Final thoughts

...although i am back in kuwait (back to school today - sunday), i wanted to finish off with some thoughts of my trip to jordan...

...the last day was spent having lunch at a lovely outdoor cafe that was part of the dana reserve...an organization that tries to promote and conserve the areas and artifacts of the reserve...the cafe overlooked the city of amman and serves only healthy alternative meals... i had a wonderful salad with strawberries and walnuts in a honey mustard dressing...i had dessert too (of course) but being at a natural health food restaurant, it left something to be desired as you can imagine...

...after lunch, i spent some more money buying some crafts from the gift shop at the reserve...all of which came from artifacts from the area made by bedouins...beautiful and not exhorbitantly priced...nice souvenirs...

...haitham drove briana, christina and i around a bit more...we were told that the best place to get dead sea products was at safeway, yes, the grocery store...as far as price goes so of course, we went there...we all bought a few things...we had stopped at a 'factory' in macaba and were told that they had the best prices for the dead sea products...NOT SO MUCH...anyway, safeway got some of our last jordanian money...

...our final stop was at a cafe that we had gone to a few nights earlier...we sat inside at first and then outside overlooking the street below to people watch and drink some shay (pronounced shy...translated tea)...and of course we ate pizza...i know, crazy...but yummy!!...

...back to the toledo hotel where we had a day room until check out at 11 p.m. to make our way to the airport...arriving at the airport, we were informed that we had to wait until 1:30 a.m. to check in...so we sat around and chatted and ate junk food until that time...check in and boarding were uneventful...and then we were on the plane winging our way back to kuwait...it was bitter sweet to say good-bye to haitham...he had been a breath of fresh air on our trip and SO INFORMATIVE...what a wonderful young man!!...

...we arrived on time in kuwait, got our bags and a taxi back to our building...what a contrast to go from one relatively liberal middle eastern country to a very strict one...the contrast in topography was also very evident...jordan has such a mix of mountains, desert, trees, water, etc. whereas kuwait is very flat and mostly desert with the gulf as only one highlight...BUT for now it is 'home' and i use that term VERY loosely...that's all for now...will try to upload some pictures soon...tata for now...