Settling into a new country

It has officially been one week since Daniel and I have been in Jordan and it has been quite the adventure! There is so much that has happened and I've been pretty tempted to add in all the details of our travel "adventures" getting to Jordan but I decided I would leave it out since it was such a crazy ordeal and no one wants to hear the negative, just the positive right?? Daniel and I definitely had to take a step back and look at all of our blessings. 

1) We were able to travel together after all the hurdles 
2) We made it safely to Jordan
3) We eventually received our luggage!

See...not too shabby :)

This is Frankfurt,Germany where we had our 8 hour layover. It was pretty cloudy!

 Daniel was SO happy they fed us on our flights. It was pretty yummy!

 Finally made it to Jordan!

 Here are some pictures of the apartment. We like it so far!

 

 The living room

 The dining area

 The kitchen

 Our bedroom

The second bedroom

The view from our balcony

We love our apartment and it's kind of funny that we have a second bedroom and so much space when we hardly brought anything with us but it's great to hide stuff in case we need to make our apartment "appear" clean ;) 

The day after we got in (or actually just later that day) we had orientation for a few hours. Basically we went over a few things and took a bus tour to see around the city. It was pretty fun!

 A sign for Qasid where Daniel is studying

 Okay, so I realized I LOVE shawerma! We stopped by this place on orientation day and it was so yummy!

 Everyone waiting in line for their shawerma

 Daniel and I on the bus during our tour :)

 I loved this part of our tour! We went to downtown Amman where the markets are. It was so fun!

After orientation Daniel and I had time to settle into our apartment which was nice since we got to explore and meet our neighbors. While Daniel is gone for classes during the day they have activities for the wives consisting of Arabic learning, cooking class and sharing bible stories and learning the history of the places we'll be visiting. I think it will be a lot of fun!

So Friday is the Sabbath here so we went to church and it was such a neat experience to go to church so far from home. Daniel and I basically got an assignment the first day. He will be playing the piano in primary and I will be conducting the music and doing music time. We are excited to be working with kids!

On Saturday we went to Jerash (basically old greek/roman ruins) which was so neat! Here are some pictures :)

 On our way! 

 Hadrian's arch

 The forum

 The amphitheater

 A few of the really neat columns

We had so much fun at Jerash seeing all the sights and are excited about the upcoming trips we'll be taking!

The last thing from this past week was on Sunday I got to go with some of the wives to an orphanage here in Amman to help teach English and spend time with the kids. It was such an amazing experience to meet everyone and play games with them. We did this parachute game when we first got there that I remember playing as a kid. After that I met two girls, Batool and Hiba, and helped them with their English. Batool is 13 and Hiba is 14. They were both so sweet and fun to speak English with. They asked me all sorts of questions including what America is like, how many brothers and sisters I have and they also taught me some Arabic! I'm super happy that we're going to have the opportunity to go back to the orphanage every Sunday. 

Things are very different here in Jordan but Daniel and I are settling in well. Daniel has so many opportunities to practice his Arabic and he's taking full advantage of it. We've definitely had to learn how to do things differently here. For example, crossing the street is basically a big game of frogger. There are just a few stoplights and people kind of just weave in and out everywhere. It seems like anything goes. So you basically have to take a leap of faith when you are trying to get to the other side of the street. It's fun though! People are very friendly here and are always telling us "welcome to Jordan!". Daniel fits in a lot better than I do. I guess I have that "American" look. People constantly tell Daniel that he looks half American, half Egyptian. He's pretty excited that he fits in here.

Well, this was our past week in a nutshell! Pretty adventurous, exciting and new! I will update the blog next week with more of what we're doing :)