Favorite Places

All right, this is more just to occupy my brain than anything. Also, sometimes I just have these moments when I'm scared I'm going to forget something, and I feel the need to write it down somewhere. So here it is, at least for these two moments.

This is the plaza outside of the Husseini Mosque in downtown Amman. It's always hustling and bustling, especially around the end of Friday prayers, when this was taken. There are people hawking fruit, and people shopping, and people leaving the mosque itself. It's one of those places that just standing there makes your head spin from so much excitement and people everywhere. From where I was taking this picture, to my left there is a small bookshop and an alleyway that acts as a fruit market, right next to the mosque. Behind me, about a block away, is the Roman ampitheater, a well known attraction in Amman. And to my right would be all the shops and side roads of downtown. And above would be the minaret of the mosque, lit up with the green lights of every minaret in the city. I love this place so much, it makes me happy just to think about it.

This is my host family's farm outside of Amman, near Al-Salt. First of all, it was the first time in several weeks that I had left Amman, and so I was really happy just to be in a more wide open space, and to be able to see something new. It was actually really spur of the moment. I was awake on a Saturday before my  immediate host family woke up, so I wandered upstairs to see if anyone else was awake, and my two uncles and my cousin were getting ready to go out to the farm for the morning. They knew that we had a farm in the states, and asked if I wanted to come with, as long as I could be ready in ten minutes. Knowing me, I was dressed and ready in five minutes flat, and we headed out to the farm. 

There were plenty of stories from that morning, like when we drove to the neighbors' house to borrow a barrel to use for water, and in true Jordanian style, they invited us in for tea, and we stopped and hung out at this woman's house for half an hour or so. There were a bunch of little kids running around, and they kept staring at me. While I was used to staring by this point in the trip, this was different. I joked about it, asking what they were looking at. They said they'd never met anyone who spoke English before. That really hit me, just because while I understand that English is not as widely spoken as some tour books try to make it sound, and most people don't speak English, almost everyone in Amman has heard it before, or met someone who spoke it. It was kind of humbling in a way to be the first English-speaker the kids had ever met. Maybe humbling isn't the right word, I'm not quite sure. But it was definitely thought-provoking. Knowing you're in a place where your language is not even on the radar is amazing.

Well, that's all for now! I'm just trying to occupy my brain in this dreadful waiting game I'm in :) Now, back to math homework!