Middle School Dance

Dani's first dance... the middle school (grades 6-8) held it's first dance of the year on Thursday night (which is like a Friday night) from 7-9pm. As we dropped Dani off, I got to sneak a peak of her getting her hand stamped as she walked through the door. She met a big group of her friends there. During the dance they played the limbo, had a raffle, played ping pong, could buy snacks, etc. Groups of boys and girls danced together. Dani said only the boys would dance in the middle of the circle. There were only 2 slow dances for which mostly only 8th graders danced.

I just got a "Moomm, stop asking me about the dance" grunt from Dani. Enough, enough, I suppose. At least she is ok with me making this post. :)


Here is Dani headed out to the dance. Girls were dressed in a wide range of clothing from jeans to fancier dresses.


This is the entrace hallway. I helped decorate. I painted all of the stuff in light blue. Looks pretty darn good if I do say so myself!

Dubai Marathon

We went to the Dubai marathon - hoping to see a world record broken but also to support two of our compound mates who ran. The marathon route came pretty close to our villa so we could just walk to it. Larry and Elle left the house around 6:30 hoping to get to see the lead runner - and they did - in the dark. Dani and I left around 6:45 am along with many others from our compound. It was a rare cold rainy day. We got to see our friends run by. Then we were able to see the leader running back on the return route. We cheered him on to hopefully break a world record, but alas he did not, bummer. The girls are into the Guinness Book of World Records so it would have been cool for them to see the record broken.


Haile Gebrselassie is in yellow. He won the marathon and is the current world record holder.


Our girls and the neighbor girls helped pass out water to runners.

Jordan Day 6 – Hanging out

Interesting things that we learned
• Bedouins love decoration. They decorate their hauling trucks with designs and bright paint. They put these black fringy things on their side view mirrors.
• Drivers are NOT allowed to act as tour guides. They aren’t even supposed to tell you about the places that they are taking you… very strange. Our driver did share many things with us anyway. He really didn’t understand the rule either.
• Everyone smokes!
• There isn’t heat in many of the restaurants and stores.
• Many buildings are in a huge state of disrepair and there is trash everywhere. (sad)
• The ancient Roman name for Amman is Philadelphia

Today we just hung out on our own. We had a lazy morning and walked to a local shopping area. Then we took a taxi to a movie theater and watched Bolt. Afterwards we went back to the hotel, took the girls swimming and then had a sandwich. Moonthere picked us up at 6 to head to the airport. It’s always nice to visit a new place, but also so nice to go home. It was weird to think of Dubai as going home, but it did feel that way once we got into the villa. We arrived home around 3am.

We would all highly recommend Jordan as a great place to see. Such amazing things to see and so much history to learn.

This is us with Moonthere.

Jordan Day 5 – Jerash, Ajlum, Amman

Today we visited the Ajlum castle, Jerash, an ancient Roman city, and parts of Amman. We met our guide at 7:30am and drove about 90 minutes north of Amman. The northern part of Jordan is very green with lots of farms and cedar and olive trees. It is also very mountainous with windy roads. Elle got a little car sick – at least she didn’t puke in the van.

Ajlum Castle - This huge fortress was built by Izz al-Din Usama in AD 1184-1185. The fortress is considered one of the very few built to protect the country against Crusader attacks from Karak. It controlled the three main passages that led to it (Wadi Kufranjah, Wadi Rajeb and Wadi al-Yabes), and protected the communication routes between south Jordan and Syria. The castle is complete with a moat albeit dry as original design, about 10 metres deep. (Wikipedia)










Next we drove about 30 minutes South to Jerash. It was a truly amazing sight, unbelievably large and again full of history. Definitely, next in line after Petra. When we were done we tried to buy a coke and bag of chips. The price was 2JD which is about $3US. So our driver took us to a local store and we paid 5JD for 3 sodas, 3 bags of chips and a big bag of roasted pumpkin seeds. The price differences here are amazing. We experience the same in Dubai. If they think you are a visitor you pay double or triple the price. The haggling is sometimes daunting.

Jerash is known for the ruins of the Greco-Roman city of Gerasa, also referred to as Antioch on the Golden River. Jerash is considered one of the most important and best-preserved Roman cities in the Near East. It was a city of the Decapolis. Jerash was the home of Nicomachus of Gerasa one of the greatest mathematicians in human history. Nicomachus of Gerasa is known for his works Introduction to Arithmetic. (Wikipedia) How cool is that?










Elle taking pictures of herself. Our budding photographer.


Dani and her ant. The ants in Jordan have very long legs. The picture doesn't show it very well however.

Then we drove back to Amman and visited the Citadel and the Roman amphitheatre. The girls enjoyed it, but were getting tired of seeing ancient sites. The ancient name for Amman is Philadelphia.

The image on the right is one of the dead sea scrolls... amazing!





It was getting late and we had not eaten lunch so our driver took us to Pizza Hut near our hotel. The experience was pretty much normal except at the very end. The girls and I left early to walk across the street to buy a bottle of water. Larry stayed behind and paid the bill. As he got up to leave he was SHOCKED that a single woman sitting at a table next to us reached over and took the last piece of uneaten pizza on the pan and THEN the family sitting on the other side took the half eaten pizza from Dani’s plate. I guess it is a good lesson to us that we waste too much.

Later after we got back to the hotel the girls were acting squirrely (a term that my mother always used when I was little). They were lying on the floor next to me laughing their hineys off and could not bring themselves to tell me what they were laughing about. Finally they told me that they had been shooting spitballs for the past 20 minutes at Larry and I. It was pretty funny!

Jordan Day 4 – Wadi Rum, Dead Sea

We had to meet our guide at 7am today so we were up early and the first ones to breakfast. Dani and Elle snuck some meat and cheese outside to the wild cats that were living on the hotel grounds. Today we visited Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea.

Wadi Rum is a huge wadi/canyon in South Jordan. It is where Lawrence of Arabia lived/was filmed. We had a local guide take us on a 2 hour tour. You could tour the place for days if you had time. We hiked thru one of the big crevasses in the rocks. Dani and Elle are very daring. The rock formations are amazing. Many Bedouins still live in the area.


Dani seeming very entertained as we drove into Wadi Rum.








On the right you can see a Bedouin tent.





Dead sea - It's called the Dead Sea because nothing lives in it. It is some of the saltiest water anywhere in the world, almost six times as salty as the ocean! The Dead Sea is completely landlocked and it gets saltier with increasing depth. Below 300 feet, the sea has 332 grams of salt per kilogram of seawater and is saturated. Salt precipitates out and piles up on the bottom of the sea. Even though it is winter we did venture into the Dead Sea and yes, you really float like you wouldn’t believe.


Here is a picture of the rock hard salt shelf as you enter the Dead Sea. It looks like sea foam at first glance, but whe you touch it is hard salt.


Dani and Elle enter the water. You can somewhat see the rocks covered in salt crystals. They are sharp to walk on so you have to be very careful upon entering the water.


The water was kinda cold... we didn't want to walk farther in, but you can't go this far and not float in the Dead Sea.


It is pretty amazing that you can just float with your arms and legs sticking up out of the water. If you leave your hand out of the water for a few minutes you can already feel the salt crystals building up as the water evaporates - very weird slimy feeling. We had to shower before we left. The showers were ice cold, but better than having salt all over your body.

Today was our longest driving day. We were driving for about 4 hours on windy mountain roads. We were grateful to finally get back to the hotel. We stayed in Amman at the Meridien again. The girls loved that we ordered room service for dinner - burgers and pasta - we are so predictable!