susan's adventures in qatar

Off to freeze in China

I’m leaving tonight for China where I’m meeting my mom and visiting relatives. I’ll be back in Doha on January 9th, but no worries, I will be online during break. Please skype me! Happy Holidays!

Jordan recap

Sorry I’ve been lax in posting, but here’s a quick summary of my Jordan trip. Jordan was really amazing! I went with Noreen, Rebecca, and Aleks. This time we planned enough in advance that there wasn’t too much hassle—look at us becoming world travelers. On our first day, Noreen’s family friend invited us over for Thanksgiving so besides the TA Thanksgiving we had the weekend before, we got to have a real Tgiving too :) The next day we explored Amman, the capital. It’s beautiful, with some ruins and an ampitheatre in the middle of the city. It’s really hilly—seven hills in the city. That day we booked an Avis rental car for the next morning to get dropped off at our hostel. Aleks told them 8am and the rental man replies “Inshallah” which means God willing. The next morning, no rental car in sight. We called maybe 10 rental car places and finally found a place called Oscar. With a Chevy Epica key in hand, we drove down south to Wadi Rum, the desert. We got there and then rode camels out to this bedouin campground where we stayed the night. It was really beautiful, especially the stars, but it was frigid! I was not prepared for the cold in Jordan and since I only brought summer clothes to Doha I really didn’t even have options! The bedouins were really funny-we taught them how to do the hokey pokey after they sang some traditional songs to us. My camel was short and fat and named Foo Foo, he was a cutie, but the other TAs made fun of him because he wouldn’t run! After camping in the desert, we drove to Petra and explored. It is huge! And it’s so crazy to imagine that people built the structures, carving them out of the stone. In Petra we rode donkeys to the highest point, the Monastery. It was quite a trek. On this trip we got in all our animal-riding adventures. The four of us all became obsessed with tea in Jordan, no milk, with mint and a lot a lot of sugar. Mmmm. The next day after Petra we spent mostly driving on this scenic route called the King’s Highway. We took picture breaks along the way because the desert/rocks were so beautiful. Finally we reached the Dead Sea and we floated! We tried to time our floating adventure for sunset, but some things got in the way (some of us needed to use the restroom, somehow we got stuck at this horrible fast food place called Chili Ways). Floating was fun, but you end up so grimy and salty! The Jordanian man floating by us told me that I would have “baby skin” the next day after bathing in the salt. We didn’t want to waste our last day so we woke up early and drove north to Jerash, these really well preserved Roman ruins. Jordan was really cool, relics from so many different time periods, and everything was close together so it was doable. Driving around in our rental car was a good idea and in the end, everything worked out. So much fun!

Jordan Itinerary (courtesy of Noreen)

Thursday, Nov 26th: arrive in Amman, check into Palace Hotel, out to dinner in Amman!

Friday, Nov 27th: see Amman-Hercules Temple, Roman Ampitheatre, art galleries, downtown Amman

Saturday, Nov 28th: drive to Wadi Rum, Tour Wadi Rum (on camel, inshallah)— BY 2pm!!, stay in bedouin tents in Wadi Rum

Sunday, Nov 29th: Drive to Petra, Spend the day and night in Petra at Cleopatra Hotel

Monday, Nov 30th: drive back to Amman via the dead sea (for sunset)

Tuesday, Dec. 1st: tentative-see Madaba, flight back to Qatar

I’m off tomorrow, happy thanksgiving!