I hate to say it, but I told you so. I told you it wouldn’t take long before I was
completely behind on blogging. We are
only 6 weeks in to this new adventure in our lives and already you have missed
the following:
MOVING…yup, again
This time we moved into our permanent residence. I have to say I am SO SO happy that we asked
for a different place. Some of you may
have heard that about 3 weeks before we were to board the airplane to Amman, we
found out that the Embassy was changing our housing assignment. They had decided to terminate the lease of
the house we were to live in and assigned us to a new apartment. That ended up being our temporary residence
for 4+ weeks. Don’t get me wrong it was
a nice place. It is actually much newer
construction than what we are now living in, but it was underground. Yes, underground as in -2 on the elevator and
there was a new building under construction right behind us so any nature light
we were getting was going to go away. As
it was when we lived there I noticed that by about noon the natural light in
the living room and kitchen areas was pretty much gone and I had to start
turning on lights. It kind of drove me
crazy and made me feel like I was living in a cave. The other downside was the location. It wasn’t a great spot. Again nothing here in Amman is that far away,
but when we now currently live across the street from the Embassy and Bill can
walk to work – those are perks you really enjoy. And we do.
So about 3 weeks ago at about 5pm we moved into our new permanent
home. While, as I mentioned, it is on
the older side, it has also been pretty much renovated. We have an updated kitchen and completely
redone bathrooms and new floors in all the bedrooms. It’s really quite nice. The bonus: it’s on the ground floor! I walk right out the back door to the street
each morning!
The move was interesting.
The guys from the Embassy showed up with a pick up truck, no boxes and
no tape. Now we didn’t have that much to
move but we did have 5 huge air shipment boxes, which were still pretty much
packed (but they were opened). I was
desperate for something for the kids to play with. Plus we had our 6 suitcases, backpacks, and
food – because when you live in temp housing for 4+ weeks you start to accumulate
a pantry (well ok this lady starts to accumulate a pantry!) Anyway I just had to laugh when the guys
walked into the place and didn’t speak a word of English. Thank goodness Bill decided to come home to
help. Not only did he translate, but we
also used the car that he had borrowed from his office to transport all the
suitcases. I loaded up our with the
kids, backpacks and food. In the end we
got everything over here, but it’s just yet another “Amman moving” story that
we will laugh about in the future.
Since moving we have had many a worker in the place. I will admit we pushed the Embassy into
letting us move in on August 25. The
biggest reason being that we wanted to be in the right house for Samuel’s first
day of school, which was the next day, August 26. So due to that there was some work that still
needed to be done. Nothing major, well
at least not at first!
Originally we just started out needing some of the cabinet
doors installed on the kitchen cabinets.
We eventually ended up with the plumber here for about 7 days. On Day 2 Bill walked into the kitchen to a
completely flooded floor. And here he
thought that by moving to a country that is “water-poor”, he would get to avoid
house water issues. No such luck
apparently. About 5 days later Samuel’s
room started to flood as well.
Apparently the radiators that are in each of the rooms (for winter
heating) were acting up and needed some attention. The long and short of it is that I now know
the plumber on a first name basis.
Things have seemed to calm down recently, thank goodness,
and we are settling in pretty nicely now.
The Kitchen
The Dining Room and Living Room (please excuse the mess)
The TV Room
Samuel's Room
Mariel's Room
The Backyard
We have discovered some nice “local, right by the house”
finds – like the falafel restaurant with the best falafel sandwiches, bread and
hummus for the low low price of about 4 JD - $6 for the whole family - and that
still gives us leftovers! There is also
Gerrad’s Ice Cream. Oh my – I have
discovered the BEST dark chocolate ice cream ever! They actually call it “Black Chocolate”
because it is THAT dark! Yum!
Mariel modeling our ice cream
Moving on…what else you have missed?:
The First Day of School
Samuel is now in his 4th week of school and
Mariel is in her 3rd week.
They both are doing really well and have really been enjoying it. Believe it or not the topic at the dinner
table is usually how many new Arabic phrases or words the two of them have
learned that day. We have all met some
really nice people at each school and I have even attended the first PTG
(otherwise known as a PTA) meeting at Samuel’s school. I know some of you will be happy to hear that
I have volunteered to be in charge of the games at the school’s Halloween Party
– “Spooktacular”!
Dead…Car
Just in case you think this overseas living is all about fun
and exciting things, I am happy to report that about a week ago I got in the
car to take Mariel to school, turned the key and nothing, nada, zilch. Yup we would call that “waking up to a dead
car battery.” Fun. Luckily Bill was able
to run around like a madman, borrow a car to loan me so Mariel could get to
school, and coordinate with the mechanic to come and take a look at our car. By the end of the day it was all fixed, but
really did I need a dead car battery on week 4?
I mean it all happened at the same time as ALL the plumbing issues. I was beginning to feel like I should just go
home.
The Kindness of Strangers
Last week I was out and about running some errands before picking
Mariel up from school. Of course I was
running out of time, but I was determined to go and find the home goods store
and see what it had. I found it and even
managed to get a parking spot not far away.
I started walking up the street to quickly bop into the shop when I
noticed the Habibah shop.
I know, I know – the what?
Habibah is the highly recommended sweets shop that sells delicious
kanafa (A middle-eastern dessert consisting of a base layer made of
cheese mixed with milk/semolina (or cream) with a crispy layer of dried noodles
with a slightly orange-ish color and is often topped off with some syrup - source:Urban Dictionary) and other local desserts. I had read about it in my Jordan guidebook
and we had tried to find it previously but couldn’t, so I couldn’t just walk by
it and NOT go in. My only hesitation was
“would anyone speak even a little English?”
Well true to my luck the answer to that was on this particular day that
the guy behind the counter spoke no English.
However, I wasn’t the only person in the shop. There was another nice looking Jordanian
woman who was in front of me. I was
staring at all the various options trying to figure out what I might choose and
didn’t even notice that the guy had started to speak to me, in Arabic. She looked over and spoke to me in English, which
made me look up. Apparently he had asked
me if he could get me anything. Being
the ever polite American, I said to the woman “Oh no, please just finish with
your order. I am still looking.” Thankfully this woman was smart and realized
early on that he knew no English and I knew no Arabic so there wasn’t a chance
I was going to end up with any kanafa if she didn’t help me out, which she very
nicely did. While he was putting the
platters of goodness together, did I mention the goodness? Seriously folks I
realize the above “definition” may not sound appealing to you, but take my
sweet tooth word for it – it is DELICIOUS.
Anyway back to Julia – yup the very nice lady’s name. She introduced herself, gave me her business
card and told me all about herself.
She’s married to a Canadian. They
own the Jordan Gold Club. She is a
Jordanian American and lived in the U.S. for many years, mainly on the West
Coast. She has a nephew who lives in San
Francisco and she doesn’t get back to the States much any more as the airplane
ride is just really long. (I hear ya,
Julia, I hear ya!) She then offered to
pay for my sweets, which I very politely declined. I mean she had already helped me so much, I
couldn’t possibly let her do that, plus I had no idea what this stuff
cost! The man behind the counter had
finally finished wrapping up her packages and she paid. We said our goodbyes. I thanked her for her help and off she
went. The gentleman then hands me my bag
of goodness and I try to hand him money and he shakes his head. I say to him, “did she pay for mine?” and
point in the direction she left and he nods in agreement. I thank him, “Shukran” and I leave. I couldn’t believe it and I couldn’t wait to
tell my story to Bill!
Habibah
Kanafa - pure yumminess!
As I have noticed in our 6 short weeks here, Jordanians are
really very friendly. They love their
families and they love making a good impression to visitors. I was so thankful for Julia that
afternoon. I very badly wanted to bring
home some of the famous kanafa for the kids to try and she made it happen for
me. So Julia, the lovely Jordanian
American who helped me that day I say to you, Shukran – Thank you very
much! The kanafa was DELICIOUS!
And there you have it folks.
You are pretty much caught up!
Love to all,
J in Jordan
