Sorry I haven't been updating as much. Now that I've gotten into my school routine, it doesn't feel like there is as much to write about. Plus, I was sick most of last week and staying in bed resting isn't exactly an exciting story. It is interesting though how my host mom keeps trying to get me to take antibiotics....for a common cold. I am now into my "residual cough" stage, something which always happens after I get a cold and she is convinced it is chronic bronchitis and that I should be taking antibiotics. With the way they use antibiotics here, the next super-resistant strain will most surely come from the very doorstop of my host-mom

So some friends and I had plans to go to Madaba and the dead sea this weekend, but they unfortunately fell through. Instead, I went to the Citadel here with one of my friends. The citadel, like the Roman Amphitheater, is situated in downtown Amman. Its located at the top of a hill and has an AMAZING view. I met my friend there and we walked around the citadel, trying to find the entrance. We ended up walking up the hill, completely around and found that had we gone left instead of right, we would have found the entrance just around the corner versus walking for half an hour up hill the other direction :) It was a nice walk though. The weather is finally starting to get really warm (I would say it was at least 70 degrees). Instead of paying the 2JD for admission as non-Jordanians we only payed 15 piasters because of our residency cards. We didn't really pay attention to the history behind the citadel because I will be going back there on one of my program trips and wanted to save some new information for that trip. There is a tiny little Ummayad palace atop which I found very disappointing. When I heard of the Ummayad palace, I pictured a large, impressive structure which instead ended up looking like a small domed building (we mistook it for a small mosque). Really, the most interesting thing was the view. I LOVE the sprawling view of the buildings in Amman----the uniformity is amazing!!! Everything is made from the same white stone. We also had a great view of a giant Jordanian flag situated in the city. In the little archaeological museum, we saw a few of the dead sea scrolls which in my opinion, are much more interesting to read about than to actually see them. Other than that, the only other event of interest was our encounter with one of the MANY stray cats with a very large lizard that it was about to eat. Yum!


On Monday, we have the day off for the Prophets Birthday which was just announced last week. It is interesting because they don't announce the day as an official holiday until right before the actual holiday. Many were hoping it would be on Sunday so we could have a long weekend. Oh well, a day off is a day off in my opinion :)


It is official: my friend and I are planning our trip to Egypt for Spring Break. It will be just the two of us. At first, I wanted more people to go but this is actually going to be really nice. We'll have the flexibility of changing our plans and it will be easier to find a place to stay. We're going to try and visit Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and maybe Aswan. So far, I'm having a lot of fun planning the trip and I can't wait until we actually go!