Ahlan wa Sahlan!

I'm in Jordan!

I left home on Sunday morning. It took us forever to find the right check-in counter for my flight; my itinerary said United, but it was actually a codeshare flight they run with US Airways, so we had to go to an entirely different terminal. Then to the second or third US Airways counter because apparently they have them in different places for different destinations? Awesome. And then something happened that's never happened to me before. My bag still had room in it for a bunch of stuff! But it was still overweight. Wut? Luckily I'd brought a duffel bag in case my bag was overweight (it felt like it when I dragged it down the stairs in the morning, but I was hoping I was just weak). My plan was to have Mom and Dad just bring random things home with them in that bag, but my suitcase was overeight by six pounds and I really couldn't take that much out. It's likely because of the extra sunscreen and aloe and everything else I brought. So since I only had one carry-on at that point I tossed random clothes and shoes and things into the duffel bag and took that as a carry-on as well. Huzzah.

It was in the 60s (maybe) and raining/yucky outside when I left Boston. When I got to DC it was 90 and humid beyond belief. I'd forgotten what humidity was like. Went to the hotel where orientation was. My taxi driver was Lebanese. We talked in Arabic. Very little. Hung out in my room for a while. Went down and talked to people in our meeting room thing before orientation actually started. Orientated. Then just about everyone in the group wound up going to an Ethiopian restaurant. It was pretty good. No idea what we ate. (Yeah we ordered it, but that doesn't mean we knew what it meant!) Came back, watched the premiere of True Blood on HBO, and passed out at like 1030. It was good.

The next day was entirely orientation. As a group we went out to Maggiano's for dinner. That was amazing. The food was SO. GOOD. And then it decided to pour when we left. Fun times.

Tuesday we had all to ourselves until 5:15 pm. I went with Brittney, Jennifer, and Kelly on a hop-on hop-off bus tour of DC. Or parts of it. We saw the White House, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, and drove into Arlington. Got lunch at a cool place with delicious salads and bread. Nom nom nom. Kelly had watermelon habanero lemondae, which was really interesting. Tasty, but bizarre. We made it back to the hotel just in time, basically, because the bus that was supposed to run like every ten or twenty minutes didn't come around for at least half an hour when we were waiting. But we made it, which it what counts.

We took buses to Dulles from DC. It's not as close as I thought it was. When we were on the highway I kept seeing signs for Richmond and it made me homesick for VCU. Aww. I suppose this is to be expected when I've not been there in a year and a half? (Two days last summer to pick up my junk from storage and to get paperwork signed does not count.) Sat in the airport for hours. I slept most of the flight to London, but when I woke up I didn't feel like I'd slept at all. And of course we were all tired having gotten up early for orientation and whatnot, and then wandering around DC for the day. Spent 3-4 hours in Heathrow waiting. Got the flight to Amman. Can I just say I hate United? And all American flag-carriers? They're awful compared to all the European airlines I've flown. And EgyptAir. And even Royal Air Maroc. Their counter service leaves a lot to be desired, but the flight we took to Cairo was actually pretty good. But anyway.

Our flight from London was delayed over an hour, I think, so we finally got to Amman at like 10-something at night? Then there was a long drive to ACOR. Then a meeting. Then we came up to our rooms and I wound up unpacking most of my stuff. Before I gave up and just tossed all the little things that didn't have a home into a pile on my floor. Classy. I'm in an apartment with three other people (Morgan, Morgen, and Rebecca). We have a kitchen but no cooking utensils and really it's almost not worth it to cook here. Two meals a day are provided for us and we got a stipend of 708 JD ($1000) when we got here to cover like travel expenses and the odd meal of the day and whatnot. A lot of people are trying not to eat out often and to save the money but I'm not going to. Not that I plan on going out and blowing all my money, and yes it is a lot of money, but I'm not going to live like a pauper either. Aaaand whatever we bring home is probably going to be lost in translation/conversion at the airport. Oh well. We'll see what happens at the end of the summer.

So far we've spent all our time being orientated again. And having super intensive dialect classes. It's crazy. And exhausting. And fun. Last night I went out with Morgan and Michael to a a street called Shari'a Rainbow. It's a cool place and stuff happens there. We got shwarma at a place called Shwarmama and it was highly amusing. Then we went next door to it to a small ice cream place called Lucky Licious. Apparently it's Brangelina's favorite ice cream place in either Amman or all of Jordan, I can't remember. I doubt it, but this is what we heard. Whatever.

And that is what we've done so far. Wahoo.