Days Inn Amman

... I guess we get the results in a couple days and then we have to attach them to our residency applications with a bunch of other ****. Now I am at work and after work I am actually going with Baha and the big boss man to the Hyatt for a meeting. I'm going to help them formulate and draft up a few funding proposals and hopefully get some food out of the whole arrangement too, insha'allah. After that, ma3 baraf.

[Note: Although still limited to the first ...

... drink, and hang. It was so nice to be in a bikini in the sun sitting by a pool. Seriously. Shawn actually picked us up to drive us there and it is the first time I have gone out of the house in a tank top. It was lovely. The food was also delicious. These dudes can cook. For starters they actually had an American BBQ, halleluia! The BBQed tuna, salmon, steak, ribs, pineapple, etc. Everyone was very nice and the food was good and the sun was hot. Unfortunately I ...

... on vacation, they go to the malls, there are sales everywhere, etc. These of course aren't traditional rituals but sort of like our Christmas "spirit" in the States, haha. Traffic is crazy as everyone tries to rush here and there and people honk honk honk even though (like Christmas) this isn't really with the spirit of Eid.

These are just surface observations of a traveling ajnabe, but I thought I would share.

... joint called Hashem. Delicious. Felafel, hummos, fuul, fresh pita, and mint tea for about 1.5 JD which is like a little over two dollars. They actually sat us with two other young women because the entire place was full (note back to the fact that is Ramadan). It turns out these women were from the US and although they leave soon they have a roommate who is staying and in need of someone like me perhaps! Happy day! As soon as I get a cell phone I am going to ...

... and dry Wadi Rum desert-whose colorful and intermittent imposing rock formations and arches had been carved by thousands of years of wind and weather - in the back of a 4x4 pickup and recounting areas where T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) camped in more recent times and where camel caravans stopped thousands of years before
~Welcoming clean streets, non hassling merchants and fixed prices in Jordan after ten days ...

... Qaeda in Iraq – that killed 60 people. But hotel lobbies still serve as movie-set backdrops for reunions of the soldiers, spooks and Iraqi exiles who pass through town, providing a constant reminder of the turmoil next door.
Equally, it is hard to forget the neighbouring Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians fled to Jordan in three main waves – after Israel was created in 1948, following the 1967 war and after the 1991 Gulf war, when they were ...

... which was ok, but what was better was the view of the expanse of desert before us. We went over to this other desert rock formation where we were allowed to climb up into a canyon. I climbed into a Siq (like the one in Petra, a channel in the sand stone) and we walked forward until we hit a wall. The sandstone offered loads of holds though so I climbed up higher and higher, ending up quite above Kristen and the girls, but getting good views of the Canyon. I took ...

Heute war ein komischer Tag. Okay, vielleicht nicht "komisch", aber trotzdem irgendwie besonders. Das kommt aber erst am Schluss, denn meine chronologische Ordnung in diesem Blog liegt mir ja bekanntermassen besonders am Herzen... Als letztes Ziel in Jordanien kam Dana dran. Dana ist ein kleines Doerfchen im noerdlich von Petra gelegenen Nirgendwo und war eine ganze Zeit lang eine Geisterstadt, bevor ein paar Frauen den Ort wieder aufgebaut und die Umweltschutzgesellschaft ...

... An ancient local who spoke no English unlocked the gate for us, then when we were done, he showed us a video in French which seemed to be demonstrating what archaeologists believe the castle would have looked like in its day. My favourite part was discovering what looked like a huge stone table in the middle of the ruins that looked like the stone table in Narnia!


We wound our way north, past a monastery carved into a distant ...

... m'ont inspirées. Le roi, tout d'abord. Autant n'ai-je qu'apercu Moubarak en Egypte, autant ai-je vite fait d'arrêter de compter le nombre de portraits d'Abdallah, parfois accompagné de la sublime Rania, tant son visage est revenu (particulièrement dans le nord du pays il est vrai). Si la démarche comporte probablement ce caractère habituel, monotone voire carrément routinier que la dimension autoritaire du régime ...