اهلان وساهلا - Welcome to Amman

As all those who read this know, primarily since you are friends and family, I have left America to study Arabic in Jordan. After being gone for about a week and a half, here is what has happened so far.

I left Monday morning, the 29th of August, and arrived at the airport where, I sat around for a while until my plane left. Thereafter I arrived in Chicago where I again sat at the airport for about 10 hours waiting for my flight to leave. Lets just say that after a nap in an airport bench, walking back and forth across that airport many many times, some food, and a couple hours of reading, I would advise anyone who is flying internationally to just pay the extra money and go direct. That said, at 10:30 pm or so I got on a flight to Frankfurt Germany, where I met up with several other students. With another 8 hour wait at the airport and not willing to shoot myself in the face quite yet, we hopped on a train and went into the city and walked around for bit. I have to say that for a large city, Frankfurt was probably one of the cleanest cities I have ever been too. Even the shanty town was nice, with green lawns, lots of flowers, and cutely painted shacks, which to the untrained eye just looked like a cute little park for children. While there I saw several cathedrals, some river (not really sure which one it is) and got blisters on the bottom of both my feet from walking too much in my new shoes, which I had never worn. Following my short excursion into Frankfurt, I returned to the airport and enjoyed hearing the stories of some of the other people from my program, about how they got a 40 euro fine for ridding in the wrong car on the train. Lesson from this story, don't wear new shoes to go walking for hours and make sure you ride in the right car.

I have no idea what cathedral this is.

At around 10 pm I got onto another plane which flew myself and 9 other students into Amman, where we exchanged money, paid to get into the country, got our passports stamped, and then watched as our T.A. Randall had all of his luggage lost. After waiting for him we met our rides, and headed to our apartments. Around 3:30 in the morning, I finally made it to my apartment, where unfortunately I couldn't sleep at all. At around 4:30 I heard the call to prayer blasted throughout the city, at which thought I screamed in my mind about how horrible it was that the sun was going to be coming up in an hour or so.

My first day in Jordan was full or orientation and disorientation. The city is extremely difficult to navigate at first until you understand the layout of the city. In Utah for example everything is based on a grid, which runs North to South and East to West and is based off of Temple Square. However, in Jordan, and especially in Amman, everything is based off of landmarks. So for example to get to the church you would say that you want to go between the 3rd and 4th circle (roundabout). Anyways, my first day here, I was coming back from the store with a bunch of food and 2 of my roommates and we decided to hop on a mini-bus which essentially takes you from point "a" to point "b" and you can get off whenever you want. However, they are really interesting to use because you don't always know where they are going, and the final destination is. After riding around for a short distance we decided to get off and walk the rest of the way home. Needless to say we got lost. We started walking in the wrong direction with all of our groceries, and all of our water and wandered around a random neighborhood trying to find our apartment. After about 45 mins of wandering around we finally tried to get a taxi and when a taxi finally pulled up another guy come up and offered to give us a ride for free. The conversation went something like this:

This is looking out from half way down Mt. Nebo

-Hamiid "Hey you guys need a ride"
-Us "How much?"
-Hamiid "Its free, don't worry I don't have any dead bodies in my trunk. You can look if you want."
-Taxi "You can't do that, it's illegal. The police are going to come and get you."
-Hamiid "Shut Up."
- Us "Its ok, he's our friend."

So we got a ride from this guy Hamiid, and he was super nice, and spoke perfect English. So that was Wednesday.

Thursday we went to Madaba, the Dead Sea, the Baptismal site, and Mount Nebo. It was cool, but at the same time, it wasn't all the exciting since there were 67 of us all traveling on two large buses and we only had a limited amount of time at each space. But I did take some interesting pictures, but also didn't take very many because I felt too touristy.

Looking out from Mt. Nebo

Friday was church and that was fun because it meant we got to go and find church, and listen to the Friday sermon over the loudspeakers. The branch here had bout 30 people in it, so we more than double it when we go. In addition, there is a little suq that is only open on Friday nights, which is off of a street called Rainbow Street. So I went to that and walked around for a little bit. It was pretty cool to see, but most of the stuff there was pretty cheep stuff.

Looking out towards the dead sea (its off to the left)

Sunday was the first day of school for us here, and that commenced the hectic crazy life that will be for the next four months. At some point during the week we celebrated someones birthday, and I went to that, and the only people where were there were married couples. It was weird, because it was all of the people who I "should" be hanging out with with Angelica, had she still come, but who we still wouldn't have really hung out with because we find them weird. So it was weird to see them all, and be all like, "Hi, how's it going? I see your wife is here with you. Clearly mine isn't here, but that's ok, because I still find you a little weird."

This is from the roof of my apartment

This last Wednesday night was probably the best, because I went to a Hookah bar (not a hooker bar, don't get those confused) and met some people there to talk with them. It was super fun. We were there for about three hours talking with them in both Arabic and English, about their families and our families and just getting to know them. What is funny, for those who don't know about the Middle East, alcohol is basically not sold anywhere in the Middle East. So, at bars, what you get are fruit drinks, milk shakes, smoothies, coffee or tea while you sit and enjoy talking with the people you're with. Additionally, if you go to a Hookah bar, like the one I was at, you typically will order a water pipe along with some flavored wood of sorts (like apple, grape, cranberry, etc), and you will sit and smoke it. However, since I or anyone else in my program don't smoke, we just sat there and enjoyed smelling the smoke, which smells wonderful by the way.  By the time that we finished talking with these people, who were all siblings, they showed us the true Arab hospitality and informed us that they were our family while we are here, and that if we need anything at all that we should call them and let them know.