Merging is over-rated

The countdown is on...my parents come visit in 19days. So says my little widget on my desktop.
I'm excited to show them my life.  See the things I see, meet the people I know.

They also get to drive around with me everywhere.
I told my mother she cannot gasp when I'm driving.  Secret to NOT dying of a heart attack while driving here?....don't look around, look directly ahead, do not stop, just go, pretend you don't notice the car careening towards your passenger door, they'll stop, they must.  Yesterday I was stopped in traffic on the bridge by my house.  There were two, count em, two, cops directing traffic.  But not directing, more like MAKING people merge, showing them how.  But after driving here and realizing no one knows how to merge--merging is merely going, those coming behind will either honk if I'm too close or move around me--I guess this was an important task.  "
It'd be easier to just TEACH people how to merge in driving school".  But as my friend commented, I'm talking years of education reform for that.  Guess the traffic cops still have a job...keep on keeping on.

Usually the presence of a traffic cop says, jammed traffic, they are coming to the rescue! Here it means, NOW there is traffic.  Instead of letting the cars MERGE--there it is again--and FLOW around traffic circles(the major forms of intersections here), we have fabulously dressed policemen to stop the flow of traffic, back it up on the major roads, and be the cause for me always being 15 minutes late to whatever I do. But good news...I have learned and fully mastered the TWO occasions for using my turning signal. And in the process have become a Jedi mind-reader---I can read a car's ambitions and know exactly when it's coming into my lane. Jordan survival skills 101. I'm going to start offering classes.

But yes, back to the parents. I'm excited they are coming. Sometimes it's good to see where you live, what you do through fresh untainted eyes.  It helps with perspective, and Lord knows I need a lot of that right now.  When my sister came to visit she told me, "I could NEVER do this, live here". And she actually has traveled and lived elsewhere.  Made me realize I'm not totally crazy for thinking this place is nuts.

Happy Monday where here it's Tuesday.
And for your reading pleasure--though it's funnier if you live here.
http://www.andfaraway.net/blog/2010/01/05/the-10-rules-of-driving-in-amman/