Two weeks and it's hit me.

We sat there that night in that café up on the hill... Eyes glassy over the shisha smoke, throwing stories into each other’s mouths. We were filled to the brim with explosive possibilities of brilliant conversation and dreams of expatriation. Studying abroad is like that… exploring who you are as you invent yourself for a new set of friends.

I have to say, Amman has become a strange hallucination for me… I find myself retreating to expat hang outs much more than I ever did in Spain… Everything is so brilliant and new and englightening but… simultaneously not knowing the local dialect makes things impossibly frustrating and overwhelming. To top it off, I’m not in a walking city. I’m bound by psychological blocks against dirt cheap taxi cab fares and minimal distance.

The physical appearance of the city is everything I hate: post-world war two industrial mayhem in an white and dusty boxy urban sprawl of interlaced car driven suburbia. The culture is something completely comprehensible. As much as I may appear to be 100% American, my father’s side is arab and I understand a fair amount of the culture backdrop. The difference is… I empathize with arab culture rather than fall into it. Certain traits in me I see reflected in this place but others are complete opposites…

So amist this internal backdrop, I will return with my new friends over shisha or mint tea and we will contemplate the next few months. Contemplate our news lives. Discover our surroundings until our new lives become our old lives. And our surroundings disappear as we venture off to where our lifelines may take us.

Little Boxes

My first impression about Amman came hours after I had arrived… The plane landed, I was rushed to the hotel, I made a few fool-hearty hellos then I slept. At 5:30 am, I awoke – eyes wide open – to a reverberating spiraling voice beckoning the faithful of the city to prayer. All was still… the sun had just dawned leaving a blue cast to the…. Boxes.
Amman, Jordan is a city of little boxes tossed up on 7 hills and convoluted to fit the ideological mold of a “modern city”. Individually, these boxy buildings are nothing but slabs of grey concrete with perfect rectangular eyeholes… Little more ingenious or beauty than a concrete parking garage.
However, in the early morning or with a carefully achieved viewpoint, Amman morphs. The thousand and one holed buildings become honeycombed in shape… The dusty monotony of the concrete becomes a clear grey calm against the blue sky. The call to prayer beckons the soul to tranquility and you submit.
My first day in Amman has been just that… submission. A calm acceptance to the drudgery of jet lag and the pace of orientation. We saw sites, we ate food, and we go to know one another. All very routine and predictable in a way… the city itself breathed calm and I submitted.
Even the unexpected news of my home stay assignment with a family brought little surprise. Maybe this will be how all my time is here? Calm and relaxing learning. Peace in the face of surprise. Gentle submission to the greater powers above.


Pictures are to come, as soon as I unpack my bag (next few days)