i have been itching to get out of tel aviv and it always seems difficult, but once the tickets are booked and i get on the bus i realize how easy it is and question why i didnt do this sooner. the girls and i (mia, talia, zo and rachel) decided to go to eilat for rach's bday weekend and also spend a day touring around petra, jordan. as with budapest there were so many great things about this weekend, it would take ages to write everything, thus i shall make a top ten.
1. the first moments of going on a trip. just being at the central bus station with the girls was exhilarating. i love the unknown, of knowing you are going somewhere that you will have memories and experience something new. i sound like a cornball but sometimes the very first part of a trip is the most real and i feel the most aware.
2. when we first got to our hostel, we changed into our bathing suits (it was 6pm but sunny and easily 80 degrees out) and went on our way to the beach. we walked into the red sea, we could hear music playing from the bar on the shore, we made up dances in the water, and to our left we could see jordan. i could feel myself breathing life.
3. That night we went out for Rachel's midnight bday celebration. we went to a bar called three monkeys which had a live band (first live band since i came to israel--brought me back to boston). the singer started singing happy birthday (not the regular happy bday song. it has a reggae tone and goes "happyyyy birthday to yaaa, happy birthday tooo ya" im sure you heard it before) and brought rachel up on stage. it was such an amazing moment, i think, for all of us. rachel looked so happy up there and was having so much fun, we were all on the dance floor cheering and dancing around. it was a moment where all of our endorphins hit the roof.
4. the next we woke up to go snorkeling. we decided to go on a 3 hour boat ride that would take us to the japanese garden reef. everyone else on the boat were scuba divers, so the first place we went we couldn't snorkle, but were able to swim in the ocean. we watched all the divers jump off and sink to into the water and then it was our turn to jump off the boat. i love water and swimming but i have a huge fear of sharks (even though i was told that there werent really any in these waters) AND i also get nervous before jumping into water. the girls and i each took our turn jumping off the boat into the water. when it was my turn i kept starting to run to jump but then stopped right before the edge. after a few attempts, i finally went for it and screamed the whole drop down, but i hit the water and swam up to the surface and felt so free. the nerves make the conquering of jumping in even better.
we swam around for an hour and then went back up to the boat, went to the next spot and went snorkeling which was breathtakingly beautiful. i realized that after we got back to the boat, that whole hour i didnt think about anything else except what we were doing in that exact moment. i realized how rare it is to not be consumed into my thoughts of what im doing that day, relationships i have, future plans, etc. so knowing i was truly IN that moment felt....mmm its simple i guess, but just felt very very happy.
5. that night we went out for a GREAT dinner for rachel's bday and then snuck into the hilton hotel (this hilton was AMAZING...it looked a lot like the Atlantis) for a drink by the pool. we sipped on white russians, talia told a story about when she was in greece that was so hilarious we were all in stitches on the floor and laughing so hard i think the hotel could hear us.
6. we woke up 4 hours after we fell asleep for our day of touring around petra, jordan. we were picked up in this huge open air jeep by dessert eco tours. the woman who picked us up wouldn't let me bring my pink pillow (i go everywhere with it if i am traveling somewhere for over 2 hours and the ride to petra was 2 hours. i couldnt believe my pillow was denied). she drove us to the border which was just 10 minutes and told us to wait at the gate until it opened at 8am. we waited, the doors opened, we were taken to israel's passport control, then handed off to a man who took our passports for the visa, then we handed off to someone else who took us to jordan's side of the border to go to security, THEN we were handed off to our tour guide in jordan. we couldn't understand what anyone was saying, so we had no idea what was going on, we just knew they were getting us in.
7. our tour guide, Ali was amazing. he was so kind and so informative. i felt awful because as we were driving i started to fall asleep when he was introducing us to jordan and giving us a background information. i have a severe problem that whenever i am in the back of moving vehicle, bus, or plane its like i took 2 huge sleeping pills. he totally called me out on it ha. once i was able to get an hour nap in on our drive to petra all was good.
it felt SO good to just be driving around a new, unknown country. we really did feel like we werent in israel anymore for multiple reasons. 1 because everything was in arabic where as we are used to seeing everything in hebrew and in arabic. 2 i am so used to say "ken" and "toda" but we all caught ourselves starting to say it on jordan. just in case we always guard ourselves from being "israeli" when we travel to other countries in the mid. east. honestly, probably nothing would happen if we did slip up but its ingrained in us that we need to be careful.
8. petra was unbelievable. it was recently named one of the new 7 wonders of the world. we walked around for almost 3 hours. the rock around us towered into the sky and it was like being on another planet. to think people had lived there so long ago was awe inspiring, and it was nothing like i have ever ever seen before or even knew existed.
one of the tourist traps were bedouins who offered either horse rides, camel rides, or donkey rides to take a break from walking. one bedouin asked the girls if he could buy me for 100 camels--i told him i go for 250. we ended up taking horse rides back up the last leg and the guy who lead william shakespeare (the horse i was on) lives in his own cave near petra. hes my age, 25 . he was very good looking so i was tempted to move in with him.
kidding.
also, whenever we told the bedouins we didnt have money they would all say "no honey, no money, no chicken to curry" which we chanted along with them. lastly, 8 year old boys were the ones trying to sell the goat rides. they would have the goats sprint through some of the passage ways with 3 of them in a row and we would have to run to the side to avoid getting run over. i wondered what these young boys lives were really like and what their futures would be.
9. this amazing jordanian desert. it almost tasted like kugel but without the noodles. i think i ate this whole plate.
10. on our last day we decided to try to sneak into the pool at the hilton. we told the security at the front we were coming in for drinks (only hotel guests are supposed to allowed in this hotel) but they said ok and straight to the pool we went. i made friends with the life guards and had a whole spin of lies about when we arrived in eilat, how long we were staying, etc. we changed our bus ticket to 5pm and spent hours at the pool. i mean, could we be more rebellious?
kidding.
11. (i know was doing top 10). the whole weekend was great. we barely slept, we were always trying to get the most out of our trip, i felt so lucky to be able to travel for a day in jordan, and it was beautiful to spend that much bonding time with the girls.
phew ok. this has taken me like 2 hours. i need to get ready for work asap. tonight is a HUGE wedding. supposedly going to be amazing. i have this dream of breaking away from working and being invited to dance all night with the guests at one of the weddings. maybe tonight will be the night.
yala bye.
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