Downtown Amman

Class was canceled on Thursday (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday; Friday is the holy day in Islam) because apparently it snowed the night before and was supposed to snow again during the day. Lauren went to campus to use the internet and go to the gym she just joined there, and she said there was a dusting of snow on some cars, but sadly, there was nothing in Jabal Amman. It was raining very hard though, for most of the day. Winter here seems to be fairly inconstant. For most of the week, it was in the 50s and 60s and very sunny.

On Friday, Lauren and I decided to do some more exploring around our apartment. We ended up downtown, which is something of a labyrinth of small shops and restaurants. Shops selling the same things are usually grouped together, so it's pretty easy to compare prices, not that I've done much shopping yet. This trip was mostly just to get a feel for the place. We found some Roman ruins, I think of a bathhouse, in the middle of the shops, which was a little jarring. They were fenced off, so we couldn't go in, and they were pretty small, but it was still strange to walk past a meat shop and suddenly see ruins, right in the middle of downtown. I remember seeing that a lot in Greece, but somehow I didn't expect it here, although I know there are some famous Roman ruins in Jordan, as well as such places as Petra. The country itself is so young that I keep forgetting that this area has been inhabited by thousands of years. During orientation, Allison (the program director) pointed out that this land has been part of at least 7-9 larger empires in it's history. It is ancient, although the country and government of Jordan is not.

So far, I haven't interacted with Jordanians as much as I would like. It is still the first week, of course, but it's already clear that it would be quite easy to interact only with Americans or English speaking Jordanians, either in the CIEE program or not. Fortunately, I have been assigned a peer tutor, which I requested, who will be a University of Jordan student who is charged with only speaking to me in Arabic for a certain amount of time each week. I've also decided to join a gym near the college, called Aspire. It's not cheap, and because of it's proximity to the school there will be quite a few CIEE students there too, probably, but when I got a tour of the place, there were plenty of Jordanians as well. It's a women only gym, too. There are coed gyms, but they tend to be even more expensive, and apparently women only gyms are somewhat unique in that they are a place outside of each woman's home where she can unveil, if she wears the hijab (most of the women I've seen on the street and at the university at least wear the hijab, the headscarf.), and interact with other women. The program director recommended the experience as unique. Between those two things, I will hopefully overcome the temptation to interact only with people I easily understand.