Our (Better Than A) Trip to Syria

After waking up on time (thanks, Ahmad, for the numerous text messages of Good Morning which sucessfully got me out of bed) and leaving my friends' place in Weibdeh for the short walk down to the serveeces in Abdali by 7:15 this morning, Omar and I realized that #1 failure to check expiration dates on government documents can really dampen a parade and #2 that according to the men whose job it is to drive people back and forth across the border, No Way were they going to let me in. I'll be visiting the Syrian Embassy here in Amman next chance I get to see about that one.

Deciding to at least get breakfast and decide what to do from there, we (nearly fatally) choose to skip going down to the awesome k3ak sandwhiches place and sat down in the first plastic lawn furtniture filled teeny restaurant we came across heading uphill. After a few bites of kibdeh (don't ask; I want to pretend it was plain 'ol meat :p) and fuul with weirdly green and glowy "olive oil" we narrowed down our travel options to "not a hospital, preferably!" paid and left. Breakfastless. I was really wanting breakfast, as I have a runny nose that empties into my stomach instead of being sneezeable ... tmi? yich.

Unable to leave the country (no money or time for Egypt, really - no visa for me to Saudi, and Omar as a Jordanian likely unable to get a visa for Israel/Palestine no matter how much we'd prepare for that trip) we had to decide on an in-Jordan adventure destination. One of my sixth grade students recently taught me that there are 12 cities in Jordan, so I asked Omar if he'd been to all of them and we began naming: Amman, Madaba, Zarqa, Irbid, Maan, Aqaba, Karak ... check, check, check ... shoo kamman? Azraq?! Bingo.

MAP: The road from Zarqa to Azraq (lots of military and customs stuff and strange circular building, but not much fun) and the road from Amman to Azraq (which takes you past lots of desert castles) are supposedly both 110 kilometers long. So why isn't there a bus or two? Or as Omar suggested, scheduling one of those big red tourists buses that go turning around Amman to head out to Azraq in the morning and return in the afternoon? Needless to say we're on a mission to return again soon - with friends!

Fingers crossed against Abdali food poisioning, we caught a cab to the downtown bus station for a little over a dinar only to find that there ARE NO BUSES from Amman to Azraq. Instead, we were told to take a bus to Zarqa and catch the Azraq bus from there. Omar rather groaned - I was elated. Finally, finally, finally I get to go and see Zarqa ... big city full, supposedly, of nothing and nobody good, clean, or of much interest besides car lots and customs offices. (Sami, my former student Anas, and George's friend shuismu who I met in Salute are all notable personal proofs I have against THAT conception.) Zarqa was EVEN BIGGER than I imagined. There were two bus stations - "the old bus station" and "the new bus station," with "the old bus station" featuring buses that run (according to the paint that declares every van-bus's route) from one to the other .... we walked it in approximately 3.5 minutes, but hey. If they exist, then there must be a demand for them. (?)

I got a lot of looks when we got on the Azraq bus - but not bad ones. (Sidenote: yesterday while walking up Jabal Amman from Balad I dodged a groping grab and looked back to recieve what looked for all the world like a one-eyed attempt to lick this rumpled 40-something-year-old man's nose with his tongue. Ugh.) People just seemed honestly surprised and a little curious about our presence, and when nearly everyone (all were middle aged and older men) got out at a military outpost on the way I was even more sure than public transit visitors to Azraq at all are a bit rare.

That's a shame, because it was beautiful, remarkable, and full of incredibly kind people. I'll get to the story of the day there in another post, hopefully with more pictures. For now, here's us at the Wetland Reserve .. check out the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature site about it meanwhile!