Adventures, Blog Posts, Travelling

Amman, Jordan: “The landing”

January 2013: My face had been glued to the window for almost 2 hours, star gazing with my hand perched up next to the window blocking the little light from the aircraft cabin that made it a bit difficult to clearly see the stars. Then words rang in my ears like a bell warning me or rather alerting me of something I needed to be alert of. “Flight attendants, please prepare for landing” Said the captain.

At this point, I had been travelling for approximately 20 hours, tired, exhausted and a little bit anxious of the sights in store. Then it hit me OHHHHH  MMMMYYYYYYYY    GOODness,  I am landing in a different country. It had been 9 years since my little brother and I landed in the U.S to call it home, and this was the first trip I was taking out of the country.

I sat there staring at the window that had now shifted from charted glowing sparks to what was now the reflection of my face. I looked at myself, speechless, thoughtless, staring. Staring at the now, the reality that happened to be hovering above a Middle Eastern country that made everyone that hugged me goodbye warn with urgency “BE CAREFUL”.

We landed. The adventure began.

Customs happened, then I was picked up along with fellow program participants and taken to a hotel where orientation would take place. We landed at about midnight and got to the hotel, and settled in by about 1:30am.  I called, messaged and informed everyone that I arrived safe. I was exhausted, but sleepless because I was still functioning in San Diego time, which was 12:30pm at that moment, 11 hours behind. I was wide awake.  I took a long shower that relieved a good deal of exhaustion and eased some of the travel tension. It was now close to 4 am, rather 3pm and I still had no sleep.

 

After 6 more hours of wakefulness, I decided to take a walk nearby and explore my surroundings.

The culture shock began.

I got dressed, took a book and went two floors down to the lobby, I went to the front desk and asked the gentleman at the desk for suggestions of walking places. He looked at me in astonishment, smiled and took a map to direct me. He circled a number of places to walk to and stressed to me to walk on the side walk. I didn’t think much of his reaction until I stepped outside. I was welcomed rather harshly by loudness, honking, and a mixture of cigarettes and car fumes in the air. The city is crowded. All I could see as far as my eyes could capture were buildings, one on top of the other, cars as far as my eyes could see and NO TREES. NO TREES!

I come from a town filled with trees, oxygen and good people, Davis Ca. I found no trees, no oxygen, but amazing people =)

45 minutes later, I was not capable of handling the lack of green before my eyes and the bombardment of pollution to my lungs so I went back to my room, hoping to find something that would prevent me from sleeping. I failed. It took me a few minutes before sleep won the battle and I curled up into my bed only to wake 3 hours later from a knock on the door. I was grateful that I was up 3 hours later, because I had a better possibility of actually sleeping at night and winning the war over jetlag.

About an hour and a half later, a group of girls and I walked to town, a street called rainbow street, to search for food. The walk was long, but not too long, and the bee like signature of the city made it very difficult to remember that I was tired, my lungs were dying and my feet were in slight pain. As we crossed through town, through the busy streets and stopped cars to cross the middle of the road, I noticed a restaurant called “Buffalo Wings and …” and I lost all concern, all feeling and for a moment, I even forgot where I was. I just acknowledged, CHICKEN. We had been trying to find a place to eat and I couldn’t seem to find a better place than this. The girls weren’t too fond of the idea as they are able to eat buffalo wings in America, whereas I am not. (The girls said I has something along the lines of “crazy chicken eyes” which I do not seem to be able to notice.) We kept walking and passed a number of interesting vendors including a vendor titled “smoothie madness” that made all it’s smoothies from fresh fruit before your eyes. We walked past that vendor to another vendor who sold felafel sandwiches which the whole group bought, but me, all I could think of was “CHICKEN!.” We went back to that restaurant where I and another girl ordered and I got to have my CHICKEN!!!. I was elated, overjoyed and in complete tranquility as we walked out of the restaurant heading back to the hotel. But before we headed to the hotel, we decided to go back to the smoothie vendor, where one of us bought a kiwi smoothie that was to die for and I bought a large pomegranate (that a friend haggled for from .75 to .50). A good walk, CHICKEN and a pomegranate. I was floating on Jordanian polluted clouds by the time we got back to the hotel.

The rest of the evening was absolutely beautiful, beautiful in ways that I would never imagine a day to be in America. I went to my room, opened the curtains to overlook the town from the large bay windows in the room. I made myself a cup of tea, turned my chair towards the window, put my legs up and began enjoying the view of Amman in silence, tranquility and a peace of mind. Soon after my roommate came in and we began to chat, our next door neighbor soon came for a visit, then her roommate and we began conversations of all avenues. Finding laughter in each other’s company, console and finding relief in that most of us had the same concerns about our experience. Soon after, I began exploring the large, red, pomegranate I bought, peeling away the skin a little at a time exposing the intricate “juice bubbles” within in excitement and anticipation of the adventure that lie within the journey of that large, red, juice filled pomegranate that I held in my hands. I passed pomegranate “juice bubbles” to the rest of the girls as we sat there, enjoying each other’s company with good conversation, laughter and companionship.  Soon after we were joined by one more girl who we shared our wealth of pomegranate with along with our laughter, joy and ease.

Conversation continued long after the pomegranate was over and I realized that opportunity for anything lie within that time, that space that moment. The sun had completely set, the town was vibrant with lights, activity and youthful energy and the bay windows were perfect for the moment, connecting us with the city, while in the comfort of the room. I washed my hands of the sticky remains of joy on my hands, took a shawl, crossword puzzle and resumed my seat in the company of the girls. 2 crossword puzzles later, the room was still filled with stories and laughter, and we decided to go downstairs for dinner which was the perfect ending to an almost perfect day.

 

Related Posts:

Jordan:”The City”