Amman, Jordan

Hi all!

I've been MIA from blog posting, but I have a good excuse--we've been on vacation!  And a much-needed vacation at that.  Rather than post a massive novel about our entire trip, I'll break it up into sections.  Today:  Amman!

Three days before Christmas, Jordan and I flew from Kuwait City to Amman, Jordan.  It was a bit colder than we're used to, but we'd been warned!  That said, the run-down hotel we stayed at the first night provided little in the way of insulation and we about froze our butts off.  We decided to sleep in our sleeping bags to both avoid the cold and the questionably-clean sheets and blankets that donned the bed.  Lesson learned:  you get what you pay for!

We survived the night (though Jordan's immune system, which had been desperately working overtime until the day we left, decided it would go on vacation as well and we traded a cold back and forth for the remainder of the trip with Jordan bearing the brunt of it) and spent the day walking around the historic neighborhoods of Amman.  As Jordan was part of the Roman empire, there are lots of neat ruins around the city including an amazing Roman theater and a citadel overlooking the city.  There was a cool museum on the same site as the theater and Jordan enjoyed snapping photos as he played around with the settings on our new camera.  Here are a few from the day..

View from the hotel window

Roman theater

Handsome Hubby

This used to be a place where they kept lions and other animals that they used in the theater--there are metal rings and hitching posts still in the wall

Beautiful tile mosaic from Jerash--we got to see some of this first hand on a different day!

Citadel

Hand of Hercules

Amman

After touring the Citadel, we walked back down the hill to the city, noting the amazing graffiti on the way down.  We had a late lunch at a tiny, hole-in-the-wall Iraqi cafe (literally, I think it was called "Iraqi Restaurant").  The place had about 6 tables and all of them were full.  We were ushered in as we contemplated our options outside and seated at the end of a 6-person table already occupied by two other men.  Heads turned as we sat down and one of the men sitting next to me welcomed us.  He asked us what we wanted to eat--Jordan attempted to convey that I was a vegetarian, but we gave up quickly and asked for whatever the two men at our table were eating.  The man yelled off our order in Arabic to the man cooking in the kitchen and introduced himself--Fadi from Palestine.  He said he had lived in Amman for 10 years and was working as a lawyer (I've noticed in the Middle East that lawyers are called "advocates"--interesting!).  He then asked us where we were from.  Now, my dad would have liked us to answer questions like this with "Canada" (he's advised us to affix a Canadian flag to our backpacks in order to self-identify without even having to speak) and I certainly understand his concern.  Post 9/11 and especially during the Bush era, Americans were not universally loved around the world.  When I was living abroad in 2005, the Iraq war--an especially unpopular conflict abroad--was entering its second year and I received a lot of contempt when I self-identified as American while traveling in England and Europe.  On one notable occasion, my friend Ida, her brother Neil and I were traveling by train from France to Italy.  We were stopped at the border and armed border patrol agents entered our train car and checked passports.  One dark-complexioned man seated in front of us was escorted off the train after an altercation and it was clear that these men meant business.  It's important to note that a few weeks prior to our visit, an Italian intelligence officer was killed at an American checkpoint in Iraq and consequently, relations between Italy and the US were strained (1). That said, when the officers came to our group and saw our passports, they sneered at us.  "Americans," they scoffed, as they begrudgingly stamped our pages.  I remember this well as a time when I felt uncomfortable being outed as an American abroad--not unsafe, necessarily, but certainly not appreciated.  And we all know the stereotypes--American tourists are, we believe, disliked by those abroad.  We're seen as boorish.  As fat and uncultured.  That said, through our travels and our refusal to identify as anything other than Americans (particularly during the Bush years), Jordan and I have had many people say to us, "I didn't know there were Americans like you."  Which is, I guess, to say that we don't fit the stereotype.  But isn't that the point of meeting people?  Of traveling in general?  To find out for oneself what the truth is of a particular place?  I like to think so.  I recently came across a quote from Fred Rogers that I think suits this topic nicely:  "If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person" (2).  Isn't that so lovely?

So--back to the Iraqi cafe.  Jordan and I self-identify.  We don't lie--we say we're Americans, even though we now know that the man we're speaking to is Palestinian.  Which, I must say, is awkward.  This man is a refugee from an area that has been largely shaped by US policy.  In fact, in Jordan alone there are nearly 2,000,000 Palestinian refugees residing with nearly 400,000 of them living in UN sanctioned camps in the North of Jordan (3).  Clearly, this is a sensitive issue of enormous consequence to those living in the Middle East, particularly Jordan which shares a border with Israel and the West Bank.  I will say that Fadi's reaction to our being American was decidedly lukewarm, though nothing more than an utterance of "oh" resulted from it.  When the Iraq cook found out we were American, he too seemed less-than-enthused though he quickly recovered as we thankfully dug into our meal and complimented him as best we could through overly-animated gestures and thumbs-up.  He gave us an additional plate of juicy meat which Jordan happily accepted, and later gave us some bottled water to go.  The experience was humbling--no one was rude to us and certainly no one was hostile towards us.  That said, Jordan and I feel its important to self-identify as Americans, ESPECIALLY in the Middle East.  We're here to learn about this place--to meet people who live here, to hear their stories and to share our own.  This is the joy of traveling and the way that bridges are built.  I don't flatter to think that we're making some sort of huge, global impact by traveling but I do hope that through conversations, that those we meet may feel differently about America or Americans the same way that my views have been positively challenged through my time living in the Middle East.  And, I might add, we are a LOT more popular abroad with Obama as our president.  For this fact alone, I am thankful for his re-election.

Here are a few more pics from the remainder of our afternoon in Amman:

 Tomorrow--Jerash!