The past week we kept busy with the usual park visits. We went to a playgroup on Monday with a bunch of other expatriates. We are becoming familiar with a lot of the other families in the Embassy community, so it's starting to feel like home. Unfortunately, by the end of this month, my two closest friends are heading back to the States (Kaylan and Jessica) and I'll have to make some new ones.
On Tuesday, I left Jake with Ailyn and went to lunch with some of the other military wives. The Embassy has a pretty large population, but the military community here is very small but we are lucky to have one of the great Army FAO legends among us, and she got us all together. She has lived in Jordan 3 times since 2003 and has a much broader perspective on all things Amman. It was a good lunch and I'm looking forward to a girls night out with the same group this week.
Then later that afternoon/early evening, Chris and I went to grab dinner and went to Cafe@Books in downtown Amman. This little bookstore was really interesting. It had many of the books in English. It was very expensive, and many of them were about sex. Not in the Harlequin novel kind of way, but more in the cultural sort of way, some also included homosexuality. Middle Easterners seem to be very private about sexuality and seemingly pretend that homosexuality does not exist, so finding a store so open about this stuff was really unique and VERY liberal for Jordan. If you walked into this same bookstore in America, I doubt if anyone reading this blog would even notice a difference between it and a Barnes & Noble or Boarders, but for Jordan, very liberal. We went upstairs to eat at the cafe. It was also a Hooka bar. The restaurants here have non-smoking and smoking sections, but there is very little difference. Even the non-smoking tables usually have ashtrays on them, but have a "No Smoking" sign on the bottom of the ashtray, so maybe it's more of a suggestion...? Dining is not a quick process in the Middle East. It took over 10 minutes to have someone greet us an take our order. When we did, Chris tried to order an appetizer and an entree, but the waiter insisted that both we like entrees and it would be a lot of food, so he changed his order. He got an appetizer and he was already really hungry, so this didn't cheer him up, but we didn't have enough time to get another entrees. We needed to get home and relieve Ailyn of Jake duty. I ordered nachos, which normally Chris would have criticized, "Who orders nachos at a Middle Eastern restaurant?" but since he was hungry, he helped eat them. The sweet smell of Hooka smoke (I kind of like the smell) drifted into our area, unfortunately so did the cigarette smoke, so we smelled wonderful when we got home. It's the only restaurant I've been to, or any place in Jordan that I have seen men wearing shorts in public. We felt like it was the San Francisco of Amman. Of course, if you walked into the same cafe in Columbus Georgia, you probably wouldn't have noticed much difference.
Wednesday nights, a group of girls get together to play soccer/football at the British Embassy. I'm not sure how all of this started, but it was fun to be invited along. The British Embassy has a great astroturf soccer field. This particular night, there were a lot of girls who wanted to play. One team was a group of Jordanian women who get together to play regularly. The rest have been playing on Wednesday nights and very in skill level. I haven't played soccer since I was about 12 and it's been 20 years, but I wasn't as bad as I thought I'd be. I think we may have lost the scrimmage by a point (3 to 4), but we scored the first goal and hung in there pretty well. I look forward to playing again soon.
We are the Orange TeamThursday Jake and I spent the day at home. We had been borrowing our friend Kaylan's car while she was in Israel. Fortunately she returned home safely, unfortunately, we had to give her car back. It was AWESOME of her to let me us it while she was gone. Thank you. Later that day, we went to the Embassy to get our car that we bought a few weeks ago. The paperwork with all the registration and insurance info isn't complete yet so we aren't supposed to drive it, but we wanted it parked at home and I wanted to have something in case I really needed to go somewhere. For dinner we went to the Embassy and then let Jake play at the park for a while to burn off some energy.
Jake discovered this little obstacle. He gets inside and says, "Don't worry Mommy, Jake will do it!"
Hurry Mommy! Hurry!
Cheese!!Our big trip this week was to the Dead Sea. We went with Jon, Jessica, and Amelia (our social sponsors) and we all stayed at the Marriott. Jessica called ahead to see if we could check in early and they said we could come at 1PM. We timed our arrival for about 1:30 PM and when we arrived it was incredibly busy. I think every Christian in Jordan was at the Dead Sea Marriott trying to escape Ramadan and the heat, and of course all of the expats in Amman, doing the same. We stood in line. Their room was ready, but the man said ours wasn't ready yet, but we could upgrade to a better room, but it would have to be a smoking room. I wasn't willing to stay in a smoking room, so we had to wait. Jon and Jessica let us use their room to store our stuff and we all got dressed and headed to the pool. it was crowded and we couldn't find a place to put our stuff. Eventually we found a little piece of grass in the shade to put our stuff down and took the kids to the baby pool. Just then a nice old lady offered us 4 chairs right at the poolside of the kiddie pool.
We all played in the pool with the kids for a while and then headed down to the Dead Sea. I jumped right in to the mud pot and started slathering it on. I wanted to see what this coveted mud was all about. Jake was not interested in getting covered in mud. Chris, apparently wasn't either. The Dead Sea's high concentration of salt made for an interesting float. Jessica warned me not to shave my legs the morning of and I'm glad she did. It would have burned to get all that salt in any kind of cut or scratch. We dunked Jakes feet in just to say he was in it, but didn't want him to get it in his eyes.
We went back up to the hotel, got checked in then headed to the room to shower and rest. We went to dinner at the little sports pub at the hotel. (There isn't really anything outside the hotel area and even if there was, it wouldn't have been open due to Ramadan). The hotel has about 5 restaurants, which is pretty common around here, but only the pub was open before 7 PM. It gets a little late to wait until 7 to feed the little ones, but the Jordanian's don't eat until much later than we normally do. It makes it easy to get in right away without reservations.
I woke up early the next morning and went out to take some sunrise pictures. The West Bank was beautiful across the water, reminded me of the Badlands a little bit. When everyone else was awake, we went down for breakfast and then went swimming again. I took a dip in the mud once more and Chris went for another float and we took turns in the pool with Jake. It was a good first trip to the Dead Sea.
On the way home we went through Madaba because Jon and Jessica wanted to see if they could get a mosaic made before they leave Jordan. We also found out our table that we ordered from Osama a few weeks ago was ready and available for pick up. We made our way up the hill to Madaba and only got lost once before finding Osama's shop. We picked up our table, Jon and Jessica got theirs, and we were able to pick up Dan and Kaylan's table that was also ready.
Here are some pictures of our weekend:
Below floating in the Dead Sea.
Salt on the rocks along the shoreline.
Panoramic view of the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is straight across the water and Jericho just to the right. We could see the lights at night.
This was our view from the balcony after Jake fell asleep. There was an Oud (Stringed instrument similar to the lute) playing in one of the restaurants and we sat outside for a long time, relaxing. The lights are of Jericho and to the left a few hills over, we could see the lights of Jerusalem.
A family picture at sunset after we had dinner.
Below was Jake's favorite attraction. He still loves tractors. He said, "Wook! Meelie! A tractor!" (Look Amelia! A tractor!) She was not as interested, but it looks like she pretended to care...
Sunset view of the "Adult Only" pool. Not getting much use in the evening.
Jake and I taking a Selfie.
Jake wanting to climb over the fence. 
I found this pretty interesting on our way up to Madaba from the Dead Sea. We took this little one-lane road, off the beaten path and passed by some vineyards. There were a bunch of grapes growing and a few other trees. This is literally out in the middle of almost nowhere, but here were grapes growing. As we went further up the hill, I noticed a tarp with a pool of water, and then more tarps with water and realized that is how they irrigate and store rain water when it rains. You can see pictures of the tarp pools an scan see the vibrant green colors of the grape vines just beyond them.
It wouldn't be a trip to Madaba without a herd of goats walking down the middle of the road.
I also find this really interesting about the Middle East. There a bedouins who live out with their herds and they always seem to be in some of the harshest places to live. They have these burlap tents, made of grain sacks and are set up along roadways and out in the middle of the desert. I believe their whole family lives in these tents because there are alway children playing outside and laundry hanging to dry. Often the sides of the tents are rolled up a little too. Below is picture of a herd of goats. At this site, there were quite a few tents and they had quite a few water tanks too. The next picture is of one of the tents. Quite an interesting life.
We finally made it up to Madaba and Jake was treated by Osama and given a white camel. Jake then swapped it because he wanted a Baby Camel. We swapped out camels in the basket for about an hour and he finally went away with one of the little camels that fell off one of those wind chimes or mobiles that you can kind of see in the top left of this picture. It kept him busy and he was quite a trooper for being in a place where he couldn't touch anything.
And this is a picture of our table. The finished product. It's really pretty and more vibrant in person. It's just a little coffee table size, but fits nicely where I swapped out one of the Embassy tables in our house.
We returned to a house with no food so we met Dan, Kaylan and Leila at the Embassy for dinner and then dropped off their table.
This morning Chris has his 2-hour, Arabic tutoring session so Jake and I headed to the park and then went on a breakfast date at Crumz. He fell asleep on the way to the grocery store at 10:30, and I made him wake up so he wouldn't ruin his long nap. It worked because he slept for about 3 hours while I've been drafting this incredibly long post. I hope if finds everyone well and thank you for taking the time to read it. ~ Bridget
Some info on the Dead Sea from Wikipedia:
The Dead Sea (Hebrew: יָם הַמֶּלַח, Yām HaMélaḥ, "Sea of Salt", also Hebrew: יָם הַמָּוֶת, Yām HaMā́weṯ, "The Sea of Death"; Arabic:البحر الميت 
al-Baḥr al-Mayyit (help·info),[4]), also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east, and Palestine and Israelto the west. Its surface and shores are 427 metres (1,401 ft) below sea level,[3] Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is 306 m (1,004 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34.2% salinity (in 2011), it is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, though Lake Vanda in Antarctica (35%), Lake Assal (Djibouti) (34.8%), Lagoon Garabogazköl in the Caspian Sea (up to 35%) and some hypersaline ponds and lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond (44%)) have reported higher salinities. It is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean.[5] This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point.[1] It lies in theJordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
al-Baḥr al-Mayyit (help·info),[4]), also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east, and Palestine and Israelto the west. Its surface and shores are 427 metres (1,401 ft) below sea level,[3] Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is 306 m (1,004 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34.2% salinity (in 2011), it is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, though Lake Vanda in Antarctica (35%), Lake Assal (Djibouti) (34.8%), Lagoon Garabogazköl in the Caspian Sea (up to 35%) and some hypersaline ponds and lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond (44%)) have reported higher salinities. It is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean.[5] This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point.[1] It lies in theJordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge forKing David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets.
Bless you! I feel like I am there with you!
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