Cloud 9

What a crazy month! March has flown by, filled with school, choir, visiting friends... First of all, my Dozan concert was more like a guest performance. We sang traditional Arab pieces for about 5/6 minutes, then sat and enjoyed listening to an hour's worth more of traditional music. It was really cool.

We started having sight reading classes on Fridays, thanks to the generosity of one of the guys from Dozan. We've been learning about the circle of 5ths, how to figure out what the key signature means, all sorts of cool stuff! We also had auditions for places on the Germany trip in May, but unfortunately, I didn't make it. So no Germany for me. However, it does mean that I get an extra 10 days in Jordan. Our Easter concerts are next week, so the past couple weeks have been packed with rehearsals. We got to rehearse with the orchestra last week - they sounded awesome! I love singing with an orchestra.

Now for the news you've been waiting for - I have made my final college decision. It was a tough one. I will be attending University of North Carolina in Greensboro (UNCG) next fall. It's about an hour's drive from my parents (this made my mother very happy). As of now, I'm undeclared, but I intend to study International Relations, Middle Eastern Studies, and Arabic. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I get to work on housing options and meal plans, which is fairly interesting. While I'm sad to be leaving Jordan, getting all of this college stuff ready is making me pretty excited for the next chapter in my life.

Last weekend, a whole bunch of us from church went to Wadi Dana for the weekend. I was looking forward to this trip for weeks - after a stressful month of school and choir and college stuff, I really needed to get out of the city. If you remember, Julia, Bethany, and I went to Wadi Dana at the end of Ramadan. It's also where the really cool photo at the top of my blog is from. We would be staying 3 days, 2 nights, and were planning on doing some really cool day hikes while we were down there. Janelle and I rented a car for 4 days, stuffed it full of food and stuff, and drove down with a few other people early Friday morning. It was a little cooler down there, but when we arrived, it was beautiful and green. We took our stuff down to the tents and got ready for a short afternoon hike near the camp. We got a little over half way to the top of the mountain when we turned around to see huge storm clouds rolling in over the top of the mountain, moving swiftly towards the camp site. We were protected by the side of the mountain at that point, and it wasn't raining yet, so we decided to keep going. After maybe 10 minutes, it started raining. We sat under a overhanging rock for a while to wait it out, and after another 10 minutes or so, it stopped raining. In true Patterson style, we kept going. Well, we got to the top of the mountain, and lo and behold, it started raining again. We were inside the cloud at this point, could barely see 10 feet in front of us. And it wasn't like little drops of rain or anything, it started pouring. We scrambled to find shelter under bushes and rocks, which were few at the top. We finally found some drier places, and waited out the rain. It stopped less than an hour later, and we set off to finish our hike, soaked. We came across a bunch of youth towards the end playing around on some slick rock faces and decided that it looked like too much fun. We joined them, testing out our cool shoes. (I was wearing my Vibrams the whole time...) It started raining again, so we ran back to camp, put on dry shoes and socks, and huddled around the campfire to warm up. There we roasted marshmallows, and later grilled vegetables and rosemary thyme chicken for dinner. Janelle prepared the chicken - it was delicious! There were brief periods of time without rain, but even then, there was still incredibly thick fog. We were dry for the most part overnight, but when we got up the next morning, it was raining. It continued to rain for the rest of the morning. Ruth, Janelle, and I went on another short walk near the campsite after breakfast, started out dryish, but then it began to pour again, so we were soaked by the time we got back. We decided that it was not worth the money we'd have to pay to stay another night in the cold and rain, so after lunch, we packed up and headed back to the city. There was crazy fog on the drive back - I was driving, and I couldn't see 10 feet in front of me. Of course, being Jordan, the roads aren't well painted, so I couldn't really tell where my lane ended. There were a few incidents with trucks driving in my lane, but they moved in time, and we got through it safely. I have never seen fog like that in this country. It was ridiculous. When we got back, we locked ourselves in the house, made Thai food for dinner, curled up and watched the 6 hour Pride and Prejudice (thank you, BBC) with cups of tea and chocolate chip cookies. The perfect way to end the evening.

Since we didn't get to do any of our fun day hikes at Dana, we decided to do a big day hike on Sunday. Janelle is the super-duper wadi person. She has done this wadi (Wadi Manshala, near the Dead Sea) like 8 times by now, and it's usually a two day hike, but we decided just to do 7/8 hours of it. So Ruth, Janelle, Julia, Jeff, and myself piled in the car early Sunday morning, drove down, and hiked out. This was supposed to be a moderate/difficult hike, so I was a little apprehensive about it, but I decided to wear my Vibrams anyways to see how they'd do. And yes, I will shamelessly plug Vibram FiveFingers for pretty much the rest of my life. I absolutely love them. Anyways, we hiked past waterfalls, climbed over crazy rocks, scrambled up steep sides of the mountain. We had lunch on the edge of cliff, looking over the Dead Sea, seeing clear across to the other side. We got to this clear pool of water, which I bouldered around, hiked further up and further in to see palm ravines, beautiful oleander bushes, and more green than I thought possible in this country. It was absolutely beautiful. The hike itself was challenging, but so rewarding. I had too much fun with my Vibrams, climbing all over things that I probably should not have tried, but hey, it was an adventure. We got back to the car around 6, after watching the sun set over the Dead Sea (beautiful!) and drove back to the city, tired but rewarded.

I sadly returned the rental car on Monday. I love driving. It can be pretty scary in this country, but I love it nonetheless. That weekend was just what I needed - it was a chance to recharge, to take a step back and remember why I'm here. This week itself was much less stressful. I actually understood what was going on in all of my classes. I have this crazy grammar class that exists solely to frustrate me, but I got the better of it this week, which was so encouraging. I had also pretty much decided about colleges, but was waiting to hear back from USC until I confirmed anything. I got that out of the way on Wednesday, enjoyed some great times with friends on Thursday, which was also the beginning of my Spring break. I am so excited to have this next week off. I was originally planning on traveling, but my concerts take up almost the entire break. So I will be staying in the city for the most part.

Coming up: Sunrise Easter service tomorrow at the Jordan River, Duke's Final Four game, Easter concerts, and the week after, I'm planning on going to Lebanon for a long weekend. Oh, and I'll be running a 10k at the Dead Sea (in my Vibrams, of course!) this Friday. That'll be interesting...