Wrapping Up

The end of the summer came quickly, and I didnt get my act together soon enough to put a blog post up. So I am back in comfortable suburban Maryland, my summer in Amman over. A quick recap to my last few days, though:

Wednesday, I had a visitor from west of the Jordan River. My friend Lani, a classmate at Harvard, headed over to Amman after spending her summer doing thesis research in the West Bank. She is camping in my apartment for a few days while she waits for her flight home - and now that I am gone, she gets to upgrade from the sofa to my empty bed.

Thursday was my final exam at Qasid. Though I'm not taking the summer classes for credit, I still wanted to go out on a high note with the test. I wont know my final score for a while, but I felt pretty good about my performance. I didnt know a few isolated words here and there, but no major surprises. I said goodbye to my teachers and a few Qasid administrators, and headed for the last time to the Madina Riyadiyah gym.

Lani and I spent the day Friday in downtown Amman. She was only in town for a few days, so I decided to head into wust al-balad to show her the city's main sights. There's not a whole lot to do in downtown, but I figured it might give her a more authentic  impression of the city than she would get from my apartment in ritzy Abdoun. We swung past the Roman theater, the Citadel, and bought baklava from Habibeh's downtown. All in all, we spent about three hours downtown... and in the process, saw just about everything there is to see. My final day in the city was pretty similar to my first - started at the same place, saw the same sights, and am still getting lost on the downtown's winding streets. Lani and I spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home with the AC cranked up on high, before I was picked up and taken to the airport.

So, twenty-four hours later, I'm back in Maryland unpacking and getting ready to head to the Cape. A couple of tylenol PM's on the plane from Frankfurt seem to have helped my jet-lag considerably; I feel like I could be mostly adjusted by as soon as tomorrow morning. As for now, though, I'm pretty pooped. I'm especially looking forward to, for the first time in nine weeks, sleeping in a bed that is long enough to fit my entire body!