Jordan

There's obviously already a lot of stuff to think about so we'll see how this goes.

First the calls to prayer...I'd say lovely and haunting but at 4 am???? Heh, I'm jsut kidding. Considering how early we'll be heading out to the dig site in the mornings, I would much rather wake to that than any alarm clock.

Our Palace has roof access, perfect for drying clothes and just hanging out and watching the city. I'm sure we'll end up spending a night up there at some point. It only seems appropriate.

We drove to the dig site today for a walk around. Awesome.

The mountains and a mix of jagged, volcanic structures and blobs of rock that look lik scooped ice cream or perhaps melting ice cream. There's not much water around but bcause there is so little in the way of foliage you can easily see where the water goes when it does rain. Lovely. I am watching the change of colours over teh day with great interest. They just flatten out and deaden as teh sun gets higher, but the light is just perfect in the mornings and evenings. I particularly enjoy how the mountains behind Aqaba (where I'm currently staying if i didn't mention that) glow red as the sun sets behind Egypt.

Just to lay it all out. I'm now in the south of Jordan in Aqaba...we drive to the dig site everyday (about 1 hour). It is called Humayma and was a Nabatean, Roman and Byzantine settlement. Some people think maybe Ottoman too, but that needs some proving yet.
Amazing what you can do with a bit of water collection technology and th desert. The soil is good, it just neeeds the precious liquid and the ways they collect and store the stuff is blowing my mind. Truly amazing and something that I will undoubtedly comment more on later. Suffice to say there are cisterns used by teh Bedo\uin today that were built over 1000 years ago. Nuts.

Speaking of the Bedouin...we hire a bunch to help us on the site and as we wqere finishing up today they started shuoting and arguing amongst themselves and with our guy from teh Jordanian ministry of antiquities. There are four main family groups in the area and the largest is also the most wealthy. We try to give out jobs to everyone and because of the above situation it isn't right to dole it out just on a ratio of population basis.

ANyway, the shouting a shaking of fists suddenly turned into 'The Dustup in the Desert' 'The Debacle in the Desert'...whatever, they started wipping rocks at eachother. AWESOME! It didn't last too long but it was pretty sweet.

Turns out one of the guys was pretending to be the head of the cooperative, of which all familis are members. He wasnted the watchman job for himself because it pays the best (over time etc) and you just need to sit around and drink tea. Our people figured it out and went to talk to the legit cooperative headman, and all seems to now be good. Con artists, gotta lov 'em.

OOOOH! I should also mention we were exploring the Aqaba Fort that TE Lawrence so famously took after runnning ut of the mountains mentioned earlier, and we drive past Wadi Raum on our way to the dig site (where Lawrence camped for a while). Neato. I guess I'll have to watch the movie again.

Okay, the smoke in here is starting t bug me...more in a few days but so far eveything is great.

Except my arabic...I just can't make the numbers stick in my head...I'll get there eventually.