Arrival

Besides an initial scare at the Salt Lake Airport when I thought perhaps I hadn’t actually bought a ticket, I arrived in Jordan safely and easily. My flight from Utah left at 11:15 in the morning on Monday, and I arrived in Madaba, Jordan at around 7:00 pm on Tuesday. Long journey!

On my first leg to Chicago, a big group of missionaries were on my flight, headed to Finland. One of them sat next to me and bless his heart, he tried so hard to talk to me and get to know me. I’m afraid I didn’t really help him out much, I was already so tired that I really didn’t feel like talking, but he was very kind. All of the missionaries were so excited and nervous and were doing their best to talk to every person that came close. I’m sure I must have been a lot like that when I was going to Argentina.

My second leg, the minute that I walked on the plane I already felt like I was in another country. All of the instructions were written and spoken in Arabic, sometimes with English underneath. All of the crew spoke Arabic unless you talked to them in English first. I sat next to a middle aged man and he did not seem interested in talking to me. He looked like he was from the Middle East though, so I mustered up the courage to ask him if he was from Jordan. He told me that he was from Iraq and he was on his way back there after visiting his son’s family in California. I asked what he did in Iraq and he warmed up to me pretty quickly, telling me all about his position as a professor at some prestigious university (I can’t remember which one) and about his family. I’m not sure what it is about older men, but I am able to become friends more quickly with them than with any other group. We talked about the differences in education between Iraq and the United States, he told me all about his family (even showing me way too many pictures of his grandson) and from then on, he shared all his snacks and jokes with me. Sometimes I struggled to understand his English, but it was a lot of fun. At the end of the flight, he told me I was welcome to visit that University at any time and he would give me great tours around campus and the city, I just had to ask for Eduard, since he was the only one there by that name. I probably won’t take him up on his offer any time soon, but I would have loved to. He said that all the Americans are always astonished at how beautiful it is there. So now Iraq is on my list of places to see!

After 12 hours flying from Chicago, we finally arrived in Amman. Wahoo! I couldn’t help but grin as I walked through the airport. I was in a new country, one completely different and foreign than anything I had experienced before! It was incredibly fast and easy to exchange money, buy a visa and get my stuff. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to find my way around, but all the signs had English on them. How handy! After I got my luggage, I went out to find my ride and there he was, front and center holding my name printed on a page. I went up to him and said hello, he nodded at me, took my bags and started walking. So I followed behind him. He didn’t ever look at me, or say a word. I guess he didn’t speak English. We got to the car, he put my stuff in the trunk and got in the driver’s seat. I got in the back because I had been told that as a woman I shouldn’t sit in the front, or something like that, so I hope I did the right thing by sitting in the back. And I really enjoyed it that way because then I was able to look out the window to my heart’s content without worrying about anything else.

I got my first look at the city! Jordan is a cool place. The airport is kind of removed it seemed like from most of the city in Amman, and at first we passed a lot of fields. I call them fields because I don’t know what the right word is for empty land that doesn’t have any grass or crops, just sand, but still fenced off. And there were bunches of sheep! With their shepherds! Almost every flock (herd?) of sheep had the shepherd out there with them. I wonder what they eat since they were almost always just in empty fields of dust.

I also could not figure out the traffic patterns. There were lines on the road, and arrows, but some of the time my driver was on the left side, some of the time he was on the right. Once he followed the direction of the arrows and another time he was going against them. Pretty amazing that no accidents happened.

When we got to Madaba, there were so many cars and people outside. There weren’t any traffic lights, just cars playing chicken it seemed like, to see who got to go first or wait. At one point, we passed this van full of young guys. One of them saw me and started pointing at me and shouting to the other guys in the car. The entire van of guys then started staring at me, some of them waving, some of them laughing, some just staring. I wanted to laugh and wave back, but I didn’t know if that would be considered appropriate. I feel like I need some more experience and hopefully someone that speaks English and can explain things to me before I make some mistakes. In the US, I always thought guys doing stuff like that was hilarious/dumb. I never really understood when people would get offended or angry at it. But I’m going to wait and see before I react. Although when we passed through a security gate at one point, the driver paid the guy at the gate and I smiled and waved before thinking about it. He just stared back at me with a slightly confused expression. Oops?

We got to the school, I gave the driver 20 JD and he said “OK, bye”. Maybe he did speak English after all…

I was shown to my room by a very helpful teenage boy, whose English was pretty good. I love it! Very comfy and nice, even comes with a TV! The city is pretty noisy, lots of traffic passing through, lots of people out on the streets, so I think it will take some time to get used to while trying to sleep. The school and church are fenced off. I met some other teachers briefly as well as some of the school and hotel staff, but I don’t remember any names. Too many people and I’m too tired.

But I’m here and I’m so excited about it! Although I did have some fleeting feelings of being overwhelmed and doubting my sanity. What the heck did I get myself into?? Why on earth would I leave a really great life behind to live here? I will struggle with those questions and feelings tomorrow though. So tired! So much to do before classes start on Thursday! And hopefully a lot of fun to be had as well!

My bedroom.

The bathroom. The shower gets everything wet. As of yet, no hot water :(

The view from my balcony. Lots of noisy cars.

The hotel is on the left, the Greek Orthodox chapel is on the right. There's a famous, beautiful mosaic on the floor of the chapel.