The Month in Pictures

Lots of travel, holiday festivities and computer glitches have made us slow to post pictures. So here is our last couple of months in pictures - think of those end-of-the-year double issues of magazines that only have ads and pictures so that the writers can have a vacation.

Thanksgiving weekend - we were in Tel Aviv and went to a drive-thru safari. All the animals were free to run at you except the lions. I feel like I have seen nature shows about charging rhinos but the threat must not be that great because they had a lot of them just walking around.

Duffy's parents visited in early December and we all enjoyed Masada - site of a defiant mass suicide by Zealots (yes, the original "Zealots") after a long siege. Better dead than Roman! Grim tale, but it also has nice weather, a cable car, falafel and a pretty view of the Dead Sea.

Last week, we had two days off for Eid. Continuing our "sacred ground" tour, we organized an outing for colleagues up to Umm Qais, in the far northwest corner of Jordan. Palestinians expelled from their lands come up here for the spectacular views, and to weep over the lost Golan Heights (see the lake and fields behind us), a strategic - and lovely! - piece of land lost by Syria to Israel in the 1967 war. On the plus side, Umm Qais has a nice restaurant, roman ruins and look! It's green!

After driving way North to go to Umm Qais, we drove south along the Dead Sea to the Feynan Eco-Lodge in the desert near Petra. Here's an inconvenient truth: anyone who thinks that solar is going to save us from global warming has not spent much time in solar-powered lodging. In fact, one chilly solar-"heated" shower is plenty to bring one to his senses on the matter. This is the desert, after all. We followed instructions and waited til dusk to shower on a very sunny day, and still the water was barely heated. The electricity worked only 2 hours past dark and it was cold, cold, cold. During the day, we had some great hikes and were offered helpings of recently slaughtered sheep by Eid-celebrating bedoins.

Our 2007 Christmas Letter Blog (a Clog?)

This year’s Christmas greetings are coming to you from our new home just 50 miles away from the (not so) Little Town of Bethlehem. Alas, times being what they are, we will not be singing carols beside the original nativity scene any time soon. It is strictly off-limits to us embassy folk. But this is an exception to an otherwise wide-open region. The Americans here don’t think twice about crossing into Syria – proud member of the Axis of Evil – to go shopping. In fact, several of us even brought our parents along with us.

Since coming to Jordan six months ago, this is the biggest surprise so far: life here isn’t so different. Of course, living so far away from family and friends is hard. Especially during the holidays. But our daily routines and creature comforts have undergone very little adjustment. We thought life in Washington, DC was paradise because we could get sushi delivered to our door. But here we can get deliveries of sushi and flavored popcorn!

Faithful blog readers may recall Dan lamenting the lack of street addresses when he first arrived. So how does the popcorn get delivered? Actually, there are street names posted on corners, and house numbers attached to houses. Some of us (foreigners and food delivery services) choose to see them while the bulk of the population denies their existence. If we mention addresses to them, they smile and nod at us as if we were talking about Santa Claus.

Don’t be mistaken, we are trying to adapt to better fit in. Dan has even learned how to drive badly, which is safer than driving defensively on these streets. A while back, a helpful Jordanian gave him this key advice: do NOT look in your blind spot as this is taken by your opponents as an implicit yield. You may as well announce that you have all day to get though the roundabout, which will infuriate your teammates in the cars behind you, causing them to lurch about dangerously. Instead, maintain a rigid forward focus – and place some faith in your fellow drivers – to keep things flowing. It is terrifying to observe pedestrians using the same strategy while crossing busy streets. To better emphasize their blindness, many choose to cross while texting on their mobile.

We have also learned how to participate in the elaborate ritual of greeting someone that involves posing at least three questions (chosen randomly) How are you?, What is your news/condition/color?, Is everything perfect?, and another dozen variations – and yet every week we learn a new variation. Thank God, if you don’t comprehend the question, you can always fake it by responding, “Thank God”.

If you have trouble picturing Dan as a reckless, aggressive driver, try envisioning Duffy inseparable from her Blackberry. Yes, it keeps her wired in to work but she has also become addicted to the Brick Breaker game, available exclusively on Blackberry. Dan has a Blackberry also, to help keep tabs on his needy American citizens, but so far he remains insusceptible to the lures of Brick Breaker. Perhaps this is because he isn’t very good at it.

With six months passed and 18 months left here, we have been cautioned that time will fly by and we should identify all the things we still want to see and schedule them all during assorted holiday weekends and vacations. While we have loved seeing Petra, Umm Qais, Jarash, Damascus, and Jerusalem … Cairo, Palmyra and Dubai are still on the list. Our list feels do-able but then we will meet someone who raves about their 10 days in Oman or someone else says that Turkey is their favorite country in the world and so we keep re-prioritizing the list.

Christmas here is different, no doubt about it. We have a chocolate advent calendar from the French grocery store Carrefour (today was a chocolate snowman) but at the British Club’s Christmas Ball last week, we realized that December 14 was the first day we had heard a Christmas carol played – a lifetime record for both of us. We must make our own iPod playlists in order to hear Ella, Elvis or the Muppets sing about the season. We love unpacking (but not yet unwrapping) the boxes of Christmas goodies that have been arriving in the mail. We have tried very hard to avoid spoiling the surprise inside by ignoring the mandatory Customs slips. We have suggested that the mail room attach “Spoiler Avoidance” stickers but apparently it is unlawful. We were impressed by the creative substitute for packing peanuts that Tim & Rose used: little snack bags of crunchy Cheeto’s. Our imagination soared upon seeing the Sharper Image catalog pages that Pam and Sam used: will we be getting the Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball Game or the Aviator Bifocal Reading Glasses/Sunglasses, we wondered.

We’ve been posting our favorite movies on the blog. Our favorites for the year are The Lives of Others; 3:10 to Yuma; Eastern Promises and Knocked Up. We saw Knocked Up via Netflix, and it also came to the big screen in Amman, but not before undergoing some serious censoring of key courtship scenes. The film as shown here suggests that flirting in a bar followed by breakfast together the next morning may lead to pregnancy. So be careful you unmarried flirtatious breakfast-eaters!

Of course we hope and pray for peace in the Middle East, not only because we would be able to visit Bethlehem and beautiful Lebanon, but mostly because peace here will improve the lives of the many Jordanians and Palestinians who have been so hospitable to us.

Duffy’s favorite books this year (Dan's list is on hiatus)
· Run by Anne Patchett
· Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill
· World War Z by Max Brooks – I am reading this now and it is really, really clever. A Studs Terkel style oral history of the world after the zombie wars – rest assured that a post-zombie infestation is not a pretty thing. Safety note: to kill zombies you must destroy their brain.
· Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – memoir of a woman who spends a year traveling/living in Italy, India and Indonesia.
· Twilight by Stephanie Meyer – this was my favorite teen fiction book of the year – a vampire romance with a vampire that reminded me a lot of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or maybe that is just who I pictured in my head.)

We have had Dan’s parents and Duffy’s parents as house guests and hope we can offer our hospitality to you too. I think they will assure you that Jordan is not scary; shwarma is really tasty and that there is indeed something thought-provoking about being in the midst of so much history.

With hopes of peace for you, your families and the world.

Love, Dan and Duffy

Eid Mubarak

Today is the start of Eid - or I think more accurately - tomorrow is the start of Eid but today is a holiday too so that people can get ready for Eid. There was an Eid "Eid-Al Fitr" that celebrated the end of the month of Ramadan. This Eid "Eid Al-Adha" follows the month of Haj, when Muslims who are able go to Mecca. Eid Al-Adha celebrates when Abraham went to sacrifice his son and God let him sacrifice a ram instead. Today, families who can afford to sacrifice an animal - they keep 1/3 of the meat for themselves, 1/3 of the meat goes to their extended family and 1/3 goes to neighbors.

The picture above is the Jordanian version of "Merry Chrismukkah" - but instead combines the ram of Eid Al Adha with Santa's hat.

Engagement party

Stephanie told me last night that we should post more - no promises but here is at least an update of what we did last night...


Last night (after talking to everyone at Vicky's Xmas party) Dan and I went to our first Jordanian engagement party which was thrown for one of the embassy drivers. This was a big party at a hotel – maybe 200 people. You know how you can go to a wedding and there is always a table that somehow sticks out – it’s the table of co-workers or it’s the table of scattered people that the bride and groom know from some part of their life. At this party there was the table of Americans from the Embassy and wow did we stick out.

The party was primarily focused around dancing. The bride and groom sat on a small, decorated stage – he in a suit, she in a beautiful embroidered dress that looked like a wedding dress except it was gold. There was a DJ playing Arabic pop music – mostly Nancy and Haifa two Lebanese singers but also Shakira, who while also half-Colombian is known here for her Lebanese-ness. There was lots of dancing – most of it women dancing with women and men dancing with men and occasionally the bride and groom dancing with each other. The DJ had a microphone AND a drum. This meant that there was his extra drumming emphasizing the beat in music that already has a pretty strong beat. He did not play the drum when the couple danced together to Kenny Rogers' “Lady” – the one slow song of the evening.

At one point the DJ called all of the embassy people to come dance with the bride and groom. After that, we were all pulled to the dance floor by assorted family members – but nearly always by someone of the same gender. I would be pulled to the floor by the bride (whom I had never met before) or the bride’s mother (ditto). Dan by the groom’s father or the groom’s boss – the head of the motorpool. We think this being pulled to the dance floor was not a testament to our excellent dancing skills but one more example of Jordanian hospitality – they were going to make sure we had a great time at their party and feel very welcome - which we absolutely did.

Winters have come and gone

This afternoon, I got a call from Mom (W.) that they had made it back to New York. They had some flight craziness with rescheduled flights and customs and luggage but they are home now. It was a good and busy week - here is the itinerary for those of you considering your own Jordan-Israel adventures.

Wednesday - arrive - eat shwarma, walk around Amman's new pedestrian zone

Thursday - Jerusalem - Western Wall, Old City, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and a model of the Second Temple which apparently used to decorate the lobby of a hotel

Friday - drive to Masada - site of a siege between Jews and Roman troops. The remains of the fort (built by Herod) are on the top of a mountain with beautiful views of the desert and the Dead Sea. Spend the night in Tel Aviv mostly so Mom and Dad can see the Mediterranean and we all can go see Golden Compass which was disappointing. Maybe whenever you LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a book you will find the movie disappointing, if I remember correctly I also didn't like the play-version in London nearly as much as the book either even though the puppet-daemons were cool.

Saturday- back to Jordan to see Baptism site on the River Jordan and a quiet evening at home eating Indian take-out.

Sunday - Mom and Dad get a driver to take them to Petra where they ride donkeys and eat ice cream.

Monday - Mom, Dad and Duffy head up to Jerash for the gladiator show and to walk around the Roman town. We then have a crazy drive around the city after missing a turn on the way home. That night we head to a friend's book signing party and go see Amman's best ruin, a Roman ampitheatre. Then we have a crazy drive around the city after missing a turn. I (Duffy) would like to note that my missed turn resulted in a 2 mile detour and Dan's missed turn got us nearly to Jerusalem (or so it seemed).

We have some great Masada pictures that we'll get posted.

Saturday (we mean Sunday) night

It was a relatively quiet weekend for me and Dan had a group of government visitors in town that he helped out with. Helping meant going to the airport and silently hoping that everyone says “great” to the plan of eating dinner at the hotel and no one suggests “hey could we go shopping?”

On Saturday night (which is our “Sunday night” because we have work on Sunday and not Friday) we had a few friends over to play games. We started with our globe trivia game at the hardest level doing capitals. If you haven’t played, each round is 45 seconds and the computer asks you to find “Wellington” and “Skopje.” With a room full of world travelers, this invariably resulted in less “where’s that” but more “never again.” I think “never again” was applied to the cities of Tashkent, Paramaribo and Jeddah for those of you planning your summer vacations.

My parents arrive tomorrow. They have a lot they want to see – Jerusalem, Petra and hometown Amman – we are just hopeful that jetlag doesn’t wipe them out. It can be really hard to sleep through the night and the call to prayer seems timed to sound exactly when one is tossing and turning the most. It has indeed turned “cold” in Amman (cold means 50s) and maybe the closed windows and our noisy heater will block out the mosque a block away.