After walking through a small garden of insignificant ruins, we stood in a group of about 20 others, who had just made their way from the nearby mosque to the entrance ot the cave that stood before us. The guard opened the door, and we crowded in to a small, hot room filled with small pieces of ancient pottery, and also body odor. A man started reciting a memorized script and gesturing to the 7 sarcophagus-shaped holes in the stone floors around the room. I think he was saying something like this:
The Seven Sleepers, commonly called the "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", refers to a group of Christian youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus* around 250 AD, to escape a persecution of Christians being conducted during the reign of the Romanemperor Decius. Another version is that Decius ordered them imprisoned in 
a closed cave to die there as punishment for being Christians. Having fallen asleep inside the cave, they purportedly awoke approximately 180 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, following which they were reportedly seen by the people of the now-Christian city before dying.
Muslims firmly believe in the story as it is mentioned in the Qur'an; however, some aspects of the story are not covered in its account, including the exact location of the cave. Some allege that it is in Ephesus, Turkey; others cite a place near Amman, Jordan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sleepers)
So I went to the place near Amman on Saturday with a couple friends from my program and a new friend—the manager of a restaurant we frequent called Talielet Baladna (between 2nd and 3rd circles if you ever go). Yeah, we frequent a cafe. I've been wanted to find a bar to frequent for over a year now, but I never found one in DC cheap or cool enough to turn into my own personal set of Cheers. But I digress. The cave was pretty neat, but I really enjoyed touring the accompanying mosque more. I've actually never witnessed an Islamic worship service. It wasn't so different from other services I've been to. There was kneeling, listening to a dude up front, standing up, praying, kneeling, dude says more stuff. It was kind of meditative to chill in the green (a rare color here) of the garden and the singing of Koran verses.
Admittedly, this week was not packed with cultural insights, but I'm going to attribute that to the fact the I mostly stayed indoors to study for a final (one of our classes is super intense for like a week and then there's a final), and two quizzes. This weekend is our program-wide trip to Petra/Wadi Rum. Hopefully I'll have something a little more exciting than a Wikipedia article upon my return. You can at least count on some camel pics, for sure.