{"id":7143,"date":"2011-12-24T14:37:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-24T21:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=7143"},"modified":"2011-12-24T14:42:14","modified_gmt":"2011-12-24T21:42:14","slug":"amman-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/24\/amman-jordan\/","title":{"rendered":"Amman, Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Here is the most important thing to know about Jordan:<\/p>\n

The people are among the friendliest in the world.<\/p>\n

This is a good thing, because guidebooks? \u00c2\u00a0They bite. \u00c2\u00a0Perhaps there is some value in them for someone who is bouncing about like rock getting skimmed across the ocean, but for the person looking to dig in for more than a few hours? \u00c2\u00a0Not so much. \u00c2\u00a0For the information you need to live, to play, to figure out how to get water in your bathroom, and shades raised and lowered, and light the stove, and identify which number is taxi fare and which is distance, and pick out which carton represents milk from a cow and which from a camel — for these sorts of things, you must simply go out and ask others.<\/p>\n

Preferably\u00c2\u00a0in Arabic.<\/p>\n

In other words: we are having a great adventure in Jordan.<\/p>\n

I spend workdays working in the office\/clinic(s)\/community center. \u00c2\u00a0Paul is with the kids. \u00c2\u00a0He brilliantly balances kids activities, his own work, and figuring out logistics (read list above, but add: mobile phone purchases, car rental, petrol station location, etc.) \u00c2\u00a0Here are some photos he took of our local digs.<\/p>\n

The park a few blocks away where the kids go to play.<\/p>\n

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In this park, they’ve met other children, who, being Jordanian, are in the running for the title World’s Nicest Kids. \u00c2\u00a0Also being Jordanian, the kids speak to my kids in English, French, and if they can get my little Franco-American tots to comply, Arabic. \u00c2\u00a0One of reasons they have met lots of kids is because the park holds a soccer field:<\/p>\n

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We picked up a soccer ball at a local mall. \u00c2\u00a0Ball + Will + Field in play park = KID MAGNET.<\/p>\n

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Kate likes the park, too!<\/p>\n

This is our street. \u00c2\u00a0Like most English translations, the phonetics of Arabic mean that it’s possible to spell things in our alphabet several different ways. \u00c2\u00a0So, depending on where you enter, it could be Torrah Street. \u00c2\u00a0Or Turah Street. \u00c2\u00a0Or Tora Street.<\/p>\n

A colleague also lives in the building and helps us immensely.<\/p>\n

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This is our building. \u00c2\u00a0If you were driving (and if you were anyone but a crazy American, this is what you would do… no one in Jordan walks!) you would pull in around the building to park underneath. \u00c2\u00a0A doorman lives by the parking spaces and acts as a maintenance\/errand\/assistant\/helper\/fix-it\/late-night-entry guy. \u00c2\u00a0Everyone in the building pays him 30JD (JD = Jordanian Dinars; .70 cents USD = 1 JD) a month for these services. \u00c2\u00a0 Our guy is super nice and we’d love to use his services more… if only our Arabic could express more than our names, thank you, and my personal favorite “sema azara” (blue sky).<\/p>\n

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And here is our front door. \u00c2\u00a0Welcome to our Jordanian home!<\/p>\n

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  Here is the most important thing to know about Jordan: The people are among the friendliest in the world. This is a good thing, because guidebooks? \u00c2\u00a0They bite. \u00c2\u00a0Perhaps there is some value in them for someone who is bouncing about like rock getting skimmed across the ocean, but for the person looking to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7143"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7143"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7151,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7143\/revisions\/7151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}