Skyrocketing Popularity

I arrive in the country and American popularity goes up! I arrived in Jordan on Tuesday. On Wednesday the Pew Global Attitudes survey reported that 20% of Jordanians think favorably of the United States. Yes, that 20% is among the lowest in the world BUT it is up from 15% in 2006. Imagine how much it will grow once I have been here a full year!

People who studied statistics may want to write snarky comments about causality and correlation.

Last summer, when Dan and I were reading up on countries in order to submit our list of preferred destinations, Jordan ranked high because of its proximity to destinations we wanted to visit (Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, et al) but also because it had sushi and Starbucks. Last night we got to have Amman’s best sushi and it was good – not great but good. Pam our friend in Bogota says that Colombian sushi is frequently mayonnaise-filled – so this was way-better than that – it was indeed fish+seasoned rice. We were joined by Dan’s A-100 classmate Corey who is in town from Baghdad for a conference. He amused us greatly with anecdotes of life in the green zone – which apparently is a sushi-free zone.