Brief summary of some action-packed days

The last few days can not be given the entries they deserve at this time, so I'll tell the short version:

Petra is possibly the greatest of the world wonders I've seen so far. It's a site so awesome, it seems to have been created by an ingenius marketing agency. Not only does it have some cool buildings carved in stone, it has vast red canyons and mountains ripe for hiking. And it's within walking distance from an easygoing Jordanian town, yet it still manages to feel hidden from the world.

Since then I've been in Jerusalem. I came here planning to meet a friend, Shoshana, who I hadn't seen since 7th grade. That was far out on its own. But in addition to meeting her I fortuitously ran into a guy who I'd been running into fortuitously run into for years in Albany (at the Western Wall!), a house full of absurdly hardcore Zionists, as well as a hippie Orthodox rabbi who talked me into staying in Jerusalem for the first day or two of a class he's teaching, for free.

I'm continuing to read Tom Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, which I stole from Neot Semadar, and it keeps the place in perspective for me. Sometimes I feel like the only Jew in Jerusalem who would even pick up the book, but I'm probably over-generalizing.

And, to remind myself of the rest of the world that I also enjoy, I went to the websites of the Digital Film Academy as well as CELTA. And I remembered that, yes, I have a future, although it doesn't seem to have started yet, that doesn't involve adventures in ultramodernized ancient lands.