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.