Ramadan is in full swing here. Everyone on the street, especially security guards and taxi drivers, are especially grumpy because they are hungry, thirsty, and can't smoke cigarettes during the day. Drag.
This translates into tense, awkward exchanges between American students and taxi drivers when arguing over cab fare, especially at night. The cabbies use meters here, but meters are illegally turned off after 10:00 PM and the ripoff-fest begins. What is usually a 2 JD trip doubles or even triples (if you're a chump).
My roommate Joey drunkenly argued with a cabbie in Arabic two nights ago outside a nightclub who tried to charge us 10 JD. Joey has taken only one year of Arabic, which eventually backslid into swearing at local Jordanians in English, which was hilarious.
I have also found out that, like in Mexico (and I would assume all third-world countries), being American = being rich. The idea of the starving college student here is as foreign as the idea of non-white Americans (seriously, black people are still just black people here, not African Americans, and all Asians are Chinese). I have been shortchanged three times already, which really does wonders for my opinion of the people. Which is to say: Ramadan Sucks.
Random Jordanian Fact of the Day: In traditional Islam, dogs are seen as "dirty creatures." Cats, however, are spared this connotation (possibly because they kill rodents and scorpions and eat the souls of children). Both can lick their own balls, which you would think conservative Muslims would frown upon.
Anyway, I live in an affluent Christian neighborhood, and everyone has at least two dogs. It is a point of pride for them as well, kind of a badge of non-Islam and, in my opinion, one of the best cultural benchmarks of the Western World.
This is Don. He is six weeks old. I am not lying, he is barely a puppy and can knock me down.
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