So the airlines lost my bag. My one and only check in bag that had literally EVERYTHING I needed. Luckily I brought a small suitcase for a carry on, but I stuffed chocolate and scarves in that suitcase instead of extra clothes. Great planning I know. I just hope I find the bag. Last time I talked to the airlines they thought my bag was in Arizona....I flew from Chicago.
I'll stop being salty about this now.
The flight was as comfortable as a 12 hour flight could get, but it did end up being a little interesting. I talked to the man next to me and failed to impress him with my Formal Arabic. I made a rule a while back that I will always start a conversation with the person sitting next to me on the flight because I always felt that not talking to the people around you is a missed chance of learning something new. It was actually kind of funny how long it took me to muster up the courage to just say hi. I was shy at first to speak in Arabic, but I realized that this first conversation was going to set the tone for how I was going to interact with strangers in Jordan. I felt that if I wasn't able to say a few words to start a conversation right then and there that I would continue to not feel comfortable talking to strangers when I got to Amman and would miss out on opportunities to get to know other people. Finally after a good 7 minutes of thinking of the worst case scenario, which I realized would be the embarrassing situation where he would completely ignore me, I decided to speak.
I used broken phrases of Arabic and English, and only managed to learn a few things from him. He owns a liquor store in Jordan. His son owns a salon. He travelled to Pakistan, Iran, and India in 1968. And he doesn't like America. After that did not talk to me and would not tell me why he was in America.
We landed in Amman around 5:00PM Jordanian time, but had to wait until 7:30 since I lost my bag. To ease my frustration the Royal Jordanian Airlines offered me what they referred to as "American pajamas", which literally looked like Velcro pants.
Immediately we left our stuff at this beautiful hotel, and went straight to dinner at Matham Alia. I was immediately worried about what dinner was going to entail. My experience with food last summer in Morocco wasn't the best because I am vegetarian. Most of the people in Morocco did not understand what it meant to be vegetarian, and I was worried that it would be the same case in Jordan. When the food came out, I was incredibly happy that I was proven wrong.
I'll stop being salty about this now.
The flight was as comfortable as a 12 hour flight could get, but it did end up being a little interesting. I talked to the man next to me and failed to impress him with my Formal Arabic. I made a rule a while back that I will always start a conversation with the person sitting next to me on the flight because I always felt that not talking to the people around you is a missed chance of learning something new. It was actually kind of funny how long it took me to muster up the courage to just say hi. I was shy at first to speak in Arabic, but I realized that this first conversation was going to set the tone for how I was going to interact with strangers in Jordan. I felt that if I wasn't able to say a few words to start a conversation right then and there that I would continue to not feel comfortable talking to strangers when I got to Amman and would miss out on opportunities to get to know other people. Finally after a good 7 minutes of thinking of the worst case scenario, which I realized would be the embarrassing situation where he would completely ignore me, I decided to speak.
I used broken phrases of Arabic and English, and only managed to learn a few things from him. He owns a liquor store in Jordan. His son owns a salon. He travelled to Pakistan, Iran, and India in 1968. And he doesn't like America. After that did not talk to me and would not tell me why he was in America.
We landed in Amman around 5:00PM Jordanian time, but had to wait until 7:30 since I lost my bag. To ease my frustration the Royal Jordanian Airlines offered me what they referred to as "American pajamas", which literally looked like Velcro pants.
Immediately we left our stuff at this beautiful hotel, and went straight to dinner at Matham Alia. I was immediately worried about what dinner was going to entail. My experience with food last summer in Morocco wasn't the best because I am vegetarian. Most of the people in Morocco did not understand what it meant to be vegetarian, and I was worried that it would be the same case in Jordan. When the food came out, I was incredibly happy that I was proven wrong.