Weekend Update!

Heyya friends!

As you may have noticed, I'm already falling behind in regularly posting to this blog...I promise it's because, during the week, all I'm doing is going to classes, studying, and trying not to blow up my apartment with our finicky gas stove every time I cook...basically, barring the last activity, I'm not really doing anything "blog-worthy," as they say. This weekend, though, my roommates and I saw Amman from a lot of different angles, making up for our rather uneventful first full week of classes. Here's a picture.

We kicked off the weekend with a visit to a bakery for, basically, sugar, in the form of the kinafa mentioned in the title of the blog. The cool thing about this bakery, however, besides the awesome sweets, was that it had a little patio-like area behind it where people could chill as they ate/entered food comas. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the demographic on the patio was mostly families with little kids celebrating the end of the work week. There were also a couple little boys who were there with their dads, playing a soccer video game...all the dads were sitting nearby, smoking, chatting, and cheering their kids on in the video game. I could definitely sense some of the other little kids, who were sitting with their extended families, getting a little justice of the kids with the game, but the whole atmosphere was just super friendly and low-key. I think it's probably the first public moment in Amman where I've felt almost at home, as if I weren't, in fact, an American tourist doing all the touristy things I'm supposed to do (though that's awesome too! I love touristy things - witness the picture I took in the last post with the Bedouin guardsman figurine...). We finally left once it started to get dark, as it's still not the smartest idea for a group of girls to be wandering around at night in the city, but it was, all in all, one of my favorite moments here so far.

Friday, we saw a completely different side of Amman - instead of seeing working class families enjoying the end of the week, we people-watched Jordan's affluent upper class at the aptly named "City Mall." The name fits for two reasons: first, the mall is, in fact, in a city, and second, the mall itself basically looks like it's own little city. I don't think I've ever seen a shopping mall that more deserved the term "mecca," if you can pardon the political incorrectness of using that word in this way...but actually: so much stuff. The whole mall looked like a giant spaceship had landed in the middle of the city. There was a Starbucks. I couldn't get a picture of that particular Starbucks, unfortunately, because the apparently snapping a photo would be a security threat (or so I understood from the angry tone of the security guard who ran up and stopped me...). But here's a picture of the logo - best part = the transliterating of "Starbucks" into Arabic. Gotta love globalization!

Anyway, in general, this mall was just super crazy, and the people shopping there were clearly doing pretty well for themselves financially. There was still a range of people present, from women in full niqab to teenagers in short skirts. Also, here's a sign of my absorption of cultural values: I was momentarily horrified to see people wearing clothes that didn't hit their neck, elbows, and ankles. Young men in shorts - what were they thinking? Girls in skinny jeans and tank-tops - so little clothing! It's only been two weeks and I'm already talking like a grumpy old Ammani grandpa. Basically, though, it looks like a lot of those clothing concerns seem to not apply in a place as commercialized as City Mall - it's almost as though any place with such a high concentration of international brands must be, in some way, culturally neutral. Yet, parts of it were still so unique to Jordan...there was a food stand selling chocolate covered dates (NOM), there were prayer rooms for men and women on the lower level, and the Starbucks sold grilled halloumi sandwiches. Not quite sure what to think about it, but it was a pretty cool place to go!

We followed our trip to the (air-conditioned) mall with dinner at a little restaurant called Hashem. All they serve are the following: falafel, hummus, pita, and a dish called ful medames (basically Middle Eastern refried beans, sometimes served with a fried egg - here's a picture of my attempt to replicate it for dinner tonight). Also, chips - as in, french fries. We got everything

but the chips and basically managed to make a meal out of, well, chickpeas, mostly. It was amazing, and it cost us about 3 bucks each. Cheap, delicious, plentiful food for the win. In our satiated state, we made our way to the Roman Ruins to a concert in the smaller version of the gigantic Roman Amphitheatre, called the Odeon Theatre, also dating back to the Roman era. So, as I said before, Jordan's government cares a lot about tourism and they use these ancient structures for concerts and other events.

This whole week, the city's annual music festival has been going on with performances in the two spaces, both the main Amphitheatre and its tiny counterpart. We didn't really know what we were going to see on Friday night, but we sort of just wanted to go see a concert in the ruins, so we showed up and bought tickets at the door. The group that was performing, interestingly, was a choir! So obviously I was dorkily really happy that we had gone that night. They weren't really the kind of choir I'm used to, though. The group, called "Choir Al-Shaab" (Choir of the Youth) were a group of young Arab men and women from all across the Middle East who wrote songs of political satire and social protest. Kind of a cool concept! Unfortunately for us, the focus of their performance was on the lyrics of their songs (they had excellent enunciation!), which were, of course, in Arabic, so despite the aforementioned enunciation, we were at a loss, reduced to eagerly pointing out words or phrases we sporadically recognized and to awkwardly laughing along with the rest of the crowd, always a second too late, whenever the witticisms in the lyrics cropped up.

The audience there, though, was so enthusiastic and upbeat that it made the performance loads of fun anyway! Also - one of the best parts of listening to a choir is watching all the individual singers, which definitely paid off this time! There was one guy who did a constant head bob, another who would gesture dramatically with his hands at certain points in the songs, and a girl who basically had her own dance party in the corner of the stage. Everyone looked like they were having a ton of fun, and obviously they were pretty amusing, since all the Jordanians around us were chuckling non-stop! It was definitely a different kind of musical performance than what I was expecting, but it was incredibly enjoyable as more of a "cultural experience" than anything else...

After the concert, we went over to a classmate's house to eat cheesecake - not any kind of cheesecake, though! This was American cheesecake. It was the shape of the American flag, with blueberry pie filling as the stars part and strawberries for stripes. We sang "Proud to Be an

American" as we cut it and pretended that it was the Fourth of July a little early...it was kind of the best. Also, we drank beer, Jordanian-brewed but beer nonetheless, and since the beer came from a can, I felt pretty darn American as I was drinking it! It was a solid little pre-7/4 shindig, which will hopefully tide us over if we can't celebrate the Fourth with proper pomp! And we finally got home after a kind of sketchy 11pm walk through downtown Amman to find a taxi.

I spent today, in contrast to the events of yesterday, sitting at home studying vocabulary, so there's not much to say, but hopefully I'll have more to post soon! Also - if you get a chance, could you tell me what your address is? I'd like to send postcards :)