Amman

Mercy...tired...hopefully you're following along alright.

Bus from Karak to Amman went smoothly. We grabbed a cab from the station. The guy wanted a 4JD fair, but we said meter. He said okay, but gas prices are going up so itll be 4 JD. At the end of the ride the meter said 1.400JD so I paid that and he kept asking for 4, although he might have switched to 2 at one point. While he was asking for that he was also writing his number and name on a piece of paper if we needed his services further and Zoe was unloading the trunk. All very confusing, but our bags were out of the back, he was paid what he was owed and we found a room for 4JD a pop at teh CLiff Hotel. PERFECT!

I've spent a lot of time not doing too much in Amman. Just napping and sleeping and watching soccer that's playing in a restaurant across the alley from our room. It's too far to make much our I spend most of my time trying to guess which teams are playing and why the Jordanians might be cheering for one team over another. They LOVE the Russians.

We tried to find Indiana Jones at a move theatre here yesterday and we found the two theatres, but neither was playing Indy. Apparently he's at the uptown theatre...maybe when I'm back home, although it would have been fun to see it here.

I've been having a weird sensation of being trapped in Amman the last few days. Not stuck, but physically enclosed. I have two theories around this. The first one is Zoe. She doesn't want it, and I'm not consciously doing it, but there's a degree of protection I feel the need to provide here. Even if it's just looks I find myself responding to them or moving in front of them...my ass is nicer anyway. Zoe (and Kristin and other girls on the dig I assume) tend to ignore the looks altogether. They're going to happen so why get worked up about them? So this was one thought I had. Zoe was going up to University of Jordan in the north of Amman today, so if that was the cause maybe it is out of my system now.

The other possible cause is the geography of the city itself. Amman is built onto hills and tends to sprawl. The sprawl isn't a big deal, but the hills throw a wrench in my traditional wanderings. Look at a map and you think you have an idea where you're going, until you run into a mountain and realize that those two roads that are very close and parallel are actually separated by the ol' 50 foot vertical drop. As a result until today I found myself restricted to the valley floor.

But TODAY! I made a decision to walk over some mountains. And I did. There are lots of staircases about that you just need to look for and just been willing to sweat a bit (and tighten your glutes) allows you to save time and escape the geography of the mountains, if only for a minute. My wanderings took me to the bus station, then the Iraqi embassy before scaling another of the hills to find the Abu Darwish Mosque. It's a neat striped black and white dealy. I saw a big set of squares when I was on the other side of the valley, tracked them to where I thought they'd be but could find them so wandered up one of teh twisting roads instead. I asked questions, found the mosque and inevitably found my way back down a set of stairs...the very ones I was looking for before, that started 3 feet to the left of where I had turned right. Oh well.

As an added benefit some little kids whose mum ran a shop half way down the stairs harangued me, gave me a pop and demanded I take their picture. Good times.

So I am now tired, but more pleased about myself because I didn't sit in my room all day and read. I walked...and read outside the British Council building...or thereabouts.

That reminds me! I started my day at an arts centre/gallery/cafe. Built above some Byzantine church ruins, above it sits some old houses, one of which TE Lawrence wrote 7 Pillars of Wisdom in. Very fun. It must have been a fairly solitary writing experience, judging by some pictures of old Amman i was looking at the other day...a new post methinks.