Jordan: First Impressions

Yay! My first summer blog post!

Well, I’m sitting in a house in Jordan, listening to the call to prayer. It’s been a very hectic last couple of days, and I’m not through processing yet, but already there’s a lot to tell.

As they say, getting there’s half the fun, and I could write a blog post just about the day we spent flying from Austin to Atlanta to Paris to Amman. I traveled with another guy from Texas until Paris, where we met a bunch of the other people in our class who were on our flight. Long story short, I ended up going to bed at 2:00 Friday morning, Amman time, and then having an extremely hard time going to sleep due to jet lag and general anxiety. Long story short, it was a night full of tossing and turning and headache and sporadic homesick crying sprees, and I ended up getting about six hours of sleep between Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon, instead of my usual sixteen to twenty.

Once I finally decided to give up, get up, and pull myself together, though, the rest of the day was nice. We went down to the lobby at 9:00-ish, and then the AMIDEAST staff picked us up and took us to our host family homes. Instead of living in dorms or apartments, we go singly or in pairs to live with a family in Amman, to help us learn about the culture and language. I’m living in my host family home with another girl, Jordan, but she missed her flight in Chicago yesterday and isn’t supposed to be here until eight tonight, so right now it’s just me.

I was a little nervous about meeting the host family by myself, especially not speaking any Arabic, but luckily, they knew more about it than I did. Before I’d finished formulating, from my very sparse vocabulary, the phrase “where do I eat? In the kitchen? Not outside the kitchen/dining room?”, they began to show me over the house and explain the rules, in english, which saved everyone a lot of trouble (in case you’re wondering, you can’t eat outside the kitchen.)

The house is very nice; it’s an apartment, but it’s very nicely decorated. I’m bad at descriptions, so you’ll have to look at the pictures (my parents were awesome enough to give me a new, very nice camera especially for this trip). Our bedroom is not a bedroom at all, but a suite, with its own closet, bathroom, sitting room, and bedroom. And if that’s not enough, I’ve never lived in a house with a maid/cook before. It’s not America, of course; the hot water is limited, and you can’t flush the toilet paper, but there’s no getting around it; it’s a very nice house.

My host family, from what I can tell right now, is an older couple and their granddaughter. The granddaughter, who is nineteen, is serving as a translator right now; it’s very helpful when figuring out what to do, but kind of unhelpful when I try to use what little Arabic I have and get a shake of the head and an “in English, in English”. When they discovered I hadn’t had breakfast (I hadn’t eaten in a while, actually; planes have a way of killing my appetite, so I hadn’t had a real meal since Wednesday morning) they immediately showed me to the kitchen for pita, hummus, and falafel.

Overall, they seem very nice but also fairly reserved; they seem fairly content to lead their lives while I type here quietly in the back room, which at the moment is exactly how I like it. I feel like, if I was hosting someone, that’s about how I would be. Of course, it’s only the first day, but so far, I’m very happy with the arrangements. It looks like there will be plenty of time to study (and possibly nap), which is what I’m about to do now, but also time to practice my Arabic and partake in family life.

I haven’t seen that much of Jordan yet, but the people have all been friendly, from the passport control to the hotel manager, the weather is hot and very dry, and the culture is varied but definitely different from America’s. When in the airport we saw both women in tight jeans and t-shirts and women wearing full burkas. The week starts on Sunday; Friday and Saturday are the weekend. Driving around, the buildings all seemed compact, and most of them were made from the same beige substance, probably sandstone. There are trees, and there is English; we passed a Pizza Hut and a KFC on the way to the hotel last night. The hotel was nice, too, but it’s the first building I’ve been in in a long time where you could smoke in the lobby.

I don’t have Wifi at my host home, so it will be tomorrow morning, at orientation for AMIDEAST, when I’m able to post this. I’m sure other things will have happened by then, but I’ll save them for my next post. This isn’t this week’s post; this is just an initial piece. I should be posting around Tuesday for the next eight weeks, so look out for those!

Anyway, since my roommate’s coming tonight, I won’t be able to sleep then, so I should probably try to nap now. Best wishes from Jordan!

PS - The first three of these are the hotel room the night before last; the next three are my current living arrangements; the other girl is my roommate; the last few are from our drive through Amman.