Home Sweet Amman

The last two days have been UNREAL! After missing my first flight out of LAX I decided to fly the following day... an odd start to this adventure. Funny thing is that as I was driving down to LAX I didn't feel ready to fly. Things happen like they're supposed to and so naturally Wednesday's second attempt was much more successful! I made the flight! After an almost completely sleepless but very entertaining 11 hour plane ride I arrived in London. The next leg of the trip was filled with a lot of running through airports and delayed flights out of both Heathrow and Frankfurt. Arriving in Amman was totally surreal. Quite suddenly nothing looked even remotely familiar. We touched down around 2:30am but didn't get out of the airport until about 5:30 - just in time to catch the sunrise as we drove into the city...

After a few hours of sleep Savannah and I met up with Sarah and walked around Rainbow Street (seriously the hippest area in Amman, lots of coffee shops, local artist market every Friday, outdoor patios for hookah smoking -- my neighborhood) and then met up with a couple of her friends. We ate  and then went on a driving tour of the city. Sarah took us all around Amman, showing us where I'll be working/researching/spending a lot of my time and all of the best places to get falafel and shawerma. Amman is a rolling, sprawling city that goes on and on. The city's layout actually reminds me of Los Angeles in many ways - it never seems to end but there are distinct neighborhoods linked by highways and side streets. Most of the buildings are made out of a beautiful cream-colored stone (lime?) and there is new construction everywhere. Later in the evening Savannah and I grabbed a falafel for dinner and did a little people watching. Friday night is the night to be out and Rainbow Street is packed with people and Top 40 pop blaring from car stereos. 

This morning, Saturday, I was able to sleep in and I wasn't even woken up by the early morning (like 4am early) call to prayer -- it would be nice if that ability developed into a habit...

We met Sarah and her roommate at a ladies-only gym for a workout. The gym, called Revolution, is pretty fantastic and fascinating through the anthropological lens. Once inside women are free to remove any headscarves or abayas they might wear in public. Strutting on the treadmill in sporty shorts and laying out in bikinis down at the outdoor pool -- strikingly familiar to home and yet so completely different from everything about Arab women portrayed by western media sources. I'm going to have to ruminate on these observations...

Next we got all dressed up and drove into East Amman to meet the wedding party before driving to Karak where the actual wedding celebration took place. Bottomlines: everything was separated (women in one section/floor of building, men on another), intriguing influences of western-style weddings mixed with very Arab customs (white wedding dress with add-ons to cover arms, chest, and head), and I've already been selected as a promising potential wife for the cousin of the bride (his mother was VERY insistent about getting my phone number and introducing me to her son. Once we arrived at the wedding - a 2 hour drive away from Amman - we were taken upstairs to the female section and seated right next to the dance floor. Many of the typical wedding events that you'd expect in the States were present at this wedding. There was a cute slideshow of pictures of the couple together, there was an enormous 8-tiered cake, there was dancing, there was a white dress. It was a blast. Lots to think about....

So far, so good. I love my neighborhood and can't wait to start exploring more and finding my favorite places to eat and hang out. I'm beginning to pick up bare-minimum, get-by Arabic essentials -- thank you, hello, numbers....yea that's about it so far. I'm really looking forward to living my daily life in this city...eating breakfast, going to the university, starting a language course, working out, eating falafel...it is all going to be SO GOOD!!!

Still can't believe this is my life,

Jessie