"I said horses not camels!"

(Bad Dates)

(This guy was in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, he was so funny. He said, "the director taught me to never look at the camera.") (My beautiful desert flower)

(many people stopped and asked for my autograph, because of my scary resemblance of Harrison Ford, it got kinda old after a while)

Finally, a post from the Middle East. Well, the Taylor family is known for bringing the bad weather with them wherever they travel, and since I am part Taylor (on my mother's side) the same is true for me, I say this because in Jordan it is very uncommon to see clouds in the sky during the summer, but for our first couple days here it was nice and cool and somewhat cloudy! There has only been one day where we saw a few clouds since then. If you are a weather man in Jordan you have it made! When we arrived in Amman, Jordan on Friday July 3rd is was nice and cool we met up with our friends and they took us to our apartment. On the way to our place we stopped for some good Jordanian cuisine, Shwarma! It is so good, but is sends you to the bathroom frequently, catch 22. Our first night we stayed up pretty late due to the time changing, and the excitement of being in a new culture. Our first week consisted of some culture orientation stuff and a lot of language training, almost every day. We have met some amazing people here. We are really honored to be with the family's that we are interning with. We also did a work project one day helping an elderly woman get here house clean after a major plumbing issue and replacing her water tank in the back, it was so great. Our first week ended with a date night with the two couples and Jenny and I, we get along so well and they are such a great example to Jenny and I. One family has two boys and a baby girl and the other on has 3 boys and a baby on the way, so in our free time we love going to their houses and playing with the kids. The date night was great, we ate at place that had a lamb, and meat, and chicken kabobs, with some boba ganush and plenty of other tasty Arab foods. Jenny of course, was sipping here Lemon Mint drink, which is one of her favorites and it looks like green seeweed water. Before I go on about our happenings let me say a little bit about our apartment. We are kicking it old school with two single beds in the bedroom, 50's style. We have a nice living room and kitchen and we even have AC, but it is kinda expensive to run so we only turn it on when we have too. The bathroom isn't bad. Not a lot of pressure in the water for the shower or toilet, but it makes it down eventually! We can't drink the water here but the huge liter or 2 liter water bottles only cost 35 piasters, so like 45 cents. We live on the first floor and we have a beautiful view of East Amman. Oh and our floors are deceivingly dirty, I'll put a picture of Jenny's feet after walking on our tile for about 3o minutes.

After the date night we got a good nights rest because we had to travel the next morning "to the ancient city of Alexandretta to find the holy grail and use it to save my father who was shot by the germans." Ok, sorry, but we did go to what Indiana Jones calls Alexandretta, but it is actually called Petra and it was beautiful. There is a lot of walking involved but it was all worth it. The buildings that are carved into the side of mountains were amazing. Jenny and I both took donkey's up the mountain to see the Monestary, this was the building that they used in the new transformers movie, no biggie. This was a faith building experience, because these donkeys look like they have seen better days. I, being of large stature, asked in english, "could I ride the big one" and the kid said, "yes, this one very strong, very big, get on." It did not appear to be strong or big, of course I am use to American donkey's so maybe it was big for a Jordanian? Let's just say by the time this donkey made it to the top I thought he was going to fall down and die, he was breathing heavy, and the kid kept hitting him to go faster, but he did it. Jenny did great at Petra, since she had already been there before she showed me around, but she loved that we could experience it together, and so did I. After we were done at Petra we drove down to Aquaba which is on the Red Sea! ever heard of it? The Red Sea comes up and has two gulfs, the gulf of Sinai and the gulf of Aquaba. We, obviously, were on the gulf of Aquaba and it is hot there. 120 degrees F most days in the afternoon. We checked into a hotel that was only 25jd a night, for a reason, and began to prepare for the kids clubs that we were helping lead all the next week until Wednesday. We drove about 40 minutes every morning to the desert to little towns to put on these kids clubs for children of bedouin familys, we started off with games, and sports, and then we would do crafts, and then we would sing songs and have snack time and play another game. They lasted about three hours, give or take, each day and they were so much fun. We worked along side a great Jordanian couple and some other bilingual people. I'll post some pictures up above for you guys. In the late afternoons we would enjoy our time in Aquaba, a couple days we rented snorkel gear and went out to the Red sea and went snorkeling, it was so much fun, the fish and the coral were so colorful and exotic looking. On other days we would talk about how the clubs went and plan for the next day. Aquaba was good on everything but my stomach, but thankfully I am regular again. Jenny did so great with the kids, I loved watching her in teacher mode, I will put some pics up of that too, because she is so gorgeous! We returned from Aquaba on Wednesday night, it is about a 3 1/2 hour drive to Amman. We did have a rental car for the week and that was really fun, except when I got a speeding ticket on the way to one of the kids clubs, argh! They didn't even give me a warning, and have a brother who was a cop didn't get me anything, but all you do is get a ticket and pay them 20 jd on the spot and then keep driving, so it is a little less painful than the states. We are now back at our place in Amman, and we are going to start language training and on Monday. We are planning our other trip for next Thursday so we are pretty excited about that. We love you all and think of you often. More to come later....

London Bridges

Hey everybody! Jenny and I have safely arrived to the Middle East, but on our way we spent a day in London. This picture is of the London Tower Bridge is over the Thames River, which is filthy. Our morning started out arriving at the Heathrow Airport at around 7:30 am London time (which is 2:30am Dayton time), we dropped off our stuff at our hotel and caught a bus to the Underground (subway in london, also called the Tube) we purchase day passes and hopped on to head toward the city. When we walked off the terminal we were staring right at "big ben" and we headed to Westminster Abbey Cathedral which is ridiculously expensive, along with everything else in London, but worth every pound. It was a great day with beautiful weather, Jenny and I grabbed some fish and chips for lunch at a little whole in the wall place recommended to us by a local, and then we layed down in a park in the middle of the city and fell asleep for about an hour. Everybody in London hangs out in parks, sitting on the grass talking, eating their lunch, reading their paper, or just catching a quick nap, it was great. After we caught our second wind we walked down to the London Tower, also over priced, and bought tickets for the tour, it was really cool. I think that I would have enjoyed it more as a little boy, because it was a castle and I could of pretended I was partaking in medievel battles. Jenny loved the Jewel house, which is actually in a vault and houses many of the scepters and crowns and dinner ware of kings and queens of 'ole. After the tour we hopped on the Underground again and made sure to "mind the gap" as we got off at our next stop which was near Covanent Gardens, which was suggested to us by a very nice chap that we met as a good place to find some good tea (lauren), after Jenny was done perusing what the Brit's had to offer as far as tea goes, and I was done drinking all of the free samples, we foud a beautiful italian restaurant with outdoor seating. We sat and enjoyed a gorgeous night of great food, and fun atmosphere. On our way back to our Hotel we stopped at Buckingham Palace, we walked down Constitution Hall rd and sat around the fountain in front of the Palace for a while just to make sure that the queen didn't want us to come in for a spot of tea, but apparently she was to busy, typical. We rode the Underground back to the Heathrow Airport and then hopped on some public bussing to get to the street our hotel was on. We were ready to hit the hay and get some rest before we had to fly to our final destination. More to come soon...