Although my sojourn to the W. Bank was last week, the experience lingers in my mind and I just feel the need to get it down on paper - er... blog space. I don't have much of a sense about how much people travel - I've travelled internationally a bit, but not nearly as much as many people I know, like say, for example, my spouse. This isn't my first time visiting Jordan, and so I was pretty much ready for the experience of not understanding most of what's going on. For those of you who haven't had this experience, it's interesting. Imagine sitting in a room full of people, ALL of whom speak another language, and only one of whom can understand you.15 minutes of conversation will go by and when I inquire about what they're saying, my husband says," Oh, they just said they missed me". Imagine all of them talking to each other.On and on, blah, blah, blah, for days. And you have no real idea of what's going on, what they're talking about, yelling about, laughing about. Now, see, for me, this creates a bit of an issue because I like to talk. A LOT. But here I listen. A LOT. But I don't understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. Let me tell you, the mind begins to wander. So anyway, the people are really nice and my spouse has not been back to the W. Bank since he was, like, 15 years old, and he moved to the states when he was 17, so in my mind, he's like, totally Americanized. Let me just say it doesn't take long for the conversion to take place. As soon as we arrived, we began the marathon of visiting 5 (count 'em, 5) relatives homes - these are people my husband hasn't seen in 33 years, and many of whome he's never met. This doesn't matter in the slightest. He's the prodigal son, so to speak, and in keeping with the local custom, each visit lasts about 30-45 minutes and each of them offers you tea, arabic coffee, juice and a cookie or date, or something sweet. Five homes. FIVE cups of tea, five arabic coffee's, five cookies or some such thing. It's a lovely, if just a tad over-invigorating, experience. Not much has changed in this part of the world, though, especially not the hospitality, and when we return back to the Uncle's house after the visits, dinner is waiting.
It's 10:30 at night, so that means it's time for fried chicken, falafel, hummus, pitas, chopped salads, pickled peppers, (Peter didn't pick em, it was Nejla) spicy pickles, eggplant, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and Fanta Orange soda. (???) They send us off to bed with a entire box of (and I'm not kidding here) moonpies. Just in case we needed a snack.
The next morning we awake to bright, sunny skies and a day chock full of visiting more family members, all of whom have lined up to prepare lunch (which is the big meal of the day) or perhaps dinner. We had only planned on staying for three days, but had to extend it due to scheduling problems. Actual fights broke out over who got lunch and who had to settle for having us over for dinner. The pecking order was firmly adhered to. Some people were not happy, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before any of this, at breakfast on the very first morning, my husband's family proposed an idea: How would we like to dress up and sit on a horse? Dress up like what?, you may well ask. And you'd be right to. Dress up like a villager, is the answer. "A villager?", I say after I had the preceding conversation with my husband. "Yeah, they've got the clothes. My grandfather's and my Aunt's, I think" he said. Well, with an invitation like that, how could I refuse?? My husband was all,"Well, I'm not sure... um, can't we just go drink coffee and tea?", and I was all,"NO! We have to DRESS UP LIKE VILLAGERS and get on a HORSE!!" So they brought the clothes and the horse and you can see for yourself how well it worked out. The umbrella was a frilly, shiny, bedazzled bonus.
