Roman castles, beer pong, and stomach bugs

Last Saturday a large group of us CIEE kids piled into a tour bus to explore the Eastern Desert of Jordan, starting with a Roman caravan station called Halabat and ending at the Jordanian "wetlands" where the country apparently gets 1/4 of its water. Judging by the fact that the wetlands consisted of about 3 ponds (and that's being generous) I can now understand why long showers are a no-no. Overall the trip was quite enjoyable. The highest temperature that day was about 70 degrees and the castles were absolutely beautiful. Because Jordan has so much history to show off (and apparently very little legal problems) they have no problem with visitors climbing all over everything. It's a shame that this means the castles will eventually crumble to dust, but now its so much fun to be that close to something so ancient.

I've had some more time to explore Jordanian night life this week. On Tuesday we went to a hookah restaurant called Jaffra with really authentic live music. On wednesday, we found a nice little bar after a free jazz concert at a nearby hotel. And I found, wherever you may be in the world, beer pong is never impossible to find.

On a more serious note, the region is more in turmoil than ever before. As I was sitting in my archaeology class the other day we heard what sounded like explosions, our teacher assured us it must just be a nearby quarry. I found out later it was actually the Israeli army setting off bombs at a training camp for no apparent reason. Although this means nothing bad for Jordan at the moment, I've now had to accept that crazy shit is going on around here. My roommates and I have been sitting in front of the tv horrified about what's going on in Libya. My optimistic side hopes the Gaddafi will step down soon, but my rational side believes the people of Libya unfortunately have a long and bloody trial before them, but I hope everything gets better soon.

I'm sitting around writing this right now because I'm stuck at home as a cause of the inevitable stomach bug that I expected to eventually get when travelling to the Middle East. It's much better than yesterday thanks to a lot of rest and water!