My flight(s) out there...

Let me first say that while this is not my first International flight (as you all well know), it was the first time for me to fly Internationally by myself. I flew from Indianapolis to Chicago (1 hour flight, 2 hour layover), from Chicago to Frankfurt (8 hour flight, 8 hour layover), from Frankfurt to Amman (4 hour flight). Count 'em up and that's a full 24 hours of travel if you include the extra two hours I needed to be at the Indy airport prior to leaving. I was damn tired upon arriving in Amman, and I knew I would only be more tired as the trip progressed with all the activity. I knew it was well worth the fatigue as my excitement mounted exiting the plane in Amman. I had to wait in lines to obtain my Visa and then the customs person questioningly stated my full name to me, "Mona Thabet Al-Kheiry???" I said yes in Arabic and then he proceeded to spout out Arabic to me. I smiled and said "English, please." He wanted to know my father's name, where in Saudi Arabia I was born and the purpose of my visit. He approved my visit and I was finally able to go out to the area where you can meet up with people. As I walked out, I saw a sea of Arab faces all trying to get my attention because I was a "blonde" female obviously by myself. I kept looking getting slightly concerned that I wasn't finding my family right away. And then I saw Amo's (Talal's) huge smile as he quickly walked toward me with open arms. Auntie (Haia) was behind him, and I burst into tears. He looks so much like dad and seedo.

Jerash...

We stayed at their extremely nice hotel in beautiful Jerash. It is absolutely AMAZING there. Their hotel is on top of a large hill that overlooks the country-side. Jerash is very hilly and "mountainy." It kind of reminded me of the foothills in Denver, except that it was covered with Olive trees as far as the eye can see. The rooms were nice and clean (except that they don't really dust there), with wimpy toilets that don't flush very well and wimpy showers that take about 5 minutes to fully penetrate my hair. I hate that part of International trips. I like me mah 'merican toilets, dammit! Everything else was great, though. They served a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner for their hotel guests, which we, of course, would partake in. Traditional Arabic food for every meal....hummus, babaghanoush, cucumber/tomato salads, haloumi cheese, eggs, chicken, rice, lamb, fusulia (green beans in tomato sauce), yummy sweet desserts, etc. By the third day I had a grumbling stomach before bed and decided that eating hummus three times a day for the past 3 days was probably the culprit....so I decided to cut back on that. Besides eating and sleeping at the hotel, we also hung out by the pool, visited with family and friends, took walks, and played in the game room which contained a pool table, foosball table (is that how you spell it?) and a ping-pong table. I had a very touching moment in the middle of the night at the hotel, too. I got up, perhaps at 3 in the morning, too look outside. It was very quiet and peaceful, with a few wild dogs barking in the distance. As I looked out at the stars, the prayer-call started....not just one, but at the top of the hill you could hear 3 or 4 different prayer-calls simultaneously from different directions. Then all the wild dogs started howling with the prayer-call....it was an incredibly beautiful moment. This was my second time to start crying during my visit.

Visiting expectations (of course)....

Jamal, Wendy and the kids arrived the day after me. The kids are all beautiful and doing great. It was wonderful to see them all and spend some quality time getting to know the kids better after not seeing them for two years. The next day we went and visited with family and friends the entire day in Amman. This is the traditional thing to do....for those of you who might know, we went and visite Amo Sameer (who's brother had died the week before and Sameer was somewhat gloomy about that), Sanah (see pictures to see who this is), and some family that probably is a relative, but I am not sure and I don't know their names. It was amusing...at one point Alex asked me "Who's house are we at this time??" I just gave him an understanding smile and said "I have no clue Alex...this is just how it is. You go to people's houses and visit whether you know who they are not. Just smile and be patient." He gave a sigh and sat back quietly...probably doing the same thing we would do when we were visiting people we didn't know....looking at the gaudy Arabic furnishings, studying faces, or wondering when the food would be served.

The Salon...

The pre-wedding preparations...In addition to all the other preparations and planning that Auntie Haia did, she had all the close relatives and friends of the family booked to get their hair and makeup done. We went to the salon around 11:30 and I ended up staying there until 4:30 that late afternoon. For the most part, I was having my hair worked on the entire time....yes, this is possible. They first straightened my hair. They then put it in rollers. I sat in rollers for about 45 minutes and then came the real work. The guy (all the salon people are male...apparently male stylists are considered better there) didn't "fix" my hair....he "BUILT" my hair. The sheer enormity of the style was amazing. He had most of it up, and would intertwine the locks on top in different directions, thoroughly hairsparying each strand until it was wet. He used, I kid you not, about 80 pins and a full can of hairspray on my head. He then came out with the STRONG hold hairspray to ensure that my head would deflect bullets. I think he was successful. I had to bend down further than usual to get into the car with my hair as high as it was. Also, the fact that the windows were down while we were traveling at high speeds didn't matter one bit....I'm certain that my hair would have remained in tact in a tornado, perhaps providing my head with much needed protection from dangerous flying objects...such as a trailer or an automobile. THEN CAME THE MAKEUP....a friend of the family was actually doing the makeup and I was reassured by both Auntie and Seema that she gave a natural look, "Simply enhancing your natural features." Apparently my natural features require a mixture of purple, green and charcoal eye-shadow with a quarter-inch thickness of eye-liner around the upper and bottom lids. It was great....I felt slightly like a drag queen except that my outfit was much too subdued to be an actual drag queen. If I were wearing 4 inch heals (which would make me 6' 4" tall) with a sequenced/beaded outfit, I am confident that I would have won any drag-queen competition out there. Bring it on!! The photos don't quite capture all of this very well....I was actually disappointed with how the makeup and hair didn't look quite as big and bold in the photos as they did in real life.

The wedding....

The wedding was wonderful and very different than traditional American weddings. First, the groom's family and close friends go to the groom's parents' house. There was a "band" that sang traditional Arabic with drums and a bagpipe. There was dancing, beverages, visiting, etc. Seema and Deema danced with their big brother and I started crying for my third time during the visit. Adel, a friend of Amo Tala's, informed me that I wasn't allowed to cry again because seeing me cry made him completely lose it, too. We then all piled into about 10 different cars and followed Amer's car, which was all decorated with flowers, to the bride's house. This was much the same thing, except with the bride's family, too. We then all piled into about 20 cars and drove around Amman, our hazard lights flashing, all of us beeping our horns in celebration. Cars passed by beeping their horns back at us....it was great! Then we got to the Sheraton hotel's banquet hall for the reception party. There were 350 people at the wedding, and they definitely filled the entire hall. The wedding reception didn't officially start until 9:30pm with food being scheduled for 11:00pm. I thought that was a bit ridiculous, but apparently this is the norm. After the food, which was absolutely delicious, we danced Arabic style, debka style, etc until 2:00AM. They had a variety of music, including traditional Arabic to disco's "I will Survive." It was a lot of fun, and Rebecca enjoyed herself immensely on the dance-floor. At one point, there was a group of about 5 grown men surrounding Becca all taking turns picking her up and dancing with her. She was having so much fun!!

The flight(s) back...

After getting maybe 6 hours of sleep the night after the wedding, we ended up having a busy next day. That night about 30 of us went out to dinner (a late dinner, as usual) to a restaurant in Amman. After eating there, we immediately went to go get my luggage so I could catch my 3:10AM flight out of Amman. Let me just explain the severity of the situation to you.....I was exhausted after the week's festivities, having to go back to the airport at 1:00AM. In addition to being tired beyond tired, I had what I call "Tornado of the butt," which essentially means I ate something or caught some virus that was making me have the shits. Wendy was also having problems. So, there I was at the airport at 1:30AM completely exhausted, trying not to fart for fear I would crap myself. After being on the plane (after an hour delay), I went to the bathroom to find that my period started unexpectedly (sorry if this is too much information for some of you, but it was significant at the time). So, I spent the remainder of the flight with my gastro intestines grumbling, my uterus cramping, and some guy next to me talking my ear off while I tried to politely stay awake (and not fart). It was horrible. But the anti-crap medicine finally started kicking in, which made things much more tolerable. I finally made it back to Indianapolis around 2:00pm. I did the math and I think Saturday, July 30th for me ended up being about a 32 hour day since it started 8 hours earlier in Amman compared to Indiana. I'm sure flight travel cut down the hours by some, but it certainly felt like it was a 32 hour day....if not longer!!!

PICTURES: http://blue.butler.edu/~mkheiry/jordan/FrameSet.htm