S here (the husband/dad), yes I'm posting here too. Today was a pretty good day. As many of you know, the weekend here is Friday and Saturday, which shouldnt take any effort to get used to, but still takes a while to get your head wrapped around. Do they have Friday morning cartoons? A show called Sunday Night Live that hasn't been funny since Will Ferrell left? What do they do for a good weekend here? We have no idea as we don't have TV service and only know a small section of the city. But, we know what Americans do here; enjoy the fact that the Jordanians either sleep in (Thursday is party night), or go to the Mosque, and leave the city open for us to explore or simply travel through with no traffic.
We went grocery shopping in the morning at a store called Miles which was really nice. It was at Mecca Mall (a lot of grocery stores at the malls here, kinda weird) but the rest of the mall didn't open until 2pm. It has a nice selection of stuff and seemed to have more in English then Cosmos, the only store we can compare it to. We have a lot to learn about the produce here as we were unsure what several of the fruits were, or had names we knew but were unsure how to eat them. The meat section was basically an old school butcher with a ton of guys running around packaging and cutting up carcases of different animals. Most were beef or lamb. You have to order from the people wearing the while coats and hats and not the rest of the random guys, I guess they are the meat liaisons or something. The culture is very specific about meat handling so it is always clean and well taken care of. It was kinda weird, but there were signs saying you couldn't take pictures. I'm not sure if it is a religious thing or just trying to keep PETA away, whatever. Same thing at the fish counter. Also available at a reasonable price was lamb liver and lamb brains, pre-packaged in the cooler. F and Little Lady did not seem interested so we had to pass. All in all a very nice store with reasonable prices and a good selection of basics. It will probably be cheaper and better to go to the local individual shops vice a super market when we know the area better.
Later in the day we went to Al-Braka Mall in an area called Swefia (sp?) I feel like there are maybe 3 vowels missing from that word, but It's pronounced like that. This is an area we went on a walking tour of last week and will probably spend a lot of time in. It has tons of nice stores and restaurants up and down the streets but is very different then a US street. We'll probably describe it in a different post, it was alot to take in. The mall was pretty nice and had a few useful stores. The parking tower was ... interesting. It was basically a large-ish vertical cylinder. The spaces were all over the place, but had pillars in very unfortunate places. The vehicle I am driving is very tall and wide so it was a bit nerve racking getting around. If the speed bumps were any taller we might have had issues. The mall was also a slightly larger cylinder with a couple stores on each floor. It has a food court that consists of McDonald's, a shawma place and a pizza place. It does have movie theaters which shows the current stuff. We have heard they are very nice so will have to try them out. However, I have no idea how they fit in the mall. Each level seemed pretty small and the theater was only part of 2 levels. So, it might be you and 20 of your closest friends in the theater. Only experience will let us know.
It's late here, so afternoon back in the States so we are going to bed. Thanks for reading and we will try to keep up the posts for those interested.
We went grocery shopping in the morning at a store called Miles which was really nice. It was at Mecca Mall (a lot of grocery stores at the malls here, kinda weird) but the rest of the mall didn't open until 2pm. It has a nice selection of stuff and seemed to have more in English then Cosmos, the only store we can compare it to. We have a lot to learn about the produce here as we were unsure what several of the fruits were, or had names we knew but were unsure how to eat them. The meat section was basically an old school butcher with a ton of guys running around packaging and cutting up carcases of different animals. Most were beef or lamb. You have to order from the people wearing the while coats and hats and not the rest of the random guys, I guess they are the meat liaisons or something. The culture is very specific about meat handling so it is always clean and well taken care of. It was kinda weird, but there were signs saying you couldn't take pictures. I'm not sure if it is a religious thing or just trying to keep PETA away, whatever. Same thing at the fish counter. Also available at a reasonable price was lamb liver and lamb brains, pre-packaged in the cooler. F and Little Lady did not seem interested so we had to pass. All in all a very nice store with reasonable prices and a good selection of basics. It will probably be cheaper and better to go to the local individual shops vice a super market when we know the area better.
Later in the day we went to Al-Braka Mall in an area called Swefia (sp?) I feel like there are maybe 3 vowels missing from that word, but It's pronounced like that. This is an area we went on a walking tour of last week and will probably spend a lot of time in. It has tons of nice stores and restaurants up and down the streets but is very different then a US street. We'll probably describe it in a different post, it was alot to take in. The mall was pretty nice and had a few useful stores. The parking tower was ... interesting. It was basically a large-ish vertical cylinder. The spaces were all over the place, but had pillars in very unfortunate places. The vehicle I am driving is very tall and wide so it was a bit nerve racking getting around. If the speed bumps were any taller we might have had issues. The mall was also a slightly larger cylinder with a couple stores on each floor. It has a food court that consists of McDonald's, a shawma place and a pizza place. It does have movie theaters which shows the current stuff. We have heard they are very nice so will have to try them out. However, I have no idea how they fit in the mall. Each level seemed pretty small and the theater was only part of 2 levels. So, it might be you and 20 of your closest friends in the theater. Only experience will let us know.
It's late here, so afternoon back in the States so we are going to bed. Thanks for reading and we will try to keep up the posts for those interested.
2 comments:
Thanks for the updates S and F (and Little Lady too)!
hee hee. F, I love that you got S to blog. LOVE IT! I want a picture of S driving... pretty please??
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