Sana Hilwa Ya Gamiil (Happy Birthday)

My days in Jordan keep ticking away.

Last Thursday was my host brother Rami's birthday. To celebrate we went to our relatives house where the whole extended family usually congregates. There house is really interesting because it is a huge apartment building where they have an apartment downstairs, but then they have a huge penthouse on the roof with a kitchen, living room, and giant patio with a great view of West Amman. The extended family is also hosting four other students so they were there also. It started out as just a bunch of people sitting around, but then someone turned on the Arab Techno CD and the younger members of the family started dancing. It was an interesting cultural experience to see how an extended Palestinian family works.

On Friday I went to church. After church I was supposed to go hang out with Anwar and the guys, but I wasn't sure how it was going to fit into my schedule. Me and Nikki ended up going to the internet cafe straight after church. The taxi driver tried to rip us off by telling us that the meter was slow so we really owed him twice as much money for the fare. When we showed up, Anwar said "today we have a special trip planned. We're going to Madaba and then the Dead Sea "Panorma". So we drove to Madaba ate at a really expensive restuarnat, and then drove for another 45 minutes through the Jordanian hinter lands to building perched on some cliffs overlooking the dead sea. It was amazing. The weather jumped from the nice 70 degrees in Amman to 90 something. At that point we were closer to Jerusalem than Amman.

When I got back from our little day excursion, I went with my host brothers to pick up our host sister at their aunts house. This what I thought was going to be a 15 minute trip turned into an hour and a half visit to their aunts. We ended up watching a really popular Turkish soap opera called Noor and eating a second dinner. All the weight I lost last winter from mono is going to come back after living with a Jordanian family for a few months. There is always so much food and it is rude not to finish everything on your plate. I'm also really worried about my sugar intake. I don't have very many opportunities to walk or exercise that much here and everything is coated in sugar or high in carbs.

Saturday morning I got a phone call from Ryan telling me that him and Shea were going to go to the ancient Roman city of Jerash in an hour. I needed to take my passport so I started looking all over for it, but it wasn't there. I practically tore my room apart and researched my bags over and over again, but still no passport. Then I decided to look through my shoulder bag one more time and found my passport, debit card, and emergency 50JD bill tucked into a secret pocket behind another secret pocket that I'd forgotten about. We were thus late. So my roommate Seth and I went over to "C-Town", a Wal-Mart type super-store, to wait for them and the five other people who would be going with us. I also went there to register my phone number with the phone company because there is a new law here in Jordan that everyone's phone line must be registered under somebody's name. They say this is to aid the police in cracking down on harassing calls, but it is also probably a measure to help track terrorism. But only two other people were there. I think we ended up waiting at C-town for an hour and a half, by which time we didn't feel like going to Jerash anymore because it was hotter than usual that day. By the time Ryan and Shea finally showed up (they got caught trying to work through poor customer relations at Mecca Mall's phone number registration outlet)they still wanted to go. We ended up going and taking a really sketchy minibus than couldn't go any faster than 50 miles an hour. When we got there, me and the four other people with University of Jordan resident cards got in for 50 fils (75 cents), while the two girls who hadn't gotten their cards yet payed 8JD ($14). The city was pretty cool, but the heat was a major downer. At one place, a bunch of Bedouin guys came out and started playing bagpipes. We were really surprised when they started playing the melody to "Praise to the Man who communed with Jehovah", apparently it is a Scottish folk song. We stood aways and took pictures, and then left really quickly so that they wouldn't ask for "bashiish" (tips). We somehow found a bus back home, but the bus was more expensive because the way back was mostly uphill. When we got back to Amman we went to the infamous Matam Hashem where the waiter spilled olive oil on me. That night we went back to our host Aunt's house and ate more of the left over cake from the birthday party and watched another episode from the Turkish soap opera "noor".

On Monday we went to the police office to register our Visas. Last time I was in Jordan, we didn't do this, and were prohibited from leaving the country until we paid 40JD. At the police station, we went into a room and the guy took our passports, stamped them, asked for our address and phone number, and then wrote something in it. What he wrote is our Visa number. Today, we were informed that we need to give our Visa numbers to our program director, but when I looked inside, I could hardly decifer it. I asked an Arab guy to read it and he said that one of the numbers could be a 4 or a 6. That is just how stuff here works.