Day 10

Today was the final day in the Holy Land for a part of our group. Since we all had to book our own airlines to and from the Holy Land we are all leaving at different times and different days. The airport is fairly close to Madaba. The first group had to leave the hotel at 7 a.m. The rest who were leaving today needed to leave the hotel by 9:30. All of us got on the bus when the second group did because after we dropped them off at the airport we went into Amman.

Amman is about a 30 minute drive from the airport. It is a very large city. Amman is the capital city of Jordan. It has about 2 million people and is very hilly. Some of the streets appeared to have a 35-40 percent grade. San Francisco has nothing on this! There are houses covering every square inch of the hillsides and most of the buildings are multiple storied.

We visited the local Nazarene school. In a very small space they teach 250 students from kindergarten to 10th grade. They showed us all the classrooms and some of the school books. And then, in true Jordanian hospitality, we were served some nice snacks and cokes. This school is not subsidized by the government and the church tries to keep the cost of tuition as low as possible to allow the less privileged students the ability to go to a good school. They have recently hired a special teacher to work with the Iranian immigrants who are a little behind in their studies due to their break in schooling recently. The school relies on child sponsorship monies from NCM to help with tuition for the students.

Students are taught three different languages beginning in kindergarten. They learn Arabic which reads from right to left. And, they also learn English and French which read from left to right. Some of their school books are written in English and French. We were also given a copy of a booklet the English club had written. It was very interesting to read.

After leaving the school we went to a different part of the city for lunch at Little Caesar’s Pizza. It was very good and a change from what we have been eating. After lunch we returned to Madaba where we had the rest of the afternoon free. There is quite a bit of shopping close by the hotel so, naturally we had to spend some more money! There were at least 4 shopowners who told us they were Christians.

Dinner was at 7:30 with the last of the team here…..just a total of 10 including our hosts. It was a nice enjoyable evening as we just lingered over our meal visiting and enjoying each other’s company.

We must get to bed fairly early as breakfast is at 6:30 and the taxi picks us up at 7 a.m. for our trip to Queen Alia airport.

This concludes the McPherson Adventures Holy Land edition.