I'm still here

I know, I know...it's been awhile since I posted anything.  It's not because I didn't have anything to post.

In May, I went back up to Europe again, helping out some colleagues in Brussels for a couple of weeks.  It was awesome.  And I got to see Art Nouveau every day.

Then I went to Lebanon to meet with a few more colleagues for a week.  I enjoyed the French-influenced country by the sea quite a bit, but don't think I'll be going back any time soon.

Gulliver came over from North Africa to visit the ME, and so she met me in Lebanon and then we went to my ME home together from there.

Maple and I survived Ramadan and hot days in the ME. 

And then I headed right back up to Europe for almost two weeks in Slovenia, where I was so busy working at a conference that I barely had time to enjoy this view from my hotel balcony.

Goodness.  It's been a crazy few months.  The new job is keeping me on my toes.

The thing about the new job (which I am enjoying) is that I stare at my computer ALOT.  Hours and hours daily on the computer.  Emails and spreadsheets and documents and video calls.

Which means... when I'm not working, I don't want to be on the computer.  My poor little eyes can only handle that backlit screen for so much per day.  And so I turn it off and walk away and before I know it--months went by and I hadn't blogged.

The normal blogger in me would have blogged about Brussels, but I just didn't have the mental and visual energy for it.

The normal blogger in me would have blogged about Lebanon, but I just didn't have the mental and visual energy for that either.

Or for Slovenia.
Or for hitting my one-year-out-of-France point (which I reached this past week).
Or for much of anything else, like saffron flavored camel milk on sale at the grocery store.

Does it mean the end of blogging for me?  I don't think so.  I hope not.  Since it's been an outlet for me for 12 years, it seems like it's something I enjoy doing... I just don't have it in me for right now.  I think being at the end of a 4 year overseas term, moving countries, traveling as much as I did this past year (I think I went to something like 18 countries since I left France!), and starting a whole new job adds up to one tired chickadee.

I leave for the Big White Boat in 40 days from today, and will have approximately 6 months-ish in the States.  I think I should be able to find some time and mental and visual energy in there to blog.  So check back around October 1st and see if I've started blogging about the Big White Boat.

Thanks for your patience with me.  I promise the ME didn't kill me... and the new job hasn't either.  Just the opposite: the #40nJordy year has been the best one yet.  :)

PETRA: The #1 Bucket List Item

I don't know when the dream to go to Petra emerged, but it's been years now of wanting to go there.  Five years ago, I booked a vacation to go to Jordan, just to have the airlines cancel my flight three weeks beforehand.  Even before that, someone had brought me a Starbucks mug from Jordan, and I've kept it hidden away in a cabinet, saving it for the day when I've actually been to Jordan.  And if I've made it to Jordan...I will surely have made it to Petra.

Finally, finally, the ultimate Spring Time Fun Time event happened as we spent our second free weekend in Wadi Musa to go to PETRA.  I could barely contain my excitement.  If ever there was a post with a lot of pictures, it'll be this one, since this was one of my life dreams.  Here we go!

The blazing sunshine on the road in. Sort of reminds me of Marseille a little bit.

One of the "tombs of the djinn."

I thought these buildings looked like behives.

Starting to look a little bit like a city.

Some guy on a horse.

More djinn blocks.

Can you see the carving in the rock? It's in Nabataean and in Greek.

I zoomed in so you could see the carving on the rock. My tourist pamphlet says that it refers to a burial monument.

Moses walked through here?!

That looks impressive.

The Obelisk Tomb (on top) and a banqueting hall on bottom.

The four pyramids and the statue (zoomed in here) represent the five people buried in this tomb.

The entrance into the Siq. Although I'd said it all day, I really started in with the "oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!" now.

Glad for some shade and excited to see the canyon formed by water (from Moses hitting the rock!).

I loved staring at the rocks and all the colors.

Just so beautiful!

The cracks in the rocks were amazing--like little slivers only a few feet wide!

Look how tiny those people are!

I walked slowly and took it all in. I knew at some point The Treasury would be around the bend of one of those slivers, but I didn't want to miss enjoying the Siq while anticipating the Treasury.

Was it around this bend?

NOPE! But look how tiny I am!

I like this photo.

Some guy offered to take me and Maple's photo...too bad it's dark in the shade.

A carving in the stone.

(If you think I took alot of pictures of the Siq, wait until you see how many camel photos I took!)

I thought of The Artist here and if she were with me, I'd have asked her how many colors she saw.

I've never been to the Grand Canyon, AND Petra's always been a dream for me, so I was pretty in awe the whole time.

Another tiny crack in the mountain.

There were so many times when there wasn't anyone around us at all.

See the little guy?!

I'm Indiana Jones!!!

I'd read about this in a book recently--a carving in the stone of a camel caravan. I think these are the buildings of Petra as the caravan leaves?

I don't know what that says...

There's the camel driver.

And the the feet and humps of the camels behind him.

Camel feet.

I began to hear sounds that made me think of the Eiffel Tower when it lights up at night and takes the tourists by surprise. I thought...the Treasury must be up ahead. Plus, this little crowd all lined up on the left seemed like a small giveaway.

And then there it was!

I'd seen this view a million times by photo, but I tried to pretend I'd hadn't, and that this was my very first glimpse...because this time it was real and it was ME and not me living through someone else's photos.

Do you think the Holy Grail is in there?!

Get ready for all the camel photos.

They were everywhere.

These two were named Daisy and Lazy.

Daisy sure is pretty, isn't she?

This began the Street of Facades, which were a whole bunch of tombs.

Look at those colors!

I mean, I just swooned at all the colors.

I couldn't get enough of the rock!!!

Building.

Another tomb. You could go inside that one...it was just an empty room that smelled bad.

Flowers in the desert.

Stairs that I was too chicken to climb.

See the donkey?

And another one. I like donkeys almost as much as I like camels.

Or maybe this is the Street of Facades? Or maybe it's a long street?

Anyway, the Place of High Sacrifice is just over to the left. Someone told me it was 700 steps up. My fear of heights told me not to go to a place with "high" in the title. My 40 year old knees told me not to go up 700 steps.

I stayed down on the street with the camels.

This guy came up and told me his camels were named Abra and Kadabra. Hahaha.

This one is Abra. Can't you tell we hit it off right away?

That looks high. Not gonna go up there.

Certainly not gonna go up to the top of that!

I told Maple that I've never been to Arizona or New Mexico, but in my mind, this is what some of those pueblo towns look like.

I like the opening of that one.

We came to the amphitheatre. Cause every 2000 year old city had to have one. And my tourist pamphlet says it's the only theatre in the world carved into rock.

Maybe those are the top-dollar box seats at the theatre?

Can you guess what I'm gonna say? I LOVED THE COLOR of these rocks!

Peek-a-boo! You can't see her, but there was a bedouin girl who would not leave me alone right here.

Looking out at the amphitheatre.

I don't know if you can tell, but I was having so much fun!

I've never seen such pretty rocks!

We stopped in a house (let's not call it a tomb, okay?) like this one that had shade and no tourists and ate our lunch and cooled off a bit. Once we were fueled up, we started up some stairs.

Camels encouraged us on our way up that we could make the climb.

There were bedouin tents along the way selling trinkets. Up ahead, the Royal Tombs.

That was my favorite stone of the day. Hands down, winner. What if THAT's the rock that Moses tapped that made all the water gush that formed the Siq? I wanna believe it is. That's Moses's rock.

But it didn't stop me from taking more pictures of other colored rock.

Maple is a great tour guide! She was smart enough to have us bring umbrellas to create shade.

That's the valley down below that we'd just climbed up from.

More bedouin up at the top selling stuff. And maybe a guard?

The courtyard in front of the Urn Tomb.

The facade of the Urn Tomb, it later became a Byzantine church.

The ceiling inside the Urn Tomb.

The Corinthian Tomb.

The Palace Tomb--the facade has five stories!

The view down the Street of Facades from up at the Royal Tombs.

Later, looking over at the Royal Tombs.

We walked a different way down than how we'd gone up...and didn't end up down at the main road right away. Instead, we ended up at a gorge. Where I had to cross a metal bridge. Y'all. It took all the courage I had to get across that bridge.

Once over the bridge, we got down to the road pretty easily, and next thing you know...we're on the Roman Road. You know...the kind that leads to Rome.

Then we came to the Great Temple.

Maple told me that only 22% of Petra has been excavated! Wowzah!

They're still working on the Temple, but we got to climb all over it.

Columns. Cause you know...columns are interesting.

The stones that, once put back together, will be a column. My tourist pamphlet says that the columns would have been 15m high!

The Qasr al-Bint...another Temple, the main one.

The Monastery is up that way...but Maple and I had discussed it ahead of time and I was convinced by all who've gone before me that my fear of heights couldn't handle the climb. I was content with my day without a 1000 stair climb up a cliff.

Maple in her element on a camel.

I decided not to take a camel but to have a few minutes to myself walking back through and seeing it all one more time.

When I stopped to get some shade, these girls called me over and asked me how I got my hair to be this color. I told them God was my stylist.  smile emoticon I had fun talking to them for a few minutes, and it totally made it worth to not have ridden the camel back.

Back at the Treasury, it now looked pink. (It had looked yellow when I arrived in the morning.)

I took a few selfies before we left.

We've had so much fun this year, the two of us.  It made sense to top it off with my dream bucket list item.

That is one happy but tired tourist. When it was all said and done, we'd walked nearly 8 miles and climbed 80 floors, according to my Fitbit. Man alive, I'm so glad we didn't climb anything else! But it was worth it.

I mean, my dream came true and I got to see camels all day long.

We stayed at a hotel up on a nearby mountain, and this was the sunset view from our room. Gold star day.

I got up the next morning and had coffee out on the terrace and looked out over that, imagining the wandering Children marching through there, tired and weary...and Moses and Joshua and Caleb full of faith. I'll never forget that view, or this weekend.

I guess it's time to dream up new dreams and add a few more items to the bucket list, since the #1 item on it has now been checked off.  Not ready to kick the bucket yet, so might as well make the list a little longer.