Blizzards and a Bed

Who was ever worried about having a hard day’s travel? In my head I was going to run into raging storms and insurmountable delays on my trip to Jordan. The truth is it was a breeze. As it turns out, when the East Coast gets hammered by a snow storm, a lot of flights get cancelled, and if you're lucky enough to be on a flight that avoids cancellation, you get the VIP treatment going through security. You might even get to crack a few jokes with John the TSA agent at the passport check station. John wasn't the only person that I got to crack jokes with on Saturday. The biggest hold up of my day was when I had to stand behind one person at baggage check, and he happened to be in the same program as me and we had the same exact flight itinerary. After my stroll through security, I rendezvoused with my new travel buddy and headed on my way to the longest string of flights of my life. The flights were incredibly enjoyable; I even got to put my four semesters of studying to German to good use on my flight with Austrian Airlines. They asked me "do you want a drink" in German. Naturally, I responded in German. It must have been an impressive sight, because it was so good I made a native German speaker respond to me in English for fear that my perfect German pronunciation would embarrass her. After a grand total of three hours of catching z's and seventeen hours of travel, I had my feet firmly on the ground in Jordan.

Being in Jordan has been exhilarating. There were fewer than 20 people on my last flight from Vienna to Amman, so the line to get my entry passport, and the line at customs, was about the same size as a line would be at a college campus to buy Barry Manilow tickets. (I was going to leave out "at a college campus" but at least my Mom would buy a ticket, which would put the line at one more person than I had to wait behind.) After walking out of customs, I started scanning for the representative I was supposed to meet from my program. I found a man waving a sign at my travel buddy and me as if to say "there's a white kid, he must be here for CIEE." We trotted over to the man holding a CIEE sign. He greeted us in Arabic and introduced us to other residential staff members. They handed us packets and talked to us for a while and led us out to a van that one of the staff members drove. We dropped off the staff members, who pointed to the CIEE office so we could find it when we came back, and the other staff members drove my travel buddy, two other CIEE students, and myself to our homestays. I got to meet the family I will be staying with for the next four months and settle in as I fought off jet lag. After about the tenth time accidentally dozing off, I figured it was time to hit the hay, and I crashed into my nice warm bed for what would be an eleven hour rest fest.

While I had missed the storm on my trip over to Jordan, we were warned upon our arrival that we might have brought a storm with us. Jordan usually gets one or two substantial snow storms a year, at least according to the workers at the CIEE office, and when they do, most businesses are closed down. Jordan doesn't have any snow removal services, so when it snows, the road turns to a sheet of ice that is impractical to travel on. Sunday night was supposed to be the start of the storm. We were given in our orientation packet an alternate schedule for orientation. We were told upon arrival to ignore our original schedule and simply use the alternate. This schedule consisted of the following:

-Don't go to the CIEE office

-Attend 3 online orientation sessions that won't take more than an hour.

This left us with lots of time to get used to our new surroundings and spend some time where we'll be living for the next few months. I bunkered down, grabbed my Tauntaun to crawl inside of in case the storm turned to a Hoth style blizzard, and anxiously awaited the impending flurry.



We didn't get enough snow to stick on the ground where I live. Somebody in my host family showed me a funny video of a Jordanian yelling about the lack of snow in Amman. Or at least, that's what I got from it. I couldn't really understand any of what he was saying, but I connected with the raw emotion he was expressing. Despite the light dusting we received, our emergency action plans were already in place, so that means it's day three of my journey in Jordan and the only official orientation I have received has been online. I say official, because my host family has been showing me the ropes to a lot of what goes on. I just got back from a five hour excursion that included a lot of showing me roads to remember and districts to go to for eating, shopping and more. Also, the CIEE staff has done a wonderful job. Despite the fact that the snow storm was a bust, they took every precaution to keep us safe, and they've given us plenty of materials to prepare ourselves. The online orientation sessions have also been helpful. Tomorrow I will head into the CIEE office for my first face to face orientation, and by next Monday I'll be starting classes, so there's a lot to look forward to. I also have a lot of stories and experiences from the short three days I've been here, but most of them I'll save to talk about more in depth in later posts. The important thing for now is I've been provided a nice warm bed to sleep in and I'm starting my unforgettable international adventure.