In New York, while waiting to get my boarding pass in the line up at Royal Jordanian I already felt pretty out of place. Everyone in line was clearly Arabic, and they all had so much stuff. I had nothing but my purse, since my (small) backpack was being transferred for me, and they all seemed to have piles and piles of luggage. It's as though Arabs travel with all of their worldly possessions, including their pots and pans. Anyway, by the time I was on the plane I was completely exhausted. I ate the dinner provided, then I promptly put in my ear plugs and slept for about 7 hours. Seriously, I was exhausted!
I awoke for breakfast and chatted with the man next to me, Mark. He works for a company, which I didn't quite understand, but from what I gleaned, it's some sort of medical device distribution service for countries in trouble: like Iraq. He was going to spend a couple of days in Jordan and then go to Iraq, where he'd been tons of times. He told all about different places in the Middle East. When we got off the plane, he showed me where to exchange money and how to get my visa. Then, when we were waiting for our luggage he had his driver call Mego to make sure he was there. I felt very taken care of. Needless to say, Mego was impressed that I seemed to have back up!
Mego took me to his place, which is a beautiful apartment right across the street from the British Embassy. He has this amazing balcony which overlooks Amman. At sunset, the mosques start praying and it plays over loud speaker for the whole city to hear. It's so enchanting, today I took a video of it, and I've posted it here for you to see:
That night, Thursday, Mego and I went to the Queen Vic, which is a British style pub. No bars are open during Ramadan, unless they are connected to a hotel, so our choices were limited.
It was his girlfriend, Huda's birthday the next day, so this was a pre-party. We had a great time, but I don't think that beer and sambuca are a good mix- I regretted it a lot when I woke up feeling kind of ill at about 5 am when the mosques pray again. I was fine though, of course.
Friday morning-ish a group of us drove to the Mariott at the dead sea. We spent the day lounging in and by the pool. I went swimming in the dead sea too, which was incredible, until I got a bit of the water in my eye and had to go run to the showers to rinse it out. It really burns a lot. That part is not so cool. The floating, however, is super cool.
Later in the evening Suzanna, a friend of Huda's, and I snuck into the pool after hours and went for a leisurely swim in the hot night. It was so relaxing and magical. After we had swum for awhile, a group of Jordanians came and jumped in and started playing Marco Polo. We decided to head up to our room, but after our swim we were hungry. We found a hotel staff and asked him if he had any chips he could sell us from the (closed) bar. He disappeared and then came back with two bags of chips for free! We were extraordinarily happy about this. That's Suzanna, happy with her bag of chips back in the room. That brings me to today, Saturday. Huda, Mego, Suzanna and I all had a deluxe buffet breakfast and then went back to the pools. We really just relaxed and had a couple of beers before heading back to Amman in the late afternoon. In Amman we had shwarma and... well, I guess that's it.
Tomorrow I'm going to finish up my application to Calgary, and then I'm going to catch a taxi up to the citadel to take a look around and go to the archaeological museum. Afterwards, I plan on walking down the hill into the market area. I will be sure to cover up :) I'm looking forward to my first adventure alone in this city. So far I've been very sheltered and taken cared of. I need to practice being a little independent while I'm still in safe Jordan, from what I hear, Egypt is a little less safe, though not necessarily less hospitable. So far it is definitely true- people here are insanely generous and hospitable.
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