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.
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2 comments:
wow..sounds like fun. If this was the engagement party, it will be interesting to see what they do for the wedding! Can regular people (driver) afford to do big parties like this, or do they save forever for all the wedding stuff for their children?
ps if you promise to write more we will promise to try and get everyone back home to read it!
Well, she'll promise to get everyone to read it. I promise to continue reading it and occasionally make either witty or snide comments as appropriate (ok, as approp in my head, but still, that's got to count for something, right?)
For a while, I thought you were building up to this horror story about how you didn't fit in or felt like complete outsiders at the party, but I'm glad you had fun! Sometimes, I think it's easier to have fun at a party where you know no one...it's like there are no expectations, so you can just be who you want to be. Of course, you were at a pseudo-work function, so you couldn't be wild, but you probably also didn't feel like you had to do XYZ for everyone either.
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