The group just returned from a weekend of fun in the ancient city of Petra and the scenic Wadi Rum nature preserve.

We began our weekend excursion at 5 AM on Friday morning. After a bit of trouble finding a taxi that early in the morning, we arrived at the bus station and rolled down the King's Highway to Petra.

In the town itself, we checked into the Petra Moon hotel and made our way to the gates of the ancient city. Walking down the Siq, the canyon-lined road down into the center of the city, we saw many tourists and a few façades embossed into the stone. It was difficult to imagine the grandeur of the city of rock-hewn buildings before erosion, but it was obvious that Petra was once a most magnificent city.

After viewing camels, the Treasury, and the amphitheater, we hiked up an adjacent mountain and found what turned out to be an island of calm - the monastery. The enormous structure stood isolated with few tourists, and it looked out over a spectacular view that showed us Israel and the Jordan River Valley.

We scrambled down the mountain and took a hair-raising bus ride up a mountain to view the sunset, and then proceeded to meet with the family of Abdullah, a former exchange student at West Point. His family was gracious and served us a huge meal of traditional chicken mensaf, which consists of chicken over rice and yogurt stew, with mint, toasted peanuts and pine nuts. The group devoured the meal, which was eaten in the traditional bedouin way: on the floor, with our hands. The mensaf was overwhelmingly good, and the groups divided for the post-meal discussion by gender.

The following day, the group woke for a day of desert tourism in Wadi Rum, a windswept landscape of multicolored sand, giant sculpted rock mountains, and ancient cave carvings.

We rented 4X4s and drove across the desert, climbed sand dunes, scrambled up mountains, and watched the sunset. We took lunch under a slightly-less-hot black goat's wool bedouin tent, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole day. We even caught a glimpse of King Abdullah's helicopters landing across the valley at his retreat.

We finished the weekend with a Sunday meeting at Al-Hussein bin Tallal University in Ma'an. We had a chance to sit in on an International Relations lecture and see the engineering department, the library, and various other buildings at this beautiful desert campus.

On our way back to Amman, we stopped once more at Abdullah's home, where we all received gifts of prayer beads, and the girls each received a hijab that was selected to match their outfits.