Something New!!

You know, I think January is my favorite month in Jordan. There are several reasons for this, not least of which is that my friend and educational soul mate Christy has spent two of my four Januaries in Jordan. She has descended to KA for three weeks each time spreading her TIEL-wheel sunshine and provoking thought among our faculty and providing me with a fun guest to romp around Jordan. When I first started teaching my grandmother, the veteran teacher of 62 years (!!) warned me that January was a difficult month in the teaching profession. She warned me that after the Christmas holidays students might be a bit more sluggish, a bit more apathetic, and a bit more prone to whining. January, of course, is the mid-way point of the school year, and one needs a certain resilience and stamina to sustain oneself through a school year.

But January in Jordan is gorgeous! It is sunny, and many days the temperature peaks in the mid-60s…yes, read that and weep all my dear ones in the Midwest and on the East coast…sunny and warm days. (Now February is a different story, but that is not the month I am savoring or celebrating at the moment.) Each year I have marveled anew at the beautiful days of the Jordan Januaries…this year I was not surprised at all and have sighed and soaked in all the Vitamin D this month has provided me (again, February will be a different story).

So Christy came and cut a wide swath through the faculty as she went and observed classes, offered coaching and tips to faculty young as well as experienced, all in the name of heightening and deepening our teachers’ sensitivities to the cognitive and evaluative development of our students.

Yesterday she headed back to New York, ending the nearly three-week visit in her return engagement to Jordan. As we came to the end of her stay, I wanted to do something different and fun to celebrate Jordan. We had done Petra in 2009, and there wasn’t time for Aqaba or Wadi Rum in this last weekend since she needed to be delivered to the airport at dawn yesterday. So I looked around (figuratively) and realized I had not gone to the Ma’in Hot Springs yet in Jordan. Was there really something new for me in Jordan? I kind of thought I had discovered almost everything in the kingdom (there are some medieval desert castles out east past Amman and nearer to the Iraqi border that I have yet to see actually) so it was exciting to add another place in Jordan for me.

A colleague had suggested the spa at the Hot Springs and avoiding the public areas there (“too gauche and smelly from the sulphur springs,” she said) and so I had Lubna investigate the spa. Hmmm…the “Six Senses Spa” it is called. We thought of over-nighting at the Hot Springs, but since there was a faculty party last Thursday night, I didn’t want to miss the bash, so we set our sights on a daytrip on Friday to the Hot Springs. We had appointments for spa treatments at 1:00 in the afternoon. No one seemed to know how long it takes to get there, (“thirty minutes?” wondered one colleague, and lots of ums, and “I don’t know if I have been there,” said others.) so we decided to give it an hour or so.


“Oh,” Lubna said with more than a hint of warning in her voice. “I hope your car has good brakes. The hill down—well, you won’t believe it.”

That “oh” actually gave me the shivers. If you have read anything in the blog about the car I lease here, I worry about the car on 15-minute drives…so an “oh” from Lubna chilled my blood a little. Let’s leave 90 minutes for the trip. Hmmm…there is no manual in the car, and no one seems to know really how to switch this semi-automatic/semi-standard car into a low gear. Oh, indeed.

We go out of Madaba and about 20 minutes we are on a road on which I have never traveled before (is this a metaphor, or what??!). It is a Jordan January day, and the fields look lovely as we drive past towards some mountains that I have only seen from the bottom at the Dead Sea. I see—they have a road alongside the mountain. How very, south-of-France! After about 40 minutes of easy driving we began on the steepest, most tortuous road I have ever seen. Now, first of all, I am prepared for this. Lubna had warned me with that helpful, “oh.” I figured out how to get this stupid car in low gear, but I am still driving about 15 mph (maybe just 10!) down the windiest, seriously, windiest road I have ever seen. (It must be said—it is a good road, however). But the views are gorgeous—I sneak a couple peeks as I make the hairpin turns. The views over the desert hills down to the fairytale Dead Sea, luminous blue in a valley of browns, are incredible. My friend Joan Fox has been telling me how much she loves the color brown now after having come to Jordan. There are so many browns in the Jordan palette—dark browns, chocolate browns, pink browns, ochre browns, beige browns, yellow browns, et cetera.

The road keeps coiling and recoiling in steep switchbacks until it finally enters the barren, yawning gorge of the lower Wadi Zarqa Ma’in. You keep going until you reach the valley floor—the entrance to the public areas and then the spa of the Hot Springs.

The car made it! I made it! Christy had to cover her eyes during some of the turns—I didn’t have to, well, there really wasn’t much choice as the driver.

We pull into the parking area for the Six Senses Spa—with just a few minutes to spare before our appointments, and as we get out of the car, the door of the spa opens and an attendant smiles broadly, and says, “Mr. John and Miss Christy—welcome!” Now that is service!

So we go into the exquisitely designed spa—it is right in the base of the rocks on the valley floor—and get acclimated (hot towels and all that jazz). Since we are right on time they take us to the treatment areas and we meet the spa professionals. Yeah, there is something beautiful about the luxury and indulgence of a spa day!

After the massages we went to the spring area—what a relaxing place and the natural beauty was exceptional. The waters have been channeled to form two hot waterfalls, and there are hot spa pools, natural and artificial saunas, and surprisingly there are not many people there, so it is easy to find a quiet, steamy niche in the rock all to yourself.

Some nice people at the spa said the hikes around the springs are great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am sure, but who would want to leave the rejuvenating steaming water! One British man told me there were some neighboring archaeological sites with Neolithic standing stones. Uh-huh, that sounds nice, but right here at the pool they bring me fruit and tea, and I can sip the tea while soaking in the spring…yes, it would make an exhilarating counter-point to lying around in the hot water, but oh, not today.

Just for fun, Christy and I checked the weather report for our beloved New York—oh, it was to reach a high of 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Too bad for the New Yorkers as I lazed around Friday afternoon on a stunning Jordan January day in the sunshine amid the stunning rock formations!

While we enjoyed the decadent afternoon Christy wondered why we enjoyed this so much (really? Wasn’t it just obvious?). But I decided to dip my toes in the pool of profundity to provide a reason…we were sitting around marveling at the rocks and water, just as the Daoists in China have done for centuries. Just as the Renaissance scholars did after they discovered the Chinese penchant for painting said rocks and water…Hmmm….

You see, to refresh your Daoist memories, these Chinese spiritualists sought a means to provide order to their chaotic lives. They thrilled to the opposing forces of rocks and water (just think about it and begin your list with all the opposite attributes!) and how these natural phenomena overwhelmed yet calmed them. This balance of the opposite forces, they believed, brought order to their lives. If they achieved balance and order in their lives, they would reach a state of harmony. We like harmony!

So, as we soaked in the hot springs at the valley floor of this stunning place on a perfect January day, we saw ourselves like the Renaissance and Chinese scholars—blissfully savoring the order we had brought into our lives, the balance in our dispositions, and the harmony into our souls.

Lubna had warned that we should not get caught on that road at nightfall, so we hightailed it out of there before sunset, and crawled back up the hills, drifted past the fields and rolling hills outside of Madaba and enjoyed the serene sunset in the rearview mirror.