Petra (By: Luke)

 I couldn't believe it! We were going to see one of the 7 Modern Wonders of the World!  Petra is an ancient city built at earliest 300 B.C.E. It is considered special because of it's big rocks shaped and cut. It is most well known for the Treasury, a huge carving into the rocks. Petra has been an UNESCO Heritage Site since 1985. With that information Iyad (our tour guide) took us into the famous city. We learned that the holes in the rocks that looked like small caves were not houses but burial sites. It was very interesting learning about the history of this place. We walked through the siq (a shaft) which was like a rock hallway with no roof. We kept on walking as Iyad showed us the narrowest part in the siq. Jacob and I spread our arms out and were almost able to touch hands and both walls at the same time. 

   At one point Iyad told us to look at this rock and tell us the colors of red that you see. I thought it was a little weird until we learned that right behind us was the Treasury! I was flabbergasted. I had seen some pictures of the Treasury but in the moment, I was in awe of it. It is 40 feet high by 30 feet long and jaw-dropping.

 

    We walked some more and started our steep descent to the Monastery. After the first 50 out of 837 steps I ran the whole way up. The Monastery also left me speechless. Except for the designs on it, it was exactly like the Treasury but a little bit bigger. We climbed to a place called The View where we got some really good pictures of the Monastery.



While we were walking we met a lady selling a book called Married To A Bedouin. The Bedouins lived here in Petra for 600 years. They lived in caves and didn't use electricity or other modern conveniences. She was from New Zealand but met and married a Bedouin when she came to Petra for a visit 30 years ago. Her husband passed away many years ago but the Bedouins still accept her as part of their community. We took a pit stop at a place Iyad called The Loo with a View. It is called this because the bathroom was built into a cave.

    We then visited a place called the Urn Tomb where we hiked up a lot of stairs. We came to a place up there where we could explore the burial sites. We spent an hour doing that and finally departed into the siq.












We got to take a few more pictures in front of the Treasury and ventured back down the road we had walked up earlier. We then slowly walked back to our hotel. I had a lot to write about in my journal that day.

 Petra was simply amazing and I highly suggest going there if you can.

Jerash (By: Jacob)

Outside Amman, Jordan there is a small Roman city, called Jerash. The city was built by the Greeks, but was used mostly by the Romans. The city of Jerash is the best preserved ancient Roman city. The nickname for Jerash is Pompeii of the East and it was founded in 2000 B.C.E. The way you get into the old city of Jerash is by going under the Arch of Hadrian. The name Hadrian is because of the visit from emperor Hadrian.

The first place we went to was the old horse racing track, the racing track was called the hippodrome. We raced around the track pretending to be ancient chariot riders.

The next place we went to was the South Theatre. The South Theatre is a place where they did plays and other performances, for all the people in Jerash to see. The best part besides the views was that if you put your ear and mouth on the lower wall and someone else does the same opposite you, you can hear each other through the wall.

The next place we went to was the Oval Forum which was the center of the old city of Jerash. The Oval Forum is made up of 64 limestone beams. Then we went up to three temples.  It was very interesting how all three temples were under the same roof. My favorite was called the Artemis Temple. It was the biggest in all of the the old city of Jerash. The only problem was that, only a tiny fraction of it remains, but the archaeologist put a sign up and it showed what they thought it looked like during the Roman times.

Finally, we went to the fountain where everyone in the city got their water. Because the Romans were here thousands of years ago the fountain is ruined and there was no water.  This is my grandfather and I near the fountain.










Our last stop inside the city was going through the Cardo Maximus which is a road that connects the north part of the city to the south side of the city.

Sri Lanka Review (Luke)

    Everybody says that Sri Lanka is "India Lite". On that note I don't think we would have survived India. Coming into Sri Lanka we all had little knowledge of what it would be like. I think that we all had a little trouble in Sri Lanka with the budget we had. We learned that Sri Lanka charges tourists about 5x more for everything which was a struggle for us. On a good note though, we really enjoyed the food such as rotti and rice and curry. Describing Sri Lanka is hard because of its unique atmosphere.

    We really enjoyed Sri Lanka and it's many activities such as going on a safari, snorkeling, petting huge sea turtles, surfing, visiting the botanical gardens, and sleeping in a tree house. We saw leopards and peacocks on the safari, a 4 foot fish while snorkeling, and turtles the size of Maggie. The foods also were great. A Sri Lankan meal is first of all not fast to make, second of all is usually rice and curry. My favorite food in Sri Lanka by far was chicken rotti. Chicken rotti is basically chicken wrapped in a tortilla like bread. Overall I think Sri Lanka had some fun activities but there were downsides to Sri Lanka too. 

    Sri Lanka as you may know was in a civil war until about 2009. It is new to tourism and they do not make it easy for tourists to get around.  First of all, Sri Lanka is an island and driving is not fast. The speed limit on Sri Lankan roads are about 25 miles per hour everywhere. A place that is 45 miles away would only take an hour or so, right?  Wrong! A Sri Lankan would look at that and think that it would take 90 minutes. Another thing that was really slow was the food. The food apparently takes a long time to cook so you usually end up waiting for your food for a good 45 minutes. 

    Sri Lanka is interesting and unique, like no other place I have ever been. Even if it made me feel uncomfortable and weird at times, I still think Sri Lanka was worth visiting. After leaving Sri Lanka I still don't think I have a word to describe it but different.

Sri Lankan Safari (by Maggie)

One day we woke up at 4:45am to go on a safari at Yala National Park in Sri Lanka.  By the time we were up and ready to go, it was 5:00am and time to leave for the safari.  We headed into the National Park ready to see some animals.   We rode in a jeep with stadium seating so we could see the animals clearly.

The first animal that we saw was the water buffalo grazing and bathing in a lake.

Then we started going further into the park.  We began to see all different colored animals. As we drove through windy roads, I was searching for animals but the one I wanted to see most was the leopard, because it is supposed to be a really beautiful animal, and also because it is one of the hardest animals to spot.  There are only 25-30 leopards in the whole park, so finding one is exciting. As we kept going, "bing bing" went our driver's phone - one of the drivers had spotted a leopard and called all the other jeeps in the park. All the jeeps raced to go see the leopard, so we sat in a traffic jam in the middle of the park! As we moved closer and closer to the leopard, I got more and more excited. 

Aha! There the leopard was, sleeping between two branches high up in a tree. The colors on the leopard were just so beautiful - black dots on yellowish-orange fur.  As we drove back the other way, we saw it turn around and wake up, but it was too lazy, and fell right back asleep!

We drove away from the leopard, and there was a peacock opening his feathers. It was stunning! The wingspan was around 3 feet long. The feathers were full of greens, blues, and purples.  I especially loved the blue on them.  On the feathers, they have spots that look like eyes to scare away predators. 

Along the way to find elephants, we saw some crocodiles, birds and many other animals.  We kept driving and there was an elephant drinking water from a pond.  After a few minutes, the elephant ran into the bush, then a baby and mama elephant walking together popped out of the bush.  Then the first elephant came out of the bush and all three elephants looked for food together. We watched these elephants until they faded away into the bushes.

It was time to go and I counted how many animals I saw in the park.  All together, I saw 24 animals on my safari! My favorites were the leopard, elephants, parrots, the jungle fowl (the Sri Lankan national bird), peacock, mongoose, iguana, and a bearded monkey. 

The Botanical Gardens Sri Lanka (By: Jacob)

When we were in Kandy, Sri Lanka, we went and saw the Royal Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Gardens were 30 beautiful acres of amazing flowers and unexpected wildlife. When we got there, we walked into a orchid garden. The flowers were red, green, purplish- blue, and white, but my favorite color was the white orchid. I liked it most because it was very simple.

After lunch it started to rain a little. We liked playing soccer, by the time we finished we were soaked and looked like we got pushed into a pool.

When the rain turned into a drizzle we went from tree to tree trying as hard as we could not to get more wet. We went all the way across the gardens to a suspension bridge and walked across it. The suspension bridge is a bridge that stretches over a huge rushing river. I liked shaking the bridge which scared my mother. My favorite part was when we were walking back and saw huge bats flying around. The bats wingspan were probably 2 1/2 to 3 feet. When they were hanging upside down on the tree they looked like huge cocoons or bees nests.  There was also a lot of bats flying around, I really wanted to watch them, but I had to run through the area because I didn't want to get pooped on.

We walked some more, then the map showed us that we were in front of a lake, but sadly the lake was all dried up and it was just a huge hole of dirt. 

On our way to the exit, we had to go through a huge stretch of crazy monkeys. I felt nervous, because right in the beginning of the path, one monkey nearly jumped on our heads.  I had a great time at the gardens, even though it rained for most of the time.

Angkor What? (By Luke)

      It felt good to be back in a tuktuk even if we were a little squished. The last time we were in a tuktuk was around 11 months ago in Thailand. Now we were in a tuktuk at 8:00 in the morning on our way to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  It was already crowded with people so early in the morning!

Angkor Wat is one of the biggest temples in the world and arguably the most fascinating. There was just stone everything. Angkor Wat was not easy to build, it didn't haveenough rock material so they used elephants to carry the rocks down from the mountains.  We walked in and were speechless. It wasn't exactly the most beautiful, but it was big. We got a tour guide who taught us plenty. He said that the holy numbers for the Khmer and the Temple (Wat means temple) were 3 for the amount of gods, 5 for the number of senses, 7 for the amount of days of the week and the number of chakra (spiritual parts of your body), 9 for the number of planets, and 12 for the number of hours in the day and months in a year. This is why there were lots of patterns with these numbers. Another crazy thing about Angkor Wat is that there are tons of little designs on the walls everywhere. They all have their own meaning! We also got to stand in the so called Middle of The Universe. I felt peaceful there.



    We then sat down and our tour guide read our palms. I wasn't very happy with him though because he said that my father will always be wiser and smarter than me. I chose not to believe him.




The boys went up to the highest part of Angkor Wat called the Upper Gallery where we could see all of Angkor Wat. It was awesome. There is a huge moat around Angkor Wat which was all handmade. Angkor Wat is 500 acres and was built in 37 years in the early 12th century. Every family sent someone to work on Angkor Wat - if you didn't send a family member, your family would be killed!  Over a million slaves worked on it until the King's temple was complete.

    Angkor Wat is said to be one of the coolest things ever at sunrise. So a week after our first visit we decided to see for ourselves. It was really crowded at the lake which was supposed to be an amazing picture. We were a little annoyed when it was cloudy and you could barely see the sun. We woke up at 4:45 in the morning to see Angkor Wat at sunrise, but all we saw was Angkor Wat and clouds. We were all really tired but we would remember it. Angkor Wat was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Bamboo Train and Bats in Cambodia (by Maggie)

Do you know what the Bamboo Train is? Well if you don't, I'll tell you right now. The Bamboo Train is in Battambang, Cambodia. The train is actually a little bamboo platform about 8 feet wide and 10 feet long with a motor attached.  It is how the locals used to get around before big trains were there. The train goes pretty fast and since you are sitting outside, it seems even faster! There is only one track so when the trains are coming in two different directions, the train with less people has to remove their train from the track. It is easy because the bamboo platform is just sitting on two axles, so they lift each part up separately, and the train with more people stops to help, too. If the Train has a moped on it, the other train has to move off the track. The ride lasted about 20 minutes each way, and it was a little bit scary because there are no walls at all, so you aren't going to fall out, but sometimes it feels like it.  If you ever want to ride on it, you should go soon, because the government is probably getting rid of it to put in a real train.

 

After we rode the Bamboo Train, we went to go see bats come out of a cave. They think that there are at least ten million bats, and they are flying out for 30 straight minutes. Then they separate into little groups and go fly out to sea using echolocation to find their food.  This happens every single night. We had no idea how beautiful the bats could be with the sunset. It was amazing, the bats came out of their cave like little Batmans.  It was stunning.  If you go to Battambang, Cambodia, that is a must see!