Jordan

With government week over, I knew there was one more country we had to do while Allison was visiting: Jordan. Her husband is currently deployed there, so I thought it would be nice to do while she was here. 

Jordan is kind of 'the place to be' if we're talking Middle East. By comparison, there's not much in way of hostility between Christians and Muslims. It's the most secure country, although it's advisable to avoid the areas boarding Syria and Iraq. 

As another plus a lot of Jordanians speak English (although the official language is Arabic). 

Jordan has also had plenty to see. Our places of note included the Amman Citadel, one of the world's oldest continually inhabited places. It was occupied over the years by some of the great civilizations like the Romans, the Babylonians, and the Persians. One of the greatest archaeological finds here was the Temple of Hercules. 

You could also visit one of the youngest oceans on Earth, the Red Sea (lookout for the bearded scorpionfish though- our book had a picture of it, and it looks terrifying). 

But our landmark for Jordan was obvious: Petra, Jordan's most visited tourist attraction. Known around the world as the 'Rose City', it's a 2000 year old city that was half built, half carved into rock. Apparently there was a huge earthquake in 700 AD which covered Petra. It remained 'lost' until Europeans uncovered in it 1812. 

Oh, and you could also visit the Dead Sea. We had talked about the salty sea during Israel Day, but visiting on the Jordan side seems safer. 

The boys made their Jordan postcards, and since it was our 50th country, Allison was here to vote on collections too! 

Calib liked Jordan's Desert Patrol, who police the deserts on camels. 

Peyton drew a giant falafel because in 2012, 10 Jordanian chefs set the new world record by creating the largest falafel ever made. It weighed 176 pounds and was split 600 ways to consume it! 

Hayden made a lot of rose colors for the 'Rose City' of Petra. 

Since Nate is actually in Jordan, we asked him what we should eat for our dinner. He said he had eaten the best hummus of his life in Amman. We decided to make our own, and it was amazing. I could have eaten it with a spoon. I'll probably never buy store bought hummus again. But somehow I doubt they use canned chickpeas for it in Jordan, so I'm sure it's even more amazing there.  

He also said we had to have Mansaf. It's the national dish of Jordan, and it was already on my info sheet when he suggested it. I guess it's usually served with lamb, but Allison isn't a red meat fan and lamb is expensive, so we made it with chicken. I was a little worried about this one. Nate said it was awesome, but what he was eating was made by people who know what their doing as far as Mansaf. And until a few weeks ago, my chef, Asa, had never heard of it. 

We used this recipe for Chicken  Mansaf, and this recipe for the Jordanian Hummus. We also had Jordanian Fattoush, and some citrus (in the form of more clementines from Sprouts, they've been on sale!) 

Nate said to set it up family style, and make sure everyone ate with their hands, and you have to listen to him, he's serving our country overseas, it's the least we can do. (Well, ok, maybe some of us didn't eat with our hands the whole time, but we tried!) 

We also all thought it was appropriate to have Allison pick the color, and color in Jordan. 

50 down, 143 to go! 

Next Up: Botswana 

Olympics Day 14: Biathlon & Best of Asia

We're on to day 14 of the Olympics, and our 'Best of Asia' day. It's really setting in that we're about done here with all this country business. And, it's really bittersweet. It's been fun, but I'm ready to move on to something else. The sense of accomplishment is no joke though. 

But we're not quite there yet. Two more 'Best of' days, and one more country to go! 

The boys are still getting mail from the 'Home Office', and they have pictures to identify. The first week they were getting all kinds of different landmarks, but now they are getting country specific places to help them with Jeopardy later in the today. Today all of their pictures came from Asia, and most of them they didn't even need the cards to look up! 

Since we had a hard time narrowing down exactly what we wanted to eat on Asia day. We were pretty split on our votes. 

But, once we narrowed it all down, I said if the boys really wanted to, we could have Chicken Shwarma for lunch in addition to our Asian dinner (we paired it with the leftover Argentina Chocotorta from South America Day and Watermelon from Africa day.) 

Then it was time for Jeopardy (see how well all the dogs, minus Porkchop, are doing together? Etta got a little weird with Ellie tonight after Ellie licked her face, but other than that, we had another good day). 

They all studied, though admittedly, Peyton and Calib studied way more than Hayden. When Hayden kept getting lucky with 'easy' ones (like the Minaret of Jam, the Flame Towers, and Burj Khalifa) 

It was close, but Calib won the bonus money for having the most points at the end of all of the Asian countries. 

After Jeopardy we moved on to our Asian flag event. Calib was super slow about it, it took him nearly 3 and a half minutes, but he identified them all correctly. Peyton messed up the Bahrain flag, calling in Qatar. Which, he knew as soon as he did it (they are very similar flags), so he only got one wrong- and he did it in under two minutes. Hayden came in with a respectable 2 minutes and 15 seconds with only 4 wrong (He missed some recent ones like East Timor, Taiwan and Laos). 

After the medal ceremony, the boys picked out their four favorite Asian postcards to make their 'Best of Asia' postcard collections. 

 Calib picked Afghanistan not because he loved his postcard, but because he said it was a nod to our very first country, Taiwan, India and China. 

Peyton went with Nepal, India, Indonesia, and Cambodia (I could not believe he didn't pick his Pakistan). 

And Hayden went with Laos, Singapore, Taiwan, and Azerbaijan. 

For dinner tonight we had the ever famous, so much talked about, Chicken Mansaf from Jordan. We also had Israeli Salad, Pakistani Fruit Salad, Lebanese spiced potatoes, and Apple Sharlotka from Kazakhstan for dessert. (So, we basically stayed in the middle east, today). 

This meal got another five spoons up. Everyone ate so much. I think all of the boys had three pieces of the apple cake. The thing was gone. And almost all the mansaf was finished off too. 

After dinner I went to the backyard for one more night skiing event: the Biathlon. I set up the flags for the track and got out the nerf guns and put some targets on the side of the fire pit. Basically, we toyed with how we should do this event, whether we should let the boys go until they got all the targets, or if we should add time for missed targets. Ultimately, we decided you had three shots to knock down the targets, if you didn't get it, you took another lap and had three more shots to hit whatever targets you had left. And, repeat. Once you knocked down all the targets, you could head to the finish line. 

It was kind of sad this was the last time they would use their skis, although they all broke at least one sandal, so it's probably a good thing that this was all we needed them for. (You can fix them pretty easy, but it's a little annoying.) 

Hayden was up first, and had so much trouble, we were debating if we should have made the rules different, or if we should have a max time. But he finally knocked down all his targets and made it to the finish line. 

Peyton pretty much killed it. I think he had to go around three times to get all the targets down. 

And Calib went hard, breaking a ski and cutting his foot, but refusing to quit (even when we told him it was ok if he didn't want to keep going). 

Calib still finished faster than Hayden, but Peyton was our Biathlon gold medalist. 

Unfortunately, Peyton also lost a medal. We put a big 'X' over one of his, since that Russian curler officially lost a medal for taking drugs. Peyton is annoyed the Olympic athletes from Russia still don't have a single gold medal. I told him the Ladies Figure Skating medal is being given out tonight though, so that's likely to change this evening.  

While the three boys are close, there's still no change in our places. 

Next Up: Tomorrow is Speed Skating day and the Best of North America!