So it's Saturday night and I'm prepping for school tomorrow. I may be a little heathen bound for fire and brimstone, but something just feels so wroooong about going to school on a Sunday. I've definitely had a packed weekend though and fortunately had today to rest up and read my article for class in response to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations- I think I would have had a much easier time reading it the first time through had I understood the bizarre transliteration of his name.
Let's see, what did I do this weekend? Ah yes, I'll start with my super sketchy experience with Irbidian cab drivers. This Thursday afternoon was the first time I actually had to play "leader" of the group as I was the most advanced Arabic student of my friends that went and the only one who felt comfortable enough to sit up front with the cab driver. We ended up buying bus tickets for the wrong time so we decided to just lose the money (since it was pretty cheap) and take a cab so we could meet up with our friends from the other cab in time for dinner in Amman. I called my friend Daniela who went on the program last year who confirmed that I should go for 7 or 8 dinars to get to Amman but of course the cab drivers started out offering me a ride for 25, to which I responded with a furious "La!" (Arabic NEGATION). One guy was actually willing to take us to the city for 8 dinars and to our dismay lead us to his own private, beat up car parked on the side of the road. "Had MISH taxi!" (you can figure out that one), I said, and the group of drivers quickly took me back over to the bargaining ground. Eventually a driver pulled up, incidentally the least friendly man of the bunch who looked like some disturbed pedophile, and we were unable to get the price below 9 dinars. Oh well, it's probably poetic justice for not working harder in A'ameeya class. We ended up running into more trouble, however, when we arrived in Amman only to discover that there were at least 2 or 3 other hotels with the name "Palace", the place we had reserved a room, and it didn't help that the second part of our hotel's title is "Amman". Even our second cab driver (we gave up on our psycho, disgruntled one) didn't seem to understand that when we requested to go to "Amman Palace" we weren't just saying the word "Amman" to hear how nice the name of the city sounded.
We did finally arrive and, besides the giant hole in the shower, the room was relatively nice. I must admit that I wasn't a fan of the part of the city where we stayed because EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the street was male and Arab. And while we weren't walking out in our tank tops and underwear, we were wearing nice "going-out" clothes which attracted even more attention than usual. We eventually found a hole-in-the-wall place to eat which actually ended up having awesome falafel, hummus, french fries-aka batatas-, and foul- dish with chickpeas and chilis (it's called Hashem and is mentioned in the Lonely Planet book if you are interested" and followed up our huge meal with warm, syrupy pieces of kunafa....glaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
The next day we had yet another fun experience with our beloved Jordanian taxi drivers when we tried to haggled for a non-tourist price from Amman to Madaba, and once again, I had to play translator. Eventually the guy just gave up speaking A'ameea to me and addressed me an overly formal FusHa which I think was even more insulting than if he had spoken to me in English! We somehow managed to hop on some minibus for which we paid close to nothing, so I can't complain about that. We then spent a few hours in Madaba, famous for its collection of mosaics, one of which includes map of the Holy Land. Of course my favorite part of the day was our excursion to the Dead Sea (I guess it's pointless by now to tell yet another cab driver story because it's a given in any travel situation in the Middle East). I wish now that we had just paid extra to enjoy the pool and Western air of a resort, but we just went to some public beach which was probably a bad idea considering all the evil stares from the hijabi women and shameless gaping mouths of their Arab husbands we got in response to our bathing suits, which were actually pretty conservative by our standards. Anyway, yes, I really did float in the Dead Sea, and walking in the shallow end felt like walking on the moon! The best part was trying to reach the bottom with my feet and just bobbing up and down in the water. Surprisingly the water was really quite warm, which didn't give us much relief from the sun beating down on our backs and on our feet which we totally burned on the sand that felt like glowing embers under our feet (advice to anyone visiting the Dead Sea in the near or distant future: WEAR FLIP-FLOPS!!!). I also rubbed the infamous cleansing mud all over my arms and legs which was like getting a free exfoliating treatment.
Ok well I'm sick of writing now and have to get back to Huntington's Arab opponent and watch Al Jazeera for listening class. Toodles!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment