Travelling around Amman

Today was an exhilarating day, and also an exhausting one. Per usual I didn't get much sleep last night so I had to brute my way through (years of fighting sleep apnea has apparently taught my system to accept little or no sleep). We had a very successful meeting at the University of Jordan with their Global Modules team. Betsy Beaulieu (my Dean from the Core division), her best friend Lee and my friend and colleague Al Capone (who I have decided to give the more Arabic name of al-Capone) were there for the beginning of the meeting, and then they went off on a tour of the campus while I continued on with the fine-tuning portion of the GM discussions. After that we ate lunch at the University of Jordan cafeteria which was very good. The conversation centered around the similarities and differences of teaching university students in Jordan and the US. The Jordanian professors had an interest discussion on the books they would love to teach if they were allowed. Rula Quawas, Inas Ababneh and Lazaward Sughayer have all run GMs with Champlain faculty so they are big supporters of the program, but also provided some great insight on ways that we can improve the project. UJ is essentially in the same place Champlain was a couple years ago - making that transition from teaching an occasional GM to trying to decide what courses to choose to act as "host" courses for GMs.

After that we went back to our respective rooms and worked on projects until we met up again to head downtown Amman for some shopping ("wasta balad tarajaad romanee" is close enough to Arabic for taxi drivers to know to take you to the old shopping area next to the Roman amphitheater). al-Capone and Betsy loaded up on souvenirs while I acted as tour guide - we have some great shots of Al dressed up on the street in his Arabic garb and also of him buying a dagger in a shop by the amphitheater (over the last couple years I've bought a few daggers from him and Bob Mayer has essentially bought him a new house - he was very glad to see me). We ate at the Al-Quds Restaurant (Al-Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem), which is a little mom and pop place downtown - and had primed ourselves for shopping by taking a sugary treat break at a Habiba sweet shop (Bob Mayer and I have done some serious damage at this sweet shop).

What I think many first time visitors to Amman would probably find surprising is how absolutely safe it feels downtown - in most ways you are a lot safer in an Arabic town like Amman than in just about any town in North America. It's a strange balancing act for women - they might both feel more indirect societal constraints (although not nearly as much as is commonly believed) but would also be a lot safer personally. Tomorrow is a very early start - the taxi driver for the ride to Petra shows up at 6:00. Then it's three hours through the desert (probably traveling around a 160 kmh) to Petra. I've been lucky enough to have seen Petra twice before so I'll mainly be shepherding the crew around, but I'm always excited to go back.