The Last Week of Summer

This has been Samuel’s last week of summer vacation.  He starts school on Monday.  I’m going to be honest.  The week has not been that interesting.  We are definitely going out like a lamb and not a lion.

We are stuck in the “it’s the last week of summer, we are in a brand new country, living in a city which happens to not really be a walking friendly city where parks are hard to come by and riding one’s bike means putting your life into the hands of Jordanian drivers, which I don’t recommend.”

Granted we could very much be having this exact same week in Reston, VA – minus the “brand new country, city, putting you life in danger” part – but you get my drift.  If you haven’t already seen the link I shared on Facebook from Jen Hatmaker’s blog about the end of summer with her 5, FIVE! kids, take a look. 

Jen Hatmaker "Worst-end-of-summer-mom-ever-a-sequel"

I find her really funny and refreshingly honest.  Not to mention she makes me feel like I’m not failing as a mom because I am fresh out of ideas and tired of looking at Pinterest in the hopes that someone created a board about “Things to do within the first 3 weeks of moving to Amman.”  If you find such a thing let me know.

Anyway…enough about nothing and on to our most exciting week! Not really, but I happened to feel compelled to write so you get to be lucky enough to read it!

The work and school week starts on Sunday here, so that is where we shall begin.

Sunday

Let me first say that my goal this week was to not go to the Embassy everyday, specifically the Embassy pool.  You might be asking why, why not go, meet people and hang out poolside?  Well the answer is this, while all of that is a nice idea, I didn’t want to become dependent on always being at the Embassy.  Being there is “America” which is quite lovely, but I have two years here and I need, as well as the kids, need to figure out how to live in Amman without our fallback all the time.  And trust me there is plenty of “America/Western world” in this city that it isn’t that hard.

The other reason I didn’t want to be at the pool everyday is that in case you haven’t noticed we, the Elliotts, are white.  As in white, glistening WHITE!  And the sun shines here every.single.day. BRIGHTLY.  People, we are living near the equator for heaven sakes, so quite frankly we can’t be at the pool everyday unless the pool water is replaced with sunscreen.  Seriously, I have never looked at Samuel and said, “Wow, buddy you are tan.”  But this summer I can actually say that.  And yes I have had new friends here look at me as though I was crazy, because the fact is, Samuel is still white, but honestly he is tan in our book!

Okay back to Sunday – day one of the week

It’s the beginning of the week, so of course we needed to go to the grocery store, because honestly, what else is there to do but go to the grocery store.  I had already decided that we were going to avoid the pool and so I thought we should check out one of the mega malls this small city has in it.  Many of them have grocery stores in the bottom of them so I knew we could hit that up while we were there.  But first I was determined to go to the local butcher shop that I heard about from several people – Meat Masters.

Samuel was super excited because he has been begging me since we got here to buy some lamb (the meat of choice in these parts) chops for dinner.  Needless to say Meat Masters didn’t disappoint!  And I probably spent more money than I should have, but we won’t discuss that and we will be eating well.  Yes we got lamb chops. The butcher chopped them up right there for us and we had them for dinner Sunday evening.  And yes they were delicious.  I like to believe that this is extremely evident by the fact that the pickiest eater in this house, Miss M, ate three whole chops, THREE!  (Have I mentioned that she is now also eating cheese again.  Go figure!  And no it isn’t even special Jordanian cheese.  It’s Laughing Cow – the soft triangle kind that we get in the U.S.  She’s also decided that she likes hot sauce, but that is purely because her brother is into it right now and that is another blog for another time.  We are still working on fruits and vegetables.)

With the success of Meat Masters I was feeling rather good about myself so after lunch we trekked off down the road to the Taj Mall.  It actually is kind of like the Taj Mahal of Malls.  Every designer name you can think of has a store in this mall.  The three of us had a nice time just walking the floors in a circle.

I found it funny that the most fun we had was in the H&M.  Yup, cheap clothing and accessories and we had a blast.  They have great character t-shirts, so the three of us had a great time looking at all of them and deciding who in our life would like what shirt best.  Kyhl and Jonas were mentioned numerous times.  Below was the best t-shirt we found.  It was unfortunate that it didn’t come in bigger sizes.  I was tempted to buy several of them.

Aren't you just singing away in your head right now? "Hey sexy lady...whomp, whomp, whomp gangnam style!" (or however it goes)

We checked out every floor, culminating in the top floor – the food court.  Well, of course we needed a snack.  The kids picked slushies from Lebnani Snack, orange flavor – kicks butt over 7-11 slurpees anyday.  Sorry they just do.  I just tried to not think about sugar content.  I mean it’s still counts as a fruit, right?

On the way out we checked out the grocery store, Spinney’s.  It wasn’t bad.  Actually clean and nice, still no Wegmans, but really who can top Wegmans, but maybe Wegmans themselves.

Side Note: the wonderful Jill Vinson sent me this link about an article recently written about Wegmans and why it is the best grocery store on the planet.  I couldn’t agree more.

Buzzfeed.com "Why-wegmans-is-the-greatest-supermarket-ever!"

Monday

By Monday I had decided if we could just make it one more day, we would do the pool (the savior of activities) on Tuesday afternoon.  Not to mention the pool is closed Monday afternoons for cleaning.

Luckily we got mail and packages on Sunday when Bill came home from work, so the kids and I had two new games to play.

We had a lazy morning and played some Spot-It in which Samuel schooled Mariel and me.  And then I beat him in Sequence and yes I secretly relished that win!

After lunch and some internet research, I decided we would check out what I thought was an inexpensive indoor playground place, which would give my extremely active kids some much needed run time.

Of course, this meant going to yet another Mall, this time Mecca Mall.  (Yes, we have now been to three of the I don’t know how many malls in Amman.)

We found the place pretty easily – both the mall and the actual “playground”.  Yes, I am bragging slightly about the Amman navigation skills I am acquiring.

Anyway, we walked into this place, Jungle Bungle, and I quickly realized this is not what I had envisioned when I was thinking “indoor playground.”  There was an indoor climbing structure that actually looked pretty good, but then there were also all the arcade games in which you need an “arcade card” with money on it in order to play.  So what I thought was going to be a 4JD/kid outing for 2 hours of running around turned out to be a 20JD outing for 45 minutes of running around in the climbing structure thing (yes, that is a very technical term) and a bunch on arcade games. (How many versions of “whack-a-mole” can there be?)

I was feeling a bit guilty about all of this, but then I realized my kids didn’t really care.  They were happy to be out of the apartment (and so was I) and they had a good time.  So all in all it ended up being 20JD well spent.  Oh and Bill called me while we were there to tell me that our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage aka THE air shipment) was being delivered at 4pm. YEAH!  Life was looking up – real pillows, sheets, towels, TOYS, blankets – oh my!

It arrived by 5:15pm on Monday.  I didn’t care.  The first things I found were Mariel’s American Girl Doll and Samuel’s soccer blanket and a baking sheet.  All very helpful things.  The boxes are still packed as we are moving into our permanent residence this coming Sunday, so the fun will continue!

Tuesday

The goal of the day – try to make it until 1pm before going to the pool – aka not the highest sun of the day.  We did pretty well.  We didn’t arrive poolside until 2pm.  It pays to be a person who runs late sometimes.

We spent the morning doing who knows what and made it to the grocery store (I know, I know, but I needed more lamb for a potential dinner guest) and the fruit stand.  The best deal in town.  I bought apples, peaches, nectarines (Samuel has been loving them), potatoes, tomatoes, an eggplant, some peppers, couple of onions all for the low, low price of 8.25JD (a little less then $12).  I’m pretty sure I can’t do that well, even at the Wegmans. (ha!)

As I mentioned we made it to the pool by around 2pm.  Some friends met us later and the kids had a great time swimming, playing on the playground, and eating every snack I brought with me – shocker, not.

Fun in the pool riding on a noodle

Wednesday

Today was to be our adventure to the Jordanian Children’s Museum, which I have heard is really quite good.  Unfortunately, Samuel got sick this morning.  (Awesome.  Three weeks into a new country and we have already puked – WELCOME TO JORDAN!)  He seemed fine right after he was all done, but I decided to play it safe and not traipse around a museum I have never been to, let alone know where the bathrooms are in case a repeat event was in our future.

So it has been a movie/DS/Leappad/doll/craft/painting/beading kind of day.

We did take an hour or so and venture outside.  I was hoping to go and pay off our bill at Mariel’s school.  Unfortunately we got there too late – 2:30pm.  They are still on summer hours and I had forgotten that they leave around 2pm.  So on our way home we stopped by the DVD shop – yeah, that’s right, cheap pirated movies for 1.50JD.  People, let’s remember this is the LAST week of summer before school, drastic times call for drastic measures!

We picked our movies and since there is a coffee shop next door, Cups and Kilos, I decided I needed to cave into my craving for a Dunkin Donuts coconut iced coffee and see what these people could do for me.  Oh and they did it alright.  They added about twice the amount of coconut syrup as DD, but I didn’t care.  It was delicious and we just won’t think about the calories for now.  Samuel decided he wanted and needed a smoothie – which was also available on the menu, so he walked out with a strawberry and Mariel chose mango (which I will say was delicious!).

Yummy Mango!

Strawberry for this guy!

And that is our week so far.  I warned you, it is nothing exciting but we did learn a few things.  I know how to get to two more malls, fruit smoothies and slushies rock here in Jordan, the fruit stand is lovely, Meat Masters and I will become close close friends, and the sun shines in Amman even when your 8 year old throws up all over the bathroom floor.

Tomorrow is Thursday – the end of the week.  We are slated to go to the New Family Registration at Samuel’s new school.  Since he was only 2 when we moved to Brussels, we never learned the International School thing, so this is new and unchartered territory for us.  I am hoping for a love connection of some sort for both him and me.  I’ll let you know.

It’s also dinner night at the Embassy. They run, at least for the summer, Thursday night theme nights for the community to come together, eat some dinner and hang out.  Being newcomers it has been a nice way to meet some new people and get a chance to chat with others that you have met along the way.  Tomorrow is “Backyard BBQ” – aka burgers and hotdogs – see, America at our fingertips.

This was Bill from last Thursday (which was Tex-Mex night).

We hope that you are all enjoying your last week(s) of summer.  Feel free to send us notes and let us know how you are doing.  We love to hear from friends and family.  Nothing quite compares to a little piece of home.

Love to all,

J in Jordan

A P.S. In Pictures

PopPop and Gammer sent us a box full of things we had left behind (okay it was stuff that just wasn't making it into our luggage) but they also included some other fun things, like Kosher salt for me (don't ask, you can't get it here), Calico Critters for Mariel and a Lego for Samuel.  He was thrilled!

 So the next time you feel stuck in traffic just remember this - you aren't stuck because sheep are in the middle of the road - unless you live in Iowa, maybe that happens in Iowa.

Yup, just passing the sheep on the left.