vacation from what is (somewhat) a vacation

Who's sister is in Jordan? My sister is in Jordan. My real sister. The one I can speak English with. In other words, this was a good weekend. Krys, two of her friends and I spent Saturday at the Dead Sea, renting out access to one of the elite spa resorts there for the day (totally busted my wallet, and totally worth it). The Movenpick of Switzerland (is that seriously a word in German? because it sounds ridiculous) is the luxury hotel chain of Jordan, specializing in recreating small imitations of Paradise in earthy realms (except with little signs that say things like, "Blackberry: a touch of Switzerland" or "Wine: Swiss perfection," so if I pictured heaven with ads for the Swiss tourism board, it'd be pretty close). Anyhow, we checked into their elite spa (complete with a million weirdly named pools that were in theory different if I had understood what they were, i.e. the hydrium, or the kneipp foot pool, or the caldarium, or the thermorium, etc.). That said, many of them sprayed you with jets of water while people handed you new towels (during the course of the day there, I must have received at least 20 towels). The entire thing also overlooks the pristinely blue (on this clear day) Dead Sea, and the rose-colored mountains of Israel. So, after we wearied of the hydrium in the morning, we headed down to the Dead Sea, by gondola (yeah, no stairs. You had to take the gondola to the shore). The Dead Sea itself was quite the experience. It is indeed disgustingly salty (as Krys can attest to, it will burn out your eyes if any water enters them, and the taste is far beyond the gross-out factor of the ocean. Imagine sticking your tongue into every jar in a high school chemistry lab and swishing.). That said, it is also weirdly buoyant. I had been expecting the Dead Sea to be sort of like my experience in the Holy Land. "Cool, I saw that. It was kind of dumb in person, but I did it." Totally wrong. The Dead Sea is amazing! You float! Now, I know that's kind of obvious, but once we were in the water, we realized what floating actually entails. You can just sit in the water, bobbing on the surface, while touching your hands to your toes. Or flip onto your back, grab your ankles with your arms, and do a back bend. On the water. Not sinking. We lay on our stomachs, arms, legs and head in the air, and did not die in the water. So buoyant in fact that if you try to sink (e.g. stand upright in the water and do nothing), you can slowly feel your legs slip out from under you as you rise back up to the surface, winding up on your back or stomach. Swimming as we all know it is actually somewhat impossible in the Dead Sea. You're not far enough into the water for most strokes to work. Rather, it's more like laying down on a kickboard, then propelling yourself in the direction you want to go. So, we bobbed over to the next exclusive resort, took some of their legendary Dead Sea mud, covered our entire bodies (arms, legs, torso, back, face, hair. Everything.), sat out, let the mud dry and do whatever it is it's supposed to (which mostly seemed to be the hilarity factor of what people look like covered head to toe in black mud. Apparently I resemble Gollum in this state), then washed off by floating back to our spa, for more relaxing multi-Roman-derived pools, then finally ending with glasses of Holy Land wine (which tastes a lot like Communion wine, begging the question, does Communion wine actually come from the Holy Land, or does transubstantiation just make it seem that way?) in the Infinity pool overlooking the sea at sunset with he cool jazz-stylings of Bruno in the background. It turns out that Bruno was a little old man wearing a panama hat wielding a laptop, but he still had impeccable jazz-stylings. Or maybe the setting just helped.

Then, yesterday, we did the tourist sites of Amman (a.k.a. old Roman things, cheap Backgammon-filled cafes, and falafel joints frequented by Jordanian royalty), before ending at the Amman modern art museum (Darat al-Funun, the House of the Arts) for an opening at (yet another sunset). The best part of the Darat al-Funun is by far the location. Set on a hill just outside of downtown, it consists of three restored houses (where T.E. Lawrence is said to have written the Seven Pillars of Wisdom) in a lush garden with fountains, and the ruins of a Byzantine church. New favorite locale in Amman.

All in all, not a bad weekend (although very little work was done. Obviously). Hopefully, pictures forthcoming.