It's been a while!

It really has! During a month that I didn't post anything on my little wordpress blog I actually did some interesting stuff. For instance, I went to Israel and the West Bank to visit my friends, one of whom live in northern Israel in the Druze area and the second one is in Nablus at the moment working for the an-Najah University there. The thing is that we actually had a long break at the university due to the celebration of Eid al-Adha which is one of the two major Muslim holidays, and that gave me a chance to travel a bit.

 Frankly speaking, it wasn't really that easy to get into Israel: I had to wait on the border for like 7 hours in a row. It was just as much fun as what it sounds like meaning NONE. It turned out that I travel too much (never thought this can ever be a problem), and Israeli customs officers found that slightly suspicious. Well, all's well that ends well, and I was finally granted entry stamp.

  To cut the long story short, my stay in both Israel and Nablus was wonderful despite all the difficulties. I ate kunafah nablusiyah (a local sweet made of honey, cheese and some other delicious stuff), visited the Old city of Nablus which reminded me of Damascus, hung out with amazing people who studied in the Soviet Union therefore speak fluent Russian and love all Russians with all their heart (I wouldn't be so sure about this part but oh well, it was still very nice to be treated this way).

  As for Jordan itself, I went to Madaba and Mount Nebo with the language center from the University. There is an ancient mosaic depicting a map of Palestine in Madaba's Greek Orthodox church. Mount Nebo is famous for being a site from where God showed Moses the Promised Land. In fact, you can actually see a lot of Palestine from there, even Jerusalem in the good weather.

  I also visited a couple of parties during this last week one of which was a birthday party for my Malaysian friend Ismael, and the second one was a mansaf dinner at my university friend's Mounia's house. Mansaf is a traditional Jordanian food of rice and lamb and a sauce (labneh) which makes it so special. To say that we were way too full and way too happy about all that is to say nothing. We literally rolled out from the table, so full we were.

  Today was special, too. I went downtown Amman to study for my test tomorrow with my Polish, Jordanian and Norwegian friends. We went to a traditional Jordanian restaurant Hashem which serves only vegetarian stuff like hummus and falafel and all that, and it is de-li-cious. There are many tourists as well because it's mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. Well, to be honest, it deserves its fame and glory.

 So that's how things are for now. Jordan is still unraveling its mysteries to me.