Jordan: Day 1.

Monday morning, we left the Jerusalem Center very early so that we could go to Jordan. The border doesn't open until 8 but it is important to be the first ones across because there is also an hour time difference so once we cross at 8, we are already starting our day in Jordan at 9. We got to the border and it was all very exciting. Going through lots of passport checks and such. The only bummer was that we didn't get a Jordan stamp in our passport... only an exiting Israel stamp.

After we crossed the border, we picked up our Jordanian guides: Mohammad and Yousef. Huntsman's class got Yousef and we got Mohammad which was good because he started immediately calling us "tigers" which always happens to our group. He was... funny but not as funny as Fatih. He was much more informative though!

Once we got our guide, we headed to our first stop: Mt. Nebo! (Fun fact: while in Jordan I wrote brief lists of our outings while there so that when I got home to actually blog about them, I would remember what we did. I wrote that we went to Mt. Nebo but my phone autocorrected it to Mt. Menopause. hahaha)

View from the top of Mt. Nebo looking towards Jerusalem.

Mt. Nebo sign with Katie and Charlotte.

After Nebo, we then went to a mosaic place. They make tons and tons of mosaic pieces and we got to see how they did it. It was really neat. We also got to browse through their store but everything was a little out of price range so we just looked. haha

Hard at work making the beautiful mosaic.

Following that, we went to the Church of the Map where they have a huge mosaic map of the Holy Land on the ground. That was pretty cool to see because you got to see the places of importance based on their perspective.

Outside the Church with Whitney, Sarah, Desiree, Suzy, (Me), Kaylie, Mary and Charlotte.

Jerusalem! On the map! :)

Mohammed, our super classy guide, working the 17 pockets look. That's right friends, 17 pockets in olive green.

We then drove to Machaerus which is the possible site of where John the Baptist was beheaded. We got to go on quite the hike to get to the top but the view was so worth it.

If you notice behind my shoulder, that pathway, that's where we hiked. All the way up to the top of the hill behind us. And all the way down the hill that we were standing on. (With Charlotte, Alyse and Lauren.)

At the top, overlooking the Dead Sea at sunset with Charlotte, Andi and Lindsay!

Following that excusrsion, we had a loooong drive (4 hours to be exact) to Petra. Well, I guess not to Petra but to the town right outside Petra. We got to our hotel super late (where we then at dinner) and then had a little bit of a rough time getting in our hotel rooms. It was impossibly hard to unlock them and I'm pretty sure one of the hotel workers though we had serious problems. Once we finally did get in our room, we went back down the huge hill to go to the lobby to use the internet! Our hotel was cool because it's a old village that they have renovated into hotel rooms so it is all spread out through out with lots of stairs. And of course ours was the farthest away from anything and we had to hike up about 5 flights of stairs. It was nice going on facebook/email though and watching some youtube videos and just having a nice relaxing evening. Lindsay Hall and I were roommates and it was joyous. Except we didn't really pillow talk because we were both so tired. haha