Our Fake War Zone

A few weeks ago work began on the street near our language school to turn it into a pedestrian only thoroughfare. For the first part of this venture, big machines were brought in to pound into pieces the existing pavement--which was then hauled away--leaving behind a gravel road with piles of rubble strewn about. We walk on this rocky road every day--as do many other people--and several people we know have commented that it reminds them of walking through a war zone, that it looks like an area that has been bombed. In reality it looks nothing like a war zone; real war zones are much, much worse.

Below is a picture of our street, followed by pictures of streets that have been bombed in Baghdad and in Beirut last summer. The pictures are the closest in appearance that we could find to our street, meaning that they are pictures that actually show the least amount of damage that we could find. Pictures of much more incredible damage and grisly scenes of death can be found without much effort--these are the real war zones.

Day of Sand

In Jordan there are spring showers and spring sandstorms. On Friday morning we woke up to a sandstorm, which as the day wore on, steadily decreased our ability to see the buildings around us. As the sand blew in we shut our apartment windows to keep out the sand--although we forgot about the bathroom window, which meant that enough sand fell in to the bathtub to slow the drain the next time it was used. The sandstorms here usually come west from Africa, and in the springtime they are called "Khamseeni Winds", which--since Khamseen is Arabic for fifty--refers to the roughly fifty days of sand blowing in from Africa that occurs each spring. When it does come in heavy like on this particular day, cars outside and furniture inside get coated with a thin layer of dust. Also, when you are outside, sometimes you can feel the dust pricking your skin.