Time is Flying By

My boss was gone all week at a conference in Ireland, so although it’s great to work with her in the office, it was nice to be able focus on my project for the college tour this summer without having to worry about the other odd jobs that she gives me when she is here. This project is the project that keeps on giving. Every time I think that I am finally finished with it, something didn’t save, or I didn’t include something, or some information was incorrect. This project took forever, and although I have finally finished creating the profiles for each college, I still have to create the rest of the booklet, which shouldn’t take too long because it’s just the cover, index, layout, and map of the tour. Also, for my new co-curricular this term I am helping out with the photography club, which has been great to far to help with something that I really love. 

My weekend was pretty quite, and on Saturday I took a shuttle to Amman to a coffee shop that I love going to for some real coffee. They only have Nescafe on the campus, and I’ve found that I’m getting weirdly addicted to instant coffee. So I had some real coffee on Saturday morning, and instead of taking that shuttle back to the school, I stuck around Amman to wait for another shuttle that was taking students to the downtown. I was really proud of myself because I was able to find my way from the coffee shop to the downtown to get picked up. It’s not very far, but I was really happy because Amman is not the easiest city to navigate, it does not run on a grid like most American cities, instead it is a maze of windy streets that go up and down hills and valleys with a ridiculous amount of traffic circles. So I found my way to the old downtown, bought a few trinkets and movies, and made my way back to campus that afternoon. 

On Sunday, my moms good friend who set me up with the Junior Fellow program stopped at King’s for the bi-annual university fair that the company organizes at schools around the Middle East. It was really strange because before I left, she told me that she was going to go to Jordan at the end of March, and before I left in early January, that seemed like forever. I cannot believe how quickly my time has gone by here, I have six weekends left, so I really have to plan each one thoroughly so that I don’t miss out on any little thing. 

My office let me take the day off, and I went around with my moms friend to two other high schools in Amman where she was having a fair, and later a hotel downtown for a larger fair open to high school students of Amman interested in attending American universities. The fair finished at around nine pm, and before ten her aunt and cousin who live in Amman came to pick us up and we went out to dinner at restaurant in an old large house downtown, with the dinning hall on the top floor with glass walls overlooking a sparkling hillside of downtown Amman. At around 11:30 we finished dinner and said good bye, because she was leaving in the morning for Kuwait for the next fair. It was absolutely wonderful to see a family friend from home, and to spend time with a family in general, because you really don’t have that at a boarding school.  

Wadi Rum

We had a shortened work week last week because it was the end of the semester, and students were taking exams. I’ve been working on this project for over two weeks now, and I am getting really frustrated with it because it’s taking so much longer than I thought it would. Basically, my boss is running a college tour over the summer for college counselors from international schools all over the world, and I am putting together the booklet that goes with the tour. This booklet includes an in depth profile of every university the tour will be visiting, as well as a schedule, map, and trying to find a charter bus to take the group around. The more I work on this the project the more bored I get, and so it’s taking me a lot of time to finish it. 

Finally the week ended on Wednesday, and I headed back to my room to pack for the long weekend. I had a good night of sleep and Thursday morning I boarded the bus and set off for Wadi Rum - a mountainous desert of Southern Jordan inhabited by Bedouins. Along with a small group, we were off to spend the weekend there in a Bedouin camp. It was almost a 4 hour drive south down a single highway. It’s very interesting to watch as the landscape drastically changes the further south you go. From Madaba it’s pretty green, with dark red soil, olive trees, and farm land, you drive a little south towards Mt. Nebo, and the rocky mountains came into view, the land at this point is very rocky, with large bouldery mountains. Further south again the boulders become less frequent, and sand drifts over the mountains. Later on the sand changes to a terra cotta color, and massive jagged mountains spring up in the distance. We finally arrived at Wadi Rum in the afternoon. We passed a small village, and turned left onto a path leading into the desert towards the mountains. 

The landscape of Wadi Rum is breathtaking, it’s unlike any other mountainous area that I have ever seen. It is not a mountain range, that is to say, the mountains are not connected by high ground to one another, instead, the desert is all at ground level, with slow sloping dunes of red sand, and then massive jagged mountains rise at extraordinary heights in random spots in the desert. 

We got off the bus at the camp that sits right underneath a mountain and went straight to an open air tent. The tents in the camp are all made of black wool with one large, and two thin horizontal stripes of white. The open air tent had many layers of thick, colorful rugs and many stiff patterned red pillows of woven red wool centered around a metal fire pit. We sat there and met an American woman who helps oversee tourists at the camp, and she used to work at King’s as well. We were served typical, delicious Arabic sweet tea with a hint of cinnamon for the winter. We quickly picked our tents for the weekends, and went off to walk around the desert to find a spot to watch the sunset. I walked barefoot through the sand, it was like walking through silk. A few of us climbed up to a ledge on the side of a smaller mountain and sat there, waiting for the sun to set behind the mountains. Shadows began to creep onto the mountainsides, and twilight dyed the mountains red. Before it got to dark we headed back for the camp to eat dinner. It was absolutely freezing when we went to bed at night. The desert is so cold when there is no sun! We only had one blanket each because we didn’t think to grab more before we went to bed. I slept horribly that night. The next morning we got up and had breakfast, and shortly after along with a teacher who was on the trip as well, I got on a camel for a two hour ride through the desert led by an old Bedouin. After an hour we stopped the camels, and the sat in the middle of the desert, at which point the Bedouin began to dig a shallow hole into the sand and place sticks which he had collected on the way. He made a small fire in the sand, put water in an old metal teakettle and made us tea, right there in the middle of the desert, it was wonderful. When he poured the tea, and the ashes were still hot, he placed to pieces of pita and warmed them up for us as well. He spoke only a few words of English, and often said “Bedouin!” and smiled. However, with his few words of English, and my broken Arabic,  we all managed to have a conversation. Surprisingly, he knew all of the U.S. presidents in order since Eisenhower, and after he said each name we would all do a thumbs up if we liked the president or didn’t. “Kennedy!” we all put our thumbs up, “Nixon!” we all said “Noooo!”. It was unreal, there I was in the middle of the Jordanian desert, talking U.S. presidents with a Bedouin. We saddled up once again and rode back to the camp. 

For lunch we met with some young boys from the village to discuss some potential community service projects between King’s Academy and their school (the purpose of this trip was actually for students to form a link with the school in the village and start some community service projects, but I was just there to enjoy Wadi Rum and “supervise” a bit since I am technically a faculty member). In the afternoon we drove to Aqaba to spend some time at the beach, which was filthy. The first time I went to the beach we I was at a resort, so it was beautiful, but this was a public beach, and it was just gross, and a fight broke out at one point as well. 

We were off in the car once again back to the camp for the night, this time we grabbed plenty of blankets so that we would not freeze again. We played games under the moonlight, and relaxed in the cool, grey sand. We woke up early the next morning, and boarded the bus for King’s once again. 

Dead2Red

The impending Dead2Red race was on my mind this whole week. Since I found out only a week in advance, I had very little time to train for it, but after work every day I went for a run so that I could prepare a little bit, but in reality nothing but months and months of running could have actually prepared me for the race. Thursday finally arrived, and I left work early to rush back to my room and finish packing, to then run to the dinning hall to quickly eat, and then rush over to the parking lot to pack up the cars. The drive to the Dead Sea was much longer than I anticipated. It took about 50 minutes, because Madaba is up in the mountains, and the Dead Sea in 1,300 feet below sea level, so the whole drive consisted of slowly driving down dangerously curved roads, carved into the side of the mountains. Even after we arrived at the Dead Sea, we had to continue driving until we reached the other side. The Dead Sea is the color of the sky on a clear, cloudless day, bright blue, with light dancing on the water as the sun is mirrored in all directions layering areas of dark, rich blues, and light turquoises, leaving a ribbon of white along rocky shore from the salt. 

Hundreds of runners were warming up as tried to find parking along the crowed Dead Sea Highway. I anxiously began stretching, and after a half hour, our first runner went to the starting line, and the rest of us hopped back into the cars to get dropped off along the road at increments of 500m to await our turn to grab the baton and start running. 

Beginning of the race, with the Dead Sea on the right

This is how the Dead2Red works: the distance from each sea is 242 km, that is split up into 24 km for each runner. It is a relay race, each team has ten members, and there is no set distance that each runner must run before passing the baton, though most do around 500m. Oh, and you have 24 hours to complete the race. You don’t get to rest at 12 am for the night, you just keep running, and running, and running. 

While I was waiting I saw the a runner from the team that ended up winning. He was sprinting down the mountain. That was the first and last time I saw that team the whole race. My turn finally arrived, and I sped down the mountain. I finished in a couple of minutes, and thought, “Oh that’s not to bad”. 1 down, 48 more times to go. The race was like a giant game of leap frog. I ran, and my car sped ahead of me to drop off the next runner, they got out, I passed them the baton, got back into the car, and we sped off ahead to drop off the next runner, and pick up the current one, the last runner got out, and passed it to the first runner of the next car. We went ahead 3.5 km, as the car did their rotation, and passed it to one last car before the baton made its way back to us again. And so the cycle was, all 49 times. I had a love hate relationship with the race. At around 8 pm, I was loving it, we were blasting music in the car, I having a ball. 12 am rolls around, the initial excitement is long gone, but I’m still going strong. 3 am, I dread every time that I have to get out of the warm car and run in the cold, pitch black desert, but at least I was comforted by the sounds of large howling, feral, most likely rabies infested dogs in the distance. 6 am rolls around, and the sun pears over the jagged mountains revealing the vast desert to my right. At this point I’m slightly comforted by the fact that it is finally day time, but then I quickly realize that I still have over 6 hours more to run, and I haven’t had any sleep, I am hating that I signed up for the race. Also, within about an hour my ankles gave in because since I didn’t think I would be doing extensive running in Jordan, I didn’t think to bring my good  track shoes, instead I wore a pair of tennis shoes, which was an awful mistake. After quite a few excruciatingly painful, and slow runs, my team members just looked at me, told me to get in the car and take a break. I originally put up a bit of a fight because I really did want to finish the whole race on my own, but after not even being able to walk without a lot of pain, I decided it was for the best. I ended up only stoping 25k or so short of the finish line, so I did run the majority of the race anyways. 

View from my room

Our team got lost in Aqaba trying to find out what street to run down next, but finally we found our way, and then all got out of the car together and crossed the finish line together in 20 hours and 26 minutes. This was great, because first of all, there were two staff teams this year, the good one, with people who are avid runners, and then our team, the disappointments as well called ourselves, who were in it just for fun, and to say we did it. So it was quite an accomplishment to finish four hours before the deadline. 

We all limped into the hotel which was a lovely 5 star resort on the Red Sea. Let me tell you, relaxing on the beach is the best way to end a 20 hour race. The Red Sea is gorgeous, and from Aqaba, you can see Israel to the right, with Egypt further down the coast, and Saudi on the far left behind some mountains. The Sea is lined with a thin beach, and red jagged mountains. The sand is dark, and from a distance the water is a very dark, royal blue. But when you swim in it, it becomes a deep turquoise. We stayed the night there, and went to a dinner at the Mövenpick in Aqaba for the runners. I spent the next day relaxing at the beach, and walking around Aqaba. All in all, I am very glad that I ran the race. Though I hated it at times, it was a great experience, and I really pushed myself physically, it was definitely worth it, though if I ever decide to do it again, I’ll be sure to spend months prior to it training.