Karak Castle and the Dubkeh Dance

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GRRRRRR. I've spent about 5 days trying to upload a video for this post. I talk about what's in the video in the post. It would've been really cool to put it up here. But it was only cool 5 days ago. I've spent far too much time trying to get it to work. It lost it's coolness like 4 days ago--but I kept trying. So you'll have to you-tube someone else doing the Dubkeh dance because there will be no video of it here. Here's the post:

Last week the kids had a couple days off from school and Todd had a day off of work for the Prophet Mohammad's birthday holiday. We went with some friends from the branch to explore Karak Castle. It's a Crusader castle completed in 1161. While the castle itself was interesting, I really have nothing to say on it. I suppose you could Google it for detailed info. It's not that a Crusader Castle isn't interesting--it's just seeing my amateur photos of it are not that interesting. Kind of like you have to be there to really appreciate it.

The video might be of interest. Every touristy place we go we get comments like "Welcome to Jordan" from complete strangers. I guess it must be obvious to the locals that we're not from here. Many want to take pictures of the kids or the more popular pictures of themselves with our kids. Karak Castle was no exception to this pattern.

As we were exploring the castle Todd started up a conversation with a group of University students--all girls. I'm sure it took him back to his bachelor days. I think they were surprised that he spoke such good Arabic. They are learning English so they were happy to have a chance to practice their English. We conversed for several minutes and they wanted to show us the Dubkeh Dance. It is an Arab dance popular at weddings and such. However, there were some boys there from the same University that these girls attend. They did not want to do the dance where they would be seen by the boys. They were very concerned about perhaps being video taped by the boys and who knows where it would end up.

We decided to climb up to a higher part of the castle where they could show us the dance out of the view of those boys. The video is of a few of these girls doing this dance for us. They were so friendly. I tried to demonstrate the western swing dance for them but that's hard to do without a partner who knows what they're doing.

After exploring the castle we ate a lunch that we'd packed then drove around for a while. We were looking for another location but we never did find it. The other car was leading. We all pulled over to the side of the road to decide if we wanted to keep looking or head back for Amman.

While we were discussing we were approached by a group of about 8 Arab boys. They were probably about 12 or so. Todd spoke to them in Arabic. They asked for money. We didn't give them any. We decided we were going to head back to Amman and so we were pulling back out onto the road and several of them spit on our car! Of course it was disgusting and we were appalled. We've never experienced anything but friendliness here. Todd has since told the story to some of his co-workers and friends and every time they offer to do something about it. They want to take him to lunch, they want to go buy him sweets, some have even offered to drive back with Todd to this place to find these boys and report them to their parents. To them this behavior was unacceptable. We'll just chalk it up to youth and move on. And no, I didn't take a picture of the spitballs on our car.

On the way back to Amman we stopped at an old abandoned train station. It was fun. Some of the dates on the sides of the car and tracks dated to early 1900's. What was incredible to me is that these abandoned railway cars have just been sitting there for who knows how long and I didn't see one speck of graffiti on them. It was just like time had stopped. Way cool. I've included a picture in the slide show of a group of men/boys nearby to the train station. It seemed like it was out in the middle of nowhere but a large group had gathered to play Football (soccer to us Americans.) That's pretty typical here. They don't need fancy fields--just open space.

So that's the summary of what you'll find in the slideshow--Karak Castle and the Train Station