mostly men and conservative women there: I'd been expecting more tourists and brought my only (bikini) swimsuit. I could tell it wasn't going to happen when lifting my shirt just a little caused all heads to turn towards me in surprisingly perfect unison. Guys were starting to the point of me wanting to get out my camera and snap a photo of them just to send the message. So no swimsuit, and i wasn't about to get the clothes I was going to wear for 45 minutes in a cramped car wet. Slightly miserable, and we called the others to warn them that it was not worth the 15JD to enter, particularly for the girls. They ended up taking off in the taxi in which they'd come, and we left soon thereafter. Headed back to Amman and ate at an overly air-conditioned restaurant (I just can't be satisfied, eh??) We dropped Chris back at his apartment and got to check it out, even though as a girl I'm technically not allowed in a guy's apartment, according to CIEE and the landlords. But I went, and was so shocked by the amazing quality of that place! Huge rooms, each guy had a bathroom, nice kitched, fully furnished...and aparently most apartments were that fantastic.
Headed home and went to bed!