Snow games in Jordan

The week before last, when we were snowed in in Jordan, we were in an empty, unheated apartment and we were hungry. (Yeah, I said unheated. In parts of the world where it doesn't snow often, people rely on space heaters and mild winters to keep themselves warm. Which they don't. But that's another post.)

So, we were hungry because we hadn't anticipated the weather and all we had was a half-eaten box of Honey Nut Cheerios. We saw them on a quick trip to the market and made an immediate decision to buy them, because we don't have anything like that in Málaga. For the record, the run-of-the-mill Jordanian grocery store had Betty Crocker baking mixes, peanut butter, Frosted Flakes, and Nutri-Grain bars. And that's all I saw before The Mister dragged me away from the food and towards the electronics section.

So: Jordan, me and The Mister, no heat, box of Cheerios. We were cold and hungry and the roads were impassable. There was no choice: we had to go out. We lined our (very un-waterproof) shoes with plastic bags in an attempt to keep dry, put on all our clothes at the same time to stay as warm as possible (I looked like the younger brother in A Christmas Story) and ventured forth. 

We walked for ten minutes and got absolutely soaked. The watery slush in the road came up to our ankles at some points and stepping right in it was the only option. My toes were numb.

Finally we came upon a little food counter. Saved! The menu was only in Arabic, and the people at the place only spoke Arabic. Our Arabic is limited to knowing how to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak Arabic" so it didn't come in that handy. Luckily, there was a huge photo on the wall of a cheeseburger. The Mister smiled, pointed to the cheeseburger, and held up two fingers. It worked. Two hot cheeseburgers (with fries!) later, we trudged back in the snow.

On the way back, groups of young guys had staked out the road, ready to pelt passing cars with blizzards of snowballs. They were also cheerfully lobbing snowballs at anyone that passed, and we fit that bill.

They saw my blonde hair, took in our unmistakable foreignness, and a gleam came into their eyes.

They laughed. "Welcome to Jordan!" they cried, and hurled snowballs right in our faces.

We looked at each other and smiled. Our "dry" clothes were ruined anyway. We couldn't really get any colder.

Why not?

So we scooped up snow as fast as we could and slammed 'em right back.

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.

Another story arc

Yesterday I was telling you about one of the stories I'm choosing to be a part of this year: The Story In Which The Girl Who Hates Running Stops Being Lazy And Runs a 5k Because She Told Her Friends She Would.

Today, another story I'm living this year.

Remember last summer The Mister and I became great friends with a group of Jordanians? Well we still chat with them often, and when the opportunity came up to travel to the Middle East with a group of friends, we said, duh, yes. So this spring we will be heading off for two weeks to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Amman, and other places in between.

And we get to see our friends!

The opportunity to be with them in their country after they came to ours is so incredibly exciting.

So, we're writing a story in which Super White Christian-ish American Homegirl and Homeboy Become Busom Friends With Muslim Arabs From The Middle East. They came to visit us, now we get to go visit them. And here's the part of the story that gets dicey: when our friends were here, they taught us a lot of words in Arabic (which I never knew was such a pretty language, but it is indeed). Their English of course was impeccable. So when one of them dared me to learn the Arabic alphabet by the time we came to visit (which at the time seemed a hazy, distant era), I instantly took the challenge.

And, um, the result is that now I need to learn the Arabic alphabet in about 9 or 10 weeks. Because I promised. I knew I could do it, because *little known fact alert!* I actually can read the Russian alphabet. It wasn't too hard once I got the hang of it.

Anyway.

Wish me luck.

That is all.