Wedding Crashers

So much has happened since my last post. The reason I haven't been able to write is because the computer lab we use at the University of Jordan was closed for finals and everytime I went to the Internet Cafe I ended up talking to the people who work there instead.

On Monday, Anwar, the guy who owns the internet cafe took us shoping in a part of town called Jebal Hussien. It's funny because there are tons of shops right next to each other practically selling the exact same stuff. The younger men here all dress like Germans...tight wrinkled and shreaded jeans, and tight shirts. By the time I come home I'll have a very unique wardrobe of euro-trash looking clothes. I actually kind of like the style though. After that we ate at a little hole in the wall shwarma place. This place it turns out is very famous because the king eats there all the time. After that, Anwar took us to the fanciest Starbucks I've ever seen. We sat there and talked for almost three hours. This concept of just sitting around and talking for hours is defenetly not and American thing. I'm starting to get used to it though. There are all sorts of games you can play to get the conversation going. For example, you ask the question, "imagine you all of the sudden woke up and found yourself in a room without doors or windows. How would you feel?" Then everyone would go around and say what they feel about this. After that, the person who asked the question says, "the way you feel in this situation is the way you feel about death". There are tons of these.

On tuesday, we went to a restaurant in the old part of Amman called "Matam Hashim". This restuarant consists of a dirty allyway with plastic chairs and tables set up in wierd places, and you walk past the guys making the food to get in. They have three things on the menu Humus, Falafal, and Fool (an Arabic style of refried beans). This was probably the best food I've had yet in Jordan. The Falafal was huge, almost the size of an orange and made with some kind of curry. When we went to pay, they only charged us 1JD ($1.40) a person for a meal that would have cost you maybe $6 a person back in the U.S. After dinner we walked into a bootleg DVD shop next store to look around. We were stunned to find a bootleg copy of "Mobsters and Mormons" there...in fact there were even multiple copies. While we were downtown, I got a call from one of my old roomates from the Arabic house who is also in Jordan with the same program telling me that she and the other Arabic House people were going to a wedding party for Sarah, the Jordanian girl who lived in the Arabic house. I had to decline because I was to far away and wouldn't have made it. Apparently this party was for family only, but Sarah had called her that night and invited us. Remember this little bit of information becuase it will play an importnat part on the events of Thurdsday evening.

On Wednesday we went to go see the new Indiana Jones movie with Anwar, his nephew Muntaser, and the Iraqi girl who works at the Internet Cafe Zeyna because it was her birthday. The movie was a total cinematic catastrophe, one of the worst I have seen in some time. But it was enjoyable because it was so horrible. After the movie we went to Starbucks again and spent another three hours playing these "how you feel when..." games.

So on Thursday, Sarah, the Jordanian girl who lived at the Arabic house at BYU was getting married. She is Greek Orthodox, so we went to the ceremnoy at a huge Greek Orthodox church here in Amman. The ceremnoy was really interesting as there was a whole ritual of chanting and reading scriptures before they said "I do". The place was packed too. We heard that hundereds of people were going to be there so we got there early and got seats towards the front. This turned out to be a bad idea for me though because I was blocking the view due to my height for people behind us during the parts of the ceremnoy where everyone would stand up. Afer the cermenoy there was a huge reciveing line outside the church. It was interesting to walk through it because all the people besdies Sarah and her parents didn't know what to do when I came by. Most of them just smiled at me. After this we got in a couple of Taxis and went to the Royal Hotel. This is where the sketchy stuff started. According to one of the girls in our group, we had been invited to a reception afterwards at the Royal Hotel, the nicest hotel in Jordan. When we showed up, there was nobody there, so we wlaked around for an hour and than went and sat in the ballroom. When we arrived, we were welcomed by the family but there was still hardly anyone there. There were tables set up and a dance floor. We sat down and pretty much ate all of the orderves. Still, not too many people. Around 10 o'clock a beduien band started playing outside in the hall and everyone got up and walked outside clapping to the music. People started coming out of nowhere. The place was packed. They all gathered around the elevators and sang and danced for thirty minutes until the bride and groom came down in the elevator. It took another 30 minutes for them to walk from the elevator to the ballroom (about a 20 foot distance) as everyone kept dancing and singing around them. We stuck out a lot. I kept getting some wierd stares and thought it was just because we looked different. We went back into the ballroom and watched a slideshow. At this point, the head waitor came to our table and started saying stuff about how there weren't enough chairs for the family. Apparently we had gone to the wrong party as it was for family only. The other party that we thought was for family only was the one we were supposed to go to. Talk about Awkward. Fortunatly, the bride and groom were still outside and were about to walk in so everyone was at the doors waiting, so hardly anyone saw us walk out the side door. We're still unsure what happened, but the girl insists we were invited. I felt really bad because we ate a lot of food before we were asked to leave.

Yesterday, I went to King Hussein's car museum. It turns out that king Hussein was an avid speed racing driver. That afternoon I moved in with my host family. They're fantastic. I already feel at home there and have felt much better since leaving the depressing hotel. The Dad is a translator, the mom is a stay at home mom but also an artist, the oldest son is a banker, the next son is a music student, and youngest is a girl in 9th grade. They're Muslim, but the mom and sister don't wear the headscarve except during prayer. I think I'm going to enjoy the next three months there. The family's relatives are also hosting students from our program so it will work out well.

As of yesterday, I've been on this program for a month. The time seems like it has gone by pretty quikly, but it seems like forever ago that I left Utah.