New Year, New Beginnings

I realise that I have been somewhat slack in updating my blog with my adventures, but considering the New Year is here and with all those resolutions and things that are rather popular at this time of year I will once again endeavour to make this blog happen.

I am back in Amman!! Living in my new swanky flat with Jasmine, which means that we get to cook and clean and do everything ourselves in the way we like, which we love! We have got into a sort of routine where I cook the dinner and then she does the washing up, which seems to work wonderfully. There is no denying that I am somewhat of a domestic Goddess!

Howe'er this is not the reason for this post. I am writing, because before I came back to Amman a took a slight detour across Israel/Palestine, which was simply amazing!

We started of in Tel Aviv, where we nearly shat ourselves with fear whilst waiting to go through the infamously difficult Israeli Passport Control, only to encounter a rather bored and grumpy woman who let us in with the most minimal of hassle. By the time we reached the hostel it was dark and the lady who greeted us was equally as stony faced as the lady at passport control, to which we thought maybe this is an Israeli thing! Thankfully the trend did not continue!

We woke up the following morning to a Mediterranean haven! LA in the middle east. Much to Lottie's despise, short shorts were in abundance along the esplanade, where people could be spotted running, cycling, doing yoga, playing the guitar, taking a stroll, walking dogs (basically everything that we never see in Jordan). To top it all off there was grass! There was actual greenery! Safe to say, we fell in love with it!

Tel Aviv is also known as the party central of the Middle East and boy did we party we found a couple of cool bars and we had a really good time with our new friend Oreo, who was great fun. We had so much fun there that we want to go back as soon as possible, probably for Lottie's 21st birthday!! Bring on the partayyy!

We left Tel Aviv amongst crowds of young Israelis garbed in khaki, wielding guns, boarding buses to go off to wherever they were posted for their National Service, which is compulsory for all Israeli citizens, both men and women. Woo for equality! However, it did mean that we had the barrel of someone's gun digging into our legs for the entirety of the journey up to Nazareth. Our next stop!

When we got to Nazareth we realised that we were following around the days off; being in the mainly Jewish Tel Aviv on Shabbat and then up to the predominantly Christian Nazareth on Sunday. Maybe our planning could have been slightly better.

Wandering around the empty streets of Nazareth with our suitcases in the rain we felt a like we had come down from a massive high, this being the amazingness of Tel Aviv. It was here that we first saw the divide between the different denominations of Christianity. The Annunciation of Jesus' birth to Mary isn't important in every church, but to the Catholics and the Orthodox churches it is highly celebrated and in Nazareth there are two churches of the Annunciation in different places. The first is the huge half church half archaeological site where the Catholics believe the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary. The other is at the top of the hill where the Orthodox church believes that Mary encountered the archangel whilst collecting water. Personally I think it is a bit of a silly dispute, but hey it gives tourists like ourselves more churches to look at.

An argument with a taxi driver, who was trying to charge us a frankly ridiculous sum of money for a trip to Tiberus, caused us to nearly miss the bus and lead to me running case in hand down the road trying to flag it down. We got on it, thankfully. By this point we had learnt a bit of Hebrew, enough to say hello, how much, thank you etc. However, the problem comes when you don't actually know what they say back thus rendering your attempt at speaking the language pointless, because it was quickly followed by "sorry? I don'  speak Hebrew.'

Tiberius, we were warned, is a bit of a tacky resort town, but this is not what we saw. There was the odd party boat going out onto the Sea of Galilee, but we mad friends with the Tiberus Rowing Team Coach who offered us to go out on the water, as we were both rowers, but Unfortunately we didn't want to hang around, because that night we were staying in Jerusalem. So we took a couple of pictures of us pretending to walk on water (I know, we are going to hell for such blasphemy!) and then it was back on the coach.

Next stop Jerusalem! Words cannot describe the eclectic mix of old and new, religious and secular, united and divided that is the city of Jerusalem. It is both a really interesting and amazing place as well as quite shocking and frightening.

When we first arrived we were amazed to see a tram! Public transport! After living in Amman for three months, public transport in  city is like heaven, God know why they haven't introduced some sort of public transport in Amman! We were very aware of the vast number of things to see in Jerusalem and as our time and money was dwindling we knew we had to be savvy. So we planned our day ruthlessly only to find that of course following the trend, the next day was the birth day of Mohamed the Prophet and thus the Dome on the Rock was indeed closed off! We were not being very lucky.

However, at the drop of a pin we changed our plans and our new plan was even better. We started off the day with the Western Wall, the most revered place for Jews as it is the last remaining walls of Solomon's Temple. I donned a kippah and Lottie pulled her skirt down below the knew and we entered our separate entries to advance towards the wall. I must admit that I felt more spiritual up against this bit of wall with people wailing the words of the Torah than I did in the hordes of people rubbing their scarves on a slab of stone in the Church of the Sepulchre and I know this is hardly the point, but I quite suit a kippah.

After we have lingered long enough amongst the Jews we joined the Christians following the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows) which is the route on which Jesus carried the cross. Whilst we were walking the route a group of Americans were carrying around a dummy cross around and singing, and the tight cobbled streets of Old Jerusalem filled with the smell of incense. The closer and closer we got to the Holy Sepulchre the more crowded it became as we reached the point where Jesus is supposed to have hung on the cross and was taken down and laid in a tomb. Personally I did not go for the whole thing. I felt that the crowds of people queuing up to kiss a bit of cross, the true cross, that some crusaders found some millennium and a half after the death of Jesus. As far as I was concerned this was idolatry and I didn't feel that is was very spiritual at all.

We left and went to the Mount of Olives where we went into the Garden of Gethsemane and also the point where Jesus was supposed to have Ascended into heaven (there is a footprint of sorts in a stone, that I think was possibly just a grove in the rock, but is where Jesus, similar to Neo flew up into the sky with such force as to leave behind a mark in the ground.) One of my favourite churches, the Pater Noster, is atop of the mount and it has the Lord's Prayer written in a something like 180 languages around the walls. We joined a group which meant that we heard the prayer read in French, Spanish, Ukrainian, English and then we tried in Arabic. It was one of those places that reminded you of how much unity religion brings, whilst at the same time causes such divides that are so clear within the city of Jerusalem.

The irony of this of course is that from this point on top of the hill you have a clear view of the huge wall that the Israeli government are building to shut out the West Bank of Palestine. This juxtaposition really rams home this injustice of the whole conflict, however it is good to see that the Palestinians can still laugh about it a little bit. This fantastic sculpture of the Nativity shows the before and after the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

We got a taxi to Bethlehem where we were given a tour around the churches, which are of course split into different denominations and got an awful picture touching the place of the birth of Jesus. Once again I detested the lack of spirituality in it all, as people pushed and scrambled to touch this spot. It seemed ludicrous. I would hate to think what it must be like in high season.

Back in Jerusalem we wandered through the sprawling Jewish Cemetery and went back to our hotel where we changed in order to hit the town, new Jerusalem! After a day of religious spectacles we decided to exchange spirituality of a different type of spirits, namely 2 for 1 cocktails. Lottie at this point was searching for cigarettes, which her host Uncle in Amman had asked for, and she made the fatal error of speaking Arabic. The shop assistant just grunted with a face like a smacked bottom and said "I don't speak Arabi!"

Another example of a ridiculous rivalry that I suspect will never heal. At this point Arabic went off the table again and we went back to Hebrew. We decided that the next person who tried to get us into there bar in Hebrew we would just respond, low toda (no thank you in Hebrew). It was brilliant, he immediately gave up and we burst into laughter as soon as we turned the corner.

The next day we returned to the Dome on the Rock only to find that it is only open at 12:30 - 1:30. At this point we were loosing faith as it felt like we were destined to never see the Temple on the Mount. With two hours to go we made the trek to the Mount Zion, where Jesus ate his last supper, Mary died and David is buried. We meandered through the class of giggling Jewish girls, I donned my kippah once more and we entered the Tomb of David, where of course the men's section is much larger than the women's, much to Lottie's despise.

Afterwards we took a quick trip on the tram to the Market in East Jerusalem. It was a fantastic market and I just wanted to eat everything in sight, but we had to rush back to the Old City for the Dome on the Rock. We joined the growing queue of eager tourists to see what apparently is so hard to get into for non-Muslims. We thought to ourselves, that we had done it! We were finally there! Only to find that non-Muslims are not actually allowed inside the mosques! Luckily the outsides are so beautiful otherwise it would have been a complete waste of time. Lottie was happy because she got to hijab up again and we wandered around the grounds of the Temple on the Mount and took some mosque selfies before our hour was up and we had to leave.

Now came the hardship of border crossings, after the fear of being turned away at the border on entry getting to a border to leave the country turned out to be a lot harder! The border closest to Jerusalem doesn't issue Jordanian Visas, because it is into the West Bank where Palestinians are allowed to cross freely. So we had to get a bus the length of Israel up to the Northern Border Crossing. Here we waited on the street corner, where we dropped off, for a taxi to actually take us to the border. At the border I was asked if I had any weapons and I thought they said parents, just before I answered "Yes, two." They repeated the question saving me the hassle of being strip searched. Apart from it taking a long time, the crossing was quite easy and at a long last, after a week of great adventure we were back to a country where we could speak Arabic freely, a country which we knew and oddly were calling home.

I'm not a cat hater, but ...

I just want to state that I am not a cat hater, but when there are cats that jump out of dustbins in the dead of night it is a tad frightening and also when they jump on your lap and you know that they have been in a dustbin it's a tad disgusting. I'm not a cat hater, but I do not trust the cats in this country. The thousands and thousands of street cats that roll around in rubbish bins and skulk around searching for food. All they'd have to do is grow opposable thumbs like in that advert and I'm pretty sure they will take over this city and possibly the world, we've all seen 'Cats & Dogs'! So I'm not a cat hater, but I wish they would all just p*** off!

I like that rock!

After a week of not so stressful exams I am reminiscing on those five wonderful days away from the humdrum life of Amman. As someone once said; all literature is sad, even when it's about good things, because it is written after the good has ended. This is not entirely true in this case, because the year abroad isn't over, but I will never forget this trip to Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba.

 A week off of school. What to do? Originally the plan was to get a personal driver person to take us to the south of Jordan, but it fell through and looked like it was going to be too expensive anyway. Instead we just got a bus on Friday morning and went off to Petra with no set plan and only one night in a hotel booked. The JETT coaches, as well as some other buses, are the only public transport around Jordan. They seriously need to install some public transport here, I'm thinking a tram or a tube line or something in Amman and a fast speed train instead of the scarcely used steam train the goes from the north to the south of Jordan. All this said the coach was actually fine and it took me to Petra in a mere three and a half hours.

Arriving at Petra we walked to a taxi rank, "a taxi rank in Jordan!" I hear you say. In reality it was a line of men who were asking for a ridiculous amount to go not very far. We as streetwise Ammani residents refused to pay such prices and called the hotel instead who agreed to come and pick us up for free. Little did we know that the taxi driver would then complain to the police that the hotel was taking away their business. We therefore accompanied the hotel manager to the traffic police station in order to explain that we were not willing to pay the unreasonable prices that had been asked for. As guests at the hotel it was part of his hospitality to help his guests and therefore we could not understand why the police were saying that it was wrong for him to pick us up.

When we arrived at the hotel finally the brilliant hospitality continued. The owner of the hotel was so nice and I would thoroughly recommend the Cleopetra to everyone, that's if you can look past the horribly punny name that as far as I could tell made no sense as Cleopatra never went to Petra. As we had not eaten breakfast and it was getting on for midday the lovely owner gave us some bread and cheese and things for free which was really lovely and the start of a beautiful relationship!

Petra. Where to begin? I suppose the most important thing to say is that usually the entry price is roughly £50 for the day. As residents in the country we got tickets for £1! This is no joke. Our student cards gained us entry for 1JD which is amazing. So for the entirety of the day we couldn't help but randomly shout "One Dinar" in jubilation and to rub it in the faces of all the tourist who had had to pay 50.

Petra is fantastic! We were walking for roughly 7 hours pretty much straight, clambering over rocks, climbing up mountains and looking in very old tombs. The ancient city is very impressive the buildings that are carved into the rose coloured rock are one of the seven man-made wonders of the world and quite rightly. You start of the day walking through the Siq which is a really long canyon that opens up onto the Treasury, possibly the most famous view in Jordan. Down the length of the canyon are sort of ditches along the sides which back in the day used to carry piped water. Piped water! The bedouin who lived here years and years ago were amazingly advanced. i cannot fathom how they managed to do all of what they did with the materials they had and I can't believe they managed to keep it secret for so long!

Of course there are still Bedouin living there, which we discovered when we got lost and ended up walking to some cave houses that are currently being used. They were a bit more advanced than the ancient ones, but impressive still the same. At the end of the day we made the effort to climb the hundreds of steps to the Monastery which is one of the farthest points from the entrance and man is it worth it. You can't go to Petra without making the effort to walk up there, because it is twice the size of the treasury and it is beautiful. We spoke to a man who owned donkeys, I forget his name now, who told us that he walks up to the monastery at least once a day and he often does it at night as a sort of purifying experience and I can imagine that no matter how many times you see it, it would never get boring.

This being said after a while a sort of holiday phrase set in. "I like that rock, that is a niiiiiice rock." As I'm sure you know, and if you don't then you should be ashamed, this is a reference to Shrek when donkey exclaims that he likes a boulder at Shrek's swap. Well there were a lot of rocks. This isn't just in Petra this is the whole of Jordan. It's basically filled with rocks and sand and well all there is to comment on are the rocks. I don't want to seem sad, but I definitely have preferred rocks now ...

The Siq

Jasmine and Lottie pretending to be statues.

The treasury

Bedouin policeman

Jack Sparrow on a donkey

Jasmine at the Garden tomb.

The monastery (my favourite rock)

To be continued ...

The Dead Sea and Madaba

It has now been several weeks since I went on my weekend trip to the Dead Sea and Madaba. They are both in what Elias calls the wider area of Amman. Truth be told they are not far from Amman at all, it takes less than an hour to get to the Dead Sea and Madaba is about half way in between the two. So basically it takes me about the same time to get to the Dead Sea as it takes some one to get from one side of London to the other on the tube. That being said it only takes four hours to dive from Amman to Aqaba which is pretty much the length of the country, so the time it takes you to drive from one side of London to the other is about half the length of Jordan. That just shows how very very small this country. I mean I was always under the impression that the UK was small, but I think it is clear that Jordan is much smaller!

We went as a group as a sort of Birthday celebration for Ruth's birthday. The drive from Amman to Aqaba is all downhill, which is to be expected considering the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth being 400m below sea level. This is the reason why the dead sea is sooo salty, because it is a basin where the River Jordan collects and then has no where else to go so the water evaporates leaving behind it very salty water. We went to Amman beach which you pay 16JD for the day to use the pools and the beach.

When we arrived we went straight to the sea to experience that floating feeling that everyone talks about. It was very strange and when we went up to the pools afterwards I felt like I was a rock. The pools were glorious and we sat by them pretty much all day watching crazy Jordanians diving into the pool in all manner of ways. I lost count at the number of belly flops that occurred. To round off the experience we got mudded up in the famous Dead Sea sludge that is supposed to make your skin as soft as a babies bottom. I can't say that my skin was softer, but it was an experience especially the applying of the mud. The guy who was rubbing me all over, whilst doing my inner thigh managed to hit my gooch numerous times.

After we had had enough of the Dead Sea we split into two, some went back to Amman and the rest of us continued to Madaba. In true risky Jordanian style we crammed six of us into a taxi to make the price cheaper, but in no time at all we were there and for only 3JD each.

Madaba is famous for its mosaics. So the next day we walked all around the town looking in the many many churches and remains of churches looking at bits of mosaics. It is amazing to think that those mosaics have been there since the early centuries. They are very impressive and I definitely want to go back to buy a mosaic souvenir. My host mum's family live there so we will definitely be going back at some point.

This Mosaic map is the oldest map of the Holy Land in existence. It's not extremely accurate or to scale, but you can see all the necessary bits are present. It would have been amazing to the see this church floors in their original glory,  because all that is left is fragment of the original thing.

Over all the weekend was thoroughly enjoyable and it's nice to know how close it all is to my new home.

Next time on this blog : I will be talking about my holiday in Eid break to Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba.

FOOD!

Hello tout le monde. I am terribly sorry for being so lax with my blog, but it wasn't my fault I promise. A lot has happened which I have wanted to write about, but I didn't get pictures of all of it so I wanted to wait until the people who did take pictures put them on Facebook, which they still have not. However, the meal I just had was so lovely that I just had to tell all.

The food here comes in masses. Mama Zein cooks a massive meal most mornings which we sit down and eat at about 2 in the afternoon and then after that I've been told to eat what I like, when I like which usually means me eating more of the same meal at dinner, because there is usually enough to keep us going for days on end.

The Jordanians / Arabs in general I think are really eager to feed you. It is there way of being welcoming. So several times a day I get food thrust at me with the accompanying 'eat!' Today I got up to get some kitchen roll, because I was making a tad of a mess and Elias says 'eat' and quite unintentionally I whipped round; 'I am eating!' I didn't mean to be so blunt, but sometimes you just can't fit any more down your gullet.

I have found myself eating some great things and some things which I have to force down my throat. They have this pudding which is basically cinnamon gloop with nuts. I'm not a massive fan of nuts and gloop, I'm afraid, isn't the texture of any appetising food. Yet I take it and eat when ever it is given to me, because it is just impolite not to and I no Mama Zein makes them herself and I don;t have the heart to say I don't like it.

However when the food is good, the food is really really good! One of the best meals I've had is a dish called mansaf which is made with rice and laban, which is a yoghurt/oil thing, and meat or chicken. It goes in a big dish in the middle and everyone grabs at it with their hands using a bit of bread as a vehicle. Today we had a fantastic dish that was basically stuffed tomatoes and peppers with an amazing sauce made from the insides of the tomatoes and chilli and other things. Never have a tasted more flavourful tomatoes! I seriously need to learn how to make these things.

Other meals have included stuffed corgettes, stuffed aubergine (yes there are a lot of stuffed vegetables) maglobi, which means upside down and is rice and meat (yes most meals include rice and meat as the made bit). Also one day Mama Zein cooked us what tasted like kofta and chips. It was amazing, enough said.

Over all I am loving the food and when I come back to England I am determined to be able to make it all so I can feed you all of these wonderful dishes.

Oh an of course I have tried the McDonalds and the KFC just to make sure it is the same as in the UK.

My Weekend

As many of you will know the week in Jordan goes from Sunday to Thursday allowing for the weekend on Friday and Saturday. This Thursday evening we went for a 'barty' around Pip and Kirk's swanky pad where we were shouted at by an elderly woman across the street who kept spitting on the ground in disgust. It was fair to say that on that night was perhaps cut short.

Friday came and I stayed in most of the day, but then in the afternoon Awat and I went to go and meet Jasmine on Rainbow Street  (شاريع راينبوو) where there is a special handicrafts souq (سوق) on Fridays. The street was buzzing and there seemed to be a lot going on. Awat and I saw a drumming group playing outside Subway, yes that's right there are Subways here too, but we didn't think a great deal of them. Then after we went to a shop called ملابس (malaabis) which means clothes. It is a really cool shop with great T-Shirts with funny Arabic puns on them. That night there was also an up and coming artist playing upstairs. His name was Perfect and Insane and this is one of his songs.

I really liked him and I really wish he had an album, because I would have bought it right there and then. He was kind of Newton Faulkner-esque, but sung in Arabic for the majority of the time which was great!

We then had a falafel and hummus rap thing, which I like to say is chickpeas with more chickpeas or fried chickpeas with a chickpeas sauce. It was actually very nice and we had a good time sitting on Rainbow Street before going to meet the other Exeter students at La Calle, which is a bar.

The next day the JLA put on a tour of Amman which meant that we had to be at the JLA for 9 which I was not a massive fan of at the weekend. However, the day was quite fun except for the hour we stood around waiting for the muslims in our group to pray. Actually I had pretty much seen everything that we were shown, but it was good for meeting people from the other universities who are studying with us and we also got a free lunch at Hashems, which is a really famous hummus and falafel place. (Yes you are right all they eat is hummus and falafel, no I'm only kidding they eat shawerma as well!)

Amman

Well I am one week into Jordan and I am loving life.

This week I has been my first week at school. We went to the JLA (Jordan Language Academy) bright and early on Monday morning for a 9am test. We sat down eager to show what we could do and it turns out we can't do very much. The test was nigh impossible! Nevertheless I wasn't immediately sent packing and the lessons began.

The JLA is a small building that is just off the 7th Circle, the people of Amman like to pretend that their road system is not complicated by saying that there is one main street with 8 circles (دوار) along it. However there are lots of main streets and lots of roundabouts and therefore this one street doesn't really help all that much. Just look at a map of Amman it is unnavigable.

The lessons were great and I am learning so much so quickly. The influx of new vocab is alarming and it is impossible to remember all of it, but the more I use it the more it sticks in my head. I have directions down now, so I can always tell the taxi driver where to go.

The Taxi drivers are great here! I nearly always chat to them. The other day I only had a twenty JD note and I told the driver this near the start of the journey, so for payment he pulled over and I bought him a coffee and some cigarettes.

There is too much to say as I have left it so long since my last blog so I'll leave it until I have done some more exploring and taken more photos to fill you in on the inner workings of Amman living, but for now I will leave you with two little bytes.

When everyone lives in flats sometimes the only way to get furniture into a building is a pully system up the side. This picture was taken whilst we were sitting at the JLA with the Manchester students who are all very nice. This was the building opposite where Amin is going to live so this may even have been his new sofa!

Tailoring is renowned for being for the wealthy. To have perfectly fitted trousers and shirts and jackets is a luxury. Not in Amman! Elias took Awat and me to downtown to buy Awat some new trousers. So he bought some for 9JD and then we crossed the street and went through a door flanked by two burly men who were sitting there sowing. Then up some old tiny stairs to a tiny room where we found this lovely gentlemen. He measured Awat up and within 20 minutes had shortened and tightened the trousers all for 1.500JD (£1.50)!! This is the price all tailoring should be!