The State Department is hiring...

A long article in the New York Times.

Day trip to Madaba with Peace Corps Volunteers

Over the Eid holiday we hosted two friends of our friend Rob. (We offer our hospitality to friends of friends, or else we'd have no houseguests at all). Rob's friends had just finished up their 27 months in Morocco. We hoped that a few days with us, as fellow Americans in the Arab world, would help their transition back to the States - but we have our doubts. We had a dinner in their honor, and invited a few of the many former Peace Corps volunteers who now work for the State Dept. I don't think our dinner table discussion (rug shopping in Syria and the discovery of a new spa) compared with their tales of washing clothes in a plastic bucket. Or as one of our guests put it - when he was in the Peace Corp he met many State Department officers and found them all to be "neo-colonialist [jerks]" I fear we left the same impression on our guests. We were, however, able to provide hot water, a down comforter and Internet access - so maybe they can be bought.

They took a day trip to Petra and the next day we showed them the Baptism site and Madaba (site of a mosaic map and our favorite restaurant in Jordan). They suggested we all go somewhere we hadn't been before but we had to admit that Jordan is a small country and their really aren't that many places we haven't seen. We are thinking about organizing an outing to Mafraq because we heard there is a sheikh there with a herd of really pretty white camels but it didn't seem like a good destination for people who are only in Jordan for two days. In the Madaba church, which is known for the mosaic map, we noticed a different (less ancient) mosaic which we thought looked a lot like Joseph with his baby Jesus hand puppet.

Scorpian Hunting in Dana

The month of December is 50% holidays for us. We spent the last one, which was the Eid in honor of God letting Abraham slaughter a sheep instead of his son (Ismail or Isaac), at one of Jordan's National Parks - Dana. This is about an hour north of Petra but with the same sandstone cliffs (but no carved tombs).

On the first day, we did a not very fun hike - because it was straight down and then straight up.




The rooms were quite plain but as you can see the view from our balcony was beautiful.


We got up early the next day - ready for our guided hike. V ery few (read almost no) trails in Jordan are marked and so if you go hiking you usually need to hire a guide to help you find the interesting things. Our guide Khalid started the day telling stories about quail hunting including wearing a mask that apparently makes it easier to catch quail (this point was confusing since I assume quail don't like coyotes either).



Our first break during the day. Some of the trees that were pointed out to us were 800 years old - I can't remember if this was one of them - but all of the old trees looked pretty scraggly - this is a desert so no majestic redwoods.





At our second break, Khalid started a fire and made us sage tea. He also passed around date cookies that his wife had made.

Part of our hike was through the Valley of the Scorpians and Khalid acted as though his tip was a function of the size of the scorpian he was able to locate for us. The first scorpian he found was a black scorpian which he dismissed as not very dangerous. He then proceeded to find half a dozen yellow scorpians which he said would all kill a child. He also spent time poking them with sticks so they would walk around. This seemed foolhardy to me - but this also seemed to be part of what hiring a guide got us (in addition to date cookies)

Book Club, Dinner Club and the Rest of the Week

Tonight my book club will be discussing Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany. I am a little fearful about sounding like a curmudgeon because it seems like I don't like any of the books we read for book group that I didn't recommend. This month's book is about Egyptian immigrants in Chicago most of whom have some tie to a particular department at a university there. I don't know if it was because it was in translation but the American characters especially didn't ring true. I likewise imagine if I and all the Americans I know in Jordan wrote a book entitled "Amman" - it likewise wouldn't ring very true for Jordanians. My book club is also a potluck dinner and tonight I am bringing a yellow cake with a praline icing. I was actually intending on bringing vanilla fudge but the fudge didn't set right so I baked a cake and spread the soft fudge on top and am calling it praline icing.

Last weekend, we was also our monthly dinner club. This month's theme: Breakfast for Dinner. We made a mushroom strata (a savory bread pudding) that was tasty but we were cheaters because it is in fact someone we have made before (and in fact had served the same dish to half of our fellow dinner club members). The most delicious dish by far was Banana and Peanut Butter stuffed french toast which Scott said was a Paula Dean recipe. It was unbelievably good - you should make it this weekend or better still for Christmas morning - although we should warn you that we left this dinner club feeling leaden (or the way you would imagine you'd feel if you ate a lot of bready breakfasty dishes at 8:00 at night).

Yesterday, I met someone who has been to Trinidad many times and really likes it (more frequently we get praise for the tourist destination Tobago). It is possible that Peter really likes Trinidad because he is an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement expert and apparently Trinidad because it has a domestic soca music industry to protect actually cares about music and other IP piracy (unlike Jordan which has no such industry to protect - and would probably also be a nicer place to live if it had a music industry).

We were in Aleppo a while ago...

We never posted our pictures from Aleppo. I don't think we will ever succeed in convincing friends back home how great a tourist destination Syria is - inexpensive, nice people (okay bad government), tremendous amounts of history, and tasty food (yay French colonizers). We spent a long weekend in Aleppo recently and while no one should spend a week there - here are some highlights:

• Wandering around the citadel which has views over the entire city
• A souq where Aleppans really shop (the souq in Damascas and especially the one in Cairo are mostly for tourists today)
• Eating kebabs featuring local pistachios (the word for pistachio in Arabic is Aleppan peanuts) and cherry sauce
• Visiting beautiful Syrian-style homes with an inner courtyard and rooms built around it. Our small inn was in this format with a lovely courtyard and a nice restaurant but our room was a little too authentic with very plain furniture and only a window that opened into the courtyard.
• Hearing souq shopkeepers talk to us in French - who clearly are the only people who visit Syria. Shopkeepers would then run through a list of countries "are you Swiss? Swedish? German?" They never guess American. If you do decide to have a conversation with them and say that you are American - and especially if you speak to them in Arabic - they then say "you must work for the government."

Dan at the Citadel


Outside of the Citadel

Duffy inside a courtyard



Dan at the art museum

Israeli Thanksgiving Days Three and Four

DAY THREE
Stop 6: Tabgha and Capernaum – the sites of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount and the site of the loaves and fishes miracles. The church on the site of the fishes miracles had a pond with really attractive koi – do people eat them?

Stop 7: Nazareth – this town was actually a disappointment. The churches were only okay; the town was chaotically laid out and lunch was so-so but no bargain. So we packed up early and decided to head to on.

Stop 8: Haifa suburban movie theatres. We have gone to Tel Aviv for movie-weekend but on Saturday we headed to Haifa and coincidentally drove past a 23-screen multiplex where we stopped and watched the Duchess (very good) and Body of Lies (pretty good).

DAY FOUR

Stop 9: Mt. Taybor – pretty views into the countryside, nice mosaics and the possible site of the transfiguration. We overheard a tour guide saying that the transfiguration actually is more likely to have occurred at Mt. Harmon (Israel’s ski resort) and the discussion was about the likelihood of which mountain rather than the likelihood of the event.

Stop 10: Bet Shean – this is one of Israel’s largest archaeology sites and indeed pretty impressive as things go – but our visit was short – mostly because we had already seen Roman cities on the trip and many during our time in Jordan and so that we would have time to eat one last falafel lunch before making it to the border crossing.

Thanksgiving in Israel Day Two

DAY TWO Stop 4: Safed – this town is known as a the center of Jewish mysticism and indeed we saw some artwork that appeared to have incorporated Madonna into its themes. We visited some old synagogues and some galleries. But the thing that made me laugh (although tragic) was this sign letting people know that Safed candles had moved because of a fire (and indeed the place was gutted)

Stop 5: The Golan – I think the true test of whether you have picked the right traveling companion is how they answer “what about spending the rest of the day in the Golan Heights?” This is the territory that Israel won in the Six Day War and is the area most likely to be hit when terrorists start shelling from Lebanon. It is also the prettiest and most rural part of Israel – we all felt like we were visiting another country – green and lush – until we stopped at various propaganda stops which reminded us we were in Israel. You'd be amazed how many playgrounds had a "tank" theme - this one is green but we saw blue and pink and yellow too.

Trenches and baracks that the Syrians had built and which the Israelis took over.

Thanksgiving in Israel - Day One

This weekend, we gave up the prospect of cooking a very expensive imported turkey in our very small oven and headed to Northern Israel to visit some places we hadn’t seen before along with our friend Ben.

DAY ONE

Stop 1: Tzippori – This National Park with mosaics and the remains of a Roman city was nearly empty. The mosaics were among the most impressive we have ever seen – including one dubbed the Mona Lisa of Galilee. Here we are trying to pass as locals.

Stop 2: Akko – Normally my Arabic teacher tends to scowl a little when I mention that we are going to Israel (and I think Israelis are incredulous that we like Arabs) – but she didn’t blink when I said we are going to Akko which is a mostly Arab town on the sea. We toured the ruins but mostly enjoyed dinner at Uri Buri. This restaurant’s approach is “we have a menu you can order from but why don’t we just bring half portions of everything we make and tell us when to stop doing that.” We clarified that we don’t like calamari and then began a parade of dishes – salmon sashimi with wasabi ice cream, ceviche, a spicy shrimp dish … and ended with creamy scallops. I wonder if they ever sell dessert

Stop 3: Our bed and breakfast in Korazim. If the Sea of Galilee is a clock – we were staying at 12:00 o’clock. Our innkeepers were retirees who had both immigrated from America as teens and fallen in love with Israel. Breakfast each morning included fresh baked breads and perfectly ripe avocados. We tried the pomelo from their garden but found it a citrus fruit that was hard to love.

Body of Lies Wasn't Filmed in Jordan

This weekend we went and saw Body of Lies. The movie was pretty good (but not great) and if you haven't seen it, it is about the relationship between the CIA and Jordan's equivalent: the GID.

In case anyone has seen it, I want to point out that the film wasn't made in Jordan - it was made in Morocco - so no, Amman doesn't look like that. Morocco and Jordan are about 2500 miles apart - about as far apart as New York and San Francisco - two cities that also don't look very similar (as opposed to naturally Toronto and every city it has ever pretended to be in a movie).

I would like to brag that my Arabic is better than Leonardo DiCaprio's and in one scene he is apparently able to "pass" as an Iraqi. I don't ever pass as an "Iraqi" or anything Arabic. We saw the film in Isael where it was naturally subtitled in Hebrew. A few of the scenes were in Arabic but thankfully our Arabic was (a) either good enough or (b) the dialogue was easy enough that we could understand what was happening. Thankfully all of the actors spoke high Arabic, which is what we were originally taught - but again would be a barrier in one's ability to "pass" as Iraqi.

10 things we've done since I last wrote

I haven't written in a while. So one jumbled post of stuff we've done these last two weeks:

1. Sent Christmas packages out in hopes of beating the rush of military packages which can take weeks in December.

2. Put our NetFlix account on hold because of the dreadful mail in December.

3. Wrapped Christmas presents in very non-Christmas wrapping paper because we can't find it here.

4. Made reservations for Thanksgiving dinner at Uri Buri a restaurant in Akko (Northern Israel) that was highly recommended to us - I think Stephanie mentioned salmon with wasabi ice cream.

5. Read a lot (but not all of) my book group's monthly selection - Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks. He is the neurologist who wrote "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and this was a collection of anecdote/cases of the brain and music and I just didn't care.

6. Celebrated Thanksgiving early with our Dinner Club - with a turkey and all of the fixings. We unfortunately burned our stuffing (which neither of us realized you could do) but the pies were tasty and the salted caramel ice cream (a copy of the Berthillon recipe) was scrumptious. Thank you blogger/author David Lebovitz. It did however trash the kitchen multiple times since you make caramel twice (which I can't do without getting it all over the stovetop) and then make the custard base. My ice cream maker also failed mid-way - I think the motor+ transformer combination was a bad one - so it was literally "hand-churned."

7. Figured out how to watch iTunes videos on our television (which will help with the NetFlix absence)

8. Called home to find out how my Dad was recovering from his broken ribs - which he earned in Costa Rica.

9. Served as the control officer for Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. Unfortunately, her visit was cut short by the need to dash back to DC to lobby for automakers.

10. Bought stocks that we thought were really cheap but then managed to fall further.

Iron Chef Jordan

Each month our dinner club gets together for a themed potluck. In October, the theme was Iron Chef. I have only watched Iron Chef a couple of times and not recently but as our hosts explained to us - the idea of the show is that at the last minute the competitors are given the secret ingredient which they must incorporate into their recipes. Our secret ingredient was pumpkin (and we had been assigned a side dish). Pumpkin - great! Except the Embassy store which is usually the source of weird American-only ingredients (taco seasoning, instant pudding, marshmallow fluff) was out of pumpkin (no doubt someone dashed in and bought a dozen cans in preparation for Thanksgiving).

Dan and I visited multiple Jordanian grocery stores and found no canned pumpkin. Stores were selling enormous pumpkins but those aren't the kind of pumpkin that you cook with. In one store, we found a can of pumpkin pie spice - which was helpful because it gave us the word for pumpkin but it wasn't something we needed it is just a mixture of spices we already own. We then decided that pumpkin doesn't really have a flavor and that the dominant flavor in pumpkin bread or pie is really cinnamon. So we created "pumpkin cornbread" and seasoned it heavily with cinnamon and nutmeg and dyed it orange. To add authenticity we decorated it with pumpkin seeds which were were able to find.

At dinner, we tried to keep our lack of a secret ingredient a secret but failed (not because it didn't taste pumpkiny) but because our fellow cooks wondered why we were acting weird in talking about our dish (we are apparently terrible liars). Our fellow cooks apparently all bought enormous pumpkins and made dishes with actual pumpkin - here delicious pumpkin bean dip and yummy pumpkin soup (and a beautiful Syrian table).

Our same group will be celebrating Thanksgiving together. I do not think there will be any pumpkin pie.

Our New Favorite Restaurant

If anyone had asked us for the pros and cons of life in Amman, we would rave about the beautiful weather, Jordanian hospitality and the innumerable day trips out to antiquities sites. But we'd acquiesce that we hadn't found any restaurants that we LOVE for the food. There is admittedly very good Lebanese food and we really, really like shwarma but that is about it. But now we have eaten at the Four Seasons and discovered that there is good food in Amman. It sounds like a bourgeois cop-out - but we've had similarly expensive bad (or underwhelming) food at the Sheraton and the Grand Hyatt. Coincidentally, I have now eaten at the Four Seasons 3 times in 7 days.

Our first meal (and indeed my favorite) was the Four Seasons Friday brunch. It was this month's destination for our dinner club (and the poshest and most expensive destination by far at $50 per head. Last month we ate mansaf at a cafeteria for $6). It is set up like the Kennedy Center brunch (do they still have it?) where you are welcomed into the kitchen and there are different stations set up - last week the kitchen featured:

- Carving station with beef and lamb

- Risotto station

- Falafel (which you can get for 2 for $1 elsewhere and which none of us ate)

- A taco bar which likewise I could not bring myself to eat given the hefty price tag of the lunch but which fellow diners swore was the best they have eaten in the Middle East

- A German stuffing/pork casserole thing

- An Asian station

- A sushi bar which I think all of us visited at least once

- A bloody mary bar

There was also a salad bar, a raw bar, a tapas display, a grill making kebabs and a buffet with Indian food. After this we ate dessert and I was able to show off my pastry training by being able to identify a "charlotte."

My favorite food items: raw oysters (which I probably should avoid anywhere else in Jordan); a delicious spicy soup; and the prime rib. I don't know where they are importing their non-vegetable ingredients from - but clearly no one else in Jordan uses their distributor. It was a wonderful meal.

Two more meals at the Four Seasons:

That evening, Dan and I went to the Marine Birthday ball which was also held at the Four Seasons. Amazingly, the hotel was able to serve 350 people delicious food - we weren't at all hungry having just had an enormous brunch but then happily ate our seafood salad, steak, and homemade ice cream with delicious butter cookies for dessert.

Last night, I had a work dinner welcoming a business delegation from Michigan. It too was held at the Four Seasons and again delicious. I'm not sure I will ever eat anywhere else - except the Four Seasons probably doesn't make shwarma and come to think of it, $50 falafel is a bit much, so maybe Jordan's other restaurants will still get our patronage.

Disclosure: the Four Seasons' owner's son is a friend, but please, Jordan is a small country. If we didn't visit (or write about) places where I know the owner, there wouldn't be many places we could go.

Alexandria

School was closed for Eid. Young Alexandrians were showing off their new clothes and buying sweets along the corniche.

We are outside the Citadel of Qaitbey, where the lighthouse once stood, one of the original ancient wonders of the world.


Dates just waiting to be picked at Montazah


Wildlife at Montazah


Haramlik Palace where the Egyptian President often hosts visitors

Coptic Cairo

Outside the museum, near ancient Coptic sites in Cairo

A grotto beneath one of the ancient Coptic churches is believed to be the hideout used by the Holy Family as they fled Herod (sorry, no photos) Matthew 2:13 says Jesus and his family fled to Egypt to avoid Herod's wrath. Luke 2:22 says they remained with him in Palestine. Guess which version they subscribe to in Cairo?

Walking along the corniche

Historical Preservation in Trinidad

Featured in today's NYTimes home section, is this adorable house. I believe the Embassy in Port of Spain is located in the same neighborhood but lacks charm. We expect to live in a Miami-style high-rise with no gingerbread trim.

Alexandria Library

Wow, we still haven't posted all of our Egypt pictures.

Another installment... On our third day, we headed to Alexandria. In another blog entry we will eventually tell you about our dreadful tour guide but the highlight of our day was seeing the new Biblioteca Alexandrina - the new library in honor of the old library at Alexandria. The actual collection was pretty modest but the building was beautiful. Situated with a view of the Mediteranean, the building was covered with examples of every known written alphabet.

The library includes a large cultural center and their website shows that we missed the class on reading hieroglyphics.

The lion head writing was one of our favorites.

Blackberry holiday

Yesterday was Veteran's Day - which is why we were able to head up Um Qais on a weekend. Yesterday also turned out to be a Blackberry holiday. Nearly everyone in the Embassy has a Blackberry - which is good for productivity (especially on Fridays when Jordan celebrates the weekend and DC keeps working) - but is very poor for letting one actually have a weekend. But yesterday the Blackberry gods (or demons) were smiling and while the phone feature still worked no email came in (and hence no new work). Now when I go into the office this morning those email will be there but the break was welcome.

What a difference some rain makes

Umm Qais November 2008Last December, we made a day trip up to Umm Qais - in very Northern Jordan with views into Israel of the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights (formerly Syria). We and our fellow daytrippers had all remembered it as one of our very favorite places in Jordan - with the same Roman ruins as everywhere; a nice restaurant; and GREENERY. We returned yesterday and while the ruins are still interesting (thought to be the site of Jesus turning demons into pigs); and the restaurant still a tasty source of hummus; a long drought has meant that it wasn't very green. Jordan is very very dry and people don't even try to create lush green grass like in Arizona (except in the Ambassador's backyard which is beautifully green) - but northern Jordan tends to be greener than everywhere else.

Umm Qais December 2007We did eat tasty hummus and my favorite mezze -shanklish -which is a spicy goat cheese dip. This restaurant did not make a very tasty mint lemonade. Mint lemonade is one thing that I will miss a lot from Jordan (also available in Israel and Egypt and presumably elsewhere in the Middle East). It is lemonade with very finely chopped mint added to it (like a virgin mojito). It varies greatly from restaurant to restaurant, however - and varies in color from yellow to dark green depending on how minty it is; it is sometimes in slushy format; and sometime like yesterday it is more sour than sweet. My favorite mint lemonade is available at Crumz, a sandwich place near the Embassy - it is sweet, slushy and pretty green.

Election Night and the Day After

Last night the Embassy hosted an election night party - I think many embassies do this and in South America you'd be staying up late just like you would in the states. Here in Amman, we stayed up late just waiting for the polls to close and to get a glimmer of the result. We made it until 1:00 (polls not closed anywhere except Dixville Notch NH). The party was a huge success - for the first time ever - large numbers of people were calling my office trying to get on the guest list (this doesn't happen at the more typical embassy reception in honor of a visiting violinist or trade delegation.)




The party started at 9:00 with a mock debate with two teachers playing the two candidates followed by other formal programming. Dan has designed the playlist so fun music came through between speakers praising the virtues of democracy. I and a Jordanian colleague were in charge of a presidential trivia contest - sample questions below. The winning table had a mixture of Americans (who had a pretty big advantage) and a few Jordanians who could help with the "what gift did President Eisenhower give King Hussein" questions.



Prior to the party, a local bakery offered to donate cookies to the event. The Embassy was interested in the offer until it heard that the cookies were decorated with just one of the candidate's names. The Embassy asked if plain cookies could be delivered or if the cookies could be decorated 50/50 between the two candidates. The bakery refused and no cookies were at the party. But fortunately for we cookie-eaters, a box of cookies arrived in my office today bearing the name of the new president-elect - we'll just have to assume that if the election went the other way I would still be eating delicious cookies.








1. How many presidents were elected president without winning the popular vote?

A) 1
B) 2
C) 3
D) 4

Answer: D) 4 John Quincy Adams 1824 (elected by Congress) over Andrew Jackson. Rutherford B Hayes 1876 (declared the Electoral College winner by an Electoral Commission) over Samuel J Tilden. Benjamin Harrison 1888 over Grover Cleveland. George W Bush 2000 over Albert Gore.



12. Who has NOT been to Jordan in the last 18 months?

A) Sen. Obama
B) Sen. McCain
C) Sen. Clinton
D) First Lady Laura Bush

Answer: C) Sen. Clinton. Senator Obama visited in July; Senator McCain visited in March; and First Lady Laura Bush visited in October 2007.



19. What was the last state admitted to the union?

A) Governor Palin’s home state of Alaska
B) Senator Obama’s birth state of Hawaii
C) Senator McCain’s home state of Arizona
D) Senator Biden’s birth state of Pennsylvania

Answer: B) Hawaii. Nicknamed the "The Aloha State," Hawaii became the 50th state admitted into the Union on August 21, 1959. Alaska was admitted into the Union on January 3, 1959, becoming the 49th state. Arizona, nicknamed the "Grand Canyon State," was admitted into the Union on February 14, 1912, becoming the Nation's 48th state and the last in the continental United States. Pennsylvania was one of the founding 13 colonies.





20. Who has appeared on the comedy show The Daily Show with Jon Stewart 13 times?

A) Sen. Obama
B) Sen. McCain
C) Sen. Biden
D) Gov. Palin

Answer: B) Senator McCain. Senator McCain has been a guest more often than any other person.

Bad week but cheap alterations

This week at work has been exhausting combined with a lot of nighttime events - some fun and some just work. I can say that one way this week has been good has been the availability of an on-site dry cleaning service that does alterations. Our Embassy is having a formal party next week and I ordered a bunch of dresses from Nordstrom figuring one of them would a. fit and b. be attractive. One of them was attractive but it also assumed the wearer was 6 feet tall. I was able to get the dress - which has elaborate fabric layers altered and pressed for the party for $8 and it was done in less than 24 hours.

Islamic Cairo

After the Cairo Citadel, we stopped at a couple of Cairo's must-see mosques

At the 14th century Sultan Hassan mosque we admired this, the oldest known exiting Koran reading stand, which is still in use. The wood carving and inlay were beautiful - I'm not sure if the picture does it justice.






















Here more pretty light fixtures at Sultan Hassan. (It was nearly empty of visitors)























Plastic lights and gawdy Eid decorations adorn the tomb of the important Sufi Sheikh Ali Al Rifai at Al Rifai mosque (only a century old), just next door to Sultan Hassan.



Al Rifai is also the burial spot for the last king of Egypt and (pictured here) the final shah of Iran. The shah received medical treatment at Duffy's alma mater George Washington University (just like Reagan and Cheney and Dan!). The shah's room was filled with beautiful marble panels in creams, greens, and browns. It also had an exceptionally nice Persian carpet left by his widow.