Welcome To Jordan

 
“Why are you going to Jordan?” That’s a question that a lot of people have asked me over the past few months. Another question I’ve been asked a lot is if I’m scared. Yes, I’m scared all the time. Part of me is embarrassed to admit this, because I work in a field with people who travel all the time, and often to much scarier places than Jordan. But the truth is, I do get scared. A thousand worries go through my mind, from terrorist attacks (very unlikely in Jordan), to kidnappings (also very unlikely in Jordan), to getting lost, to getting sick, to not being able to find a taxi, to snakes, to bugs, to many things.  Mostly getting lost.  I have a somewhat deep-seated fear of being lost, and I’m not sure why it bothers me so much. And the truth also is that I get homesick. I love to travel, but inevitably when I get to a new country, especially one that is very foreign to me, I immediately start questioning why I left my comfort zone.  I miss my home, my family and friends, my bed.  Mostly, I miss the feeling of waking up and knowing exactly where I am, and what I need to do, and how I can get there and do it. Because life in a foreign country is hard. You congratulate yourself on accomplishing the smallest of things, like successfully grocery shopping, giving a cab driver directions and him getting you home on the first try, managing to find a functioning ATM. It gets easier as time goes on, but you never feel quite as comfortable and at ease as you would in your own country, in your own town.

So now we come to the question that I ask myself a lot, especially when I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed and homesick. Why do I continuously do things that scare me? Why did I leave Washington DC, a city that I now consider to be my home, for a country where I barely speak the language, and where the culture is completely different from the one I’m used to?  I do it because of days like yesterday.

There’s a saying about travel that is one of my favorites: “Life is a book, and those that travel only read one page.”  I think this is true, and I believe I’m a better, smarter, stronger person because I travel. And so I remind myself of this, and the amazing experiences I’ve had, when I start to get a little scared.

Anyways…Week 1 in Amman.

As you may have guessed by now, I survived my first week in Amman.  I arrived on Sunday morning at about 5:30 am. Amman is surprisingly light out at 5:30 am…not really sunny, but definitely not dark. It was a little weird. It took ages to get through immigration, but luckily when I got to the front they didn’t give me any trouble getting through. They will only give you a 30 day visa at the border though, so I’ll have to register with a police station sometime this month in order to extend my visa. I had booked myself a room at the Ibis hotel so that I could rest a bit when I arrived, since I hadn’t slept in nearly 3 days. I took a cab from the airport, checked into the hotel, and promptly passed out for about four hours, when I forced myself to get moving.  I don’t usually allow myself to sleep when I land after a transatlantic flight because I think it can negatively impact your ability to adjust to the time change, but I was so tired by this time that I honestly could barely function. I only allowed myself to sleep for a few hours though before getting up, showering and moving on with my day.  If I had slept all day, like I was tempted to, I’m sure I wouldn’t have slept well that night and thus the cycle would just have been perpetuated.

After freshening up a little, I took a taxi to the office so that I could meet everyone and get settled in there.  The work week in Amman is Sunday – Thursday, with Friday and Saturday being weekend days, so I got to meet the whole team on Sunday. The JCEF CEO, Mayyada, and Training Manager, Tamer, I had already met, but there are a couple of new staff members that I hadn’t met before. Everybody at the office has been really friendly and welcoming, and they’ve helped me a lot over the past week.  Most of them are around my age, and I’m looking forward to having them as friends in Jordan. 

On Sunday night, my roommate Dunia met me at the hotel and took me shopping and then to her apartment, where I’ll be staying for the next two months. We went to the Citimall, which could easily be mistaken for any mall in the United States.  There’s an H&M, a Gap, a MAC makeup store, even a Pinkberry frozen yogurt place. I bought a SIM card for my phone and a 3G internet dongle, since there’s no wifi at my apartment. The dongle unfortunately doesn’t work well in the evenings – I’m usually only able to connect for short periods of time, and the connection is never very strong.  During the morning and daytime the connection is usually fine, so I’ve been trying to arrange Skype calls with friends and family in the early morning my time/late evening their time.  I also bought some groceries.  She then took me to her apartment, which is in a really nice neighborhood of Amman close to the American Embassy.  I’ve got a really good-sized bedroom that’s furnished with a bed, dresser, wardrobe/closet, and little nightstand. My room doesn’t have air conditioning, but I do have a fan and I’ve found that it actually gets so cool in the evening that I don’t really need the A/C, at least so far. I’ve got my own full bathroom, and there’s a large living room area and kitchen that I can use.

The rest of the week passed pretty normally.  I work from about 9 to 5:30 or 6, and then typically come home, make dinner, and either go online (if my dongle is working), read, or use my Arabic Rosetta Stone software for awhile until it’s time for bed.  There’s a small supermarket across the street from my apartment that has most of what I’d need in terms of groceries. Luckily I downloaded a lot of books onto my Nook before leaving home, since I don’t always have internet access. Dunia offered to let me borrow some of her DVDs to play on my computer, but I remembered that my MacBook Air doesn’t have a CD drive, and I forgot my attachable drive back in the US. So I probably won’t be watching much TV or movies this summer. Oh well, it’s good for me to read.

On Thursday night, a couple of my coworkers and a few of the trainees from the Jordan office’s Media Training Program took me out to this restaurant called Zorba. It’s in downtown Amman, with an amazing view of the Citadel, an area with tons of Roman, Greek, Umayyad and Byzantine ruins. We ordered a bunch of appetizers to share, including hummus, some type of yogurt dip with herbs, another type of dried yogurt with onions and herbs and sundried tomatoes (dried yogurt has the flavor and consistency of feta cheese and it’s delicious), lamb sausages, and meatballs in a tahini sauce with potato slices.  Some of the people in the group didn’t drink, but the others invited me to join them in drinking arak, an anise-flavored liquor similar to ouzo. You mix it with water and it turns this white color, and it’s actually really refreshing. I’m typically not a fan of anise flavor, but I don’t mind arak.  We also smoked hookah, or “argileh” as it’s called in Jordan.  In general, it was a nice, laid-back evening, and I really enjoyed making some friends.  Everybody has been super welcoming and the other staff members and trainees keep offering to take me around Jordan and show me the sites.  It’ll be nice to have local tour guides to show me around while I’m here.

On Friday, it was the first day of the weekend in Jordan, so I slept in, explored the area around me a bit, and took some time to read and relax. On Saturday morning, I got up early to call my parents (my internet seems to work the best in the middle of the night and early morning, so I figured that 6:45 am would be the best timing for a Skype call), and then went back to bed for awhile. Then I went out to explore the city, starting with the Citadel.  The Citadel is on top of a huge hill called Jebel Al-Qalaa, and offers some of the best views of Amman.  It’s the site of many ancient settlements, and has tons of ruins dating back to Ancient Greece and Rome, the Umayyad Empire, and the Byzantine Empire. I hired a tour guide to show me around, which I think is worth it because they can really give you some detailed information about what you’re looking at.  Otherwise, some of the things might just look like rocks, although some structures like the Temple of Hercules and Umayyad Palace are pretty well preserved. There’s also a museum, called the Jordan Archaeological Museum, which has a lot of amazingly well-preserved artifacts from Jordan and the region, some of which date all the way back to the Paleolithic Era.

After seeing the Citadel, I hired a cab driver to take me to Iraq El-Amir, which is about 20 minutes west of Amman (not in Iraq) and the site of some historic caves and the ruins of an ancient castle, and offers some amazing views of the Jordanian countryside. Iraq El-Amir really didn’t disappoint – the caves were cool, the castle ruins even better, and the views of the country were not to be missed. The caves were ancient forms of shelter for people the area. You can still see smoke marks on the wall from fires, and stone furnishings that look like they were once chairs, etc. The walls provide protection from the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter. Only a few minutes away from the caves is a castle, called Qasr Al-Abd (Castle of the Slave), which is thought to have been built between 187 and 175 BC. According to the legend, a slave once fell in love with the daughter of a local tribal leader, but he was forbidden to marry her because of his status. However, the tribal leader eventually was called to go to war, and left the land for many years. While he was gone, the slave came in and built the castle so he could marry and live with his daughter. When the tribal leader came back, the slave was forced to vacate the land and never come back.

The land surrounding the caves and castle in Iraq El-Amir is amazingly beautiful. It’s one of the few fertile areas in Jordan, so there were actually rows of fruit trees with farmers at work picking fruit to sell in markets throughout Amman. One of the farmers picked a fresh fig from the tree and gave it to me, and I think it was the most delicious piece of fruit I’ve ever tasted.

And so begins week two of my Jordan adventure. I don’t have any firm plans for this coming weekend yet, but we’ll see where I end up.  Maybe a trip to Jerash is in my future to see some more Roman ruins.  We’ll see.

Much love to you all!

Sarah