The Dead Sea, for Mr. Ridge's class

   Welcome to The Dead Sea!  You see my friend floating almost ON the water?  That's because it's so salty.  Look up The Dead Sea on the web if you want to learn more.  It's a little over 1,300 feet below sea level.  That is really low.  Find out the level of Topsham to compare it.

Going down to The Dead Sea

   When you go to The Dead Sea, you drive down, down, down, and the land gets drier and drier.  It's very much like the desert, but as you descend below sea level, the ground is hard, like sandstone.  Coming away from The Dead Sea, I saw a couple of camels, but I knew they were there for the tourists, so they could have a camel ride if they wanted one and were willing to pay for it.  Here's what the land looks like as you descend to the sea.
   The Dead Sea is very big.  I have not looked it up on the web, so I don't know how large, but just looking at it tells me it's big.  We were on the Israeli side and across the water is the Jordanian side, two different countries.  There's also a section that is Palestinian.  Palestine is not officially a country yet, but it's trying to be.  There are a lot of serious disagreements between Palestine and Israel and sometimes there is also very serious fighting.  It's very complicated.

Muddy men

One of the things that people like to do when they come to float in The Dead Sea is cover themselves with mud.  They do this because the mud is apparently very good for your skin.  After you've covered yourself with mud, you're supposed to let it dry and then you almost peel it off, at least that's what I was told.  It looked to me like most of the people were going into the water to wash it off after they put it on and left it for a while.
   You don't swim in The Dead Sea, you float ON it.  You float on your back because you don't want the very salty water to get in your eyes.  If you do get a little in your eyes, you have to get to shore as fast as you can, which isn't very fast because you're on your back until your feet can touch bottom.  As soon as you get to shore, you rinse your eyes out with the fresh water that is coming out of a pipe from a spring.  It feels very good to get your eyes rinsed out if you do get salt in them.

across The Dead Sea to Jordan

   I said you float on your back; you can't really swim.  I heard a funny story about someone who floated a lot further than he intended.  He fell asleep, floating on his back and he began to float across the sea.  The life guard called to him with a bull horn telling him to come back and apparently thought he had heard because the life guard didn't look again until it was too late.  Oh, nothing awful happened!  The man slept while he floated all the way across the sea to Jordan.  There, someone woke him up and brought him back to the other side.  That's a long floating sleep, or sleeping float!
   Friday I also went to see a new play at a theater in the town of Ramallah, which is north of Jerusalem.  Can you find it on a map of the Middle East?  The theater is called Ashtar, and the play is called 48 MINUTES FOR PALESTINE.  The last play I saw at Ashtar, twelve years ago, was good but in Arabic, so I didn't understand much of the dialogue.  (Do you know what "dialogue" is?  It's what people are saying when they talk to each other, like they do in a play or a movie or in real life.)  48 MINUTES didn't have any dialogue.  There was music, movement, two characters, a simple set and some props and sometimes the characters made sounds, but there were no words.  I understood it all and thought it was very good.
   I'll blog again tomorrow.  You'll probably read this one Monday and tomorrow's, Tuesday.  I hope you're all well and reading, running, eating and drinking lots of water, sleeping but not in class.  Happy new week from Grampa Al.