It's Hot in the Middle East

There has been a heat wave in Jordan this week. Everyone including the Jordanians are complaining. It was 106 degree yesterday – it is admittedly a dry heat but it is still really, really hot. The heat broke today – yay – and we opened all the doors this morning to let the cool air in.

Today, I gave a talk on “the Jordanian Economy” to Jordan’s new class of Peace Corps volunteers up in their training center in Irbid - Jordan's second largest city. These approximately 40 people just arrived in Jordan and are in an orientation program learning Arabic and how to do their teaching jobs before being sent out to the towns they will live in for two years. They don’t know what town they are in yet. Rumors seemed to be spreading in the group about the existence of some teaching jobs that came with housing with air conditioning. Others in the group were lobbying the Peace Corps staff for towns near to Amman or Irbid – so they could escape to civilization. Peace Corps workers are paid 140 JD a month – not quite $200 for living expenses. The head of the group said that some of them spend a lot of their pay on DSL.

Too much stuff

About half of what we own arrived yesterday. Our car is still somewhere en route - we have no idea where. The other half is in storage. Our apartment in Jordan is now an absolute mess of boxes and I think both of us can't believe we have this much stuff, especially since we prided ourselves on living in a small clutter-free house.

We were warned that people invariably over-pack going to their first post and while they end up down-sizing some things they also tend to pick up local art, furniture and rugs. Right after Dan got into the foreign service we were invited to drinks at the home of a retired foreign service officer. We had a great conversation and as we were leaving, our host insisted we come to his basement, which he described as a cautionary tale. It was full of arts and crafts from literally around the world - he assured us that we do not want to own this stuff and that we should be wary of shopping abroad.

And yet, Megan sent me a link of a really, really cute cake pan that is easy to covet.

Field Trips

There are some really hard things about this job. Most notably leaving friends and family thousands of miles away and living in an apartment with really prissy furniture. But there are some great things too. Mostly they are field trips. The great thing about this job seems to be I can call up lots of people and say "Hi - I work at the embassy. I think your company is really interesting. Can I come visit?" And so far they have answered yes and usually they provide tea, coffee and really good cookies.

Yesterday, I went to a school for air traffic controllers and today I got to go up in the tower at the airport here. This is no O'Hare with flights every 16 seconds - but I got to see a flight land and one take off - and I got really good cookies. I was traveling with some military guys in town who wanted to see Mount Nebo. So after cookies, we went to Mount Nebo which is still dusty but is still overlooking the promised land. I was wearing a suit and unsensible shoes. When you visit Mt. Nebo do not wear a suit.

Movie and Harry Potter and Promised Land

First off, Dan is wrong, there is a good portrayal of a consular officer - we just watched the Painted Veil which was excellent and one of the characters is the unbelievably handsome "vice consul" - this is Dan's title and Pam's. Sure he turns out to be a philander in the movie but still...

Good news... the English-language bookstore in our neighborhood had Harry Potter - we even had a choice of covers. We got our copy at 11:30 am our time so maybe we were even reading it before the Washingtonians.

Yesterday we went to Mount Nebo - which is where Moses saw the Promised Land but was unable to enter. The promised land is very very dusty - I'd think perhaps he was disappointed but then he was coming from the Sinai which cannot possible have been better.

Fortunately, there is an excellent restaurant near Mt Nebo. We ate hummus and baba ghanous and lamb and ...

My Embassy Can Beat Up Your Embassy

Dan here. So, a short-tempered American walks up to a Jordanian security officer. Words are exchanged. Fisticuffs ensue. An hour later, the American is under arrest. He still has a cell phone, and he calls his embassy. An American detained by foreign police! Surely the United States Embassy will do something!

As you know, I am responsible for helping American citizens in Jordan. Most of the time, people want only the basics: a passport renewed, a document notarized.

Then there are the Americans who expect more services.

Most of them are due for a reality check.

(Image Left) The Consular Services Strike Force Unit
Important disclaimer: does not exist

When I arrived almost two months ago, I was issued a Blackberry on my first day. It is now clear that this is not a perk. When I meet other embassy workers and tell them I am in the Consular office, they say wow, that must be hard, hard work. Then I specify that I help American citizens, and they usually groan, and share a story about when they had to call the American Citizen Services officer (me) in the middle of the night. Everyone has a story.

Thousands of Americans are visiting Jordan this summer. A few of them are going to get into trouble. Instead of showing respect to the local authorities and the host country, they boast “but I am an American! I will call my Embassy!”

This has never, ever helped their situation.

During Consular class back in DC, our instructors shared American citizen stories with us. Everyone has a story. My classmates and I wondered aloud, what movie did these Americans see? What television show did they watch? When has Hollywood ever portrayed an Embassy or Consular officer in a positive light? Haven’t these people seen Midnight Express? Remember in Babel, when Cate Blanchett has been shot and is slowly bleeding to death? The faceless officer on the phone tells Brad Pitt, “We are still requesting the local government to grant clearance for a MedEvac helicopter. It could take 2 more days.” Now that’s realistic!

What did the short-tempered American expect I would do? Swoop in with a Humvee and a badge and whisk him out of the police station? He certainly did not expect me to start reading him phone numbers of local lawyers, which was all I could do for him. “But I didn’t do anything! You have to tell them!”

It slowly dawns on them. Like the schoolyard threat of my dad is gonna beat up your dad. When in fact, our dads needed to coexist in a community, and were never going to beat up one another over a schoolyard scrape.

Another Harry Potter-free Week

Harry Potter - the movie opened in the US a week ago and didn't open here. I just read the movie section for this weekend (which thankfully begins in just three hours) and again no Harry Potter. I guess I should be happy that there are nice movie theaters here that show American movies - right now Shrek 3, Die hard, Transformers, Hannibal Rising and Oceans 13. Near as we can tell it is the action movies that make it over here and some arrive opening weekend - but alas not Harry Potter.

Also, Amazon's Saturday guarantee for the Harry Potter the book does not extend to APO addresses. Our mail seems to take about 8 days to get to us - no doubt enough time for all of you to read the entire book. Please don't tell us the end.

Meetings and Petra

So far my work week has been many meetings around Amman and a trip down to Petra - to have more meetings rather than to see historic treasures.

Adventures in Meetings

1. Reading Powerpoint - normally, I think presenters who read their powerpoint slides are awful - but when they are speaking Arabic - as they were at a conference I went to on Sunday - I am hugely grateful and would have appreciated if they had read their Powerpoint slowly.

2. "Camel Experiences" - there are indeed many ways that work here is like work in DC but then you go to a meeting and you get a tourism presentation on "camel experiences" - as if there were a range of such experiences - and you are reminded that life is different here.

3. Camels #2-80 - Speaking of camels, yesterday, I went down to Petra - a two hour drive South and I saw probably another 80 camels and 1 "Camel Crossing" sign. Dan has still not seen any camels. I now have seen baby camels - camels that are white; camels that are taupe; and standard beige camels. All camels here seem to have one-hump.

Look Alike

Yesterday, I had my first solo meeting. Up until now, my meetings with Jordanian officials or business representatives have all been with a colleague. Yesterday's meeting went well until the end when the gentleman asked where I was from. I answered. He said "Are you sure you aren't British because with your bone structure you look just like Margaret Thatcher." He meant it kindly. Perhaps you too see the similarity. Maybe it's just my strong personality and committment to privitization and monetary policies.

Due to my enthusiasm for the Vote Petra campaign. I actually get to go to Petra for work. I'll report back!

JORDAN'S "WONDER"FUL VICTORY

Yesterday I was talking to Pam on the phone and she said "wow, is that the call to prayer? That is cool." Indeed, the deck we were sitting on is only a block away from a mosque and is easy to hear during our dinner but is also easy to hear at 3am when it is less cool. Last night, however we not only heard the 3 am call to prayer, which we can increasingly sleep through, but we also heard the 1 am victory fire works. Last night at 1 am local time, Petra's victory as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World was announced. Woo hoo. In the office, there was talk about what this means - will more people visit Jordan now? will more people who are visiting Israel make side trips? how can you make Petra a destination that you'd go to more than once?

It's worth noting that we can actually see/hear fireworks every night. Weddings are celebrated with fireworks and honking horns and since we have deck-views of most of the city's big hotels we see fireworks every night. Weddings seem to happen not just on weekends - for instance we were invited to a wedding tonight (the first day of the work week).

Old Town

The mid-June heat wave ended, and with Duffy adjusted to the time zone, we headed downtown to see the Roman Amphitheater, built around 150 AD to honor Emperor Hadrian. We were immediately befriended by a semi-official tour guide who spoke very good English. However, he indulged our request and gave the tour in Arabic, pausing frequently to translate himself.

Acoustics were indeed astounding. When you stand on the "X" at center-stage and speak to the audience, your voice is naturally amplified. At the same time, conversations among people sitting in the bleachers were amusingly transmitted crystal-clear to the opposite side. My eavesdroppers no doubt heard me bemoan the lack of safety railings on the steep steep stairs.

Tucked into the amphitheater is a folklore museum, where Duffy posed with Bedoin mannequin heads.

No need to see everything in one day. After our leisurely amphitheater visit, we had the "city's best" shawarma - I have had better here - and watched "Transformers". The English-language soundtrack is played, very loudly, with Arabic subtitles. No movie previews beforehand, unfortunately, just quirky European-style soft drink ads.

It was a fun summer movie, with dazzling special effects and laugh-inducing captions like "Qatar - The Middle East". Or, at least we all laughed here in "Jordan - The Middle East".

Have You Voted Yet

The New Seven Wonders of the World is a big deal here in Jordan. Voting deadline is Saturday and the results will be broadcast live at 11:30 pm (Jordan time). An estimated 2 million of Jordan’s 5 million residents have already voted – and 60 million people have voted worldwide. The government’s goal was to get 4 million votes cast. There are billboards around town and kiosks set up for anyone who doesn’t have a cell phone or online access. A Miss Petra was just crowned and a motorcycle rally also promoted Jordan.

Petra is currently in the Top 10 along with the Acropolis, Chichen Itza, Eiffel Tower, Easter Island, Brazil’s statue of Christ the Redeemer, Great Wall, Machu Pichu and the Taj Mahal. The Statue of Liberty is in the bottom 10.

What I've Been Reading

Dan just started reading Looming Tower about Al-Qaeda but I haven’t read anything nearly that weighty…

On the airplane, I read Tina Brown’s Princess Diana biography. It was absolutely perfect plane reading – gossipy, easy and I finished it somewhere over Turkey.

After that I re-read Harry Potter 6 in anticipation of Harry Potter 7. I read somewhere that there are only going to be 6 movies – I think they are combining books 6&7 into a single movie. As I re-read Half Blood Prince that made a lot of sense to me. The book doesn’t have a very satisfying end – a cliffhanger Snape (good or evil? I think good.) but mostly just Harry knowing that he has a bunch more horcruxes to find. Note: Microsoft Word does not know the words Snape nor horcrux.

Yesterday I spent July 4th reading the treacle-y Last Summer of You and Me by my second-favorite teen fiction author Ann Brashares of Traveling Pants fame. This was not nearly as good as Traveling Pants and was aimed for “adults” but by “adults” I think they meant teen-agers. Last night, I started a new teen fiction series that seems really trashy – Gossip Girls.

Happy Anniversary

It’s my one-week anniversary since leaving DC. Since arriving I have:

• Seen one camel; dozens of cats that live in the trash cans (or at least spend a lot of time there); and several herds of sheep and goats.
• Eaten sushi AND hummus – admittedly a lot more hummus than sushi and frankly better hummus than sushi
• Drafted my first cable – cable is a wonky weird word for an official memo in dreadful courier font which harkens back to the days when they were truly telegrams sent via cable. My cable was about television.
• Gotten 250 pounds of stuff. Another 250 comes next week. The rest of our stuff and the car are somewhere en route.
• Attended the rehearsal of the July 4th official party – I’ll be passing out souvenir hats with clear instructions that there is only one per person.
• Worn every suit that I brought so tomorrow I will be starting the suit jacket rotation again.
• Slept through the night for the first time.