Al Dana Plaza Amman

... in Shmeisani.]

Thursday: Today I woke up early and headed with Annette to get a blood test. I am starting to start (did you catch that?) the residency process here and a blood test is one of the first requirements. Annette isn't Fulbright but her program is sort of facilitated by Fulbright so they sent someone with us to help us take care of everything. The place we were taken to was definitely not a hospital. It might have been a clinic or a ...

... will actually be taking Arabic at the FCC too but in the afternoon, and Shawn who is from Minnesota heckled me all night since they were whooping Detroit's ass, haha. It was nice to see the game though, even if we did lose. I also learned that standing by yourself watching sports on TV is apparently a great way to attract guys, whether you want to or not. My favorite question was ::charming smile:: "Are you really watching this?" I should have said "Watching ...

... the house said goodbye to everyone and headed to the local mosque for prayers. Meanwhile we were playing this game with her kids and their friends who are in heels, shorts, sandals, makeup, smoking sheesha, whatever, m3a allena. The circles I am in here remind me of home, with a normal mix of religious diversity...even in the same family.

I also think that my friends here are really used to americans and ...

... and I was eager to set off on my week-long tour of this country. Below is attempt to recount summarily the highlights of my time in Jordan....

PS-I am creating just one blog entry for Jordan under "Amman", but am setting map pins to mark the different cities at which our tour stopped overnight.

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~After spending our first night in Jordan in the port city of Aqaba (which shares its ...

... marry. No, no, no. Stay as lovers and then you’ll keep the spice.”
Nothing is ever what it seems in the Middle East. The pale-skinned, blue-eyed man you assume to be a western businessman is a Jordanian of Circassian origin, whose forefathers fled persecution in Tsarist Russia in the late 19th century to seek haven with their Muslim co-religionists in the Ottoman empire. Nearby, a Gulf Arab in flowing white robes barks orders about selling stock in a ...

... more just to save 10 EGP (less than $2), but it was ridiculous how cheap things were. Language Barrier - 35%. It was pretty tough getting along in English, not as bad as my trip to Hungary, but I would definitely brush up on some Arabic. You might also get your hotel or hostel to write things in Arabic for you to show your cab drivers where you need to go. I have picked up a couple of words, phrases, and the numbers. Fun Factor - 80%. We ...

... even bothered to look at the surroundings. It just made no sense. Well I guess it made a bit of sense, they were close friends seeing each other for the first time in 8 months, but you'd think that if the one girl liked Wadi Rum enough to come back she'd care about looking at the surroundings and sharing them with her friend. In addition, her only really conversations with us in English were to tell us she thought our jeep driver was too tame and that we weren't ...

... year due to the thick haze) and Madbara, home of some "famous" ruins and mosaics. Lovely, but not that interesting to me. It was a nice preview of Jordan. Not nice enough, however, to want to come back. Amman is a hot desert city without trees. After five months at the edge of the jungle, living in such a place seems very odd to me. The few people I met there were lovely and hospitable, though. At the flight to Israel I shared the entire airplane with only one other ...

... place forte romaine censée concurrencer les puissantes Palmyre et autre Bosra (au programme syrien). La conservation du site, remarquable, joue beaucoup dans le charme que la cité exerce sur le touriste ; on se prend rapidement à imaginer le bout des ruelles ou la forme définitive des batiments, aussi nombreux que variés (un marché, une grandplace, des thermes, théatres, temples...). Il y avait pas mal de monde, il ...