Sometimes Life Comes Full Circle

So, last week I got about as lucky as a person possibly can when my friends Siham and Leah came for a visit.  It was only a bit more than a week, but we managed to pack it with all sorts of activities, including meeting all the students in both my classes as well as many of my Fulbright friends.  We also went to Petra (completing my goal of Visiting Petra Three Ways), Wadi Rum and Aqaba (where I was able to cross snorkeling in the Red Sea off my list). 

With the women of my Pressure Groups class during our end of the year dinner: Feda'a, Amani, Leah, Siham, Rola, Heba and Areej (Abdulazeez missed the photo op by thoughtfully rushing to the pharmacy for medicine for an emergency burned hand)

Enjoying the excellent night view at Books@ Cafe with Fulbrighter friends: Grace, Christina, Leah, Elizabeth, Siham, Jayme, Cooper and Kelsey

At Al-Quds restaurant sampling mensaf: Cooper, Mike, Leah and Siham

Posing with my Health, Environment and Human Rights class students after they completed their presentations: Siham, Mary, Noura and Leah

I plan to do some separate posts on some of these activities, but I also just wanted to take a minute to reflect on the fact that it was Leah and Siham who co-originated the idea of 52 New Things that started this blog and Siham who came with me to Jordan two years on my first trip here. (And while I'm thanking people, I should also point out that another close friend of all three of us, Jamila, set up our original connections here in Jordan for us, and would have been here too, had she not been racing a deadline to complete her PhD at Oxford.) As my adventure in Jordan draws closer to its conclusion -- I have less than a month left here now -- I'm so grateful to them both for helping me to create the path that led me here for this year, and for coming to explore the results of my time in Jordan together.

Siham and Leah (hiding out here in Wadi Rum): hard to imagine a better pair of travellers, explorers or all-around friends!

30. Visit Jordan -- Part I: in Praise of Jamila, Siham and Leah

So, I think I'm going to have to do a whole bunch of posts to do the tiniest bit of justice to this Jordan trip, but before I even begin, I have to do one about three former students and now close friends who were intimately involved, even though only one of them is actually here.

My first thank you is to Leah, who originated the idea of the 52 New Things out of a more amorphous idea and who was in on most of the plans getting us to this point, and who is very definite that she WILL be part of the next trip to this part of the world (which I hope will be soon).

Although she couldn't come this time, Connor, Siham and I owe an everlasting debt to Jamila,who has the broadest and deepest friendship network of anyone I know, and the greatest logistical know-how. She spent a semester abroad in Jordan, and she spent the weeks before this trip connecting us with friends and helping us figure out flights and a million other things. Her good friend, Chris, is allowing us to stay in his family's guesthouse our first week here. Another good friend, Khaled took us out on our first night on the town in Amman (about which more, later) and greeted us with a question, "So, are you guys okay with following the itinerary Jamila suggested for this evening?".
Finally, I must thank Siham, who is sitting next me as I blog this. In addition to being the best all-around travel buddy anyone could ever ask for (this is now the third region of the world we've travelled through together), she has been translating for Connor and I. She's making everything infinitely easier, from letting cabs know where we're going, to reading menus at local places to us, to showing me how to log in to do this blog posting (all the labels are showing up on my computer in arabic script -- and written right to left). And being Siham, she's charming her way through the country as well. Taxis drivers go from grumpy to insisting on us not paying our fares after she chats with them, newspaper sellers call her the most charming creature they've ever seen and forget to bug us about buying the paper, and perfect strangers offer to drive us home when she asks them for directions.

Wishing they were here, I'm putting in one picture of Leah and Jamila, from a few weeks ago when they were both visiting in Burlington and helping with trip planning. There is a picture of Khaled, Connor, Siham and I eating a feast on our first night out, courtesy of Jamila. And finally, here are Siham and Connor, looking appropriately touristy as we were standing in front of the world's largest flag pole (which happens to be right here in Amman). It's a great trip so far, but it never would have happened were it not for Leah, Jamila and Siham, and before I posted anything else, I wanted to say a huge thanks.