Our latest houseguest

Our Jordan apartment is nearly double the size of our DC house – every room is bigger than what we have at home (except no whirlpool tub here) and we have three bedrooms. This has meant we are able to have houseguests a lot more easily. We’ve been told that foreign service officers stationed in Paris have houseguests quite literally every single weekend of their two-year tours - since everyone they know decides to visit. Here in Amman, we’ve had both sets of parents, are expecting some foreign service officers taking a break from Damascus (Amman has multiplexes and Starbucks) and this weekend we hosted my second cousin, Rachel’s boyfriend, Joel. If we were in Paris, this relationship might be too distant for us to say “sure come on over” – but here in Amman with almost no one “just in the neighborhood” we were delighted to play host.

Rachel and Joel were both in Israel participating in a program called Birthright which if I understand it is a joint government/non-profit program to introduce American Jews to the idea of living in Israel. Rachel had to get back to school, but Joel who is studying Arabic wanted to see more of the Middle East than just Israel. He was here for a few nights, we took him to our favorite restaurants, toured Roman ruins in the rain and sent him on a bus to Petra. We really liked Joel – he was curious about the region and our work; joined a brunch party at our house; and we could share stories about Maha and Khalid the two stars of the DVD that comes with the Arabic text book we all use.