felafel burrito

I had a "what the hell, Jordan?" moment today.

I stopped the first cabbie I found to get to work this morning. In retrospect, maybe I should have tested his English or thought about the strange band-aid he had on his nose. Whatever. He took me to the general vicinity of where I needed to go (via a gas station, and I could not tell him in Arabic to stop charging me for the time it took to fill up his tank), asked if I was married, asked for my phone number, drove in a loop, asked four people for directions before I called the office and had the receptionist give him directions, and then dumped me on the side of the highway while he pointed to where I should walk (which was on the other side) and then peeled off with my three dinars. What a turd.

Plans are cancelled again for today, which left me some time to read about...honor killings! For a good description of what Amman is like, and a maybe, although it may be exaggerated, description of what women's lives are like, check out Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love.

Fun fact about Jordan: felafel here comes wrapped sort of like a burrito, not all stuffed inside the pita.

Also I started work today, and they had nothing for me to do except read all their literature on the Dead Sea and on the rivers and groundwater of the area. A, the main guy I will be working with, was nice enough to tell me that tomorrow will probably be a waste as well, so I am going to take with my own reading, since I exhausted the supply in the office today. Hopefully Tuesday will bring something more substantive. On the other hand, another guy who works in the office took me for a tour/drive of Amman because he wasn't doing shit either.

By the way, what are the thoughts on what's going on in Israel and Gaza? http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/world/middleeast/03mideastcnd.html?hp&ex=1151899200&en=322a92cbd8530d36&ei=5094&partner=homepage

There are a bunch of people I know who were thinking of going over the border, either for work or fun, and they are all cancelling now because "shit's going down."