So far, this place is just strange. I just didn’t know what to expect so right now I’m both tired and overwhelmed by all these new things surrounding me. I live in West Amman and I haven’t seen further than what’s around and near my apartment, but so far I’ve encountered an interesting first day. Nothing too crazy but I’m definitely not in the Bay Area anymore. From the airport, I was picked up by the organizers of Qasid Institute (the school that I will be attending for these next 3 months) along with other students who took the same plane. There were two full buses that drove us from the airport to the student housing. I was a bit in a funk from traveling for more than 30 hours and then having to sit on an other bus ride for an hour, so I wasn’t fully aware or conscious of the fact that I had just arrived in the Middle East let alone in the city of Amman. All of a sudden, as I was listening to some music and dozing off on the bus, the moment I knew I just wasn’t at home anymore was when I first heard the Call of Prayer (Adhan in Arabic which called out from a minaret in a mosque five times a day. The prayer times in Amman are 3:47AM, 5:29AM, 12:37PM, 4:17PM, 7:43PM, 9:13PM.) I had no idea what it was like or sounded like, but it was a man’s voice over a loud speaker for the entire city to hear. This is when I looked over to Katie, my roommate from last year’s summer program and also my soon to be roommate for this summer’s program, and said, “We are in Jordan!” So I know the exact time when I felt that moment because the call of Prayer plays at a specific hour of everyday. It was about 4:30 AM. I became happy and really excited for what is ahead of us.

After we checked in and received our room keys for my apartment we decided to pull an all-nighter. Instead of sleeping right when we arrived, we thought we would just not sleep (because it was already 5 in the morning) and the sun was rising. I unpacked and 3 other people were keen on finding a place to eat and shop for some stuff for the new apartment. The apartment is really nice stashed with nice furniture in a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a dining area. I think this place is bigger than my home.

We finally went to the food market down the street at 10AM after being at a cafe that we thought allowed men only. We were so hungry but nothing that consists of fast food were open so we just shopped for the food and went home. We bought everything we needed in the apartment like rugs, towels, bath supplies, kitchen supplies and food.

At noon, after eating lunch and getting to know some new friends, my roommates Katie and Chandler took a really long nap. We woke up at almost 7:30 PM! I’ll talk about my roommates and people I meet later.

Of course, after a long nap which was more like our sleeping time, we were hungry for breakfast during Amman dinner time. We walked further down the street of our apartment and ran into Safeway. We got so many honks and looks on the road, some people even wanted us to go into their car. Some of the honks are from taxis, it’s like their way of saying, I am free, you look like  you need a taxi.

07 Jun This entry was published on June 7, 2012 at 9:44 am and is filed under Jordan, Jordanian Culture, Middle East, Travel. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.