Welcome to Jordan!

Greetings, Pilgrims! We've been out of touch for some days now, enjoying Jordan. We've had several days of snow and rains since we got here, but the warmth of Jordanian hospitality have more than made up for it! Mike and I have both commented that, after the way we've been received here, it feels like we've never been hospitable to anyone before!

We've been staying with my friend Amal, her husband Jeries, and their little boy Laith. They're letting us stay in a vacant apartment below them where their grandparents used to live! We've also spent time with my friend Maher and his wife Nisreen. They and their families have treated us like royalty! And it's not just friends - many times we've been told by a taxi driver or someone in a shop as we leave, "Welcome to Jordan!" The overall feeling here is much more relaxed and easy-going than in Israel and the West Bank - obviously, there's nothing here in Jordan like the conflict that dominates life there.

I'd always imagined Jordan as desert, and most of the country is in fact desert. But from Amman north and west, it is actually quite fertile hills, with olive orchard, pine and oak-covered hills, and plenty of other agriculture. Maher was working on his Ph.D. in forestry at Purdue while I was working on my bachelors degree, and now he's the head of his department at the Jordanian University of Science & Technology. He took us on a tour of some forests last weekend ith his wife - it was awesome to be able to ask all the forestry questions I've been wanting to ask all these weeks!

This picture shows Mike and I eating with our hands, the traditional dish of rice, lamb, and a kind of goat's milk/yoghurt sauce! We were actually told to do it this way by Maher's father, and he obliged by modeling the proper method of rolling the rice and lamb into a ball, using the yoghurt sauce to stick it together! I LOVE Jordan!

There's lots of new pictures up at Picasa, so check them out!

God Bless,

Ben