Ahlan wa sahlan Amman!

I wrote this on Sunday--our second day here. My blog wasn't working so I couldn't post it until today.

Here we are in Amman, Jordan. Why are we here, you ask? I will be working with the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative program with the University of Jordan. I’ll write more about the details of my work here later. I am extremely grateful to the ABA for giving me this opportunity, and I am looking forward to our three months in the Middle East.

We arrived in Amman late on Saturday night. As we flew in over Tel Aviv, it dawned on me how far we have traveled, literally and figuratively, since we left our home in Texas last summer. I never in my wildest imagination could have anticipated what a wild and fabulous adventure this year would be.

Our apartment is wonderful and roomy (just like our apartment in Germany was). It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a large kitchen, a dining room and a living room. It is fully furnished.

Here, the weekend falls on Friday and Saturday, so Sunday is a workday. I was excited to be able to go into the office this morning and meet my new colleagues. My apartment is within walking distance of the ABA office, so—like in Germany—I will be able to walk to work.

We live in the area where the foreign embassies are located. Therefore, my walk to work takes me past several embassies, each of which has a heavily armed guard protecting its gate. I’m not sure if the big guns make me feel safer or less safe, but they most certainly make my walk to work unique. In addition to the guns, there are dozens of stray cats that greet me on my walk to work.

Last night we got in late and, although we each had one bottle of water with us, we did not have dinner before we got to our apartment. It took us a couple of hours to figure out where we could get food, and finally we found a website promising that KFC delivers until midnight. So, at about 11:30 p.m. we were eating KFC. Our first priority today was to get food, water, and other supplies.

One of my ABA colleagues took us to Safeway Supermarket—our first supermarket in six months! There, we experienced severe culture shock—but in a good way. So many choices! In Germany, the grocery stores we went to were very small, and most of the time we shopped in specialty shops, such as a bakery for bread, a butchery for meat, a farmer’s market for fruits and vegetables, etc. There were a few product choices, but nothing like what we were used to in the U.S. (Of course, there were large supermarkets in Germany, but we didn't go to them because we didn't have a car.) But, today, we went to a gigantic supermarket and were bombarded with 50 kinds of cereal, 80 kinds of shampoo, and anything else we could think of wanting—just like back home in the U.S.A. It was a two-story store with food downstairs and an entire department store upstairs. “American” products were plentiful.

We got back to our apartment and tried to figure out the stove, which we could not get turned on previously. After a near disaster with a defective gas tank, we learned there was something wrong with the stove. This led to an eventful afternoon, including our discovery that our apartment comes with a “helper,” who is a delightful guy who will do for us anything we ask—run errands, take us places, call taxis for us, pick things up for us, etc.

But here was the highlight of the day for me: as we were standing on the steps out in front of our apartment building, waiting for a taxi to pick us up, I heard the most amazing sound I have ever heard. It was the call to prayer. This was the first time I had heard it because our apartment overlooks the back of the building, away from the mosques, and so it is hard to hear the “adhan” from inside our apartment or on our balcony. Of course, I have heard audio recordings of this before, but that was nothing like standing there and hearing it in person. It was amazing and I’ll never forget it. I know I will hear it many, many more times while I’m here, but I hope I never get so used to it that I don’t stop and take it in.

So, my initial thoughts: In many ways, Amman is much more like the United States than is any city we visited in Germany. The climate reminds me of Southern California—warm days, cool nights—and even the architecture is similar. Also, there are many more English channels on TV and “American” products in the grocery store than we found in Germany. But, in other ways, of course, Amman is very different from the United States. There are sights and sounds that we could only hear on this side of the globe. There is history here far more ancient even than what we saw in Germany. There are hundreds of satellite dishes dotting the flat roofs of the houses and dominating the skyline. The Arabic subtitles on the English TV shows and Arabic logos alongside the familiar logos of the American food products are a distinct reminder that we are far, far from both Texas and Bavaria!