in search for a park

I have offically been in Amman/Jordan/the Middle East for a week now. It has been quite the experience, and I still have so much more to come.
This last Saturday was good. I got kind of tired of just hanging out in the apartment on Friday, so Saturday morning I got up to wander around my neighborhood. Turns out it is very close to downtown, but the walking was surprising easy to do. Let me explain. Amman is a horrible city to walk in. I mean you can, and people do, just not extensively.
My neighborhood was explianed to me to be part of "Old Amman" which was the "posh" place to live back in the day. But yes, it is nice and a fairly quiet neighborhood.

This is walking out of the apartment building.

To the left.

And to the right.


I played soccer in this street, well kicked a soccer ball around, later Saturday night. Later being midnight because cousins and uncles were over visiting and it was only the first day of school the next day so why not?

Fun facts about Amman: the population of Amman is about half the population of the entire country of Jordan. Also, in terms of water as a natural resource, Jordan is the fourth poorest nation in the world (I have not done this research, but this is what we were told at our orientation.) This means short showers, and not everyday.

It also means fountains lack the water.

But they are really nice.

I found a park close to the house!

Since then, I attended a youth service with my host brother at his church that night. Sunday was my first day of Arabic class and I'm beginning to learn how to use the taxi to commute across the city to get to class. Luckily there are quite a few other people in the same program living close so we can split the cost, which makes it very cheap.
Today was my second day of class so we started our area studies courses which I am pretty excited for. As for now, I have some studying to do.

Ma3a ssalama.