Travels in the Levant

Today we had a tour of the University of Jordan and a brief oreintation. The University is very large with a student body of 25,000, but the campus is much smaller than UNC’s. The greenery on campus is very beautiful after the lack of plants or color in Amman, which has been called the White City, because everything is either made of limestone or the color of limestone. There are palm trees and fir-like trees to provide shade from the always bright sun.
We ate lunch in the faculty’s cafeteria where we ate a typical 3-course Jordanian meal. The first course is composed of pita bread dipped in various dips and salads, such as hummus, cucumber salad, fuul, and dill salad. The second course rice and shwarma (like a gyro) with vegetables. Dessert was a palestinian pastry made of sour cheese, honey, and sugar. I bravely drank 2 glasses of tap water at lunch and so I’ll soon find out just how much bacteria is in the water. Eating vegetarian has proven to be far from difficult, as the appetizers are very filling and are always vegetarian.
We were proudly shown the dated and rather shabby library and then shown the computer lab, apparently the largest at any universtiy in the world. Later, we met our Jordanian language partners in the new Language Center, by far the nicest building on campus (we will have our classes there.) My partner is named Yasmeen and she is majoring in the English and German, but has also studied Spanish and Italian. She has 8 brothers and sisters and lives with her family in Amman, who left Palestine in 1948. Yasmeen was very friendly and we will meet again after UJ’s exams finish in a few weeks. Here is a picture of Yasmin and I during our reception.

I woke up Sunday morning to the call of the muezzin at 3:30am. It was still pitch black outside and the street was quiet but the pre-recording call to prayer still blasted from the mosque’s speakers loud enough for everyone around to hear. First there is the call to wake up; 15 minutes later there is the call that prayer is about to start; and then there is another call to let latecomers know they should hurry up. The locals say that one learns to tune out the call (if you don’t want to pray) after a few days. This call to prayer is repeated 5 times every day for the faithful to pray. They may pray at home or in a mosque, although the mosque is the prefered place for men to pray (women, apparently, should pray at home.) Later that morning we went to the King Hussein Mosque, the Crystal Cathedral of Jordan. This is where almost all prayers are broadcast from and it is kept in perfect condition.

Women must cover themselves completely before entering the mosque and so we were given black gowns, almost like graduation gowns but with hoods. We were told to completely cover our hair.

I passed another mosque downtown but Dr. Curtis told me that women are not allowed in that mosque, as is the case any many Jordanian mosques. Apperently women pray at shrines instead.

This is a view of Amman from downtown. The roman ruins are just at the top.

This is a picture of the ruins, this is the temple of Hercules.

The flight from Raleigh to New York last night was bumpy because of the wet weather and because of our tiny plane. Shortly before takeoff the flight attendant announced that the plane was overweight and that people needed to put more of their belongings underneath their seats. Otherwise the flight was uneventful.
Everyone met up at JFK after traversing the cavernous terminals of the airport. Many of us were on the Raleigh flight and arrived in Terminal 7. We took the AirTran to Terminal 3, although only after taking first towards the New York subway. Once we got off the AirTran we followed the signs across what appeared to be a small freeway. Cars were exiting from the freeway at the exact spot where we wanted to cross and so we were forced to dodge oncoming cars. We proceeded along a narrow, tilted sidewalk in a dark ally until finally we emerged near Terminal 3. We waited for several hours in a dank waiting room filled with sweaty, irritated Jordanian families until final we boarded the plane. The flight was long (11 hours) but I still managed to sleep through The Pacifier, a movie I was disappointed to have missed. Before Jordan, we flew over Palestine and a little bit of Israel. From the plane, Jordan seemed to be very sparsely populated with very few buildings in evidence. The ground was entirely the color of sand and there were no trees or any other greenery except for a few olive groves. The trees were planted in perfectly slanted rows for irrigation. We didn’t see Amman from the plane but rather dessert and sand. Here’s a picture of the plane.

The airport was small and crowded. A number of men puffed cigarettes next to a large, red sign, which read “No Smoking.” Outside the airport several men from the University of Jordan met us with a huge bus obviously at least 25 years old. Although there were only 16 of us, the bus could have seated 2 or 3 times that many. The bus had no air conditioning so we pried open the windows and tied the vomit-green curtains in knots to keep them pulled back. We drove about 25 minutes into Amman until we finally arrived the Al-Amera.
We were informed by the hotel manager that a number of the rooms were being re-done and that most of us would have to share bedrooms until the other rooms were finished “very soon.” I get the feeling that “soon” may really mean never and so have resigned myself to sharing my very small bedroom with another girl. Maalesh – it is in God’s hands. Otherwise the rooms aren’t too bad, we have a very modern fridge and gas rings to cook on. The bathroom, however, is simply a room with a toilet and a sink and a hose on the wall to shower in. Another foreigner at the hotel informed us that the hot water is intermittent, an apparently typical occurrence.
Since the rooms didn’t have towels as we had thought they would, everyone set out to find towels. I bought a slightly worn looking pink bath sheet for 5JD, around $7. We walked through a large enclosed market and until we found a restaurant that would serve so many (14 students, the professor and his wife, and 3 men from UJ.) We ate hummus, cucumber salad, falafel, ful (fava bean dip), something with eggplant, and pitas. It was delicious, cheap, and completely vegetarian.
Several of us decided that necessities such as toilet paper and hand soap could not wait and so we took a taxi to the nearby Safeway where I bought hangers, toilet paper, pitas, gum, bottled water, tea, and sugar for less than $5. The UJ people turned up as we were getting ready to leave, apparently not trusting our Arabic or common sense enough to get back the hotel. They had a van with them and so we all piled with 4 in the back seat, 3 in the front, and about 8 in the trunk, along with about 20 bags of groceries. Here’s a picture of the back of the van.

Here’s a map of all the countries where I’ve been (including Jordan). The countries are the US, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Hungry, Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, and Jordan.

create your own visited country map
or check our Costa Rica travel guide

Well, only 9 days until I leave. I went shopping today for tampons, deoderant, and other things that are supposedly scarce in Jordan. I can’t imagine what Jordanian women do when they go swimming…
Here is a picture of where we will be staying in Amman.

This is the view from the window of the Al-Amera; the University of Jordan is directly across the street.

This is what the rooms look like inside.