This is an email I wrote to my family and friends while studying abroad in Egypt. I had just gotten back from a weekend trip to Jordan and I was recounting my adventure:
As far as my life in the Mid East goes, I recently went on a trip to Jordan, during which the Taba bombing went down, and while it may have dominated the news, it has had little to no effect on my life. Not even security was tightened that much at AUC except now they check our IDs. The interesting thing that did happen was when I had an international politics class and the egyptian students in the class weren't really that concerned with terrorism in their country. They were more worried about the fact that Israeli rescue teams got to the site faster than egyptian crews and how that proved that the Israelis still controlled Taba and how they could invade at anytime. Now, this is actually a quote from a couple, not all, but a number of egyptian students in my class.
That is the strangely politcal aspect of life here. The party here was Jordan, however. I wrote an extensive journal entry about it, but to sum it up, Jordan is a functional monarchy, essentially a benevolent dictatorship, as opposed to Egypt which is simply a dictatorship pretending to be a democracy.
Besides that, Jordan is absolutely beautiful. Petra is a must-see-before-you-die kinda place (the pictures are all online by the way). The Dead Sea is also fabulous and I definitely collected a bottle of Dead Sea Water and a bottle of Dead Sea mud.
The Crusader castle of Karak was also an unbelievably awesome sight as well as being rich with history and fun anecdotes about Saladin. For example, he had a favorite artillary spot to bomb the castle with, and also, while he was seigeing the castle, a wedding was going on so he directed his attack away from where it was being held.
Once back in Egypt I got back in the swing of Macbeth rehersals and not doing a lot of homework. THe play is going to be fantastic though, and there will be a movie of it so fear not mom, it will be well documented. The play is also being done in the round which is something new for me and should be very exciting.
Well I think this email is long enough and if you got this far you have an iron will.
See you all soon, and lots a love
sam
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