Trip: Part 1

For or better worse, here begins the long, picture laden, random and complicated story of my trip to Jordan and Palestine.  

Day 1 was April 18 a Wednesday.  I left Wichita in the afternoon, flew to Chicago, met up with Michael and Jorge (pictured below) for our flight to London.  I was feeling good at this point.  I felt like the 8 1/2 hour flight over the Atlantic was going to be doable and thankfully it went smoothly.

 Later I told Ben that it felt like a pretty quick flight, which means I slept.  It was a late afternoon/evening flight so that helped me to sleep.  So, the three of us arrived in London and made our way to our gate to meet the rest of our group.

 From London it was a 5 hour flight to Amman.  That flight was not much fun - crowded, kinda hot and simply another long flight after a day (or was it a night?) of long flights.

Thankfully it was easy to get visas and get through immigration in Amman.  We met our hosts Daryl and Cindy Byler (MCC Middle East reps) at the airport and they helped us get loaded up for transport to the hotel.

 I didn't realize the airport was about an hour outside of Amman which was nice because we got to get a feel for the topography,

 but it also gave me a chance to ride in a taxi.  I think I said more prayers asking God for safety during that car ride than I did any of the 16+ hours of flights I had been on in the last 24 hours.

We safely arrived at our hotel and were greeted with glasses of mango juice - yes, please!!  It was delicious and refreshing after airport/airplane drinks.  Look at that face - that's got tired written all over it.

 We met up with a couple other MCC folks who happened to be in Amman at the same time and we all walked to a nearby Gaith's Restaurant.

 The hummus, falafel, baba ganoush, tabouli, bread (which seemed to have a different name every place we went) and the grilled chicken was amazing.

 Here's the outside of our hotel, the Toledo, where up is down and down is up.  That was our little joke because the hotel is built into a hillside so the lobby is on the top floor and all the rooms are below.  So, you went UP to the lobby, and DOWN to your room, but we kept pressing the wrong buttons in the elevator and saying it wrong the whole time.

 And finally it was time to sleep and this was the scene outside our hotel window:

 A huge outdoor used-clothing market.  It was loud - lots of men yelling working to sell their clothing, horns honking, jack hammer sounds and more.  It was really interesting to listen to, but in the middle of the night it was a little hard to take. Here's the hotel room I shared with my roommate Mimi, who works for MCC East Coast.

And, just in case you're wondering, Jordan and Palestine are 8 hours ahead of Central Standard Time, my first couple nights of sleep weren't great, but they weren't bad either. And, oddly enough, it still felt like Wednesday - the same day I left Wichita.  But, it was actually the end of the day on Thursday.  That made Friday morning pretty confusing.