Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Rainbow Street

I am tired and so full of potato pizza. Apparently potato pizza is a family or regional thing because my host mom says, "you'll never have this anywhere else." It was good, and I was fed way more than I needed to eat, but I'm getting used to that. Thank god I have motivation to workout because a) it means I get to shower whenever I want and b) I get to train for the Dead to Red marathon, which I really want to do.

Today was the Prophet's birthday, so no class. Instead, Brooke and I slept in, had breakfast, then went out to explore Rainbow Street. This particular section of Amman is downtown and consists mostly of restaurants, cafes, bars, and shops all aimed at foreigners. Most of them have menus in English, and it contained many of the only shops open on this particular holiday. We met up with Julia and headed to a cafe she'd passed the night before when going out for dinner. We found the place, called Old View Cafe, and went up three flights of stairs to the terrace and sat down to a fantastic view of old Amman. We could see all the hills around us, and miles out to the deserted hills just beyond the city. It was absolutely breathtaking. We ordered drinks (cafe latte, lemonade with mint - a huge hit here in Amman - and fresh, and I mean FRESH orange juice for myself) and sat just passed the time chatting. The great thing about eating out in Jordan is that no one is rushing you. Whenever I go out, we sit down, order our food or drinks, recieve our orders, and then don't see the waiter again until we flag him down for our check. None of this constant checking and rushing that you get in American restaurants. Everyone and everything here is generally very relaxed in regards to time, and just sitting around and hanging is not considered wasteful. It's very difficult to be stressed out, because nothing here is ever rushed.

After drinks, we headed out to meet up with Matthew and look for bookstores. I've been craving Margaret Atwood for a few days now, and it's been impossible to find anything by her in any of the bookstores. We stopped in three bookstores, in varying states of content - from a ramshackle, one room hodgepodge of literature to a fairly full-blown store - and couldn't find anything by her. Most of the books we found were of the self-help or religious variety (mostly Christian too, oddly enough) and the fiction was generally relegated to the realms of Jodi Picoult and Dan Brown. The last bookstore we stopped in was Books@Cafe, this wonderful little bookstore/cafe combo with the literature on the first floor and the trendiest little cafe on the top. Again, the cafe opened up to a beautiful view of the city, but the inside was modern furniture and art: low, high-backed lounge chairs and wrap around sofas, blue walls with pop-art murals, and funky chandeliers and lamps. All the people in there were trendy too: clean-cut guys in argyle sweaters and designer jeans, hipsters, and women with four inch heels, skinny jeans, and smart sweaters or chic tops. There were also very few hijab clad women among the crowd, but those who were wore them in an impeccably chic fashion. I'm assuming that most of the women wearing them in the cafe were wearing them due to social custom or familial obligation, rather than religiously; my professor has pointed out that very few women do wear it for religious reasons, and that most of them wear it to protect themselves from discrimination, which I now understand first-handedly.

Everyone in my program it seemed was spending time on Rainbow Street, so we sat and drank milkshakes with a few other students. The milkshakes were 3.5 JD (the orange juice earlier was 2.5) but it was well worth it considering that a) it was the first milk I've had since I've been here and b) it was incredibly delicious. After that, we headed back out and walked around until 5, when we grabbed a taxi at the 1st Circle and headed home.

I've finally started to get into a routine, and I'm really enjoying the way life is unfolding here in Amman. On Saturday, however, is our first group outing beyond the confines of Amman, and I've signed up to head out and explore the Eastern desert. It should be absolutely amazing, and I promise to take as many pictures as possible. Yellabye!

Beth

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