Weather

I feel like the weather here thus far is worthy of a post. Right now its brightly sunny and in the low 40ºs. The past two days has been cold rain. In the two weeks before that however, it was also brightly sunny with highs in the low 70ºs. So far I haven't really gotten sick from the weather but everyone else in the program (and the city) seems to be. 

The weather obviously isn’t that cold, the problem is buildings really aren’t insulated at all and heating either doesn’t work in some of the apartments or in my case, is electric and costs ridiculously high amounts. Also, come the snow, the entire city basically shuts down. Snow driving isn’t a widely held skill and when I went out in a taxi on the biggest snow day, the driver would repeatedly swerve into the small snow banks on the sides of the road. The common past time seems to be to hang out on the sidewalks and throw snow balls at the cars passing, dangerous for sure and while most of the drivers I saw had a sense of humor about it, some didn’t. About six inches of snow closed everything down and I mean everything, small shops didn’t even open. Its much more understandable when you know that most people don’t have the appropriate clothing (boots, etc) and that the roads aren’t really properly plowed (although I saw plenty of bulldozers driving around scraping snow up). Most people have told me this is an unusual amount of snow and rain, but its very, very welcome because of the constant water shortage. Jordan is one of the most water poor countries in the world. 

It was also cool to notice the differences in weather from within the city. The multiple small mountains and hills Amman is built around means that it could be snowing in one part of the city and raining in another, with obviously more changes due to how north you are in the city and where the storm is centered around. Not unique, but cool to witness.