In Jordan at last!

Wow, good thing we went to cairo before amman. Just a few reasons why life is better here in Jordan:
1. my feet are moderately clean at the end of the day. its so much cleaner here!!
2. i've slowly shirked off my defenses towards people constantly trying to sell me things.
3. no cockroaches in the hotel room so far, although the toilet seat and shower had a good brown filminess that i wiped off....

4. people are soooo nice! they are in egypt too, but here i can enjoy it more cuz i'm not on my guard.

So, Egypt was WONDERFUL and i need to show more pictures. I'm happy to say i'm in jordan now and i will continue to vary in use of capitalization if you were wondering. get used to it. We are staying in a hotel for a couple weeks until we are placed with families through amideast. apparently we WILL be placed, ensha'ala, even though we get no communication on the matter. i hope i live close to the university because i can already tell that i'll be spending a lot on bus and taxi transportation. The university here is beautiful. beautiful as far as i can tell in comparison with other schools in the middle east. i thought we might see a lot of other americans or english speakers like us, but we are far and few between. i did see a few at our main building, markaz il-lugat (Language center), but not really anywhere else. we do our placement exams in 2 days so that we can track our progress at the end of the program. tomorrow night we have a meeting at the LDS Cultural Center (which is where our ward meets) so that the US embassy can give us some important information. The day we arrived (2 days ago), we all went up on a hill where there were sheep and a couple donkeys relaxing in an open almost-grassy area. It was above an ancient farmhouse that archeologists are working on or SOMEthing...we didnt get a lot of details about the remnant rock patterns in the ground. The point is, we were taken there and while we munched on arab bread and zatar (ZATAR!! oh how i missed it. they serve it in dry form to just pour on your bread here..weird) we listened to Kirk Belnap, one of our teacher/directors, tell us about our mission here in Jordan. He had good things to say, and encouragement for the frustration and hardship that lies ahead (they keep insisting that there will be hardship). He pointed out that we were literally on the hilltops of Jordan, fulfilling a prophecy made hundreds of years ago. the view was fantastic, and he told us to look at our feet (right after i looked up from looking at mine cuz i kinda have a photo journal of my feet)and commit to make sure that our feet are those that spread a message of peace. Now the journey of my feet (my reason for taking pictures of them) has a true purpose. thanks kirk!

small note slash cool story: I got to hang out with my friend Shereen in cairo the night before i left! Shereen is the one i went to the gym with in saudi every morning before school before she left for boarding school. i was in the best shape of my life probably haha, because she and i also did after school sports. things have certainly changed ay? Anyway, she picked me up in front of a mosque and we drove around, drank sugarcane juice, and then ate dinner on a boat on the Nile. how cool does THAT sound ay? 2 "ay"s, thats all i should keep in my word inventory for one blog. anyway, we ate sushi on this unmoving boat called Blue Nile. we talked for almost 3 hours if can remember correctly...it was great! Shereen tried to show me the good parts of Egypt and tell me about the good there is to counteract the bad. she struggles with living there because she also experiences and sees the apparent bad that we can see right away. we parted with plans of meeting on the mediteranean in june. there is one point of jordan that extends down to touch it, so hopefully that'll work out! beach trip HO!


now i'm talking to brett on skype so i'm gonna go. this is probably the highlight of my day. actually, its DEfINITELY the highlight of my day.