Technically, Friday was our last day in Jordan. We wanted to make the most of it, so we all woke up early and made our way to the Al Hussein mosque to visit it before the Friday prayers started and it would have been impossible to get inside. Zaynee led us on a quick walk around the park where the mosque was, until it opened at 10:30am. It was such a nice day compared to yesterday!
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| Family |
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| ...plus Azhar! |
When the mosque opened, we joined our newfound American friends, a brother and a sister who were loud but nice, and waiting to enter the mosque as well, and went inside after covering our heads. I expected it to be a bit more intricate, after seeing the mosques in Turkey like the
Blue Mosque, but it was rather simple.
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| Mom in front of the mosque |
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| Ready to go inside! |
The men and women separated to see the separate facilities and Mom and Zaynee led a short prayer for us before we headed out. It was a nice way to start the day.
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| Inside where the men prayed (Dad took this for me!) |
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| We were given clothes appropriate to pray in |
After seeing the mosque, we asked Ghamid to take us to our favourite place...Starbucks! Mom was craving a coffee, and Hanaa was desperate for wifi. We hung out there before walking across the street to the Taj Mall. Then we discovered that it's closed until 2pm on Friday. In Jordan, Friday and Saturday is the weekend, and since prayers are on Fridays, most things stay closed until later on. It was almost like how everything shut down in Vienna on Sundays, except they did end up opening in the evenings here!
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| Our favourite place! |
We ended up just wandering through the closed shops in the Taj Mall, before heading back to Ghamid.
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| Walking back to Ghamid across a bridge above the highway.... |
The next area Zaynee took us was called Jabal Al-Webdeh. It's part of the historic old town and was really quite nice, despite almost everything being shut. Then we stumbled across a shop called Jo-Bedu with the coolest graphic shirts and cards. We spent a few minutes in there and all came out with purchases before heading to get flowers for the Mansaf dinner we were going to tonight at the family's!
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| The cool t-shirt place! |
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| It was trying to be "Parisian" at Al-Webdeh |
We changed quickly at the Kindi, and Zaynee forewarned us that we were about to be so full after Mansaf. This is a typical Jordanian dinner of rice, lamb, nuts, and fermented dried yoghurt that the Bedouins eat. The main thing is that you eat with your hands! Well, one hand. In your dominant hand, you take a piece of lamb and roll rice and yoghurt around it into a firm ball, which is much harder than it looks. Then, you use your thumb to almost flick it back into your mouth. It was quite a process, but we all tried it after Alaa demonstrated how to do it! The food was delicious and definitely made us so full.
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| The glory of Mansaf.... |
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| Alaa and Ali teaching Dad how to roll Mansaf balls |
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| WE SURVIVED! |
Our 3am flight was not enviable by any of them, but they were all good sports and drove us to the airport at midnight where we said more goodbyes to the boys and especially to Zaynee. We only have three weeks until we see her back in America, and she only has three weeks left in Jordan! She will make the best of it, and I'm sure she will end up visiting the family again after getting so close to them all. They made our experience, as well as hers these last six months, wonderful.
Jordan was such an amazing trip and experience. Not only did I get to see Petra, that I've been dying to see since I was about 14, but I got to visit the Dead Sea and so many other important sites! I also experienced the Middle East...this is definitely not like Dubai, which is so Americanized and modern. It was great to get such an authentic taste of what the Middle East is like, from dealing with the traffic, water shortages, no heating, falafel and hummus for breakfast, copious amounts of mint tea, and lots of dust and sand, as well as everything being an Arabic, a language that we can not only not speak, but not even read because of the different script! I'm incredibly proud that Zaynee has managed to spend almost seven months in this country, which is so different from America, and has become so fluent in Arabic. I loved visiting for a week, but I wouldn't be able to do any longer! Visiting a developing country was eye-opening, and the experience was definitely made better thanks to our new local friends!
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