Adventures in getting places, snow in Amman, losing my phone, and fasting

First of all, to all my Baha'i readers out there: HAPPY FASTING.  Once my Dad told me that you only wish people Happy Fast on the last day of the fast, but whatevs Dad.  I am 45 minutes away from sunset in Amman!

But anyway, fasting is a very small part of this story.  This story is about adventures in getting places.  For the last two days, Amman has been experiencing snow the likes of which have not been seen in years.  Since this is Jordan, and not Alaska, no one here knows how to handle snow so everywhere has shutdown including my university.  While snow days are typically celebrated, I've mostly spent the last two days wrapped up in a blanket inside my unheated apartment.

So today, Katrina, Fathme, and I decided to venture out.  Our plan was to head downtown to Jafra and pick up the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and the complete series of Firefly.  And then go to Abdoun to check out a café we'd read about.  Upon leaving our apartment we were ATTACKED by keffiyeh-wearing-obnoxious-snowball-throwing-hoodlum teenage boys who thought they were HILARIOUS (they so weren't).  Luckily, we got a cab pretty quickly and hopped in with most of our limbs intact.  Katrina, the Arabic expert, instructed our cab driver to take us downtown.  And so, feeling relatively successful we settled into our drive.

Until we realized fifteen minutes later that we were no where NEAR DOWNTOWN.  We tried to ask our cab driver what was up, and ascertained that he has decided to take us literally on the scenic route so we could take pictures.  At which point, I was like "LA SURA! LA!"  And Katrina more eloquently explained that we didn't want to take pictures we just wanted to go downtown to Jafra and buy the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

Nearly an hour later, we ended up downtown.  At which point our cab driver tried to charge us 22 dinar.  There was a loud chorus of la's from the backseat.  We payed him significantly less than he asked, and bolted out of the cab and into the DVD store.  A week ago, I had asked the adorable hipster guy at the video store to get Firefly for me.  So I was fully expecting to be able to pick it up today.  Sadly, he told me he didn't have it, citing Syria and snow and everything closing down as the reasons.

We got a few movies and went to catch a cab to Abdoun.  We ended up finding a really nice English speaking cab driver, which put all of us in good moods.  Until we got to Abdoun and realized EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED.  After a little while of walking through slush, we ended up in a Starbucks.  Katrina and Fathme went to order drinks, while I took my fasting self upstairs and opened my laptop to start blogging about how crazy our day had been.  When I realized my phone was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.

After frantically searching through every pocket of my coat and backpack, I remembered that our English speaking cab driver had given us a business card.  So I called him with the awkward introduction of "Hi, I was a girl in your cab and I left my phone there."  Luckily, he found it and came back to Abdoun about half an hour later showing me a variety of six phones that had been left in his cab.  I picked out mine, tipped him, and headed back inside.

And now it is almost time to break the fast.  I hope, for those of you reading this that are about to embark on your first day of fasting due to time zones, that your day goes a lot more smoothly than mine did.

All things considered, I did build a snowman today.  So that was nice.