June 1- Trip to Ajlun, Jerash & Um Qays

                 OUR FIRST TRIP! We woke up and met downstairs at 8:45.   At our pre-trip meeting the night before, Waed told us that we could wear shorts.  Initially I was against it, but Nicole convinced me.  I wore the only pair of shorts that I brought- white short shorts.  That turned out to be a mistake in my own opinion, but Nicole did not think it was a big deal.  Only Americans/other tourists gave us dirty looks , and no other tourists that we saw were wearing shorts.  Whatever- it was incredibly HOT and I was more comfy in shorts, so it doesn't really matter in retrospect.

Here's the map of where we went---- We left at like 9 am, got good breakfast breads, and were home by ~6 pm.  Jordan is much smaller than Morocco, so we are doing a lot of weekend trips as opposed to any one week excursions

Here's the trip in pix-

Um Qays

Lake Tiberias/ The Sea of Galilee in the distance.   

6 of us by 5 pillars

security look-out in the middle of the site

Mosaic Tiles (these are the best ones that we could find--- NO comparison to the ones at Volubilis) 

PUPPIES

Peeps looking @ puppies

Ajlun 

Look-out from the Ajlun Castle

Jerash

The ampitheater- you can whisper from a particular part of it (the middle of the stage) and people at the top can hear it.  We tested it- it works. 

Muhammad says that they still have concerts here, and he once tried to sneak into one, but the police caught him, and kept him in jail for a very short period of time--- to scare.  It's called Jordan Festival, but according to my research- the last one was in 2010.  I think it's supposed to be similar to Mawazine in Morocco, but isn't as well-established?  

view from the top-- Hiiii Nico!  It was VERY scary up there... miiiiiight not have even been worth it in all honesty.

Also--- there was a little performance thing, and these Jordanian men came out playing Yankee Doodle on the bagpipes! It was really random & funny. 

Our trip ended with a DELICIOUS early dinner.  We had Jordanian salads (hummus, falafel, babaghanoush, tabouleh, kibbeh, cucumber/tomato salad, french fries, & potato salad [which I didn't touch bc it's normal and did not look as good as home]) and a meat platter with chicken that was unreal  

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