Ninja attack!

So after my early ramblings about how the crap the Arab mind works, I was referred to by Keaton to Prof. Lucas who teaches at OU and is in Syria right now. Thinking I didnt have much to lose to wrote the most jumbly and trying-way-too-hard-to-pretend-to-be-intellectual email ever. Actually it had less pretention to it and just was a raving mass of words trying to ask about a complicated subject as short as possible which makes you sound retarded. Politely, he responded quickly back and said he thought the issue was less Islam and more about corruption, and theres little point to be a good person with so much of it. And I got his cell # and link to his syriacomment.com blog.

I think the words I should have used in the blog though were "order breaks down very quickly" rather than "resistance to order". Slowly, but surely I'll crack the Arabs, then promptly write a overly simplistic book that the public will be able to grasp and sell millions and be an "expert" on MSNBC or somewhere.

This weekend though was a nuclear blast of fun. Despite taking away the only 2 days I have to sleep in past 7, we left for Petra (place where they carved buildings into the sandstone-it was in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, or if you've seen Indiana Jones, which is far less likely), Wadi Rum (a desert camp out place thats 3 nuclear blasts of fun), and Aqaba (Jordans only sea outlet to the sea).

Petra was cool and I rented a donkey to ride back to the front gate, they brought me the smallest donkey they could. My feet were maybe 6 in off the ground, and the guy walking next to me actually had to slow down to keep pace. Donkeys I should note are a blast, I used to think having a Llama farm would be great, but donkeys win. If I could ride a donkey to school every year, Id never not want to go. Actually, I probably would spend time riding it else where other than going to school.

That night we went to Wadi Rum, its in the middle of the desert. The desert has sand, and alot of it. Trying out my ninja skills another guy and I snuck up on a person in our group who had gone out into the desert to talk. We got no less than 10 yards away. That accomplishment started to sour when she notified him of her having a boyfriend status. Note to dude, that means give up, not spend 40 min trying to convince her that she should like you. The dude apparently did not get the message and spent 40 min. trying to talk into liking him, and with great lines like "whats the chances of us two, meeting eachother all the way over here, blah blah blaaaaaaaaaah". As I became tired of him going on and on I realized our great position made it greatly hard to turn around (we were on our bellies) and leave. DANG IT. So, we had to lay there, and lay there, and not laugh. I kinda felt bad about easedropping, but not that I could sneak up on someone. If only people went into the desert to actually look at the stars, harass beetles, and rub sand in your hair like me.

To make up for easedropping, we ran into some other guys in our group who convinced us to pull out the central support for another guys tent. Mission succesful, only they didnt wake up. You dont laugh as hard when someone just keeps sleeping rather than them failing and cussing the air.

Then Aqaba, I didnt go for someone else touching me with sunscreen since I hate putting it on myself. I was rewarded with 2 weird shaped spots on my back, where yeah, I didnt get any there. When putting my clothes back on in Aqaba the small dust cloud from my jeans being lifted reminded me my crawling for an hour had turned whites to yellow/browns, and my black shirt to a nice off-white dusty color. I could make clothes for Abercrombie.

As Ive been sitting here, I realized, that continuing from the weekend I didnt apply trusty Right Guard. So you do actually sweat more without it. Awesome.