Stairmaster 2000

Amman is a city of hills, so if you think a little jaunt down to the local store, or ancient citadel is a fun stroll think again. After living in Jerusalem for a while, my thighs literally grew bigger and I was probably in the best shape I had ever been. Stairs: everywhere. Up the hill, down the hill, to the point where it’s a bit ridiculous. But I guess I do prefer them to cliffs and slippery slopes.

Downside of living in this city-I can’t just go for a normal evening or morning run. Upside: I do get to walk a lot, and walking a lot means climbing and descending many many stairs.

So we descended into the ballad….or what is known as the downtown area. Lines of shops and restaurants lining the bottom of the valley. I’m a week into this new city of hills and circles, and graciously a new found friend let me traipse along with her so I could become more familiar with it.

Down the stairs we go..all of them different heights and shapes…I look up to find a man climbing his way on my side. Stair rule: if the man doesn’t move sides, I need to..so I crossed over and continued down the right side until we get to the street.

Then we play a nice game of Frogger as we dodge the cars. In order to cross the 4 “lanes” of traffic you just have to start moving out. Get through one, creep through a 2^nd, pray the 3^rd stops for you and run in front of the 4^th. 100 points. Next 4 lanes…successfully navigate through 3, walk boldly through the last of what now has become 2 more lanes. Sidewalk reached=500 points, life still intact.

Now for the climb up to the where my friend used to live. We head down Italian street, run into a friend shopping with her mother for curtains, formalities exchanged, we bid dear woman and mother good-bye and head further up the hill. Grateful my friend isn’t making me walk up the hill, we get in a servicia-white taxi that fills up before heading up the dreaded hill. We squeeze in and head up the hill. Yes, I’m glad we are not walking. I see my friend’s old house, realize it’s the current house of friend to be:), and we head out.

Next thing on the list, hummus. We head to the hummus shop, providing ample entertainment for the 10 men sitting inside eating. We just want a nuece(50) worth of hummus..oh that size is 75. Oh we want that size. Old man scooping hummus scowls as he finds more hummus to refill his bowl in order to fill our 750fils worth of hummus containers. Hmmm but hummus on my pita tonight—totally worth that awkward interaction.

Head to the black and white mosque to see a cityscape of Amman, but find it’s a bit hazy. Take some pictures, and make our way down the hill. Yes, more stairs. We finally get to the ballad again, play some more Frogger, and head to my friend’s favorite shwarma shop. I don’t want onions, but I forget the word in Arabic…so we point and ask what it’s called. Oh yes basal, I don’t want basal. Upon receiving my schwarma I find it just has basal. Awesome. I guess I need to work on that.

Walk around, get my bearings, and figure out where the best shops for this and that are. We pass a little shop filled with oranges. After eating salty schwarma and walking 2 hours in the heat, that orange juice looks amazing. I force my friend across the street nearly colliding with a taxi. The oranges beckon. Two guys in stands opposite each other, both are waving their oranges at me. I pick the older man on the right..less chance of a weird situation…and watch him squeeze fresh oranges into a delicious pulpy juice. He hands us two mugs of orange juice that pretty much were gone in 30 seconds. Best orange juice I've ever had.

We head to go get vegetables. I’m still learning my numbers. I know my basics, but smaller amounts are in hundreds, which I don’t know, so have a hard time understanding everything. And of course they have different words for 250 and 500. Ugh. Luckily my friend is better at this than me. We find good apples, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots. Things that will go well with my hummus:)

We take our heavy bags of vegetables and head up the steep road out of the ballad. This time there are no stairs, but don’t worry the stairs are coming. We reach the top and head up the stairs where at the top we know a cold diet Pepsi is waiting. Ah cold diet pepsi..same deliciousness in any country. Dripping with sweat and needing refreshment we enter the little shop, grab two cans of that delicious coldness, make our purchase and suck it up quickly. Ahh so good. A bit sweeter here, but still so good. We drink our Pepsi to the end of the street til we get to the circle. Hill and circles my friends…that is what this city is. Upon entering the circle we find our air-conditioned taxi and sigh in relief against the soft seats. 7^th circle please…and off it goes.