The Best day so far!

Thursday was seriously the best day I have had in Amman yet, and exactly what I hoped would happen when I came here.  Let me tell you about it so you realize just how awesome my life is right now!

  Thursday started off as a pretty boring day for me since I didn't have work and all I was doing was translating a survey from Arabic to English that we have to analyze and report upon soon.  I woke up late and did some of the Arabic translation as well as quite a bit of the reading I have to do for my International Development class.  At 4:00 PM we had a dinner planned with all of the interns so around 3:00 I jumped into the shower and guess what?  IT WAS WARM!!!  It was amazing, I had turned on the water heater about two hours before and I got a perfectly warm shower that was the perfect length and I didn't run out of water.  It was glorious and I knew right then that it was going to be a glorious day.

L To R: Brady, Austin, Jennae, Katie, Jensen, Me, Ben

  At around 4:00 o'clock when my last roommate got back from work we jumped in a taxi and asked him to take us to the Armenian Church near the city center.  Unfortunately he had absolutely no idea where he was going and took us a round about way to charge us more money.  In addition, he stopped in the middle of the drive at a coffee shop, without asking, and bought some coffee as well as a pepsi for one of the passengers.  It was a nice gesture but a little unexpected.  2.50 Dinar later we finally got out of the cab, called our facilitator and then got another taxi to take us to the right location.  We met our facilitator, Annie, on the road and then hiked up some massive hills to her home which was simply beautiful and in a nice quite part of Eastern Amman.  There we set to the project of making traditional Middle Eastern Food (Annie is half-palestinian and used to eat this stuff with her grandma all the time) consisting of stuffed Zuchinni and meat in Grape Leaves.  It was an awesome experience and once we were finished with that we ate the most delicious food ever out on the veranda over looking Amman and listening to the prayer call echo around the city from all the different mosques.  It was breathtaking and exactly what I imagined when I thought of coming to the Middle East.

The Breathtaking view from the Veranda

After dinner we ventured down to the city center where we were supposed to meet up with one of our new Arabic friends, Yahya, and have some drinks or something.  As we were waiting for him at the mosque a random man came up to us, welcomed us to Jordan and began talking to us excitedly.  He then told us he wanted to take us out for drinks but we told him we were waiting for a friend so he made us commit to seeing him the next day to which we agreed.  He then kept talking and said that he wanted us to come with him tonight, as well as our friends, and have some drinks so he could be hospitable.  When Yahya got there he introduced us to his friend Anis (haha, I laughed pretty hard when I first heard it to) and we all went to go get some drinks.  Ahmed led us to this dingy little cafe about the street called Rasheed that was full of Arabic men smoking hookah, drinking, laughing and playing a combination of chess, checkers, and cards.  We walked out to the veranda and there we talked for about 3 hours simply having fun, joking around and trying to get through our language differences so that we would be able to understand one another and have a good time.  At about 11 I convinced our hosts that we should move inside and they should teach us an Arabic card game which I thought would be extremely interesting.  We moved inside, cleared off a quite disgusting table and wafted the hookah smoke out the window and then.... they taught us Spades.  Oh well, it was still really fun to play cards with them and to get to know all of them better.  Just so you know, the guy that we had just met that day, Ahmed, paid for all of our drinks and stayed with us until midnight.  He then told us that we had to meet him the next day in the square and we would have some more fun with him.  It was amazing, but that is Arab hospitality.
  On a side note about Arab hospitality, they are extremely competitive.  They always need to look the most hospitable and are extremely protective, even paternal when it comes to their guest.  Although we have taken a taxi many times to Wisit Il-ballad, Yahya insisted on waiting with us to get the taxi, telling the taxi driver where to go and ensuring he turned on his meter just for us.  It was very interesting and an amazing night.  Like I said earlier, this exactly what I hoped would happen when I came to Jordan and it has been amazing!

Fun in the Hookah Bar
L to R: Austin, Ahmed, Yahya, Anis, Me

I'm two days behind on my blogs and it has been absolutely amazing, but hopefully I will be able to get them taken care of in the next few days insha'allah!  Again, I love to hear from you all and have a wonderful day.