One-Third of Tour Done: an Accounting

Dan and I realized that we have now finished 1/3 of our tour. Eight months done. 16 months to go. We had been cautioned that time would fly by quickly and it has. Since arriving, we have:

• Visited Petra 2x for fun (Dan) and a million times for work (Duffy).


• Visited both of Jordan’s UNESCO World Heritage sites - Petra and the marketing-challenged Um Ar-Rasas (we have pictures to put online).


• Drunk half of the champagne we brought and eaten all of the cereal but thankfully Dan received a lot of breakfast cereal for Christmas so we are well-supplied until at least July.
  Been to 4 out of 5 of Amman’s movie theatres, 1 of 2 bowling alleys and all 3 sushi restaurants.


• We have visited two of the four countries that border Jordan and are very unlikely to visit Iraq or Saudi Arabia.


• We have seen six of the top eight tourist sites. Yes: Petra, Jerash, Dead Sea, Bethany, Um Qais, and the Citadel. Not yet: Aqaba (although Duffy goes next week) and Wadi Rum.


• We have had no meetings with the King but Duffy did have a week when his first cousin called her every day, seven or eight times a day waiting for an answer about some equipment from the US. It is probably the only time in her life when she will screen calls from royalty.


• We have watched 3 1/2 Seasons of 24 on DVD and have Season 5 ready for viewing.


• We have eaten hummus every week.


• We have seen hundreds of camels, thousands of sheep and now consider feral cats no cuter than rats, except for one fluffy grey one outside of our neighbor’s house.

All of the talk in Amman is about inflation. The cabs all just increased their fares and restaurant menus have stickers over the old prices with newer, higher prices. Even the New York Times noticed.

Feral cat - see? Not that cute.

Vote for Amena and Chris

Our friends here Hanan and Stephanie are renting their condo to Amena and Chris who are contestants in the Washington Post Express's wedding contest. Hanan says that they are a very sweet couple who are sometimes late with their rent and he is hopeful that if they win the contest they will spend their money on rent and not on party favors.

Their entry is very cute - there are five contestants whose applications are literally about 9/11, Iraq, HIV/Aids and dying of multiple sclerosis (sp?). Theirs is the lone funny application. Please vote for them so Hanan and Stephanie can get their rent.

According to our property manager our house is still fine. Fine means okay now that we have paid for a new roof, changed the locks to meet DC fire codes and had a sick 50-year old maple tree taken down. Our tenant thankfully continues to pay rent and is not involved in any contests that we know about.

Somehow, our home computer now knows we live in Jordan and the blog submission directions are all in arabic in the teeny-tiniest and kind of swirly font. I like my arabic like a five year old - in big, bold print so I can sound out each individual letter.

Oscar Contest

My friend Andrew sent out his annual Oscars survey with the caveat that he hadn’t seen anything that wasn’t a Disney/Pixar creation. Dan and I probably saw more movies than Andrew, but for the first time in a long time we have only seen two of the best picture nominees. Jordan doesn’t get the artiest films and this year's best picture nominees seem arty rather than commercial. We did see an edited version of Atonement here – only when we later saw a preview for the movie in Tel Aviv featuring a soaking wet Keira Knightly could we confirm that scenes had been cut. We also saw Michael Clayton in Israel but we both found it boring.

Other nominated performances – we enjoyed but found bleak La Vie en Rose; we were disappointed by Golden Compass and liked the very-violent Eastern Promises. Julie Christie was excellent in Away from Her but how many people go see movies about Alzheimers? I am now realizing that except for Atonement, every nominated movie that we have seen, we saw in Tel Aviv or via Netflix.

Holiday Hike

Happy President's Day - we got a three-day weekend and we headed off to Petra with two friends. Yes, I (Duffy) have been there a zillion times but a new truism is that Congressmen don't hike (or not in Jordan they don't.) So while I have walked "the main drag" of Petra a lot - neither Dan nor I had done any of the hikes off of the main walkway. On Friday we headed to the High Place of Sacrifice (there is also a low place of sacrifice and no doubt we would be less sore if we had settled for the low spot.) Dan and I both chickened out at the last 15 yards - the wind was howling and you need to scramble up a really tall boulder to get onto a precipice to look at the valley and we felt like we had seen the valley enough. Rick and Olivia made it the last bit and Dan and I chatted with an Austrian couple who like us decided that getting nearly to the High Place was high and safe enough.

Proof that Rick made it:

On the second day, we hiked up to "the Monastary" - which isn't (nor was never) a monastary but was a tomb like all of the big carvings in Petra. We then hiked a bit further to look at views into the valley. Multiple shop-keepers had set up signs from the Monastary reading "view" and then as we got further there was competition for which "view" since each shop-keeper had claimed a rock to set up a tea-shop/souvineer stand.

We then hiked back down the hill and made the unwise decision of driving the 3 hours home. I think we were all doubly sore on Sunday (the next day) because of the combination 2 days of hiking followed immediately by a car ride. So we spent Sunday doing very little (except being sore) - organizing tax records, writing thank you notes, watching 24. We are up to the middle of season 4 - where Turks who speak Arabic are threatening the US - yes this is the plotline for nearly every season of 24 although sometimes it is eastern Europeans - oh but wait Turks are eastern Europeans now.

Dan's Birthday

We celebrated with karaoke and champgne cocktails Friday night and yesterday Dan's colleague Miriam baked him a cake. He also got to wear the office's crown (usually reserved for "consular employee of the week"). You can also see some of his colleagues and the office in the background.

Movie Recommendation ... when it comes

Last weekend, Dan and I went and saw Jordan's first feature film in 50 years - Captain Abu Raed. It played in January at Sundance and won some award (but a lot of films win awards). Please watch to see if it is released in the US - per the filmmaker's blog discussions are in the works.

It is a really good movie about a janitor telling stories to children in Amman who think he is a pilot but it also touches on serious issues here in Jordan - spouse abuse, poverty and particularly the huge gap between the rich and poor. The "rich" scenes were filmed in our neighborhood - and one street scene is just two blocks from our apartment. The film is in Arabic with English subtitle and we both left feeling like our Jordanian comprehension is getting better. Stay for the credits so that you can see some great panoramas of Amman - including Jordan's largest flag.

In proof that Jordan is a small place, I recognized one of the extras from a company I visited and Dan issued a visa to one of the producers that was going to Sundance.

Google Trends

Google has a tool to track searches. Here is the history of searches on Petra in Jordan. You can see the spike when it won world wonder but it has pretty much flattened out since then. Indeed I met a tour operator who said while business looks great for 2008 and 2009 and thinks the World Wonder buzz won't get him any business after than.

Office Division of Labor

I am spending part of next week escorting various American trade delegation members around a conference (quick: name your favorite American trade official? Any trade official?) My coworkers got to pick up Angelina Jolie at the airport.

Introducing Ricky Rice

Previously in the blog, we mentioned going to the US Rice Federation dinner. Well we just got photos and now you can see me, Dan and RICKY RICE (large white thing below). This dinner was a cooking contest. Five Jordanian housewives cooked dishes featuring American rice. Note: Rice while a staple of the Jordanian diet is not grown in desert-dry Jordan - it is imported. I am told that Jordanians prefer American rice - sold under the Tiger and Uncle Ben's brands but it costs more than Egyptian rice. While the housewives were cooking their dishes (chicken with rice, chicken with rice, fish with rice, chicken with rice, chicken with rice), there were innumerable drawings. Good news: I won! Bad news: the prize I won was 25 kilos of rice (55 lbs). Other people won 110 lbs of rice.

The evening was MC'd by a local television personality (you can see her standing behind Dan and next to Ricky) and also featured quite possibily the worst magic show I have ever seen. The nice thing about the magic show was that the magician had a trick that involved disappearing rice and a trick that turned white paper into currency and photos of the royal family - always a crowd pleaser.

The End of the Snow

The snow is almost gone – there are some dirty piles on the edges of some parking lots but that is about it. Apparently the 18” that fell in Amman was more than anyone here could remember receiving and it wasn’t country-wide. One of the drivers at the embassy lives in the nearby city of Zarqa and last Thursday he drove his family to Amman to play in the snow because they only received a few inches in Zarqa. This is why there were a ton of traffic accidents - because people wanted to go SEE the snow.

As anyone who has taken Communications 101 knows, there are what 30 words for snow in some Eskimo language (Inyuit??? is the PC term I think). Well in Arabic there are too few words. In class this week I was trying to say that “I like the snow but I don’t like the ice.” But the word for snow and ice are the same word so the sentence ends up not making any sense. I had my teacher confirm that there really are no other words so the best I could come up with is “I like the snow/ice but not the snow/ice on the street.”

Last night, I (Duffy) went to a delayed SuperBowl party that did indeed not air commercials – well aired commercials telling people not to abuse their wives and featuring a lot of football players thanking the troops. Not in the same commercial. The host asked all guests to stay in a media cocoon and remain blissfully unaware of who won the game. This is not that easy to do. I planned on not going to any news sites or checking my hotmail account but then at work a Jordanian colleague who went to Boston University sent an email about “My sad day.” About 50% of the guests knew the result and half did not. Everyone ate the yummy chili and the obligatory hummus and baba ghanouj. We are having a party on Friday and the store where we (and everyone we know) gets their hummus and baba ghanouj is closed on Friday. It is unclear what we will serve.