Jordan Part 2: PETRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh happiness!

Can I just say.. I had no clue why Petra was so cool and everyone was so jealous I got to go there. Like, I really didn't know what it was. Or how huge it was. Or how incredible it was. But now I do. The end. Enjoy the largest blog post I will probably ever post... the internet is being magical. 

Our hotel from the night before!

As you first walk into Petra.. you see cool random little things like this on the left. You freak out at how cool they are!!! But you have NO IDEA HOW MUCH COOLER OTHER THINGS ARE until later. :)

Walkin' through the canyon. Um this picture is kinda crappy but I'm too lazy to pick a different one! We walked for a good 20 minutes.

Please just trust me when I say it is amazing that Ashley and I made it through this day in Toms.

Best. Picture. Ever. Hahahaha.

Iman.. our awesome tour guide for the entire Jordan trip!

Still walking through the pretty red rock canyon.

AND THEN.

Out of no where, Iman tells us to get in single file lines, and look down.

We are not allowed to look up until he tells us to.

WE ALL KNOW WHAT'S COMING AND IT'S KILLING US.

Squeals abound as we walk forward for about 2 minutes.

And we may or may not begin to sing the Indian Jones theme song...

Finally.

We are allowed.

To look up.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

The treasury!!!! Maybe the coolest thing of my life. (Well, until I saw the Monastery... but we'll get to that later...)

Schade class!

Oh yeah and then I rode a camel! ;)

Ahh! It was so fun! We all did tiny 30 second rides in front of the Treasury for a small fee.

I'M SITTING. ON. A CAMEL.

I love this picture so much. I'm freaking out being this close to the camel, and the camel is doing a creepy awesome smile (which is why I am freaking out). So much win.

Well, it felt like we were really close... hahaha.

Matt dressed up as Indiana Jones. It was awesome. Um, ignore my most awkward pose in the world... 

Apparently it was blue shirt day! So we took a picture with the (fake) guards. :)

How better to capture awesome scenery than by taking a jumping picture?!

The layers in the rocks were sooo pretty.

Love. Just love.

I call this.. "Amphitheater. With a donkey."

I still don't know what this is but it's huge and we climbed up to it!

View from the top of the huge awesome thing! With Ashley and Tyler.

See guard.. take picture! (This guard was real. ;))

This is all that was inside the huge awesome thing. Pretty much everything in Petra is an empty room!

More prettiness.

And then.. WE HIKED!! For 45 minutes. Up 800 stairs. To the Monastery!! My Toms and I miraculously made it, and it was SO WORTH IT.

On the way up.

Are you ready?

Heeeere iiiit cooommmeesss!!!

.....

The Monastery!!!!!!!!! I know what you're thinking - it looks just like the Treasury. But believe me, it is a LOT bigger and so so so awesome.

Once again, the inside is just a big empty room.

With 2 of the roomies. :) Anne & Aubreigh!

Then we hiked up just a tiny bit more to the tallest view point! AWESOMENESS. I had "On Top of the World" by Imagine Dragons stuck in my head and it was kiiiind of perfect. Look how teeny (yet huge!) the Monastery is! Bahhhh.

Hiking back down. Indiana Jones picture perfection.

Next we had lunch, and then a few of us decided to pay a little extra to ride the camels back to the meeting spot (the Treasury). It was SOOO FUNNNNN!!! We rode them for like 15 minutes and it was magicalness.

Oh ya know, just my new favorite picture of my life. (I will have you know it is REALLY hard to take a selfie on a camel.)

Back at the Treasury! Me, Anne, & Mikkel.

Taking one last look at the Treasury... goodbye awesomeness..

On the way out of Petra we got to ride horses!

And then Anne & I bought camels to commemorate our incredible day. :)

I love you Petra!!! The end.

Jordan Part 1: Mt. Nebo & Madaba

Alright guys.. I'm FINALLY getting to blogging about our 4 day trip to Jordan, which was at the end of January!

Our itinerary!

Ashley and I with the traveling essentials: GUMMIES!

So excited about my first passport stamp! This was right after entering Jordan. I think it's just a stamp that says I exited Israel.. I can't quite remember. Haha. BUT I LOVE IT!

Jordanian money! I love foreign money.. it's so prettyyyyy! These are called dinars. :) I probably spelled that wrong..

Ashley and I on top of Mt. Nebo where Moses viewed the Holy Land!

Walking the streets of Madaba

Little boys are adorable in every country!

Jordanian advertising is hilarious. That is all.

The St. George Church at Madaba! It's from the Byzantine period.
 

This church houses an ancient mosaic map of the Holy Land. Historians have used it to reconstruct the Near East during the Byzantine period! It was seriously so cool to think how old it was and to recognize so many things on it.

Back at the hotel for dinner! Eating with KC (left) and Bethany (my assigned roommate for Jordan!)

Bethany in our room!

In this bathroom is where I had my first experience of using bottled water for everything. Lol.

Now for part 2! :)

Jerusalem Marathon

Today I ran a 10K!!!!!!!!!!!

If you know me, you know this is a miracle.

If you know me, you also know I walked 9K of it. ;)

But it was so fun! A bunch of us did it, and about 14 did the half-marathon. We didn't have any full marathon runners... but it's like, impossible to train here without treadmills/a decent running track. So yes. I'm amazed that people even did the half!

Also, because I like to be depressing, today is the halfway mark. I am halfway done with this amazing Jerusalem semester.

Cue tears.

Okay. Funny story. So last night, we were informed that the time to get on the vans to drive to the race was 9:15 AM. Well, my roommates and I skipped breakfast (some intentionally, some unintentionally *cough meeeee cough*), and so we didn't see the new SUPERRIDICULOUSLYLASTMINUTE sign posted outside the Oasis about the vans leaving at 8:45. So at literally 8:42... we're all awake and are slowly getting ready... takin' our sweet precious time... when we hear other girls running down the hallway. And we're like.. Huh. I wonder why they're hurrying. So we poke our heads out the door, and are informed that the vans are leaving in 3 minutes. And you guys.. THE VANS DO NOT WAIT FOR ANYONE. THEY JUST DON'T. In fact they often leave a couple of minutes before the departure time for some reason  that I am still totally not okay with. It's surriously insane. Well, obviously we FREAKED OUT and turned into crazy people and flung our bodies all over the room trying to grab things and put clothes on and tie our shoes on and grab shekels and we ran all the way up the 10 bajillion flights of stairs to the vans. (I should seriously write a blog post on the stairs. They are cray-cray.) I got on that van with no makeup on my face, no food or water in my belly, and my hair without a hair tie. It was glorious. I never got fed or made up before the race, but a gracious friend did offer me her hair tie! ;)

Aurbeigh and Ashley... my 2 amazing roommates that BOTH got their mission calls last week to side-by-side missions in Brazil!! They'll even be in the Brazil MTC at the same time!  SUCH HAPPINESS! They randomly found this flag lying in a bush before the race this morning.. kind of awesome. :)

BYU before the race! Pfft... open eyes are so 10 years ago.

So many people!

I CAN PRONOUNCE THAT ENTIRE PHRASE IN YELLOW. Yeah. I take Hebrew. It's whatevs.

A few minutes in!

These rooftops were so pretty.

Oh my gosh. This sweet old man was the cutest thing I've ever seen. He was jogging with his back all hunched... it was adorable and he was so spirited and smiley and into it with his arms all swingin'. I died. 

Pretty streets. ♥

Running buddies Erica and Anne!

Anne being the fierce woman she is. Pausing for a picture on top of the world in Jerusalem. Yeah the view is kind of nice.

I love how totally normal it was to run past a little sheep herder. Like, duh.

Pretty West Jeru street. ♥

I basically need to eat here.

WE DID IT!!!! And no, I did not lose 50 pounds. But let's pretend I did.. because that's fun!

Alright, I think I'm going to do something crazy.. and ditch my paper for my bed. And get 9 hours of sleep. I just.. I just cannot even imagine how good this will feel. I wish I could explain how tired and achy I am... always. It is time to love my body. Goodnight!