living like elle

I know the title of this blog seems like I’m the most irresponsible student and traveler ever. Yet, I promise I’m not. The title is mostly clickbait and it really wasn’t as bad as it sounds, its mostly funny to look back at now, but it was a little bad. 

For starters Jordan was amazing, I loved Jordan. I loved the food, the people, the culture, the atmosphere. I am so happy that we traveled to Jordan while on the voyage because I’m not sure it would have been somewhere I would have traveled to on my own. Jordan to this day is the most beautiful places I have ever been, the landscape, the water, the architecture. Everything about this place was beyond amazing and I could spend hours writing about every little amazing thing that I did while I was in Jordan.

On the first day of Jordan my friends and I did a driving tour of Aqaba and it was so much fun, this tour kind of fell into our lap and I’m so happy it did because sometimes the unplanned events are the ones that are the most fun. We had great tour guides and we went to ten of the most historical places in Aqaba. After this tour we ate the MOST amazing food and headed back to the boat to get ready for our night out at the bar. 

We all got ready into our sexy going out clothes and headed to the bar where we were meeting some friends. I ordered a bottle of wine because I wanted wine, and I thought if I just got a bottle and stopped drinking after the bottle then it would be cheaper than buying multiple cocktails. Turns out I finished the bottle of wine and consumed way too many cocktails anyways. The night was amazing, we were mingling with all of our friends and locals, drinking great drinks and having a fun time for our first night in Jordan. I headed to the bathroom to go pee as a drunk girl does and I got locked in the bathroom. Simple as that, I don’t know how else to explain it. I thankfully had my phone on me and was able to text Jess that I needed help asap. She took her sweet time because she thought I was just being dumb and drunk, but I was really stuck in the bathroom. The lock no longer turned and was fully jammed. The spaces between the top of the stall door and the bottom of the stall door were way too small for me to try and squeeze through also, if I would have tried, I would have ended up being stuck between the stall door and the floor which would have been way less fun. Jess went and grabbed the bartender once she found out I was actually genuinely stuck, then there was a 45-minute process to try and get me out of the bathroom stall. I was standing on the toilet; the bartender gave me free drinks while I waited and he called in backup. The door finally was able to be opened by a butcher knife being shoved in the lock and essentially cutting a hole in the door to unjam the lock. I got out safe so that’s all that mattered but for a while there I really thought I would be spending the night in a bar bathroom in Jordan. Being locked in a bathroom didn’t dull my night though all my friends and I continued to drink and hang out and entertain locals for a while after. 

Now let’s talk about the drunk tank. I was wasted, I’m not saying I wasn’t. I drank a lot of drinks at the bar, smoked a cigarette on the bus ride home and was not walking in a straight line by the end of the night. But hey, I’m in college, and I was being very safe. When a bunch of college kids go out to a bar you can only expect so much. My eyes were open but no one was home. In order to get back on the ship where we live, we have to scan our ship ID and get our bags checked. I got my bag checked just fine and then my drunks scanned the wrong side of my ship ID and they sent me straight to medical where the drunk tank is held because our ship won’t let you back to your cabin if you are drunk or have been drinking. So, it’s always this big game of everyone trying their best to act sober while being absolutely wasted when trying to get back onto the ship. I was sitting down waiting to get examined in the medical waiting room and there were so many people who had also been drunk tanked, there was even an RD who got sent to the drunk tank (RDs are like our RAs on the boat). It was finally time for me to get my field sobriety test and I somehow passed, they had me stand on one foot and count to 10, stand on the three foot and count to 10, do the nose test, and the eye test and somehow, I got out of there and was so excited I went back up to my room and the first thing I did was drunk stumble head first into the table in our room. Overall, it’s something to laugh at now but I would love to never experience the drunk tank again. 

We then woke up super early to go to the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea was so much fun and is supposed to be very healing for the body. We went to Petra the next day and Petra was also so amazing. Petra was my first wonder of the world and will definitely not be my last, I am so blessed and grateful I got to see Petra learn about the history of Petra as well. 

Now let’s talk about how I almost got stranded in Jordan (family if you’re reading this, I’m sorry and I promise I learned from my mistakes). We stayed at the best hotel right on the Dead Sea, the next morning we were in a rush to meet our driver to take us to Petra and my outfit wasn’t looking good so I was already running late. We get in the car and make the 4-hour drive to Petra when Jess gets a text from the lovely hotel we were just at. We had left our passports in the safe at the hotel, on the Dead Sea. We were driving in the opposite direction. We let our driver know and he assured us he would figure it out so we signed off the rights to our passports and put our faith in random men we had never met before in hopes that they would pick up our passports and hand deliver them to us within one day. We needed this plan to work because we needed to have out passports the next day, to get back onto our ship that was going to be sailing to Cyprus. 

We decided to just enjoy our time in Petra, had the most amazing time then headed even further away from the Dead Sea hotel where our passports were to the Wadi Rum desert, because who wouldn’t trust random men in a new country to deliver your passports to you? We got to the Wadi Rum desert, our driver got the van stuck in the sand and all us girls got out to try and push us out of the sand which didn’t work but was quite funny. Help came to tow us out of the sand and then we enjoyed our time and were assured our passports would be there the next morning. We woke up the next morning and our passports were not there, so again we had faith and just decided to have a fun day on the Wadi Rum dessert and not worry about our passports, so that’s exactly what we did. We start heading back to the cruise terminal after our day spent in the desert and meet the guy who had our passports on the side of the road and signed our rights back to our passports. We got them, the random guy we trusted ended up being trustworthy and he came in clutch just when we needed them, and we were able to get back on our ship, sail to Cyprus and go through immigration in Cyprus just fine. 

Despite all that, Jordan was so much fun and I would recommend it to anyone. Some of my favorite memories and favorite conversations have come from my time spent in Jordan. I made a lot of dumb decisions but you live and you learn and I can promise I will probably never be putting my passport in a safe again. 

Above all my dumb decisions we all continued to make the best of every situation and hey the worst that would have happened is we would have been stuck in Jordan, but all worked out in our favor and I was kept safe and my passport was kept safe, so there’s really nothing to look back on and regret, only lessons learned.