Amman

So after leaving the Arava and many people went back to normal life my friends and I decide we need a vacation. The three of use had finished finals, moved home (I moved to new place), moved my friend and my other friend took her Arabic final. If this does not say vacation time then I don't know what does!!! We talked about it and decide we wanted to go to Jordan and visit our friends from the Arava. Funny enough my two friend have never been to Jordan even though they both have lived only a few hours away from it there whole life! So we hopped on to a bus and headed for the border of Jordan.

After spending some time in the duty free and waiting for 40 minutes for a bus to drive use less then a Km we had made it to the border control of Jordan. So a piece of background info Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1996 and have been at peace ever since. It was funny to here my friends talk about the day when the treaty was sign kinda like the Americans talk about Sep.11 but it is happy day to remember. Even with the peace between the two country we had some problems crossing the boarder into Jordan. The Jordan police pull my two friends out to talk with them for 20 minutes or so and final we called the friend we where going to visit. He was basically put in change of ensure that they leave the country and don't cause any problems. It was a nice change for me because I have been "talked" with by the Israeli government the two time I fly into the country. So I told my friends pay back is a bitch!

So we received our visa and stamps and off we went to Amman!!!!

We stayed with a friend who rented a flat for the week so him as his girlfriend could spend time together. So we figured why not crash the love shack? Each day we had another Arab friend from the Arava be in charge of our well being and took us around to do the tourist thing. Our first day was spent with our friend and her sister family going around the city center!

While shopping in the city center our friend had to kept reminding us not to speak in Hebrew. I am by no means claiming I can speak Hebrew because I can't but I have replaced a lot English words with Hebrew words. So I have to say I think I got yelled at the most for speaking in Hebrew. Sadly even though the two country have been at peace for 18 years it is still not very safe for Israelis to go and visit Jordan. It is hard to say if it is because of Jordanians or of the Palestine living in Jordan but we were always reminded by our friends to say we came from American and not to bring up Israel.

After our time in the city center we were off to her family house for dinner. They cook a wonderful meal and they tried so hard since I was the only guest that ate meat the other three are vegetarian/vegan! I would guess it was the first Arab family that tried hard to make a meal not surrounded by meat. Also when being a guest in a Arab home it in not polite to stop eating. If our plate were empty they would just refill our plate when we were not looking. Once we were done with dinner we went down a level to her sister flat and ate again. The idea here is that each member of there family had a level of the home and each time we went up a level we ate again. I am sure we ate a month worth of food in 5 hours and sadly it was just the end of our first day in Jordan!!!