This Good Life

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...

I love your creation, but why flies ?   W hy ? PS. I also respect your creation, but jumping spiders --really??! Spiders scare me enough when they are 8-legged and normal; however, a brown and white spider that doesn't walk, but rather JUMPS is too much for me.  Please don't let me encounter this again.  Thank you! Love, Aleisha

so this past weekend we took a trip to Petra. it was amazing!! such a cool place full of history. and pictures don't do it justice. Petra is an old city that's about a 2 hour drive south of Madaba, where we are staying. Petra is also the area around which the Garden of Eden is said to have been located. As you drive up to Petra, you can see a mountain called Mount Hor where there is now a memorial in honor of Aaron. Aaron, from the Bible is said to have been laid to rest here and i think i got a picture of the correct mountain. (one on the left)  Deuteronomy 34. so, we got to Petra about mid-day on Friday and entered the city. there's so much to see and you basically just pick a trail that you want to follow to the spot you want to see. before you get to the place where all the trails split up, everyone has to walk thru this 'gorge'--i'm not sure what else to call it. but you are surrounded on both sides by incredible mountains made of sandstone. the ...

ok so let me finish up the rest of the istanbul trip with Andrea. we did alot of shopping and the best shopping was definitely at the markets. we had fun in these 'bazaars'! got some tea (istanbul/turkey is known for their amazing apple tea) and a table runner and other little trinkets. we also walked up and down Taxim street because there were so many shops...at one point it started raining HEAVILY while we were in on particular shop. well when it started this massive downpour, everyone who was shopping all moved to the sides of the street and into the entryways of the shops. not many people were prepared for the rain with umbrellas. so we got stuck in this shop you see. then we had to move out of the doorway for safety reasons and thus we were pretty much forced to look around. turns out it was a Turkish men's store. there was nothing in there for us, and nothing of remote interest. however we were stuck. so we made the best of it. after a while, we got bored and decid...

I have a tragic story. But first I have to preface this story from two different angles. Angle #1 of the preface : I need to confess some things. a) I'm clumsy. I trip a lot. I fall a lot. I hurt myself. More or less, I'm not very graceful and it seems to get worse when I try hard to BE graceful. Surely I'm not as bad as to be called a clutz...but clumsy?  Yes. b) I have a horrible tendency of hurting other people. on accident. not all the time. but my clumsiness sometimes gets in the way... for example: Christmas break 2009, a group of friends and i went down to Austin and San Antonio for the weekend. Well my friend Ryan injured his knee that first night we were there and the next day we had to run around the Austin/San Antonio area trying to find crutches and a brace for him so he could walk around with us. (And no, i had nothing to do with the injured knee, surprisingly). Well we found a store for Lance and Ryan to go into to get the ne...

ok so let me sum up the first couple of days in Istanbul... Day 1: i finally get there and took a taxi to the hostel. well i could have gotten to the hostel a much cheaper way, but i was so so tired from travel time that i splurged. taxi it was!  ps, istanbul is SO huge, i dont see how any taxi driver knows every nook and cranny. or could survive without a GPS, more importantly. but anyway, i was driven down this cute little street and i suddenly look to my right--Andrea!! sitting outside waiting for me. it was soo wonderful to see her. ok for those of you who don't know, Andrea is my preious friend i met in Austria and i love her dearly.  she's come to see me in texas twice and we like meeting up in places around the world.  we planned this short little 5 day trip to istanbul together.  ok, so when we started exploring, we first noticed we are really close to 2 mosques. although i dont agree with the religion, the mosques are very beautifu...

well once i finally finished the long flight overseas (about 11 hours), i had to stay in the Amman airport for a significant amount of time, waiting on my flight to Istanbul. this happened partly because of a) availability of flights and b) becuase of me being cheap and choosing the lowest costing option no matter how many hours i'd have to wait. i almost finished two books during this period. i got to know the small (lubbock sized but with a much greater traffic flow) Amman airport pretty well. and during this time, i made friends. of course i did. let me back up just a tiny bit and say that there were a couple americans on the flight that i talked to alot that were very nice, but they left the airport. so i was kinda on my own. but i was told from multiple resources that i was safe and should have no troubles in this airport. that advice was correct. no problems at all! but now we get back to the part of the story where i made friends.  and these friends were all workers he...

well the trip has officially begun! so far there's nothing to report, nothing to tell. pretty cut and dry over here. travel time underway. except for the fact that on my first flight i sat windowside. now this may not seem like a big deal, and in reality it's NOT a big deal at all. when i fly, it doesn't matter to me whether i sit aisle, window, beside a crying baby (ok well i might mind that a little bit), in between two strangers (i actually enjoy this because it's a great chance to meet interesting people), or otherwise. i'm not picky. however today, sitting windowside was a blessing. because i like the sky. more specifically, i love sunsets. i love the stars. and i love imagining God upstairs painting away with glorious colors for our evening pleasure, flicking specks of paint across a black canvas for our nighttime enjoyment, and taking pictures of us during a lightening storm. i just KNOW He has so much fun! and i appreciate His play time. one thing i do...