Whew...I am getting so behind in my updates. It's surprising because it doesn't seem like we do THAT much in a day, but international travel is always more exhausting than I remember and it's tough to keep up with houskeeping things. I’ll try to keep this post to highlights so I’m not overwhelmed ( Read more... )

After our delicious Friday night meal, Alex and I returned to the apartment to regroup and wait for the evening festivities to begin. We’d planned to go out to a Western-style (not country-western, mind you) club for a little dancing. Despite being a Muslim country there are always places you can go to find a drink, but dancing places are harder to ( Read more... )

Mmmm... Alex just returned from a Friday afternoon/evening (the sabbath) meal at Abdullah's house. It was so good! It was a variation on maqlooba ("upside-down"), the dish that he described in his LJ. This version was a tasty rice pilaf with pine nuts, almonds, and chick peas, served with chicken and a soup made of greens I didn't have a chance to ( Read more... )

Alex’s apartment cracks me up. Apparently it is virtually impossible to find a single-bedroom dwelling because the only reason the locals would move out of their family home would be due to marriage and child-rearing. This means that all the foreigners studying in Amman have ridiculously roomy apartments. Alex’s is in one of the posher parts of ( Read more... )

Today I got to go to the Dead Sea. It was sooo neat to be in such a historic and unique place-it is the lowest point on earth outside of the ocean. Indeed you cannot sink as the water is around 30% salt. It also happens to be a great picnic spot and I went with Alex’s sponsor family: Dr. Ahmed & Intisaar and their three kids, Zaid, Zain, and Yazid ( Read more... )

I was going to give an update of the events of the last few days but this morning I received a letter from the advisor at Berkeley who had seemed like my best shot at graduate school there informing me that he was no longer considering me as a potential student of his. Now I am saddened and unsure of what to do next. The other schools I have ( Read more... )

As I type this the afternoon call to prayer is ringing in the background and the sun has just peeked out after a night and morning of rain. I am so happy to be here with my brother! This morning he made me a traditional Jordanian breakfast with fresh falafel and qhubs flat bread (both still warm from the vendors). The tea here is traditionally ( Read more... )

OOps ( Read more... )

At first I wasn't sure if this trip would have been worth all the hassle of my late-night train fiasco and utter exhaustion, but I'm having a great time. Last night we went to the local pub, The Puschli. All the helpers were exhausted and kept forgetting to speak in German so the waitress was giving us withering glares every time she passed by. She ( Read more... )

Well I finally made it to my destination in Switzerland after something close to my worst-case-scenario (although it really wasn't all that bad). The long and short of it was that all of my flights were delayed and Î wound up on later trains that I'd planned on and found myself in the tiny Swiss village of Brünig in the dark, the only person at the ( Read more... )