OK, so I have a life dominated by amazing nerd moments, but through careful examination I have been able to identify the single, greatest shining nerd moment. This happened back in early January 2005, long before I started the blog or even before I started writing a travel journal. It was my first visit to Jordan and I was fortunate to go with a group of eleven other professors on a state department grant to study Middle Eastern and Islamic culture (although I think we probably spent more time studying mosiacs than anything else - our leader, Pierre, who at the time ran the American Center for Oriental Research, was a nut for mosiacs and I think we saw every one in Jordan). The group was extraordinary - not only because they were all great teachers and scholars (with the obvious exception of me), but they could not have been nicer - I will never, ever have such an amazing experience again. For some time I've been meaning to go back and talk about some of the early travel experiences, and it would be a pity to not discuss that trip, so expect more posts in the future. We spent three weeks travelling around Jordan and hearing lectures from other professors. On one of our trips we ventured out to the desert castle of Azrak, which played a role in the adventures of T.E. Lawrence. I had been reading Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom (and, in the picture, you can see the book sticking out of my pocket), and I took the opportunity to read to the other professors the actual account that Lawrence wrote of sitting in that very room - mainly about a miserable cold rain and ghosts. Now, in the real world, I would have been beaten savagely, but in the bizarre other world that academics live in there was tremendous excitement.
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