Tourists!

Today was the first day of orientation. Breakfast at 7 (again, delicious). A group of us then went to look for an ATM – although we didn’t find one that worked. Returning to the hotel, we were herded onto two large charter bus. We began by touring The Citadel: there’s a Roman temple to Hercules, an ancient church ruin, a (presumed) Umayyed-era mosque ruin, two palaces, and their associated houses. It was, surprising, cold as we were on the top of a mountain with the rains coming in, making us thankful to enter the small and crowded archeological museum. The artifacts were interesting – they had things ranging from late Greek sculpture, Nabatean monuments, some Dead Sea scrolls, a trepanned skull, and bodies of children buried in jars to golden Roman jewelry, Bronze age bronze daggers, medieval chain mail, and fossils of various animals. However, I was vastly surprised by the apparent lack of security: the building itself consisted of one main exhibit room with three exhibit rooms off it. The pieces were arranged in long glass cabinets, not protected by any special form of lock or laser guard. In the room containing the Dead Sea scrolls, there were apparently no security cameras and the scrolls were in glass cabinets with a very simple, widely available lock.

With the rains, we skipped our scheduled tour of the nearby Roman amphitheatres and instead took the tour bus all through Amman. Going through the older, First Circle area of Amman was particularly fun due to the number of small shops lining the streets. From there it was quite a contrast to the “Beverly Hills” of Amman, Abdoun. Here, a basic plot of land is 2 million JD.

Finally we parked and walked to “Wild Jordan,” where we had the cultural context discussion and coffee. More walking back to the bus and another tour of more of the city. Then we went to Jaffa for a late lunch. We went down a series of stairs running between houses; crossing multiple, narrow one way streets we risked our lives. Then into a small opening in a wall, we trailed through another series of stairs – down, down, into a smoky atmosphere. We sat at a long table with a glass top covering drawer-like displays of spices. Around us were shebaab, smoking hookah. The babaghanouj was particularly delicious. (Yes, I did come to Jordan for food and yes, it is doing very well to meet my expectations.) Another bus trip, and we were back at the hotel.

We decided more touring was necessary, so a group of six of us headed out to a supposedly nearby shopping district. To get there, we had to walk quite a distance. This is not a problem if there were anything resembling a sidewalk. Instead, we walked through deep red mud or blanaced along a curb between the raging traffic and a deep rut filled with water. Finally arriving at the shopping district, we asked around for an electronic shop. Unfortunately, our lack of Arabic did not help us find anything. The shopping area was very upscale: if I had wanted something from Guy Laroche, I could have found it here.