A Brief Update

I arrived in Amman on Thursday night, met up with Craig and Robert (my friends from PHC, also here to study Arabic, also having no prior experience with the language) within an hour or so, and rode to our apartment with Fred, the director of CGE [Consortium for Global Education] Jordan (that's the program we're participating in). I hadn't been able to sleep more than a half hour or so on the planes (and I certainly didn't want to sleep during my layover in Milan - I had a great panini at a cafe and ate the best gelato I've ever tasted), so I was exhausted by the time we got to the apartment. We met the guys who are living next to us (three are participating in the program, the fourth teaches ESL at the office), unpacked enough of our suitcases to clean up and get to bed, and then slept from midnight to 3PM the next day.

We were only awake for about 9 hours yesterday, which meant that we woke up rested this morning, in plenty of time to get to the orientation session at 9:00. We were at the office ("the office" is the phrase I'll be using for the CGE office suite, which includes several classrooms and a common area for students to hang out--basically it's the base of operations and the locus of most of CGE's activity) until almost 5:00 this afternoon, and on the way back from dinner we found a WiFi spot we could leech a connection off of. Thus I'm posting this update. I have some thoughts on the culture here, and my reaction to it, but I don't think it's fair to post them after only two days. I'll give a full debrief of my impressions and reactions when I think they're more informed and honest.

Oh, one last thing. For lunch, 10 of us went across the street to a Yemeni restaurant where we ate family-style for 2JD apiece ($2.82). Ful is one of my new favorite foods. It's like refried beans if they were better-seasoned and served with hot, crispy flatbread instead of tortillas.

That's all for now. Thanks for your prayers, everyone. I'm getting more acquainted to things here and settling in for the long-ish haul.

Salaam