Again sorry…it’s been awhile. Finished the term on Thursday. Sat the exam. Al-hamdoulillah it went well, I say my marked paper today and probably 90% of it was correct (there was no grade on it yet though). So I’m pretty happy with that. We went out to dinner on Thursday night to celebrate. We had Thai and then Gerard’s – nutella crepes…mmm… Managed to get myself some Gloria’s (Gloria Jean’s) last night and it reminded me so much of home, which I am missing somewhat at the moment… I actually considered leaving… But I’m staying insha’allah.
Anyway, spent today shopping for presents for a friend here (who’s having a baby), and my teachers (one who had a little baby girl last week, masha’allah). So am now totally exhausted and cannot be bothered to make dinner. We also shopped for our flatmate who’s off to see her husband in Turkey for the break – I have never been so irritated by male shop assistants in my life, they stick to you like glue here, even after you tell them several times you are “just looking”. It’s creepy.
So yeah, as you can tell I’m not presently in Syria, I’m still in Amman. Hotels proved to expensive (high season) as all the budget ones were booked out. As it turns out, al-hamdoulillah we didn’t go, because a friend and her husband left today for Syria, and even though the wife has a visa, the Syrians wouldn’t allow them to enter the country. So Al-hamdoulillah. Since we’re not going to Syria, we’ve extended our visit to the South of Jordan – I’m really looking forward to some swimming and snorkeling insha’allah. Wish I had an underwater camera, apparently the sea life in Aqaba is amazing. Kheir Insha’allah.
About two weeks ago I went on a trip with the murid sisters to a couple of the maqams (graves) south of Amman, which was fantastic, and totally crazy. On the way to our destination, our bus driver decided that he would take the incomplete highway which is meant to link Amman to this particular area. So anyway, this highway is being built over a massive (and very very deep) valley and it was so foggy that you couldn’t see 50cm out of the bus windows and the driver is motoring along at about 70kmph and then suddenly there was a really large bang and the bus dropped about 10cm off an incomplete join in the road. So the driver decides that he will drive a little more slowly. I was looking out of the window down to the ground and you could clearly see that the highway was nowhere near being completed – there were large boulders all over the road, it wasn’t properly sealed, every 10 metres or so there was a small drop where the connection had not yet been complete, and there were long iron poles (the type you see in concrete buildings when they are being built, you know, the put them inside the cement – sorry don’t know what they are called) sticking out of the road surface. It was a miracle that the bus was not totally destroyed. So after about 30mins on this road, the driver decides that indeed he is on the wrong road (duh!) and decides to make a u-turn, great – except there is no u-turn bay and there is a median strip about 40cm high and a metre wide between our side of the road and the other. So the driver begins to make his “many-point” turn. All on the bus are slightly concerned, especially those of us at the back, who could see that if he reversed just a little to far, the drop into the valley below was a good 200metres! Finally we got turned around, and so the driver proceeded to drive back up the highway on the wrong side of the road (no way to get over the median strip) in the densest fog I’ve seen yet in Jordan… Naturally, we (the girls) were quite concerned, and so they (the murids) began to recite the burda, I simply closed my eyes and prayed that there was no truck heading in the opposite direction. We finally made it back to the road he was not supposed to turn off to begin with and were heading along at high speed once again. Salt was beautiful, we stopped on the road that wound its way down into the Jordan valley, the fog had cleared, the sun was out and we could see into Palestine. It was green – such a contrast to Amman. After our brief stop we headed to the maqams we had planned to visit – I’ll put the details of who, where, what at the end of this post insha’allah. We got back later than expected, but it was a really nice day (excluding the drive) al-hamdoulillah. So that was the trip.
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Sorry this is all over the place, I have a massive headache – sugar withdrawal, I’m on a health kick…Again. *lol*
Insha’allah you’re all well.
Ma’a salama.
~ Video Coming Soon ~
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