Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Aqaba, Jordan: May 17th, 7:57PM GMT+2

Hello from Jordan!
It's an unbelievable day in Aqaba, 37 degrees (wow) and gorgeously sunny. Since London, we've had had the most unbelievable, silly adventures together. It started with meeting Erin, Meaghan and Ana in the airport at Heathrow, where we got to know one another a little bit as our increasing tiredness led to escalating hysterics. We also bumped into my seminar professor, Dr. Chowdhury, in the airport - he was on his way back to Canada, and it was one of the funniest run-ins of the day!

After five hours together, we jumped on a plance to Amman, meeting several students from a dig at Petra who were sitting on the plane next to us. It was really interesting to compare notes and fun to get excited together. They had an equally long travel day, so it was good to see we weren't the only ones going insane from exhaustion. Arriving in Amman, we met up with Jake, and played cards, chatted, and sat for three hours until the others flying from BC, London, and Frankfurt started to arrive. After several mishaps including a forgotten laptop, a passport switch (Robin accidentally took Jake's instead of her own - ha), and many more hysteric giggle fits, we were finally on our way to our final destination.

Aqaba is shockingly similar in appearance and climate to the Costa del Sol in Spain, albeit much hotter, so it's been fairly easy to adjust to the living space. No AC yet, and our room faces East so it's scorching during the day but cools down quite a bit in the evenings. We went down to the water and put our feet into the Red Sea - it was really refreshing, but also pretty cool since you can actually see Israel from Aqaba - it's only 6km to Eilat, Israel; you can walk there easily, and see the whole city from much of our area. So far, the biggest shock has been the heat, the people have all been friendly, helpful, and welcoming. Unfortunately, wandering around Aqaba I was quite sick, and ended up spending the better part of the day taking gravol and sleeping for hours, though I woke up feeling way better, which definitely helped the adjustment to the humidity, the altitude, and the hot sun. Much needed! Everyone took such great care of me - Victoria kept checking in while I slept and Chris regularly made her way around to make me drink more water. Plus, Mike C walked me back to the rooms and then checked in later on to make sure I was ok. I was super grateful, they're all awesome.

All in all, a pretty eventful first day. Looking forward to tomorrow :)