Living in Jordan

Fun Fact: Because of the dire scarcity of water in the region, water is delivered once a week daily in Jordan and stored in tanks. For this reason it is very possible to simply run out of water until your next delivery date and for tap water to be undrinkable because of the bacteria that can sometimes accumulate in the tanks.

Amman is a very modern city. I felt guilty at first because I had been preparing myself for a very rural and non-Western experience, but then I reminded myself that my fellow study abroad friends in Europe are enjoying such amenities and that they don't make this any less of any "authentic" Middle-Eastern experience. After all, this is how much of the people in the Middle East live; half of the population of Jordan lives in the city of Amman. That said, our dorm is extremely nice and I do feel like we are learning more about the upper class way of life because of that, so my experience won't be entirely the average Jordanian's.

Regardless, there are still differences. Although I don't like to dwell on comparisons between the US and here and instead consider it a wholly new experience, I thought people might be interested.

Things about my living conditions I'm still getting used to:

-Not having clean hair. Our shower has very, very little water pressure so showering isn't very effective. I find that cupping my hands and gathering water to splash my body is the best way. Then I wash my hair in the sink. My roommate showers next door--apparently they have a better shower...I might start doing that.

-Not being able to drink the tap water. I haven't tried it yet but all the Americans I have talked to admit to getting sick from it. I still can't bring myself to buy water so I just bring my water bottle to our classes and fill up from the filtered water fountain there.

-No toilet paper in public restrooms. We have one of those European washers things in our bathroom

that I had to use before we bought toilet paper. I have since learned to carry a roll around with me.

-The call to prayer. At around 5 am the mosque next door performs the morning call to prayer. It is hauntingly beautiful and doesn't both me, but I do love hearing it at other points in the day a bit more.

-Using the elevator. For some reason our dorm mothers constantly urge us to use the elevator rather than the stairs, even though we live on the second (really the third) floor. They also tell us just to give the doorman/guard money to fetch us things to buy rather than walking the local shops within a 500 meter radius around our dorm. We think that might be because the Arab girls who live in this dorm are used to servants.

-Smoking. Although juice and coffee is not allowed in the academic building smoking is. Also the girls who live in our dorm smoke hashish a lot and try and get us to when we hang out. I usually point in my chest and say "asthma" as an excuse.

Attached are pictures of my dorm room. We also have a very small balcony that I hypothesize is for smoking.

Perhaps I will post later about cultural differences.

On another note, for all of those who I freaked out about the harassment with:

The harassment from guys here is not bad at all and nothing like Egypt. I have gotten comments and honks and one bus driver stuck his tongue out at him and grinned in a suggestive way, but other than that, not much and nothing that I can't simply ignore. I even heard one guy say to another guy that was leering at me "Haram alayk!" which means "Shame on you!". It is by no means a daily burden but rather a rare and unintrusive occurence. All of us overestimated the conservativeness of the clothes we wore, although as I learned this summer, just because you can get away with it and the locals wear it, doesn't mean it's culturally sensitive.