Sometimes I just don’t know how I got here. 

I am standing outside, taking in a completely crazy view. The Dead Sea is sprawled out before me, giant hills of sand are to my left and right, and unfamiliar music is floating through the air. Air that is thick with tobacco and flowers and salt. 

Yesterday, after a billion passport checks, we passed over the Allenby Bridge into Jordan and whamo! we were in the Middle East. I know Herzliya Pituach is technically also in the Middle East, but it’s really not. Living in HP is kind of like living in a quirky European country. Jordan is most definitely the Middle East. I counted two women on the twenty minute village drive to the resort and I have never, ever been more aware of my skin exposure (I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts). Camels, small and slightly sketchy “markets”, ridiculously bad driving, a men sitting around everywhere. And holy hell the heat. The wretched, wretched heat. 

During the day, I do not enjoy it here. I mean the people are lovely, the food is decent, and the scenery is pretty fantastic. But I hate the heat, so much so that it changes my mood and I turn into a giant grump who longs for her Canada, with the winter and sweaters and feeling real cold, not air conditioning cold. I find myself wondering about the people who CHOOSE to live here all the time – why on Earth would you want to live here? With this weather? This god awful, rage-inducing weather? 

But oh the nights. I freaking LOVE the nights here. The sun disappears and the heat changes into a cozy toasty feeling and all of a sudden I can’t picture why I enjoy living anywhere else. It feels like the air is actually hugging you. And the smell – dear me but it smells good here. Indeed, were it not for the bugs (THE CURSED MOZZIES) I would stay outside all night (and sleep all the live long wretched day). 

Anyway, I can’t believe I’m here. How did I, a small-town BC girl, end up living in such a crazy and fantastic and terrible and lovely region of the world? I just….well I just don’t know what to think about it. Surreal is the only word to describe my Easter this year.