Orentation and the Long Flight Over

Well, the trip has begun! Today I spent the day in classes on Jordan, Middle Eastern History (A much more balanced view than I was expecting), and logistics. One long day, but an important one. People had so many questions about the simplest things! I forget how much experience I have traveling.

At the moment we have an hour free and then they have made a large Jordanian dinner for us to teach us Jordanian table manners. Jordanian dinners, (actually Middle Eastern dinners in general), start off with a feast of appetizers and breads, known as mezze or muqabalat. On most occasions, the mezze layout is such a grand presentation that it could be considered a feast in itself. (Especially for me since it in mainly vegetable dips and salads prepared in a wide variety of spices and ways. The most famous of these is hummus. Hummus is a puree of chick peas blended with Tania (pulped sesame seeds), lemon, and garlic. Fuul is similar, but is made with large white beans instead of chick peas. There is also koubba maqliya- a deep fried oval-shaped ball with a meat and bulgar wheat paste as its crust and a filling of minced meat and pine nuts in the middle. (Ok, I'm not eating that one, but it does sound tempting.) There will also be baba ganoush- an eggplant and tania dip, and lots of tomato, and cucumber, and pepper salads.


The main dish is going to be Mansaf- the "official" Jordanian dish.It's a Bedouin dish that consists of Arabic rice, a rich broth made from dry sour milk called jameed, and either lamb or chicken. Utensils are not used when eating Mansaf, instead people eat from a communal dish using their hands because it symbolizes social community gathering. There is going to be a vegetarian version for the few of us who are veggis.

After dinner we are supposed to go to bed. This is partially because we have A LOT of traveling to do in the next 48 hours, and partially to start to get us on Middle Eastern time. Amman is 10 hours ahead of us in California.

Tomorrow we leave for the airport at 3am. We fly from LA to Chicago (four hours) and then have a two hour layover. (That is if all goes well, there have been lots of storms in the Chicago area and great delays.) Then we have a nine hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany where we have a 15 hour layover. Students from the Middle Eastern Cultural Center there will bring us to breakfast, then on a tour of Frankfurt, and then to a Mosque for a tour and discussion on being Middle Eastern in Europe. Afterwards we are going to dinner and then back to the airport in time for a 4 hour trip to Amman. We land in Amman at 2:30. They expect us to be at the hotel at around 4. (An hour to get our things and get out of customs and then a half an hour to our hotel.)

Sunday, (or will it be Monday?) We will have a late brunch and then a walking tour of Amman, a short nap and another large dinner! I will try to get to the Internet cafe after that, but obviously I can't make any promises.

Until my next trip to a computer!
Salaam ‘Alaikum