A friendship story

After our time in London, we went to Amman, Jordan to visit some friends. You might rightly wonder how in the world we have friends in Jordan, and we wonder that sometimes too. But it's because a few years ago in Phoenix a group of very smart, very engaged people put their heads together and thought, how can we make the world just a little bit better? And they thought that one thing the world could use right now is some mutual understanding between the Arab and Western worlds.

So, being industrious people, they decided to have a little impromptu gathering of young people: a few from the Middle East and a couple Americans (they threw in a Brit or two for the fun of it) and to toss everyone together for a week and see what happens. The Mister and I were invited to this week-long gathering, in which the Jordanians flew to Arizona and stayed in our homes, and we spent a week sitting in living rooms, sharing meals together, and having conversations about religion, politics, culture and the Black Eyed Peas.

And in that week, what do you know, we became friends. Good friends. We had deep conversations and sang Hey Jude together at the top of our lungs and learned about each other, our cultures and countries and religions. It was easily one of the most educational and eye-opening weeks of my life.

So last week we headed to Jordan to visit these friends, although the weather had other plans. There was snow/hail/sleet/ice/general winter mayhem for practically the whole time we were there, and a lot of our meetings with friends and almost all of our sightseeing was cancelled. A disappointment, definitely, but we still got a chance to see nearly everybody and have some great conversations and smoke some hookah (lemon mint flavor, yum) and eat some really fabulous hummus.