i need to come up with a leonidas-style jordan kick. ... just read. you'll get it.

so my friend got hit by a car today.

dont worry, i mean she's fine. somehow. but really, when i talk about how dangerous the streets are here, i am not kidding. 10 people die a week in this city because of car accidents. the taxi i was in yesterday NARROWLY avoided 2 head-on collisions in 4 minutes, and i didnt even blink. it's normal. there are no seatbelts, in any car. there are no crosswalks. and for some reason, GOD KNOWS WHAT IT IS, when a driver sees pedestrians in the street in from of him, he accelerates. wtf. i didnt believe it when my jordanian friends said it, but it's true. we pretty much just play human frogger and hope we don't die.

so we were on our way to school, which meant crossing garden street, a big street for amman. its like 3-4 lanes going each way, and we have to get across it to catch a taxi to get to school. we had just made it down the stairs of doom. pics will be posted of the stairs, i promise, they are the most ridiculous thing i have ever seen. so we were crossing the street, and the cars were all stopped at a red light, except the last lane before the median ,which didnt have any cars in it.

none of us even saw the car coming, it was this massive boat of a station wagon accelerating as fast as it could toward the red light where it was planning to screech to a stop. typical jordanian stoplight behavior. and we were crossing, and the driver didnt see us, and all of a sudden there was screeching and i screamed and one of my roommates was rolling in slow motion over the hood of the car and crashing onto the pavement. it was a long and very surreal moment.

then, of course, she stood up and brushed herself off, and started laughing. tij, this is jordan. sparta aint got nothing on us.

the driver was freaked, and understandably- the penalty for hitting a pedestrian is 10 years in prison. she opened her car door and started screaming, we didnt know what to do. my friend started apologizing profusely, until noe of our other roommates reminded her that, in fact, the car had hit her, and not the other way around. we crossed the other side of the street, and she complained that her leg hurt a little and she needed some advil and her sweatshirt had streettar all over it, and we all just laughed and shivered and tried to hail a cab.

wait what?

i love this country. i love it love it love it. and it is so ridiculous, and so funny, and so insane. i live in jordan. here, it is illegal to NOT have a picture of the king in every public place. there are also, somehow, few and far between good pictures of the king, which is strange because he's not a bad-looking man. you would think that the KING of this particular HASHEMITE KINGDOM could find a photographer who was willing to do a second take. who knows.

our apartment has as many living rooms as bedrooms. one for each of us. does that make sense? also, 3 pink bathmats appeared in our bathroom today, randomly. im assuming it's our landlady, since she has also brought us beans and pizza, but who knows?

there is a random cement room in the garden. i- being very pc about things like this- call it the maid's house. (backstory for those of you who dont know, i.e. everyone: most homes in jordan have a maid from southeast asia, who may or may not be paid, may or may not sleep on a mat in the living room, and may or may not be treated fairly poorly. we dont have one, which is the only reason i can make the joke.) there's a doorless archway on the side of this room, and if you go through it you will find a real door, which is rusted and has been ripped off its hinges, possibly by bruce banner. it's just leaning against the doorway. the combination of this "door" plus the curtains in the window freak me out to the extent that i havent explored it yet. pretty sure that's where they keep the bodies.

no, my landlord and lady are very sweet. they live 2 floors above us, just above the friend who got hit by the car. theyre pretty much a host family (like a homestay?). they have an adorable dog, and they love animals. they are so old and cute and wrinkly, and they love cigarettes. the woman keeps trying to feed us and the man told us that if we dont destroy anything he'd be very disappointed. he likes to fix things.

i told him i'd try my best.

we live very close to the israeli embassy. which is hilariously unhelpful. see, there are no street names here, really. i mean there are, but the signs were put up 3 months ago. 3 months. most people in amman didnt have a street name and number as their address until 3 months ago. so, needless to say, no one uses street names, or numbers to find anything. it's all landmark-based. i went to an interview yesterday, and the secretary who called to schedule it told me to take out a pen so she could give me the address. this is their "address":

"leave UJ (the university of jordan) via the north gate. go straight til you cant go any further, and at the end of the street you'll see binaayat (building) RSS. turn right, but only kind of right. a veer, really, more than a turn. we're in the 2nd building on the left, on the 2nd floor."

which is even funnier when you find out that there is NO WAY to go straight out of the north gate, and that by straight she meant turn right? when i called to ask her about this, she maintained that i should cross the street and continue going straight. i told her that this would put my in a shawerma stand's kitchen, but she insisted. i dnot know how i ever fuond the place.

so, we live by the israeli embassy. but, we're in jordan, and frankly, no one likes the israeli embassy here. even after seeing the guards in jeeps armed with ak's on every corner, i still wonder how they ever got it built. the elections are today, meaning that i may or may not be able to get to my house because of protests. we'll see. welcome to jordan.

this country is crazy. on our first day here, we had orientation scheduled all day. so all 89 of us american kids, having been sufficiently lectured on our lack of unerstanding of the culture we were about to become a part of, were loaded onto the oldest train in jordan, which used to go to saudi and back. we were taking a trip.

so when we realized that we'd been on the train for almost an hour and had no idea where we were, other than "in the desert," we were curious. and when our train was stopped abruptly by a clan of bedouins riding horses and brandishing rather intimidating weapons (which i will not specify for the sake of my mother's health), shouting things we couldnt understand, we were a little scared. and when people started shouting that the bedouins had taken a few of the girls, and our jordanian girlfriends were flipping out and screaming at us not to take pictures and not to get off the train, we were wildly curious and confused and fascinated and probably not scared enough. and, when we got off the train and there was a ceremony wherein our bedouin arabic department head begged for our lives and permission to cross their land on his behalf, and the tribal leaders agreed, and all kidnapped prisoners were released. and an hour later, when our program director couldnt contain herself any longer, and erupted with laughter at her joke, we thought it was hilarious, too. but we were confused. we're now in a country where it's a joke to wave guns around and pretend to kidnap people? wow.

the bedouins were very nice, actually, they would never have kidnapped anyone. we rode their horses and wore their scarves. they also gave us some peanuts and asked my friend and i to come back tomorrow.

also, if we ever want to be bedouins and ride horses forever? they have declared that they would accept us with love.

i dont know how im going to live here for the next 4 months. it's been less than 2 weeks, and ive been kidnapped by bedouins, and bought a notebook that says "to be special: never miss a class" (sweet, instructions). and i have no internet at home, and we dont go 2 days without argila (hookah, for the uninitiated), and we go to underground clubs with valet parking in the alley where its located and chandeliers inside and scandalous behavior. apparently the christian girls and the muslim boys get it on, but can't get too serious or their parents will kill them. literally. and you're not allowed to flush toilet paper in the toilet because of the water shortage, and all the houses are made of white stones, and gnats really like my hair because im blonde. didnt know they could see colors? and we eat hummus and pita every day, and thyme-covered bread costs 40 cents, and at burger king they dont know what you're referring to when you say "cheeseburger", and today my friend got hit by a car.

and then there's the propane truck, oh the propane truck. picture an ice cream truck-style van, that drives around playing ice-cream-truck-music, and sells 4foot propane tanks just off the street. it must be making good money somehow, because it goes around about 4 times a day.

... can we talk about how ridiculous that is?

tij, i guess.