One for the Road

I absolutely love road trips.  The open window with wind whipping your hair, notes of music emitting from the radio, letting your thoughts pass as quickly as the scenery outside--perfect. There is something about the state of limbo, the interesting predicament of going but not doing, that makes me feel remarkably at peace no matter where I am.

I have dozens of fond memories associated with road trips--spending quality time with my dad on the biannual trek to and from DC, the Wust El-Balad sing-a-long on the weekend trip to Cairo last summer, the immense anticipation of the 45-minute trip to camp during my Meyer and Burt years--and I love that so far Jordan has just been one road trip after another.  Exploring Jerash, biking at the Dead Sea, and, this weekend, visiting Madaba and Ma'in have been amazing experiences in and of themselves, but driving to and from these places has been just as memorable.  Jordan's mountainous landscape means that indescribably beautiful vistas greet you around every bend in the road.  I've tried countless times to capture the vastness of the Jordanian landscape with my camera and have summarily failed each time.  Here's the best I could do on the most recent trip:

Madaba to Ma'in taxi drive

On Friday morning, five fellow CIEE students and I boarded a bus in downtown Amman bound for the small town of Madaba.  Madaba is known for its Byzantine era mosaics--especially a huge (and surprisingly mostly cartographically correct) map of the Holy Land laid in the floor of St. George's Church.  We spent most of our day in Madaba wandering around looking at various really cool old things and finished the night with an epic head-to-head rap battle. 

Mosiac map in St. George's Church

This morning, we all piled into a couple of cabs and drove to the hot springs in Ma'in.  The scenery between Madaba and Ma'in was alone worth the 15JD we payed each way for the taxis.  Outside of Madaba, we saw only rolling green hills covered with olive tree groves and fields but this soon transformed into towering desert cliffs dotted with sheep and goats as we drew closer to Ma'in.  For a short while, we were close enough to see the Dead Sea in the distance.  I wasn't able to get a good picture, but it looked something like this.  It was quite possibly the most remarkable 30 minutes of my life, scenery-wise.

The hot springs were gorgeous and I had to continuously remind myself that it is still February and that I still have to go to class tomorrow morning.  As we slowly descended a mountain on a switchback road, the lush palm trees and greenery of the springs appeared as if out of nowhere.  The water was gloriously warm and there were waterfalls everywhere.  We spent a good four hours lounging in the water and soaking up the sunlight.

Ma'in hot springs!

Me, loving the waterfall!

Now, I'm back home in Amman, uploading photos to Facebook and writing blog posts instead of doing something productive and school-related.  It's amazing to go somewhere new every weekend, but it makes it darn hard to be excited about going to class on Sunday mornings!