Posted in Tuesday Travel
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The most logical starting point for "Tuesday Travels" is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It was the first trip I ever took outside the good ole U.S. of A. Back in college in the 1987-88 school year, I was selected for a year-long humanitarian mission working with handicapped children in some very special schools in Amman run under the auspices of the royal family. But you don't want to hear all about that; you want to hear what Jordan was like! If you are like me (and keep in mind that this was the very first time I'd ever left the country and it was for a solid year), you picture Jordan as a land of sifting sands with a few Bedouin tents dotting the smooth, flat landscape. You would probably guess that it is hot all the time, and that it rarely rains. After a mere couple of weeks of exploring the country, I was actually more than ready to come home. And at the tender age of 22, a year seems like an AWFULLY long time. But I had committed, had no return ticket, and somehow muddled through. And I've always been so glad that I did. The food was wonderful. Shwarmas and Falafels were cheap and could be purchased right off the street. I didn't miss a thing in that department, although I will confess we occasionally visited the Pizza Hut and the Cincinnati Chili House. And when we wanted to be Americans for a short time, we would go dancing at the Marriott. The Jordanian people were wonderful. Hospitality defines Jordanian people. It is not unusual to be walking down the street and be invited in to a complete stranger's home for tea ("shy" -- yummy concoction about half sugar and half tea) or for a shopkeeper to offer you some Turkish coffee. You coffee aficionados will appreciate that, upon stepping out the door of our apartment, you would have been daily knocked over by the oh-so-satisfying scent of freshly ground coffee wafting up the street, mingled strongly with cardomom. To this day, when I smell cardomom, I am transported to that stoop! There's a rule of etiquette for those visiting Jordanian homes that says one shouldn't admire the belongings of another -- because the other will be required by his sensibilities to give you the object of your compliment. Likewise, it is rude not to take or eat what they offer you; so we ate lots of things that we really didn't want and I do recall that my best friend Joanna became very resourceful at disposing of unwanted food: no house pet or potted plant was safe from her stealthy deposits. Shopping was fabulous. There are no fixed prices except in the grocery store. The price of everything else is open to debate; even taxis! I must say, I came to LOVE that. The shopkeepers think you're a complete idiot if you don't counteroffer about half of whatever price they state -- then settle on some price that's somewhere under halfway between half and their original asking price, although you can do better than that if you're buying multiples and if you are willing to walk out of the store a time or two. Everyone leaves a transaction happy that way. I have lots and lots of gold from Amman. There were many, many palacial dwellings -- all made of heavy concrete or blocks and built in metal blackout shutters. The richest folk had gorgeous wooden doors (and there were LOTS of rich folks there). Wood is so rare in that area that it is truly a luxury. You'd see lots of manicured, watered lawns; many with swimming pools. The homes of all the important people were guarded [badly] by uniformed military men with machine guns. We lived in an apartment on the bottom floor of the home of the [then] first minister to the court of the king and there were always guards on the front gate of his home. I found that unnerving the first night we arrived, combined with the firecrackers used in a wedding celebration going on down the street. There aren't a lot of machine guns in Six Mile, where I come from. Ironically, we learned later that there were never guards on our side gate, so we knew it was just for show. One of our landlord's guards actually shot his own toe while we were there -- he fell asleep! There were lots of poorer homes, too, of course. They look a lot like concrete boxes. And honestly, the cityscape looked very sloppy because the builders always left a ton of exposed rebar on the roofs of houses. Turned out there was a tax on finished houses that could be avoided if you claimed it was unfinished and rebar must have been the evidence. And truly, real estate is so pricey in Amman that most families just built UP another story when their kids got married so they'd have an affordable place to live. This is the year I caught my Wanderlust bug. During winter break, we had a 2 week trip to Egypt and at another time, several of us traveled to Syria. At the end of the school year, I went on an educational tour of Israel for 3 weeks (which took some doing back then, since Jordan and Israel weren't on speaking terms). More on those places in other blogs. We were always very happy and relieved to return to the relative safety, comfort and cleanliness of Jordan after our jaunts to other lands. I highly recommend a visit to Jordan. While I haven't taken my children there yet, I have traveled with lots of folks who did have them and Jordanians love children very much. It definitely will go on my list of cool places to take kids. |
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