Intatibaa3 al-Awul (First Impressions)

After about 7 hours of waiting in airports, 10+ hours of flight time, and 3+ cups of rice pudding (yay AirFrance!), I am finally in Amman!! Truth be told, I was surprised by the ease of the trip--the first leg, from JFK to Paris, only took 6 hours, while the second leg was only a mere 4 hours. In terms of my fellow passengers, however, the two flights could not be more different. I had a lovely row-mate on the way to Paris, a young man named Chet en route to his sister's wedding in India. Originally from Sydney and now a Vice President of Management at Goldman Sachs in New York, he had a lot of interesting things to say about the current recession, the Middle Eastern Economy, and the life choices you make post-college graduation--all of interest to me! Moreover, he gave me his card and extended the help of the Goldman SOS system in case I ever got in trouble--gotta love the friendly fellow passengers. Upon boarding the flight to Amman, the shifting gender percentages (heavily in favor of males) was readily apparent--aside from the girls on our program, you could probably count the number of females on one hand, and they were split down the middle, a few older ones in headscarves, and a few more in more modern apparel. The men were fairly aggressive in their eye contact, but otherwise, paid us no attention. It was dark when we reached Jordan, and perhaps due to sporadic electricity, as well as my meager knowledge of Jordanian geography, the landscape, from above, appeared to be a series of swirling lights, with frequent gaps of total darkness. As soon as we hit the ground, the cell phone of a man started ringing in front of me, throwing out peals of Arabic pop music--I was in the Middle East!

Along the half hour bus ride from the airport to our hotel, my eyes were glued to the window, absorbing all the contradicting elements of the landscape. There were rocky bluffs, ample sand, along with seemingly out of place patches of snow. The cars on the road ran the gamut, from Mercedes SUVs to tiny, broken down pickup trucks with mysterious odds and ends poking out of their backsides. Once at the hotel, we were assigned to temporary rooms until we move in with our families on Friday--most amusing of the process was the elevator, which was TINY, could fit no more than one person and one suitcase, whose buttons had no direct correlation with whatever numbers they purported to represent. The dinner served, aside from some very tough chicken, was absolutely delicious--probably the best hummus I've ever tasted, as well as a few things I didn't recognize, but decided to try anyways. Our Academic Director seems very nice, and I've enjoyed using my Arabic--it seems like most of the kids on the program have taken fewer semesters than I have, so it's nice to be able to help people out with basic conversation, after typically being frustrated by my arabic studies back at Brandeis. Tomorrow, we begin our orientation, and hopefully I'll get a hold of a cell phone, some Jordanian dinars, and general know-how. Until then, Ma'a salaama!