Syria!

If there is a God—a discussion that could no doubt fill countless blog posts—He probably lives in Damascus. You'd see him walking through the Souq Hammadiyah, builed by His inspired devotees over 1200 years ago, and eating pistachio-topped vanilla ice cream at the Bakdash stand—a newer creation, but no less heavenly. He'd buy a gorgeous silk scarf, handmade in Syria, at the Souq Buzooriya. And he'd finish his day with prayer at the Umayyad Mosque in the center of the old city. (To whom he'd pray, exactly, is beyond me—I'd imagine he'd pray to himself, but that requires a kind of unbelief so perverted the Muslims probably don't even have a name for it). In any case, he'd return home every night to an old Damascene house—built during any of the Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mamluk or Ottoman eras—and say to himself, "Damn, I'm good."

If you ignore the atheist snark in the previous paragraph, you can perhaps appreciate how freakin' awesome Damascus really is. (Sparknotes version, for those who don't plan to read this whole post, I went to Aleppo too, it was awesome, I had a bath and saw a castle, woohoo!) Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, according to most scholars, and holds the record for least-sacked city in the Middle East—just once, by the Mongols. (Freakin' Mongols!) The city has expanded considerably in the modern era, and the new part of the city is not particularly sight worthy—sort of a dirtier version of Amman.

But my, oh my, is Old Damascus great.

For starters, there are the souqs. I get a laugh when I read the promotional material from the Jordan Tourism Board describing Amman's "souq." Amman does not have a souq. Amman has a downtown—a pretty authentically Arab hodgepodge of shoe, clothing, and cell phone stores and sweet shops mixed in with juice stands and shawarma stands, lining the streets below Jebel Amman. But the Souq Hammadiyah, which greets one upon entrance to the Old City, is essentially an ancient, covered market, and it stretches almost 1 km in length. Even Hammadiyah is touristy—the sheer lingerie, offered in more than a dozen styles, is not something you'd picture Ibn Taymiyyah's wife buying in the 11^th century. Beyond the entrance, though, there are three other souqs—spices, silk and clothing. There's the Street called Straight, referred to as such by the Lord in the Bible, where he tells Saint Ananias of Damascus to go to the street called Straight, where he would find a blinded man named Saul. Saul, whom Ananias converted to Christianity, would later be known as Saint Paul.

Then there's the Umayyad Mosque, which is ancient beyond belief—predating even Christianity in Syria. It's changed over the years, obviously, and now bears a fully Islamic character, complete with minbar, mihrab, and fantastic calligraphy and artwork. The photos I've put up here don't really do it justice, but rest assured, my total haul, picture-wise, was upwards of two hundred for the weekend, and so those dying to see the intricate calligraphy can await my return. In any case, perhaps the most surreal thing about the trip was Friday prayer in the mosque, surrounded by literally thousands of Muslims in one of the most sacred places in Islam. (Legend has it that Muhammad refused to go into Damascus, saying "I'll only enter Paradise once). I don't know much of anything Quranic beyond "Ashadu inna le ilaa illa Allah, wa Muhammadun rasool Allah," (I attest that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." I don't even know the Fatiha, the opening surah of the Quran and a standard piece for recitation on account of its shortness. So I found myself considerably out-Muslimed, blindly copying Yusuf next to me as he performed the series of bows, prostrations and such that characterize the Muslim prayer. It didn't help that the imam giving the khutba spoke quickly and didn't enunciate in the slightest, so what I had hoped would be a half-hour dissertation in beautiful Fusha Arabic turned out to be an exercise in cramped, awkward waiting. Overall, however, the experience was both enlightening personally and culturally fascinating—the Muslim equivalent, almost, of St. Peter's Basilica, although that honor should go to Mecca or Al-Aqsa.

Yusuf assured us that we had acquired ten thousand baraka, or blessings, for praying in the Umayyad Mosque. But we must have had some coming into Syria as well, for we were mabrook—blessed!—with good fortune in our border escapades. Not having acquired Syrian visas before leaving the US, we were advised that it would be next to impossible to get them at the border, but that we should try anyway. We did, and were pleasantly surprised to receive them after only a two and a half hour weight. Less pleasant were the constant bribes we were forced to pay our taxi driver so that he'd wait for us. But overall, since the Syrian border visa is about $120 cheaper than a visa bought stateside, we came out quite well financially.

If I have one regret, and for this I wholeheartedly blame my traveling companions Yusuf and Alice, it's that we didn't watch the whirling dervishes on our first night in Damascus. We'd overpaid for a tremendous, neverending buffet of food at a kitschy restaurant in the Old City. But it was pricy, we figured, because of the entertainment provided—musicians and the famous twirling Sufi dancers. Unfortunately, and again I don't want to point fingers but IT WAS ALL YUSUF'S FAULT—some of us got tired, and we retired to the room before the festivities began.

So we spent our two and a half days in Damascus in glorious fashion. We peeked into the Hejaz Railway station, architecturally beautiful, albeit now stuffed with Bashar al-Assad hagiography. We spent three hours in the Damascus Museum, investigating the history of Syria from the most ancient times up through the Islamic era—a truly wide array of sights. We wandered through the Christian quarter, checking out several ancient churches and noticing the subtle but definite cultural differences between the neighborhoods. We bumped into Qasidfolk all over the place, and said to ourselves, "Why are we studying in Amman, and not here?" I'm asking myself that question for next summer as well.

Above all, it was the people who made the trip for us. In Jordan there's a cautiousness to the people—they've been inundated with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, and it's hard to pin down exactly what it is to be Jordanian. Their foreign policy is a nervous, awkward balancing act of Arab and US interests. So they display most of the qualities of generosity and hospitality that are associated with the Arab world, but you can, for example, walk down a busy street, past houses and shops, and feel unnoticed and invisible. In Damascus that's impossible. "As-salaamu alaykum," they say. "Min ayna antum?" Where are you from? Yusuf will smile, and tell them proudly, I'm an American from Syrian origins, and there will be handshakes and tea and twenty percent discounts on all merchandise. I found myself alternatively wearing the kufi and going without it: with it, you get that much more respect and appreciation from the locals, but you also, not unreasonably, feel dishonest. The only time I actually claimed to be Muslim was in a textile shop. The owner smiled, ordered tea, and we talked about both the contradictions in the Bible and the misapprehensions of Americans about Islam. "Americans see Saudi Arabia and think, 'That is Islam,' but they don't understand," the man said. "That is not true religion." Oh, and I also got a discount.

People were even friendlier, if that's possible, when we went to Aleppo, a five hour bus ride from Damascus, and almost as old of a city. Yusuf theorized that it had to do with the smaller number of tourists in Aleppo as compared to Damascus, which was filled with Frenchmen. Folks in Aleppo, or Haleb as it is called in Arabic, have yet to be exposed to the constant rudeness of tourists, the blatant flouting of dress codes, the sprouting of luxury hotels in formerly cultural areas. So they approach foreigners as they do any visitor—with kindness and open arms.

We only had a night and a day in Aleppo, but we made the best of it. Upon arrival we headed to the Armenian quarter and dined at Sisi—the best restaurant in Aleppo, and possibly all of Syria. It lived up to its reputation—the cheese, for which Armenians are famous, was superb, and the various appetizers and main dishes were also top-notch. Also, it was my birthday! We toasted my 20^th with fine Syrian wine, and my wonderful friends surprised me with a cake that the waiters delivered to our table. Possibly the bet birthday one can imagine. The next morning we visited the citadel of Aleppo, a massive castle on the hill above Aleppo proper. Then down to the souqs—even older than Damascus, and cheaper too—where we wished that we hadn't spent all of our money in Damascus. The highlights of Aleppo for me, though, were twofold: first, a delightful (and cheap) several hours at a hamam in the old souqs, where we sat in a sauna, were scrubbed down, lathered and massaged by a burly man with tattoos reading "LEAVE ME ALONE" and "DEATH OR FREEDOM." Second, a second amazing dinner (spoiling ourselves, weren't we?) at Kan Zaman, which I may have even enjoyed more than my birthday dinner. The signature dish was their special version of kebab—but this had pistachios mixed in, and a hint of that fine Armenian cheese. I may have died and gone to heaven.

Of course, the eleven hour bus ride back to Amman was enough to pull me back to earth. The movies shown on the bus (at full volume, despite our futile protests) included Dead Ringer, a horrid American B&W film starring Bette Davis, and 24 Hours in Israel, which I can only assume was some sort of Syrian propaganda film. It ended with shooting and the fluttering of the Syrian flag over what I'd guess was the Golan Heights. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much, but I really had to go to class—we'd already missed two days in order to have enough time in Damascus. So did I have a hell of a time? For sure. Will I be back—possibly as soon as next summer? Inshallah.

Petra!

A few years ago, the Barron family took a trip through Arizona and Utah, visiting that trifecta of natural wonders—Grand, Bryce, and Zion Canyons. I was, of course, amazed by the Grand Canyon; its vastness overwhelmed me, and the impact of Colorado River, winding through the rocks since time immemorial, provided an instructive lesson in the impermanence of everything. But it was Zion Canyon which really got to me. In terms of sheer spectacle, it placed a distant second to the Grand Canyon; it lacked that single, astonishing view of an unbroken chasm in the rocks. It was, however, infinitely more explorable. We spent three days clambering over hills and wandering through valleys, fording streams and losing ourselves in the endless expanse of mountains.

Imagine Zion Canyon, with its glorious red rocks and incredible vistas, its countless nooks and crannies. Now stick it in the Jordanian desert, and hire an ancient civilization to carve incredibly detailed, impossibly monumental buildings into its cliff walls. That’s Petra. It’s simply unbelievable. Two thousand years, the Nabatean people fought off Rome, controlling sea ports as far south as Aqaba and the Hejaz. They left almost no trace of their culture, their religion, their history. But they are survived by what is truly one of the wonders of the world—this magnificent, “rose-red city half as old as time.” (The poser who wrote those words, John William Burgon, had at the time of the poem’s composition never even visited Petra. When he did go, sixteen years later, he told his sister, “there is nothing rosy about Petra, by any means.”)

But there is something special about the place. You enter Petra through the kilometer-long Siq, a narrow path that winds through high cliffs (rose red!) until you reach the famous Treasury. Here, of course, is where my camera batteries decided to die on me. I had to rely on other people taking photos, so this post doesn’t contain all the photos that I’ll eventually have.

The Siq:

The Treasury:

From there, the path turns to the right, passing an 850-seat theatre carved into the cliff, and a massive complex of tombs. Afterwards, you pass through the Colonnaded Street, visiting the Great Temple, on the way to the center of the old city. Then it’s an hard climb to the top of the mountain where the Monastery is located--but on donkey it’ s only twenty minutes! Yes, that’s right—I put my fate in the hands (er, hooves) of a donkey who seemed to think his objective was to pass the lead donkey at a quick trot right at the edge of the cliff rather than, I don’t know, keep me alive. All in all, however, it was an amazing ride, despite my ripping my pants when climbing onto the donkey. I had a much better experience than either Jason, who had to keep shouting “Shwayy, Shwayy” (slowly, slowly) to both the donkey and the Bedouin boy guiding it, or Tristan, whose donkey didn’t seem up to the task and who had to dismount at least twice on account of orneriness. We walked the last five minutes of the path, and turned right to suddenly find ourselves in front of yet another façade of the cliff—even bigger than the famed treasury. The inside of the Monastery, while cool and shady, wasn’t much to write home about, but the experience of discovering a huge cave-carving on an isolated, rocky mountain is truly unforgettable.

We spent several hours on the monastery mountaintop, climbing out to a magnificent viewpoint that overlooked Wadi Araba desert, as well as Jebel Haroun, the tallest mountain in Petra and the burial place of the Prophet Aaron, brother of Moses. It was by then past noon, and getting uncomfortably hot. We’d already spent many hours in Petra, having gone in at 6:30 that morning. The park had been mercifully deserted in the early hours, but now it was filling up and heating up as well. We elected to catch an early bus and head back.

All in all, the practicalities of the trip worked out fabulously. The eight of us took a three-hour bus ride from Amman to Petra for the equivalent of $6, the night before we went in, and we stayed in an el cheapo hotel for about $12 per person. Despite earning the sobriquet Sleazy McSleaze from the group for, among other things, trying to sleep with Kate, our hotel manager was remarkably helpful in arranging our trip and in getting us return transportation. Our taxi driver spoke beautiful, achingly slow Arabic so we could understand him and respond, and the drive back to Amman was blissfully air-conditioned. Overall, I had the time of my life.

Classes!

Haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd update folks on what I'm doing. I've now had just over a week of classes, so that's been keeping me occupied. Why I am writing this now, when I should be in class, you ask? Well, I had the good (or bad?) fortune to get 1-5 classes, guaranteeing me plenty of sleep every night and a lazy morning. The other bizarre thing is that our off days are Friday and Monday, meaning that we don't have a two-day weekend, but we never have class more than three days in a ow. The Qasid folks explained that this would reduce both the Friday fatigue of sitting through the fifth consecutive class day, as well as the forgetfulness of Mondays, in which you're struggling to remember what you slept through on Friday. So far I tend to agree with them. It's great to not have to go more than 3 days before a day off. And the only problem--how to take weekend excursions--is hopefully solved by them rearranging a couple of the weekends to make them consecutive. That way, we can go to Syria or Petra or something like that.

Other fun things:

• Went to Madaba this past Monday. It's a Christian town just 45 minutes south of Amman, whose ancient churches boast beautiful mosaics, including the oldest known map of the Middle East. We visited it as a day trip, though we spent about 5 times as much money trying to find the right bus station in Amman--getting scammed by taxi and serveece drivers all the way--as we spent on the actual bus fare (maybe $1.50 roundtrip).

Modern church building, but the right mosaic has a great picture of Pope John Paul II preaching at Mt. Nebo (where Moses saw the Holy Land and then died) a few years ago:














Part of the big, old map, showing the Holy Land:

Fragments of mosaics at the Archaelogical Museum in Madaba:

• Went to a Sufi zawiya (convent) a few nights ago for their twice-weekly hadra. You may have heard of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for their spinning, twisting rituals. Also known as the Mevlevis, they represent one particular tariqa (order) in Sufism, which is generally described as the mystical side of Islam. Well, the Sufis in Kharabsheh--which is filled with them--are adherents of a different order, the Shadhili tariqa. Their hadra, in which they practice dhikr, or remembrance of God, is characterized by men standing in a circle, following a rhythmic pattern of alternately bowing and leaning back. Now, as you know, believing in God and following a rhythm are two things I'm not especially good at. But I went along gamely, and as it was the first time as well for my roommate, Mohammed, who'd invited me to the hadra, I felt less out of place. It helped that I was, like everyone else, wearing a kufi, which I'd bought downtown for just a dinar. Besides, the Kharabsheh zawiya is an interesting, not exactly traditional place. For one thing, many of the dervishes are Americans or Westerners who've converted to Islam and have come to study and worship under the master of the zawiya, one Shaykh Nuh. For another thing, this Shaykh Nuh is also a convert. Known as Shakyh Nuh Hah Mim Keller (the last name of which is not exactly Arab or Muslim), he was born Roman Catholic but, after a lot of philosophical soul searching, gravitated toward Islam. His fascinating account of this conversion (long, and not a bit convincing, is here: http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/bmuslim.htm). In any case, I was amazed to travel so far from the United States and find a mix of Jordanian locals and expat Americans practicing dhikr!
• Oh, I suppose I'm taking classes as well. Those are actually quite good, although in the first few days, when the workload was light and the going slow, I wondered how much I'd benefit. Luckily, the pace has picked up, and we're on track, as far as I can tell, to finish the book. That would enable me to skip Harvard 3rd year Arabic and start 4th year or do colloquial language. I could go more in detail as to what exactly we're doing in class (passive conjugations of hollow verbs! discussions of Islamic revivalism in the context of antidemocratic Arab politics!) but I fear a lot of it would be lost on the audience. Suffice it to say that I'm ata'llum al-luga al-arabiya bi-shaklin jayiddin, wa sawfa atakalam bisur'a wa wadihan heena arja'a ila al-wilayat al-mutahada.
• I'm going to see WALL-E tonight! It's at the Mecca Mall. Don't judge.
• Food still good. Keep posted for updates.
• Went to Wild Jordan (modernist, organic food, US-funded cafe with great view of downtown Amman) couple of nights ago. Here's roommate Mohammed on the balcony, with the Temple of Hercules in the background:

That's all, folks!

Explorations

Well, classes start tomorrow, so I've been taking the opportunity to experience Amman in all of its contradictory aspects. I've also been hanging out with the folks at Qasid, who are a diverse and fun crowd. Nothing particularly sticks out as the crowning highlight of the past few days, but some things worth mentioning.

• Amman food is incredible. The shawarma I'm eating in the picture in my second post was, in retrospect, crap--it was somewhat dry, and the French fries that accompanied it were cold and made from old oil. By contrast, the (pricier) shawarma I had in a cafe in the Mukhtar mall--which, besides the cafe, had only Western restaurants--was amazing. It was chicken instead of lamb, and it had a delightfully creamy sauce as well. The French fries were fresh and tasty, if oversalted. Other delights included a shish tawook in downtown Amman on Wednesday--basically a chicken kebab with great seasoning accompanied by delicious herbed bread and tomatoes and onions. There was also the lamb kebab in the little restaurant in Ajloun that we stopped at after visiting Ajloun yesterday. I'm mostly eating falafel for dinner, though--a sandwich costs about $.50, max, and though I've been assured I'll tire of it, that moment has not yet come. There's a stand just two minutes walk from my apartment, and if you come at the right time they'll just have fried up a new batch.
• Qasid organized a trip to Ajloun yesterday, as I mentioned. It's an old castle built by Saladdin's nephew to defend the Muslims from the Crusaders. Perched high on a hilltop about an hour north of Amman, it has views, to the west, of the Jordan River and the west bank and, to the north, of Syria. The defenders of the fort could send smoke signals in all four directions, to Iraq, the Hejaz, Jerusalem, and Syria. Ajloun also has the distinction of never having been captured--either by the Crusaders or by the Mongols, who attacked it later. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died halfway through the visit, but I'll be sure to steal photos from my friends and roommates. In the meantime, though, some snapshots:

From the outside, a view:














Crossing the moat:



















An arrow slit inside:



















The outer stairway (beware of boiling oil!)



















Katie and John looking pensive:

• I have roommates! Mohammed came on Wednesday evening--he's from California, son of Iraqi parents but he grew up in Kuwait and the US. He graduated from college about 4 years or so ago and has been working in various Middle East-related jobs (I think) for that time. Yersen (or so I've transliterated his name) is a 19-year old student at university in Istanbul who's looking to pick up Arabic as a second language. He's studying business administration, and at Qasid he'll be starting on the Modern Standard track, but he's just beginning to learn the language.
• The Qasid administrators are wonderful people. Granted, I haven't spent much time with the teachers, but the folks who've been running our orientation--Osama, the director of the institute, Abdullah, the outreach director, and Faysal, the academic director--are incredibly kind and welcoming. Most are Western-born or educated, so they speak English as a native language. It also helps that some of them have come to Arabic as a second language, so they have experience learning it just like we did. I'm not sure if that's true for the instructors themselves, but I'll have to see. Faysal actually lives in my building, so I got a ride with him down to Qasid yesterday morning. Otherwise my walk is about 25 minutes--fine, but happily missed in the hot weather!
• Amman has a huge diversity of nightlife. Where I live, Kharabsheh, is a pretty quiet neighborhood, but just a taxi ride away is the balad, or downtown, where there's a very lively Arab street scene. I spent Tuesday night with Qasid people in a maqwa, or coffeehouse, drinking tea, playing chess, and indulging in a bit of sheesha (what Jordanians call hookah. Very weird). Wednesday night, we went to Abdoun, the posh western area, and spent hours at a hip, upscale cafe. Thursday night--back to the balad, but this time to a bar where we watched Spain eviscerate Russia 3-0 in the UEFA semifinals. They'll play Germany in the finals on Sunday night, and since I don't have class on Monday, we'll probably go down there and see it again. Tonight, however, I'm looking forward to spending some quiet time in Kharabsheh, where there's apparently a Sufi meditational walk at 10:00 every night. Of course, when classes start there won't be an opportunity for much of this going out, so I'm seizing this opportunity while I can.

That's about it for now...my next posts will be squeezed in around the time constraints of homework. The horror! The horror!

Baby steps

It's rather disorienting to be in a city the size of Amman with no concrete plan and nobody to visit. Not lonely per se, but I don't have things like homework or classmates to ground me in any concrete schedule. Even my flatmates have not yet arrived. As such, I've spent the past two days wandering about the city and seeing the sights.

"Sights," perhaps, is a bit of a stretch in Amman. To call the city historical would indeed be accurate, but it's also a completely 20th-century invention. Urban life in the Amman area dates back to the Neolithic era, around 8500. The current name, meanwhile, is derived from the ancient name of Rabbath Ammon, which appears in the Bible. Under the Greeks and later the Romans, it was called Philadelphia, and was part of the Decapolis--ten independent city-states allied with Rome. After the fall of the Islamic Ummayyad caliphate in the 8th century AD, however, when power in the Middle East shifted towards Baghdad, Amman became a backwater. It wasn't until the building of the Hejaz railway in the late 19th century that Amman, finally linked with Syria and the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, developed beyond a mere village. It was gradually settled over the next fifty years until Abdullah, the British-appointed Emir of Transjordan, chose it as the capital of his emirate.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that if you walk through the streets of Amman, you won't see anything that existed before 1900. The lone exceptions are the few Roman ruins that dot the city's downtown, and these are truly spectacular. Yesterday, I visited the Roman Theatre, a marvellous building set into the hillside of Downtown. The sight is amazing and not a bit jarring:



















Previous picture is looking from the top and center of the theatre. From the left side, looking out over East Amman:



















The stage and the remnants of the columns:














The Temple of Hercules on top of Jebel al-Qal'a, which I didn't visit but plan to:














Looking at the Theatre from Hashemi Street:














The guide at the Theatre was very insistent about giving me the full tour for a measly 5JD--something like $7, which is astronomical by Jordanian standards. Le! Le! Shukran! Shukran! Ma'a as-salaama! No, no, thank you, thank you! Go with peace! Finally he went away disappointed. I did accept a tiny cup of tea from the men outside, however, who ripped me off for a mere half-dinar. Of course, I had to drink it down in the hot sun before they'd let me into the theatre, but whatever.

Earlier in the day, I had spoken for about an hour with two policemen who accosted me on the street to chat. Murad, actually an army corporal, did most of the talking: he in accented English, me responding in halting Arabic. At the end of the conversation, he pronounced my command of Arabic "half-by-half", and suggested that I needed to "hold on to" (ie, memorize) more words. I readily agreed, and in the spirit of politeness assured him that his English was excellent.

We commisserated about the difficulty of learning each other's language. Murad, whose grammar was pretty good but who possessed a limited vocabulary, related the following difficulty he often encountered. He pointed to the space between his nose and his lips and said, "In English, what is this called?"
"Moustache," I said.
"Na'm," he said. "In Arabic, sharib." Then he mimed drinking from a cup.
"Drinking," I said.
Again, he agreed. "And in Arabic?" he asked, testing me.
"Yashrub," I translated.
"Na'm," he replied. "But in English, is it possible to 'moustache' the water?"
By this I was thoroughly confused. I hadn't known where Murad was going, but in asking whether it was possible to moustache water he seemed to prove himself either hopelessly incompetent in English, or else actually crazy.
"Like-like a milk moustache?" I asked, grasping at straws. For a man with this much of a limited grasp of my language, the thought that he might be familiar with such cultural nuances as the Hood advertising campaign was a unlikely possibility, but still worth a try.
"No, no...in Arabic, moustache and drink...they are the same..." he stammered.
Aha! "Yani...sharib mithla sharaba?" I asked. He happily confirmed my understanding.
In Arabic, a consonant-based language, both sharib--moustache--and yashrab--to drink--derive from the three-letter root sh-r-b. They are, to an Arab, essentially the same word. So Murad was understandably frustrated by the fact that in English, "moustache" and "drinking" bear no more resemblance to each other than "chicken" and, say, "parliamentary democracy."

Of course, my new "dear friend" Murad and I have exchanged numbers, and he earnestly promised that the next holiday he had he would invite me over for dinner. It was, all in all, a fascinating exchange.

Today I wandered around Sports City and Shmeisani, battling unfriendly ATMS, life-threatening taxis and and obnoxiously consistent 85 degrees of heat. Bought a fan for my AC-less apartment, bought an adapter for the laptop, as mine cracked on the second day of use as I tried to extricate it from the wall socket. Outside of downtown, Amman really is a very Western-seeming city, albeit with different architecture and a lot of funny-looking squiggles on the street signs. Tomorrow I take my placement test for Qasid; Tuesday we begin orientation, and classes start later in the week.

Until later...enjoy your summers!

On the ground!

I'm on the ground in Amman! Right now it's about 10PM Amman time, which for all those on eastern time must be about 3 in the afternoon. I had an overnight, 10-hour flight to Istanbul last night, and since we jumped ahead 7 hours we landed at 10:20 despite taking off around 5:30. Spent the day inside Ataturk Airport wishing I were outside Ataturk Airport, because of course I wanted to see all the famous mosques I've been studying about in Islamic Architecture. I arrived in Amman at 4:40, exactly on time and was pleased to find Bilal, the Qasid driver who took me on a pleasant half-hour drive north to Amman proper.

I write this now from the table in the front room of my second-floor Kharebsheh apartment, the only place currently where we have a DSL line in. (The second-floor is actually the third floor, since in the Middle East the ground floor is labelled zero). In any case, the apartment is quite lovely, with a nice sitting room:















and a decent kitchen:














and a comfortable bedroom:














and shawarma!














OK, the shawarma didn't exactly come with the place, but the doorman (or doorman's father, I couldn't quite figure it out) showed me where to buy it and helped me through my fumbling understanding of the Jordanian currency system. (There are $1.40 US to a Jordanian dinar (JD), but everyone just calls them "jaydee." What's tricky is that they're either broken into 100 fils or 1000 piastres, but nobody actually says the units, so you have to work it out for yourself). Luckily Abu Hussein--that's the doorman, or his father--directed me. He was quite surprised that I only wanted one shawarma, and I was equally surprised when, back at the apartment, I had actually gotten two. I also have half a dozen apples, some peaches, some pineapple juice, some inscrutable but delicious-looking baked goods and several gallons of water.

The call to prayer sounded just half an hour ago, which is incidentally close to the time that the call to bed sounded for me (Time changes! Airport sleeping! Not fun! I have nothing scheduled until Monday afternoon, so I look forward to several days of Amman sightseeing. Whatever that amounts to. Until then, may peace be with you all!

PS: It was 33 degrees Celsius in Amman at 4:30 today. My internal Celsius-to-Fahrenheit converter tells me that if you multiply by nine, divide by five, add thirty-two, multiply by your weight in kilograms, subtract the number of letters in your last name, switch the digits around and carry the two, that's...hot.

Gearing up

Hi all!
This is my first post on this new blog, and ideally I'll be updating throughout the summer. It's Sunday, so my departure date is just four days away. I can't exactly say I'm ready...I just got back from hiking for two weeks on the Long Trail in Vermont on Thursday, and I've been decompressing from that for the last few days. At the same time, I've got clothes and suitcases to buy, housing to finalize, roommates to contact, driving plans to JFK to finalize, guidebooks to purchase, etc. For sure, I'll be taking my camera and a big memory card, so look forward to pictures that, while perhaps not worthy of being immortalized in the arches of Adams House, should give you a sense of what I'm doing. I'd love to hear comments and feedback from any of you, which you can do using Blogspot's commenting feature.

That's about it for this posting, but look here next week for posts when I've gotten myself settled in Amman. I have ADSL at my Amman apartment and WIFI at Qasid, so I'll be fully wired. Until then...ma'a as-salaama!