Camels for Breakfast: Oh the pain...

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March 19, 2005

Oh the pain...

I just go back from the Dead Sea and am in quite a bit of pain. Beyond the pain of the slight sunburn I received, there is a stinging sensation over most of my body. There is so much salt in the Dead Sea that you can literally smell it from several yards off shore.

My friends and I decided to go with the Language Center at the University today to the Dead Sea. It was a very economical trip because we didn't have to pay for a taxi to take us there and we went to the public beach which is only 2jd per person. The public beach was an experience in itself because we were the only people in bathing suits there. Basically, my friends and I took our clothes off quickly and dashed into the water so that we wouldn't be stared at. We were still stared at but at least we did our best to not create a scene (the Russian girls in bikinis took care of that). It was quite a sight to see fully covered women sitting on the beach watching their children and husbands swim. It was especially funny when those women were wearing high-heels because they looked even more uncomfortable. Almost no one was swimming anyways so I guess it doesn't bother them as much as it would bother me.

Once we were in the water it was just about the craziest experience I have ever had. Basically it is like sitting on one of those noodle thingys that you play with in pools except there is no chance of falling off! In fact, you are more likely to float too high and fall over. You can just paddle around floating on the top of the sea without any fear of going under. My thought was that it would be really easy just to swim over to the Israeli side (it would be much cheaper than crossing the border) but of course the giant machine guns made me think differently. We didn't swim for very long because it really is painful but it was definitely a memorable experience.

One word of advice though. . . don't try to put your head under! Not only is it nearly impossible but it is also really painful. My genius friend Rob did just that and ended up cutting his foot on a rock while stumbling around blindly looking for a clean towel to wipe his face on. His foot was fine but the incident made for great pictures of a very unhappy Rob.

If it wern't for the fact that I have an impossible test tomorrow morning, I would say that today was an amazing day!

Posted by rcollins at March 19, 2005 10:15 AM