Assalamu Aleekum!
(You would all respond "wa aleekum assalam")
This first couple days of the my Jordan experience have been an amazing experience, although all seen through the haze of jet lag and adjusting to food and culture differences. That being said, I don't know how long this post will be because I am already starting to doze off as I write, not a good formula for creative thinking.
Traveling across the world by plane is definitely an experience. That whole get there 3 hours early thing is a joke. I only needed to really be there an hour and half early because I wasn't leaving the country until after I landed in NYC. The flight from Phoenix to NYC was pure heaven - I was sitting by the emergency exit so had an extra six inches of leg room and an extra 6 inches of width (there was no arm rest on my left side - I could easily stretch out and relax. I enjoyed watching "Million Dollar Arm" again on the flight. (That's weird the italics won't work on this...hmm). After that it was a crazy sprint to the New York airpot to get from one terminal to another and find the right train that would get me to where I needed to go. When I go there, there was only x-ray machine working so the line was about an hour and half long. I barely made boarding my flight right on time. That was exciting. The plane was ginormous with 3 seats on each side of the plane and 4 seats in the middle and a business class section, priority section, economy comfort section, economy section (that's me), and even further back economy section. No one in my surrounding area spoke any English so I gave up trying that and spent my time playing on their individual TV screens. I watched "Divergent" and "Captain America 2" as well as tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Then I landed in Paris and enjoyed another fun train experience trying to reach the right gate (what is up with trains going so fast and always heading the wrong direction, just my luck I guess haha). Then I ran into one of my friends and we spent all the hours talking until we boarded the flight and finally headed to Amman.
Arriving in the Amman airport was an experience not for the faint of heart. The first thing you have to do is wait to exchange money since it costs 40 dinar (about $60) to get a visa to enter Jordan. Without the visa, you will wait for the remainder of whatever life you have stuck behind the passport security line. The line for exchanging and working out visas took about 2 hours to get through. Then we got our bags and found Dil (the head of my program) waiting for us with our driver after we got through customs.
Let me say a word about driving in Jordan. Picture the busiest LA freeway or driving in Manhattan and then multiply it by 2 or 3 and you get what driving in Amman is like. No one follows any of the lines, they pack in close to each other as close as humanly possible and then honk like crazy so no one runs into them. Then everyone drives as fast as possible and swerves across all lanes of traffic when needed. It is CRAZY! Apparently, even our professors (or anyone sponsored remotely by the church) is not allowed to drive here ever because of how dangerous it is, so there you go. That being said, I feel almost safer here than on the streets of Mesa. Everyone is paying super close attention to driving - no one is texting or eating or adjusting the radio or turning to talk to the passengers. They are focused on one thing and one thing only - driving to the destination and not causing accidents so that they can get paid. The frenzy is kind of fun after the first couple times of shock wear off. Trying to cross the street at some of the busier areas is whole other kind of adventure. You kind of just wander into traffic whenever it remotely slows and people drive around you. Again, no one is ever hit because people are so focused. It is an interesting concept for driving and transportation is all I have to say. There are so many different types of taxis, but I have now figured out how to make sure the one I get on is the right one and how the meter works so that I don't get overcharged. It starts at .25 dinar and goes up from there. A ride across town only costs about 2 dinar (or $3.50) so taxis are much cheaper here than they are back in America.
Other than that, I have visited some sites around Amman and spent a lot of time in orientation or running errands to get supplies. I visited the Roman ampitheater in downtown Amman with some friends the first night and walked along the shops. It was awesome! To see something so old still standing in such good condition and think about what it would have been like to live back then was something else. I do have a question though, it was so tall! How does anyone in the back few rows ever hear what is happening on stage? Did they kind of just guess what the words were being said based on the action? That could be kind of fun I guess. I did take lots of fun pictures, sadly I have no way to connect my camera to my laptop so I still have to figure that out. After that we visited the shops which are set up like Canal Street would be in New York City or street shops in any major city for that matter. There was lots of men's clothes, shoes, pet stores, souvenir shops, restaurants, DVD shops (all for only around 1 dinar, I am going to beef up my collection while I am here let me tell you, also they have all the movies that are in theaters so Guardians of the Galaxy is already out and I might not have purchased it yet, but you can bet it might be something that happens soon...just saying). We ate some legit chicken schwarma that was cooked on the spit right in front of us and then headed back to our apartments.
Today we visited Iraq al-Amir which means "Cave of the Prince". They are huge set of caves just outside of Amman where people used to live thousands of years ago. There are still ancient Hebrew inscriptions carved into the rock as well as evidence of decoration in the caves that show where the people lived. Apparently they were all rick, because most of the carving looked like crown molding and according to Dil who researched these things that's what they were. (Again no pictures yet because of the camera thing, sorry). There were wild chameleons that run rampant through the caves, so one of my roommates caught one and we all got some pictures with it. Apparently they don't change colors as fast as the movies portray, but it did change colors a few times. We weren't allowed to keep it though, haha. We also saw an ancient dovecote there where people would leave out food for the birds, trap them, and then eat them. Supposedly, it was a delicious commodity. We then headed down to the actual palace that is a few miles from the caves. It was mostly toppled over, but was still very grand and impressive. They had giant stone lions and jaguars outside and the classical pillars at both of the entrances. We were allowed to go inside and explore the ruins, and that was really cool. As we were leaving, Dil purchased some fresh figs for us from the caretakers of the site. I haven't never tasted anything so good. I agree with one of the other professor's wives when she said that "figs are the forbidden fruit from the garden of Eden" - they are that good when you pick them right off the tree.
Sorry another break in the story - I learned today about the main three staples of the Levantine diet from ancient Biblical times until today and that was figs, pomegranets (sp. it won't even given me suggestions on how to fix it sorry), and olives. They were all perfect because they could be preserved in various ways to be consumed all year long. Still to this day, those are the main crops of Jordan for the same reason. Needless to say, I love all of those things and so naturally am very excited about this revelation. The actual palace itself is down in a valley where all the fertile land is so it was surrounded by groves of all those different types of trees. They use prickly pear cactus to make a natural gate around their groves for protection. They also eat the prickly pear fruit and it just barely came in season so I am going to be adventuresome and try it in any way I can. It is bigger than the stuff we grow back home.
Can I say I grew up in the perfect place to prepare for this major? Because I did. Everyone today almost died of heat stroke because it was sunny and 98 degrees. I was almost celebrating that the weather was that cool and could have stayed at all the sites much, much long with not a problem. There was even a nice breeze (not the oven death-like ones that come during the summer in Mesa) to keep me going throughout the day. I am also used to seeing dirt and dust everywhere and very little green. It's just a fact of life. A lot of other people are struggling with this concept. We'll see if they can get used to it. I am also used to drinking warm water when it's the only thing available and a lot of people struggled with this concept and might have even gotten sick now because of it. I was raised in Mesa for a reason and it was to prepare me for this so that I didn't suffer from geography/weather shock as well as culture shock.
I also found today the best falafel sandwich I have ever had in my entire life. It was like taking little bites of heave and it is right across the street from where we go to school, talk about awesome.
Anyway, I think I have just been rambling so put up with my jet lag semi-awakedness and I will try to post more coherent, straightforward posts sometime this week after seeing how classes work and I get more settled to actually living here in Amman, Jordan. It is so crazy that I am finally here, I have been dreaming about this day for the past 2 and a half years and it's finally here and so surreal. I'm still adjusting to the whole fact that this is not just a dream.
Love you all and hope I didn't bore you too much!
PS (on a blog, I know is tacky but an additional thought nonetheless) I am living in the best apartment I will probably ever be in my entire life. It was supposed to be for the landlord's kids so it is absolutely huge and has the top-of-the-line furnishings. I think it might even be bigger than my family's house in Mesa. We have four bedrooms (with one master suite), 3 1/2 bathrooms, 2 family rooms (one opens up to a dining type room), a giant kitchen, and a spacious side porch. I don't know what I did to deserve living like a king, but I will certainly enjoy it while it lasts. The one thing it is missing is air conditioning, which is killing all my roommates. I don't mind at all though, to be honest, our apartment only gets about as hot as our house does during the summer in Mesa. So warm, but 100% bearable. I need to take pictures of the whole apartment so you guys can all see.
PPS (another one I know, cut me some slack) There are so many more stories to tell so I am jotting down ideas here so I don't lose them later - limited water supply, how markets work, what "mall" means in Jordan, how cell phones work in Jordan, what all the food is made of and actually tastes like, the giant hill of death by my apartment, orientation at Qasid Institute, attending the Amman 2nd branch of the LDS church (the English speaking one), adjusting to the call to prayer that happens at 4:30 in the morning, seeing 100's of wild cats but only one domestic dog, being the person everyone gawks out because I am tall and white (although the redhead on the program sticks out even more, how Jordanian money works, finding out that we have bidets and how those work, eating fool (Egyptian beans), having a harrissa (doorman), how gas trucks play music like ice cream trucks (definitely not as exciting let me tell you)etc. Maybe those can be teasers for later!
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