In Beautiful Amman

So. I'm in Amman. Oh my goodness. It's literally like finding an oasis after being in the harsh barren desert for so long. Grass! Trees! Beautiful flowers of every color! Violet, fuschia, periwinkle, orange, light pink, and JASMINE! I love the scent of jasmine flowers--we have a huge bush in our front yard in California. I wrote in my journal while sitting on a quaint stone bench in the shade (Shade!) of an olive tree. The air smells like laundry and car exhaust.

The missionary couple is so nice! They just welcomed me in and gave me a room with a double bed =] And they fed us (being me and Katie, who got picked up by Brian, our old Arabic teacher who is our age. That was fun seeing him). Guess what we ate? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!!!!! It tasted SO good! Real bread! Peanut butter! MMMMM!!!

The Jerusalem Centre kids came by this afternoon for a little devotional thing with Pres Cook just to hear about the church here in the Middle East. It's pretty interesting. Did you know there's a stake in Saudi? It goes from Kuwait down to Yemen and over to the UAE. And they're making the Middle East/North Africa Arabic speaking area, from Syria and Lebanon to Egypt over to Morocco. It's not quite a mission, but it's getting close. Oh... It includes Jerusalem! That's a big step for the church. I've seen a lot of Arabic study abroaders too. Everyone in from the JC and study abroad is like "...Wait... You're not in our group... Who are you?". Kinda fun =]

I don't know what I'll be doing the next few days, but I might be shown around a little by the missionary couple, if they aren't too busy. If not, maybe I can get one of the study abroaders to come with me somewhere? Man, I hate being a young white woman sometimes...

But I'm safe, I'm happy (I got to play the piano!), and I will be in Spain on SATURDAY!!!!