Getting to Jordan from Seattle

 

Wow!  So much to do before I leave for Jordan/Israel trip.  Not a good time to buy a house.  For the last month—between trips to Cuba and now Jordan, all of my energy has gone to the house, not the trip.  I’ve researched nothing and paid very little attention to the trip except to feel the pressure of the trip getting closer and closer and closer 

 

We flew into the new Queen Alia Airport in Amman.  Queen Alia was one of King Hussein's wives and she was killed in her early 30's in a helicopter crash.  The new airport has been open 10 days and is modern, clean and apparently the process of where to meet guides has changed.  Another tour guide called our guide and filled us in on the process. Our guides goes by Bil, short for Nabil.  He is fluent in English and understands nuances and jokes and is a graduation of Texas A&M!

Today is Friday, the start of Jordan's weekend and is a free day to rest up and get ready for our tour.  Our guide has offered to show us the local market and drive us around town this afternoon, then to his house to meet his wife and see how the Jordanian people live.  We drove from the airport to our hotel through the poshest part of town.  There are malls to rival BelSquare, mansions owned by corrupt people-according to our guide- and we are staying close to the US Embassy--another very impressively large and beautiful place  with lots of gun-power on display!  Amman, like Rome and Seattle was built on 7 hills--that was 3300 years ago, not the city encompasses 13 hills. This is the view of the Friday market from my room on the night we arrived.

Jordan has lots of Syrian refugees since the Syrian civil war began a year ago.  Refugees are nothing new to Jordan.  After the Israeli independence in 1948, thousands of displaced Palestinians flooded Jordan and Palestinians now account for almost half of the population.  Those refugees were eventually given full citizenship.  Another wave of Palestinians arrived from Israel after the 1967 war.  In fact, to force Israel and the world to deal with the Palestinian issue, Jordan has not given them citizenship even though they have lived and worked in Jordan for 45 years now.  Some of the younger ones have never been to Israel and some come and go freely back to Israel.  Next came Iranians who supported the Shah and Iraqi's fleeing Saddam

It’s the most stable country in the Middle East, highest standard of living, literary rate is 97%.  Jordan is the only country in the Middle East with no oil reserves.

A little history of Jordan--very little since  I don’t know much about the history of Jordan.  It's history is meshed with the rest of the Middle East and it's ever changing borders that moved with a succession of empires that have ruled the Middle East.  Jordan was partitioned from Palestine in 1923 as Transjordan during the time after WWI when England and France carved up the Middle East with no regard for historical or tribal boundaries.   The idea of a Jewish state cause all kinds of havoc with the Palestinian population post WWI when Jewish immigrants from all over the world started started coming to Palestine. In 1946, Jordan gained its independence. In a lecture on the Middle East this past winter, one of the speakers described Jordan as “an anchor surrounded by squabbling neighbors.”  Contrary to many countries around them, they have a tolerant, moderate and relaxed attitude about Islam—mostly due to the influence of the late King Hussein (1935-1999).  His son, Abdullah, is the current king.

 Nine tenths of Jordan is desert and can be divided into north of Amman and south of Amman. Most of the country’s 5.5 million people live in the north which is a fertile valley watered by the Jordan River.  It is here that plentiful food is produced.  South of Amman is desert that extends to the sea at Aqaba.  Besides the Bedouins, the south is mostly tourist that come to see Petra, a Nabetean city carved from pink limestone and abandoned many years ago,  and other-worldly, craggy, sandstone desert places like Wadi Rum that provided the backdrop for Lawrence of Arabia. 

Our trip will be the typical tourist sites.  My main reason for coming is Petra.  Also on our itinerary are prehistoric sites, Roman, Bzyantine and crusader ruins.  Amman, like Jordan, is a modern creation, but deep root to the past with remnants of previous civilizations everywhere. Embedded in Amman are Roman ruins and Crusader forts. The modern city blends together in an easy manner.