The Flight and First Few Moments in Jordan

I've never actually done a blog before so here goes. The flight to Jordan was a long 13 hours. Royal Jordanian (the airlines) seated me about 15 rows in front of most of the group so I was sitting away from anyone I knew fortunately this turned out to not be much of a problem. To my right was sitting a family of a mom and her three children. Since she was clearly Muslim (she was a muhajib= wearing the hijab) I was cautious about how to interact with her since in our orientation packets it warned males to not go out of our way to converse with women because from the view of Arab Islamic culture this could be seen as attempting to compromise her honor or humility. I was so happy we ended up having a light 10 minute conversation about where we were from and why we were going to the Middle East. Throughout the whole conversation we spoke in Anglebic. It turned out that she and her family were American of Lebanese descent who were flying to Lebanon to visit family. Her sister and sister's daughter were sitting in the seat in front of her. Before our plane took off (about 50 minutes behind schedule) I gave them my cell phone for 2 minutes so they could call family back in Baalbek, Lebanon.

As we waited for our plane to to depart the flight attendants passed out Arabic and English newspapers, feeling cocky I smiled to the flight attendant who was about to hand me an English newspaper and I said "Arabiyaah!" she threw the Jordanian "Ar-Ra'ee" ("The Opinion") newspaper into my lap. I skimmed over the front page and realized I could only understand the pictures of the smiling King Abdallah II doing this and that.

The best part of the flight I have to say would be the guy who sat next to me. Right now I can't remeber his name but we talked about a lot of interesting stuff. He had flown all day from California where he lived with his wife and children. He told me that he had studied accounting at a California University in the 1970s and had lived in the states since then and that he was now an American citizen. Like many Jordanians he was of Palestinian descent. After speaking some Arabic with him he decided that he was going to teach me some Arabic. I read to him little snippets of the Arabic newspaper I had gotten. He told me "no! you don't speak Arabic from the mouth, you speak it from the stomach! Speak from the stomach." We spent most of the flight that we were awake talking about Arabic, Arabs, Bush, and the hord of screaming children around us. The latter ensured a restful and comfortable flight.

To me, the descent into Jordan was amazing. As our plane sank below the clouds it was awsome to see the hills and brown desert of a region I've been reading about and have wanted to see for so many years. Stepping out of the airplane I knew I was in a new place. Everyone around us was speaking Arabic. My first sense of the Middle East was the light smell of cigarette smoke. As we exchanged our American dollars for Jordanian dinars we saw dress uniformed Jordanian Army officers walking around and talking with who were probably family.

Jordanian baggage claims is very different from the way it's done in the U.S. It was a mess. Bags were everywhere and Jordanians were running around chatting away in Arabic looking for bags and family. While I was completely cluless about how I was going to find my bags, a Jordanian airport worker dude walked up to me as he crawled around the sea of scattered bags saying "ticket do you have your baggage tickets? I find your bags". Still confused and completely dead (tired, I couldn't sleep Monday night and I didn't sleep much if at all on the plane) I gave him these tickets someone had given me back in NY. For the next 10 minutes I saw this guy running around turning over bags. Al Hamdu lil Lah he found my bags, smiled, and put out his hand saying "Teep". Still clueless I just nervously smiled back at him. Looking upset he stood in front of me and wouldn't go away saying "No teep?" I handed him a dinar and walked away.

It was around 7 PM when all of us had gotten our bags and we stood by one of the airport's entrances looking for the bus from Yarmouk University to take us from Queen Alia Airport slightly south of Jordan's capital of Amman to Irbid. From the University we met two men who were assigned to help us out in the program for the next two months, Ayham and Khaled. Looking around as I we waited for the bus to come was unlike any experience of had. Around us stood Jordanian military personel, western dressed Arabs, and Arabs wearing the traditional kufiyeh (red and white scarf) tied to the head by the aghal with the thawb (long flowing outfit). About 3/4 of the Arab men around us were smoking.