Phew! We made it! We are half way through our first year in Jordan! Our winter break is nearly over, so I thought it would be a good moment to reflect and share some highlights.

We spent the week around Christmas in Budapest, Hungary. After 7 years in tropical Brazil, we decided to lean into the winter! It was our first time in Hungary, and we enjoyed the history, the food, and the Christmas markets!

Honestly, one of the best parts of traveling to Budapest was returning home to Amman. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very cool trip, but by the end of our week there, the kids were starting to long for home. And I think it made us all realize that Amman now feels like our home. The first semester was a roller coaster of emotions for all of us, but the kids had intense moments of missing Brazil. The word in Brazil for longing for something you no longer have is saudades. It’s missing and longing and yearning and happy memories and sadness all in one word. We all felt a lot of saudades.

Matilda struggled the most, I think. In the middle of the semester, I tried at one point to get her to admit that things were going okay. I said, “Things are good, though, right Matilda? You like the school, our apartment is nice, you are making friends.”

She looked me dead in the eye and said with a completely stony face: “We could leave today and I wouldn’t miss a thing.”

Pre-teen savagery much?

But when we returned from Budapest, Matilda volunteered this, “I like it here. I’m happy.”

I had to resist the urge to react visibly, but I was first pumping in my head.

For me, the main evidence I have of my growing comfort is how much more at ease I feel driving here. It really spooked me when we first moved here. The minor fender bender on day 3 didn’t help, but I was in emergency mode every time I drove. Now I’m feel more calm, slinging my regular swearing at other cars, and learning to go with the flow.

David and I have figured out our running routines here in Amman. We live on a rectangular residential street that measures almost exactly 500m. I call it the neighborhood track. Even on the cold days here, I find that we can easily run outside. We also have a lovely school gym that is open evenings and weekends, and I’ve been running on the treadmill there. There aren’t as many road races here (this city has 2 million, not 25 million) but I really enjoyed the Amman Marathon 10K we did in October. 10K is a more challenging distance for me, but the views were stunning and the medal ceremony was in an old Roman theater 😮

The cost of living is higher here, but we’ve found a rhythm that we like. We’ve found the cheap places to buy Rice Krispies and kids’ clothes. We have a great grocery store just 400m from our apartment, which has a nice restaurant on the top floor. Moving somewhere new always means spending more money the first year getting set up, but I think we are reaching a balance point. During this break we bought the final rug for our apartment. Our kitchen is fully stocked and our walls are hung.

We can buy alcohol here, but it’s more expensive. I’ve learned to look for deals, and we were already drinking less, so it works out. Every few weeks we do a happy hour, which usually has good prices. Pork can be purchased here, but we only bought it for the first time during this break. Budapest made us realize that we were starting to miss it! It will stay a treat every now and then.

I didn’t expect Amman to be so decked out for Christmas! (To be clear, we live in West Amman, which is where the expats and foreigners live, and I’ve been told East Amman is quite different). There were Christmas trees and decorations everywhere!

From my travels in Spain in the early 2000s, I learned about the Arab conquest and occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. Under Arab/Muslim rule, all three Abrahamic religions coexisted peacefully. The beautiful synagogues in Spain were built under Muslim rule. Some in the West may not know this history, and it echoes into the present. Historically, Muslims are tolerant and accepting of other religions. They don’t feel that they must convert others or restrict how others worship. (Also, remember that Jesus is one of the prophets of Islam. It was the expulsion of the Moors in Spain and establishment of the Catholic monarchy that led Spain to expel all non-Christians and begin the Spanish Inquisition.) Remembering this history, it makes sense that Christmas was present in Amman. Of course, Christmas is also a consumer/capitalist export, so much of it is less about religion and more about selling stuff. When your country is 92% Muslim, there’s not a sense of insecurity. Believe it or not, Christmas was more present and visible in West Amman than it was is Sao Paulo, a city in the most Catholic country in the world. Go figure!

The kids are getting settled more and more. Matilda played one of the narrators in the school musical Into the Woods. Calvin ran cross country and now is doing track and field, along with Matilda. Matilda qualified to travel to our regional track and field competition in Chennai, India in early February! She’s very excited about this opportunity. Everett has been doing evening swim lessons at our school and robotics after school activities. Calvin has continued playing the flute in the school band and coding and making video games in his free time. He will be in David’s semester-long coding course next semester! Every 8th grader takes that course, and this will be the first time Calvin has had one of his parents as a teacher!

David and I are fully immersed in our new courses. I am teaching 9th grade English and AP Language and Composition. I brought some really strong 9th grade units with me from past years of teaching, and I’ve enjoyed revamping and adapting those units for my new context. My 9th graders are quite diverse, and they bring a lot of energy and heart to the classroom. After 7 years, it’s been really fun to return to AP Lang. It’s a really great course, and I have a lovely group of 11th and 12th graders.

David is teaching the 8th grade coding course along with a 9th/10th grade coding elective and 2 AP computer science courses (AP CSA and AP CS Principles). For our 7 years at Graded he split his teaching load between math and computer science, so this is a change for him to be focused on CS. He’s easy-going about things like this, so when I ask him how it’s going, he will always say he likes it. From what I’ve observed, focusing his energy on one subject area has been good.

Both of us feel like this school break gave us a good reset and we have some clear goals and things we want to focus on in second semester. First year in a new school is always a steep learning curve, and both of us feel like we are doing some fire-hose drinking and mid-air plane building. As essentially creative people in our core, this is hard but very energizing.

The high school English department is entirely new this year, and it was one thing I spent a lot of time fretting over before arriving. I’ve been so lucky in career to work with amazing educators who supported me, taught me a lot, and brought the best out of me. My new department here in Jordan is amazing. The women I work with a smart and knowledgable and they bring diverse strengths to our team. Our collaboration has been energetic and exciting, and I feel honored to be the subject area lead of this team.

Other random stuff: winter. Yes, Jordan is a desert. But it gets really cold and rainy in the winter! I’ve seen some serious rainfall recently. We still get lots of blue sky days, but then it will rain for 2 days straight. Everything is greening up and little grass is sprouting along the roads. Our home heat comes radiators powered by a diesel boiler. The diesel is pretty expensive, so our heat is on a timer that runs in the mornings and evenings. I don’t love being cold, but I’m adapting and we are all now in possession of a lot of slipper socks and nice robes.

Food! I am basically made of hummus at this point. It’s so good. I was told before we got here that the hummus was going to blow me away. They weren’t wrong, but you don’t understand it until you experience it. And the falafel! The shawarma! The fattoush salads! Tabouleh! Everything pomegranate! Falafel is ridiculously cheap and delicious. Oh the feta and the labneh! The feta made in Brazil was truly terrible, and the feta here is mind blowing. Calvin has taken to making himself labneh sandwiches on sourdough bread for school lunches. David’s new obsession is stuffed grape leaves. Oh so good. On top of the delicious regional food, the excitement of access to important products has not worn off. In Brazil, the 100% import tariffs meant that there were basically no imported food items. If they didn’t make it/grow it in Brazil, you couldn’t find it. That’s mostly not a problem because Brazil has a lot of delicious food. But things like steel cut oats or cheddar cheese are nearly impossible to find. Here, there’s very little you can’t find! Bob’s Red Mill! European cheeses! All kinds of sauces!

One thing I miss about Brazil is being fluent in the language. It’s hard to speak only the most basic Arabic. When we bought our final rugs in late December, I told the guy my phone number in Arabic! I had just learned one to ten, and he said he was going to give us a special discount because I said the numbers in Arabic. Ha! I think we were always going to get that discount, but it was nice of him to say. This semester I want to start taking some Arabic classes or lessons. The challenge is the time! I’m not sitting on hours of idle time. I’ll start small, maybe online, this semester and then hopefully next year I can go deeper.

Our head of school sent us this graph last semester:

All of us definitely recognize the curve. I think that we are climbing up again, and that’s a nice feeling. The second semester begins in two days, and we have still more to experience and discover! Ramadan is coming in March and Eid (both Eids!). We might have one more small trip before we return to the US in June, and I’ll try to share updates as the adventure continues.

Happy New Year!