Going into Palestine/Israel

Our program gave us a four day weekend to travel and go wherever we wanted to go. I decided to go with three other girls to Palestine/Israel. Traveling into Israel/Palestine was definitely a bit of experience. We left Irbid to go to the Israeli border at around 3:15 in the afternoon via taxi. From Irbid (northern Jordan) there are two border crossings, the biggest one crosses the Jordan just west of Amman (King Hussein/General Allenby Bridge) while the other is northwest of Irbid and is smaller (Sheikh Hussein Bridge). We decided to take the Sheikh Hussein Bridge which was a 5o minute taxi ride from Irbid. The taxi ride was pretty uneventfull, we drove from down from hills around Irbid and Yarmouk into the flat and more noticably humid Jordan River Valley. As we approached the Jordanian border crossing post, we clearly saw the increased security presence. There were two checkpoints were our taxi was forced to stop and an armed dude looked over our American passports. At the last checkpoint, which was nicely decorated with machine Jordanian Army machine gun posts, our taxi driver was told he could go no further so we got out and took another taxi (I guess I taxi that had been already checked for bombs or something, security was bigger) for the remaining two miles.
Once we got to the Jordanian customs office, Jordanian security dudes went through our bags abd we got our passports processed and a Jordanian exit visa. Since most Arab countries aren't the biggest fans of Israel, I had the Jordanian visa handler stamp my exit visa on a separate sheet of paper, I wanted there to be no evidence that I had gone to Israel since that would prevent me from visiting most Arab countries who will not allow anyone to enter their country who's been to Israel.
After sorting through visas and customs checking we hopped on a bus to take us to the Israeli side of the border crossing. Driving to the Israeli side took us 5-10 minutes. We drove over the raging Jordan River which now is more like a creek about 20 feet wide. Our bus stopped for about 5 minutes in front of a security gate on the Israeli bank of the Jordan. There was a guy with a bomb inspecting mirror who examined the bottom of our bus to make sure there were no bombs attached then we went on our merry way to get dropped off at Israeli customs.
One of the girls in our traveling group was an American girl of Indian ancestry. No big deal except for the fact that she's a practicing Shia Muslim who a few weeks ago traveled to Damascus, Syria and had gone on the Hajj to Saudi Arabia last year. The Syrian and Saudi stamps on her passport immediatly gave the Israelis a red light. After getting our bags checked, everyone except her was ready to take a taxi to Jerusalem. We decided to stay in the Israeli customs area until they were done with our Indian-American friend. An Israeli border customs dude came out of his office to question her. At first we had no idea this Israeli was working for customs since he wore baggy sweatpants that barely covered his ass and a baggy t-shirt. He looked more like a college student who just woke up than customs officer at what should be the most secure border on the globe. Anyways, our Indian-American friend answered this customs dude's questions regarding her visit to Israel by telling him she came to visit and pray at the mosques in Jerusalem. Probably not the best thing to say if we wanted to get out ASAP. We ended sitting at the customs are for three hours. Relatively speaking, not that bad. I entertained myself by annoying the other custom dudes/dudettes (many of them wore very heavy makeup, lots of jewlery, and long painted fingernails) in asking them what the Hebrew signs said and asked them how to say certain things in Hebrew. I brought with me my Dummies Guide to Hebrew. After that got old I looked over the Hebrew alphabet.
Once we were cleared, we found a taxi minivan so we could get the Beth Shaen Bus station. Stupidly, none of us had any idea how far Beth Shaen was from the Israeli border crossing. We ended up paying what 150 Israeli Shaqils (about 50 US dollars) for a two mile trip. Needless to say we were thrilled. By the time we arrived in Beth Shaen, it was dusk and we were anxious to get to our hostel in Jerusalem. One of the girls walked a few yards to the Beth Shaen bus station only to find out that there were no more busses running to Jerusalem. We ended up chatting for a couple minutes with these cab drivers in front of a pizza restaurant. Saying he was from Jerusalem, one of the cab drivers agreed to take us to Jerusalem for 200 shaqils We agreed since that was a fair deal considering Jerusalem was an hour south of Beth Shaen.
Our cab ride was amazing since our cab driver, Aaron, sang along with the 1950s French Jazz music that he played in his CD player. After this CD was done, Aaron decided to sing whatever the hell he knew like "Oh Susannah!" and "Joshua and the Walls of Jericho". Sometimes he didn't know some of the English lyrics so he would just sing "ladidada" to the parts he didn't know. Since Aaron was originally from Morocco, he knew both French and Spanish. I spoke to him a bit in any Spanish I remembered from High School. Aaron dropped us off at the Jaffa Gate in Old City Jerusalem, just 10 yards from our Hostel. In front of our taxi were two Israeli soldiers and an Israeli policeman. Since I had never seen members of the IDF up close in person I wanted to take some footage. As I pulled my video camera out, one of the girls got really freaked out so I put my camera back in its bag. Since then I've actually taken a lot of photos of Israeli soldiers so I think she freaked out way more than needed.
The boring part o Israel was over...