CHANGES TO AMMAN
Amman has changed a lot since we were last here four years ago. The basic change we have noticed is that Amman is bigger and busier. Large, new roundabouts and overpasses have been built, and more are being constructed. Once vacant lots—and once vacant areas—have become the location of new apartment buildings, and many more such buildings are being built. New businesses have sprung up—such as Starbucks—and malls with western shops have been built as well. More cars are on the road, and traffic is heavily congested. With few traffic rules and more cars on the street we have fun taxi rides every time we get on the road! Urban sprawl has definitely come to Jordan!
POPULATION GROWTH
It is clear that Amman has grown. We have heard from different sources that almost 1 million Iraqis have come to Jordan since the start of the war in Iraq, and everywhere we go people are talking about their influence. Just on our apartment searches we have met Iraqis either moving out of places or looking for places. We have also heard that other Arabs from the Gulf are building second homes and vacation places here as well, adding to the growth.
FINDING HOUSING – The Divine Wrong Turn
The increase in population made it a bit difficult for us to find a place to live that was conveniently located near our school and affordable. We spent about 12 days walking the streets of Amman looking for empty apartments and inquiring about them. We saw apartments that ranged from palatial to those that looked like they were used as meth lab houses. We can now effectively help anyone who is planning on relocating to Amman with finding housing, as our Arabic on the subject is quite good. We are happy to report, though, that after about two weeks we did find an apartment, something that was made possible in part through Matt getting sick on a chicken kabob. This is because his sickness forced him to be homebound for two days (we have been staying with some friends), requiring Annamarie to go out looking without him. On the second day of his sickness, she found a place and called him to come look at it. He did, but even after over two hours of wandering around a certain area, he never found the place where she was waiting. In his first ten minutes of wandering, however, he did come across a different empty apartment, which he inquired about. We both went back later that night, and again the next afternoon to sign a year lease. It was almost exactly what we were looking for. Since this place ended up being our new apartment—and since any ill feelings Annamarie felt after waiting for what seemed like an eternity were replaced by joy and happiness—Matt likes to call this event the “Divine Wrong Turn.”
OUR APARTMENT
Our new apartment is mish mofrush—unfurnished—which means that it is rented totally empty. This means that we needed to shop for appliances such as a fridge, stove and washer, not to mention basic items like chairs and a bed. We do like our apartment and are glad to have our own place. We do have an extra bedroom so we are ready for visitors! We live close to school – only a 20 minute walk. There are cockroaches and an intermittent sewer smell but those are things that are common in Amman.
Our Apartment building. Our apartment is on the right, above the red tile overhang.
The view from the roof of our apartment building. The blue mosque is the King Abdullah Mosque, completed in 1990 and named after the grandfather of the late King Hussein.
The view from the end of our street. On the left is a palace--rebuilt--of the Muslim Umayyad Dynasty from the eighth century. On the right are the remains of the Temple of Hercules, built by the Romans in the second century. The hill is said to be the site of Rabbah, the Ammonite city where Uriah the Hittite was killed.
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