This Good Life

i'm sitting in Sachse, TX (outside Dallas) freezing my little toushy off...no no no, it's not cold in dallas tx in the middle of august.  it's terribly hot--mostly because of the humidity.  but inside , it's terribly cold.  i guess these people feel the need to compensate for the weather by keeping it about 52 degrees indoors.  let me tell you--this is not the way to handle hot weather.  i appreciate air conditioning, however i would much more appreciate 70 degree air conditioning and a nice glass of lemonade.  an indoor-52-degree-continual-goose-bump-creating-environment is no place for Aleisha. anyway, i'm sitting in this environment obverving software installation and go live, and i get a message from a good and dear friend.  it was just the reminder i needed for the day, and bless her for blessing me with it! "For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly o...

ok, so i feel like marathons/triathalons/5K/10K/2552894K are the new thang...! it's like the new Facebook or the new Twilight. running marathons are WHAT PEOPLE DO these days... i just dont get it. even if I was in tip top shape, running would STILL be a horrible miserable activity. let's just say that i love working out at the gym, but a marathon is NOT on my bucket list of things to do before i die.  it's kinda like eating larvae-filled cheese (they really eat that in Norway!); i'm MORE than ok with not doing a marathon in this lifetime. (sorry to offend anyone who loves running marathons. good for you! seriously) speaking of eating nasty things (the aforementioned cheese), do you remember that 'old' show Fear Factor? i used to watch it and always think to myself that i could do it and WIN!!  however--hands down--i would never be able to win because of the second phase of the show...the part where they bring you a platter full of pig's guts or cow ...

I think everyone is looking for something. We all want more out of life.  And in our Americanized society, the 'want' is money.  Or power.  Or fame.  Or love.  And money.  And all these things we desire keep us busy.  Constantly busy.  But it's so much deeper than that, and so much more innate that.  And the same longing that Christians have is the same longing that fame-seekers and money-hoarders have; we just don't realize it. Christians and non-Christians alike want more .  We are all humans created in the image of our Father and created for an eternity in relationship .  And that's what we desire, whether we know it or not. Well, I've been back in the States for almost 2 weeks--and I'm already antsy!  I'm longing for another adventure!  (feel free to *roll your eyes* at me)  In addition to that desire, I've been constantly longing for more in my life.  Am I doing enough to help change the w...

Well I have a couple more things to write about that sums up my time in Jordan!  Sorry, i'm going a little bit out of order if you already read my previous post about Egypt... Anyway, first to mention would be my trip to the Dead Sea! This was so fun. and the water really is..bizarre.  you get in, and it just feels like normal water. but then when you walk about to where the water is about waist level, your lower body just floats up. and you cant do a thing about it. except enjoy! I floated on my back for a while, but then accidentally got some water in my eyeball. no big deal, you say. ummm, yes big deal. it huuuurts! i couldn't open my eye for over 15 minutes..and i didn't want to get out of the water to rub my eye, and i sure couldn't rub my eye with my wet hand..so i just waited for the pain to finally subside. the dead sea is definitely not a place to host any swimming races anytime soon.. A little later, i found the dead sea mud i'd heard so m...

well i still have at least one more big exciting (more or less, you decide) post about Jordan i want to put on this blog...but it will have to wait and i'll do it later.  til then, let me tell you about egypt. the past couple of days in egypt have been amazing! it's fascinating here and i'm really enjoying it. we flew directly from Jordan to Cairo and we've had a really great tour guide for our time here. when we first got to cairo, we drove around through the city. an interesting city, full of life and people and buildings yet still infiltrated with poverty. we saw the pyramids and we crossed over the Nile River. we stopped on top of the bridge on the Nile to take some photos...and i had a friend try to take a photo of me. on the Nile. you would think this would be an easy task. however, let me show you the series of pictures that were the finals products of this undertaking. where's the Nile? aleisha, quit talking. hair in face . shirt is a...

so, close to the very last day of digging for the season, i find something. well i've already mentioned that we've found alot of neat stuff in the past few weeks...pottery, bones, beads, towers, carbonated seeds, lythics, objects, walls, mortars, etc. but... i found a scorpion. if you can recall a previous blog post, i mentioned that when this day came, i would freak out. well the day came. and i didnt quiiite freak out...but i sure didnt go near the thing, and i enlisted manly help to excavate the little guy. the scorpion was yellow. and about 6-7 centimeters long. ewwww. (sorry, didnt get a picture!) but even more amusing is that fact that when i think of deadly poisonous creatures, i think of clever cunning smooth sly things. however, in reality, scorpions--being deadly poisonous creatures--are in fact very clumsy and uncoordinated. baha. i can relate to scorpions in this sense. anyway the scorpion story is not the find i actually wanted to tell you about...rather i...

I had a great day yesterday -- thank you to ALL who wrote me and sent their love!  I really appreciated it! It was a good day--just a normal day in Jordan. :) but everyone on the trip made me feel special. we had a special dessert after dinner too--Jordan's form of the Turkish Baklava, very good! and then a little bit later, a couple friends and i went to this souvineer shop where ever so loved and famous Yousef works. he's a cute little old man that kinda takes Americans under his wings and has his shop open just for us in the evenings to come sit, talk, and drink hot tea. about once a week,.he usually has a tea drinking contest. the record is currently 27 cups of tea (that Landry holds!) but you're only allowed to beat the record by one cup--so the contest can continue. so that's what i did on my birthday! it was enjoyable. oh, i also bought my dad a gift on this fine day--hope you like it! as we are on the subject, might i just further add that i've ...

Well here are some other tidbits of my current adventure I thought you might find interesting: First of all, there are some fascinating people on this trip!  There are about 28 people total, some come and go, and they each have different reasons for being here.  There are several professors and lots of people from New York.  There's one girl who's been teaching English in Damascus for the past 2 years and is fluent in Arabic; she's about to get her Masters at Oxford in Arabic studies.  There's one girl who's only a bit older than me, got her doctorate, and has been teaching at the university in Cairo and is our resident 'bone specialist'.  There's another girl who's my age (and she's precious) who was a military child growing up; lived in England for 3 years, Germany for 3 years, Italy for 2 years and went to college in those countries.  Her family is from Texas originally and she moved back to T...

so an archeology dig is hard. haha well i didnt think it would be easy, and i'm so glad i'm doing this--i'm doing this for the experience--however, i'm also glad that i'm not an archeologist. :) but i'm currently learning what a locus is, that you have a specific square you're supposed to dig, how to create a probe, which phase of the site we are wanting to excavate, what a 'shabob' is, what goes in specific buckets, when to have a pottery reading and how to register pottery, what a 'goofa' is, and what a bulk is, how to correctly use a trowel and how to take pictures and elevations.... oooh man. ok so, let's get to the nitty gritty stuff (baha. pun intended.) our dig site is pretty interesting. as said previously, it's a city from the Early Bronze Age (3500-2000 BC) but i'm not sure how well known the site is internationally or even in Jordan. but it's pretty important to history and it's cool. we've found alot--...

Animals. So I've already mentioned the flies (they must think I'm dying in the desert... They're pretty close.)  And I've mentioned the jumping spider.  But our dig site is full of other little critters too! Let me explain. I'll start with the ants.  I've been digging in a probe trying to find these two walls of the city, right?  Well, my probe has been FULL of black ants.  I kept going deeper and deeper and thinking I'd come to an end of them, but no.  More and more kept coming out and the further I dug down, the bigger the ants got.  FOR REAL -- it's not my imagination. Anyway, this one particular time I was digging in my little hole and I felt something sharp and painful.  I leapt out of the hole and onto solid ground and yelped a bit... I had ants in my pants! I had like 3 or 4 (that I could feel at least) and they were biting me.  A lot.  I certainly couldn't strip my pants off right then and there because there were about ...

After our long day exploring Petra, we woke up the next morning and drove to the Wadi Rum. Okay, the Wadi Rum could be described as...I'm not sure..it was pretty incredible.  Let's try: a mountain range meets the desert meets the Grand Canyon.  What? Wadi Rum IS a desert but it's surrounded by mountains and they, too, are carved like Petra--but not by human hands.  These mountains are carved in amazing ways by God and natural elements and I've never seen anything like it!  These mountains are mostly sandstone but several of the bottom layers are made of granite.  We got there about mid-day once again, and watched a video on the 'sporting activities' that take place in the Wadi Rum.  It's mostly rock climbing and it seriously would be a rock climber's paradise.  After this, we hopped on some jeeps (that could have fallen apart underneath us at any point in time) and took a tour of part of the area.  We saw the spring where water...