Amman, Jordan

I am so glad it's the weekend. I started off this week by arriving home at midnight the night before our school week started. Last week, I flew from Muscat to Amman on October 20 for a math conference. The conference was only two days, but we flew out the day before and I stayed an extra two days to see some sights.
Petra and the Dead Sea were the top two highlights I had researched to visit and I was able to see both. I rented a taxi both days from the hotel and although it was more expensive than taking a bus, it was also more comfortable.
The cab ride to Petra was about 3 hours from Amman. There wasn't much to see once we left Amman and headed south. The desert highway is just as you might imagine, stark. Upon arrival, I payed the entrance fee, 21 dinars, which is about $30, and made my way to the siq while offers for horse rides were shouted to all the visitors. The siq is a long narrow passageway that leads to the city of Petra. To get to the Treasury, which is the first major feature, it took me 20 minutes to walk through the siq. The walk was well worth it when I came to the end and the Treasury appeared. After the Treasury, I wanted to see the high place of sacrifice. This trek was tough. I spent about 30 minutes walking up stairs and trails to reach it. The view was spectacular. You could see all of Petra and the people looked like ants. I walked around to the other sights and spent about 3 hours there.
I moved to a new hotel this night because the school was no longer paying for it and I knew I could find a hotel for a lot less than the $225 a night the school had payed for the La Meridien. Casa Bonita was where I ended up and it was a cool place. It had 6 rooms above a Spanish restaurant and tapas bar. The food was superb. The room was preety small, but I didn't spend much time there, because I walked downtown to search out the cheap DVDs and some other souvenirs. I bought a few DVDs, about 100 of them and ate at Hashem, which is a famous restaurant that is basically a bunch of tables in an alley. The hummos and greasy falafels were cheap and super tasty.
The next day, my last in Amman, I headed for the Dead Sea. I caught a cab for the 45 minute ride outside my hotel about mid morning. The driver was a young guy who knew some English and wanted to practice. We talked the whole way down. He was a student at the local university studying global position technology.
When we got there, we went in at the public beach, Amman Beach, for about $10. He took a couple of pictures for me and then took off for a while. I floated around until something funny happened. I was floating aroud as most people do and bumped into a guy. Well, he discovered that he could not touch the bottom and he could not swim! This is not a big deal in the Dead Sea because it is impossible to sink. But he grabs ahold of me and starts speaking in Arabic while pushing me under. I wasn't to worried as I knew I would not drown, but I couldn't get him off me. His friends swam over and I thought they'd settle him, but they grabbed onto me as well. So here I am in the Dead Sea with 3 guys from Jordan who are trying to hold onto me and I am trying to fight them off. While this is happening, I am watching my cab driver laughing hysterically on the beach as he knows exactly what's going on.Well finally, they figured out they could float and which arms were there friend's and I was able to push away. I wish he had grabbed my camera, but no such luck. Does this kind of stuff happen to everyone or am I just lucky?