The Adventures Continue!!..

OH my goodness I fell in love with Amman, AGAIN this week. Rainbow street, church, the food, the shops! Okay I'm getting ahead of myself.. I'll start from the beginning.

Friday we had church again, but Jord and I are no longer going to the same branch, he was asked to serve up in the Al-Husn branch which is about an hour from home, and they only speak Arabic there.. so I don't go. The branch is SUPER close to the Syrian border, so we don't really see each other until about 3 pm on Sundays, oh, I mean Friday's.. I don't think i'll ever get used to that.

Church was fantastic as usual, it was fast and testimony meeting, and there were about 6 kids that went up and bore their testimonies. After the meeting was over the branch president stood up and said, "I think we heard from the entire primary today!" ha ha. So awesome.

After church we rode home in a packed taxi. They don't believe in car seats here..

The back of the taxi..

The front... :) such good times.

That night the Adam's came over for dinner and a little texas sheet cake dessert before we called it a night.

Saturday was FULL of adventure.

Jord woke up early and studied for a while

This is what he is doing.. ALWAYS. 

and then we headed to the market to grab a few things... We took our own bags so we didn't look like a circus coming out of the store like we did last time..

Story time..
Last time we ran to the store we came out holding like 30 plastic bags and this guy came up to us and said.. Taxi? Jord replies "nam" (yes) and he helped carry our bags to his car. After getting to his car we realized he wasn't an actual taxi and was just trying to make a few bucks, Jord asked how much it would be to get to our destination and he said 4 JD. SERIOUSLY a rip off.. we can usually get home for like basically 40 cents. But all of our food was already in the back of the car and we were afraid he'd drive off with our stuff so we just had to pay him more.. LAME. We learned our lesson! In fact, this time around when we came out of the store we had a gentleman ask if we needed a taxi, and Jord said are you a real taxi? He replied with a sneaky grin and just laughed.. we just kept walking.. ha

Anywho. We got home and made some french toast with my homemade bread for lunch and headed out for the night with our good friends the Adams. We got a taxi to Rainbow Street which is downtown Amman. When I saw downtown I literally mean DOWN. It is basically a valley with a lot of super steep hills leading down to it.
It was so beautiful! We had a blast looking in little shops and craft stores and then stopped for a little cold treat.

I  made him put on this hat... and then I found out it said Sara on it.. whoops 

Most confusing road signs EVERRR. 

Mr. Lollies did NOT disappoint, it consisted of  Popsicles dipped into the flavoring you wanted with a topping of your choice. We got a lemon popsicle with strawberry flavoring and sprinkles. :)
You could say we will be going back VERY soon.

After dessert we headed out to find a good place for dinner.. because you always have dessert before dinner. (that's not a culture thing here, it's just my rule of thumb)

We found this awesome place in kind of a ghetto area of town, we walked up 2 flights of stairs and ate on the balcony of this adorable restaurant.

 The only thing not very adorable was the hookah(??) smoke inhaled with every breath. But hey, at least it smelled like cotton candy.


I really stepped out of my comfort zone and ordered an authentic dish.... pffft not. cheese pizza..no regrets. It was DELICIOUS.

We had a beautiful view and fantastic company, which makes it very easy to love this place <3

Sunday was MAGNIFICENT. Sunday is our orphanage day.

My heart grew 13 sizes. We pulled up to the all girls orphanage ages 3-19 and they were so excited to see us. All of them were peeking out the windows waiting for us to arrive and jumping up and down. It moved me to tears, and continued to move me to tears as we hugged and kissed each girl on the cheeks as we met them. I fell in love with every single one of them. The Jordanian people are incredible, but there is a very distinct light in the eyes of the young Christian girls at this orphanage. We got to spend the next two hours getting to know them, playing with them and teaching them English. My teaching partner Heidi and I have the older group, there are four 12 year olds and two sixteen year old girls. They are absolutely beautiful, and every time they phrase a sentence correctly I just want to wrap my arms around them and tell them how fantastic I think they are.  I didn't want to leave. My team teacher told me it was time to go and I replied that no one had come to get us yet so we could probably just stay.. ha ha. 45 minutes later we were in trouble for being late back out to the taxi's ha ha. WORTH IT. The nuns gave us cookies and popcorn on our way out, I took a generous helping and they were very pleased that I did. :)

I would have pictures but we aren't supposed to post pictures of the girls.. so I will post a few of the classroom and my teaching partner and I next week :)
Thanks for reading! I love and miss you all!


Masalema!!

Our new home

Soooo.... we made it!!! We are now living in Amman, Jordan. (I realize its confusing that my husbands name is Jordan.. so from here on I will refer to him as Jord... :)

WE LIVE HERE. !!! still trying to wrap my mind around it.. :)

We got to Amman on Thursday on a delayed flight at about 1:00 am. Before we got here we had a raffle with all of the other couples to see who would get the nicest biggest apartment, for some reason I thought we were supposed to guess a number between 1-100 so i guessed 26 when in reality it was 1-1000... haha so yeah, we didn't win.. Anyway! We arrived at our apartment and it was honestly a lot nicer then I had anticipated. 2 bedroom, marble floors, and even a TV! We were so exhausted we threw the sheets on our bed that we brought and passed out at about 3 am. Without a chance to sleep in we were up at 7:30 to get ready for church Friday morning. Church is on Fridays in Amman. We survived our first taxi ride on the way to church, and when I say survived, I mean BARELY survived. Seriously, there are absolutely no rules while driving in Amman. People are weaving in and out of lanes laying on their horns, there could be three lanes merging into one lane at 40 miles an hour while turning onto another street. It gives me a panic attack every. single. time.

Church felt like home. There is incredible leadership and members here in the Amman branch. The BYU students were more than half of the congregation, we felt that everyone was really excited that we were there. We had English sacrament meeting and then Jord got asked to go participate in the Arabic Sunday school while I stayed in the English one, and then we had priesthood and relief society. After that we all went to the Arabic sacrament meeting and then had a fireside, orientation, and a shwarma lunch provided by the branch. It made for a spiritual, exhausting Sabbath.

We went back home and got a little more settled in our apartment, unpacked, cleaned a little, and got used to some of the changes from American apartments. The water for each apartment is kept in a tank on the roof of each building. So if you run out then you have to have water delivered and have your tank refilled, which is really expensive. Because of this we are not allowed to drink tap water as it is sitting under the sun all day, and we have to use water VERY sparingly.. I'm talkin like.. in the shower get wet, turn the water off, soap up, turn the water on, rinse off, turn the water back off.. etc. There is a small water heater in the bathroom that we turn on to get hot water and then turn it off right after you shower.
Also the plumbing is a little different here.. we are not allowed to flush toilet paper, so ill let you do the math on that one.. 
Overall its actually super great here, and SO beautiful. All of the buildings are sandstone and seem to go on for miles and miles.

On Saturday there was a barbecue at one of the foreign service officers house for the branch at the US embassy. We had HAMBURGERS. It was the first time I actually felt full in 3 days. It was really fun because Jord and I got to pick the brains of people with jobs that we are interested in. We had a great time.

Sunday was the first day of Jords classes. He left early and then all the wives of the program came over and we planned what we are going to do while our husbands are in school and studying all semester. Orphanage trips every Sunday afternoon.. cooking classes on Tuesdays.. book club, Arabic classes, bible study with the branch, and gardening with handicap children. 😊 Seriously the best  vacation I could ask for!

Overall I feel pretty safe here in Jordan, I can tell people are staring at me a lot, especially when all of us wives go out to the market together, but I've never felt legitimately scared. (that was for you mom)
As a woman in Jordan, you aren't supposed to make eye contact or smile or shake hands with a man. That goes against everything I know, so in taxis I have to literally concentrate on not looking into the rear view mirror at the same time the driver does. ha ha ha

Last night we had the opportunity to visit one of Jord's families good friends that lives here in Amman. The dad actually lived with Jord's dads parents as a foreign exchange student for years and years in California. Such a small world!  They were incredible hosts, and treated us like family. I couldn't count how many times he said "My home is your home". We had SO much food, I've never been so full in my entire life. Meat kabobs in pita bread, hamburgers, salads, and juice. And then we had chocolates and cookies, and THEN they served us cake and herbal tea. I could hardly breathe by the end. After we visited for awhile we went upstairs and met his mother, she remembered Kurt's family (Jords dad) very well and is very Facebook savvy so she snapped a few pictures of us all together:)

We've almost been here a week now and I'm starting to get used to the constant honking, the call to prayer that blares through the streets and the beauty of this country.I can't WAIT for the adventures that await us here.

Thanks for reading! Until next time!

Our last couple days in Paris...

Our last couple days in Paris were AMAZING. The Notre Dame was incredible, we went on our own made up bike tour around the city, had some more amazing food, and stopped at a palace. We also got to relax in the Luxembourg gardens. It was fantastic.

Luxembourg Gardens

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Luxembourg Gardens.. you could rent a sailboat for like 3 Euros, but it was fun enough watching them crash into each other.

No ONE order this burger on a first date. THE MESSIEST THING EVAH.

Just a little of our view during dinner.

LOVE WALL

Leaving Paris :(

Entertainment to distract us from leaving..



Our Journey from Paris to Amman, Jordan was relatively uneventful, except for my Mr. Bean moment when I went through the little doors to enter the Metro station but didn't get my huge bag through fast enough and it was I was on one side of the door with my bag on the other.. Jordan laughed way too long at me for it. :)

I have SO much to say about Amman, i'm not sure where to begin.. so I will start on the next post! :)

Love and miss you all!

Day 2!!

There are literally too many storied to even start telling... so I'm going to let the pictures do the talking. :)

The Seine was BEAUTIFUL.

Opera House! Can't you just imagine the chandelier falling to the ground?! (phantom of the opera reference)

Phantoms Box... Eerie..

I MADE THIS WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS.