Amman, Jordan

For those of you I have not talked to recently, I will be spending the next two months in Amman, Jordan, working on my Arabic (especially dialect) and also doing some pre-dissertation research. As many of you may have read in the news, research (and travel) in Syria is currently out of the question due to current political events. Although I had actually decided to change my field site to Jordan before the events broke out because Jordanian society is much more conservative and it is much easier to do research here. Thus, the need to do pre-dissertation research to see both how culture and society, as well as more practical matters, differ in Jordan.

I'm already noticing a lot of small differences between the two countries. For starters, on the way from the airport to my apartment, I passed two KFCs (this was the only chain in Syria which was allegedly renamed "Kuwaiti Food Corporation" two days after it opened to get rid of the US connection), two Pizza Huts, Popeyes, Domino's, McDonald's Subway, Gloria Jean's Coffee, and the "Modern" American School. While I had been to Amman on my big trip Middle East trip in 2009 with my sister, I had forgotten how big Amman was. Damascus is much smaller and extremely easy to navigate as a result. There are very convenient and cheap service (bus) routes that are incredibly easy to figure out. However, Amman is much more spread out and it seems that cabs are going to be the necessary mode of transportation. Amman is also MUCH more expensive. I will not even tell you how much I am paying to rent an apartment (I'll post about my rink-a-dink apartment later).

However, the biggest difference so far as been the water situation in Jordan. While water is by no means plentiful throughout the Middle East, Jordan is in extremely short supply. Each apartment has a weekly allotment of water (our tanks get filled Saturday and Sunday) and once that is gone, we have to wait for the next refill. While Syrian water was perfectly fine to drink, Jordanian water is not. We started a delivery service to get a 10 gallon jug of boiled water for 6 JD (rather than consistently buying bottled water). It's definitely going to take a little getting used to.

Even though I lived in the Middle East last summer, it's fun to come back and remember all the little things one needs to get used to again. There's the don't-stay-in-your-lane driving, the throwing of water onto the ground to clean and reduce airborne dust (yes, even in a severely water-deprived country), no recycling (painful). Culturally, I have to get used to the extreme precision of interactions with Jordanian males, an issue that stems from honor which I am fascinated by (and also the area of my dissertation research). This entails not opening the apartment door with a tank top, making sure shades are drawn from neighbors if wearing said tank top (it gets hot!), not making eye contact with strangers, leaving the door open when any men are in my apartment fixing the TV, internet, stove, etc. Practically speaking, my least favorite is not flushing TP. And we learned another one courtesy of a neighbor's guidebook: leaving the house with wet hair as a woman insinuates that one is a prostitute because she's just taken a shower after sleeping around (definitely in Egypt, possibly in other countries). I might need to get a hairdryer!

Photo courtesy of LP