Arabic Wedding and House Party

Photos have been updated At http://community.webshots.com/user/chadgriggs

and videos from this blog at the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voRA9eufKZs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri9QAh9Zezo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVwSeo8ctE4

Hello everyone, I can't believe that it will be 2 months that I have been away from home on Tuesday. Things are going well Jordan is much different then Dubai (but as the locals say -- Same same) at the same time.

I do miss Texas especially family, friends, and food (Mexican that is) the three F's that you can only get in Texas. But I am enjoying life in Jordan although I work way too much. It is also funny living in a 5 star hotel now for a month. The Le Meridien is very nice and as you can imagine it comes to feel like home. I have made friends with all of the staff who mostly all know me by name and we have made other friends such as some from Italy that we went out with last night. We move into the Marriot on Wednesday, and are meeting with the director of His Majesties Royal Court on Sunday so we are now just one step away from meeting His Majesty King Abdullah so that is pretty exciting. My last blog that I posted was never finished because I always thought that I would get back to it but never did.

Anyways so last weekend I had my first Arabic Wedding that I talked about but I never got into detail about the reception which was the main event. So it was being held in one of the ballrooms here at the hotel. And everyone waits outside the elevators for the bride and groom to come down from their room and then the 6 piece Arabic band and singers start playing. And it is at this moment that the dancing and clapping begins. And everyone is doing it from the little kids, the grandma to the bride and groom and of course the two gringos that everyone is starring at trying to figure out how we fit into the picture.

So they dance but they really aren’t walking forward just dancing with the band leading the way and they just barely keep up to the entrance to the ballroom dancing which it probably takes us 45 minutes to get from the elevator to the ball room. Lots of fun but boy your hands sure do hurt from clapping. Then they did a little slide show thing and start dancing again. It was a lot of fun, they would come around with drinks and we would just dance with the bride and others that were there from the hotel that we knew. It was a lot of fun and a true testament of the hospitality of the people here in Jordan for her to invite us to her wedding and go as far to dance with me on her wedding night. They would lift the bride and groom up in their chair while dancing and the grandma would come around with silly string and foam shooters at the crowd on the dance floor. And about 3 hours later at about 1am they finally served dinner. I couldn’t believe how long they danced!!!!

So this weekend was very relaxing, first we started out at Centro Brasserie (http://www.grumpygourmet.com/april_06/resturant_reviews.shtm 4th on the list) restaurant which is Italian food - it was really great a nice fillet minion with a béarnaise sauce just what I needed to finish off the week. Then we headed to the Le Royal which is probably the nicest hotel in Amman http://www.leroyalhotel-amman.com/ to one of the top floors to the Buddha Bar which is really cool themed with a great view of the city. Then we received a call from one of our friends who is a manager at our hotel who invited us to come to a party at her uncle’s house. So she calls the hotel to send a driver to come and get us to take us out to the house. It is a long ways outside of Amman probably about 20 minutes and just next to where we are going was the Kings main palace. We start driving up into the mountains which was so beautiful with all of the lights from the city. When we start hearing this really loud music coming from the house that we were going to. They had huge speakers that they had sat up on the gates outside the house pointing into the courtyard where everyone was. With a keyboard a couple of Arabic drums and the uncle singing on the microphone. Where they immediately greet us and all of the family about 75 of them start coming up to us telling us how glad they were that we were here and welcoming us to Jordan. Everyone was lined up in chairs along the wall of the courtyard watching the people dancing and the music. When they got some chairs and sat them up right in middle of everyone and the grandfather came and they brought a chair over for him and he sat down right next to (his special guests) as he said. Then they brought out a coffee table and sat it in front of us and starting bringing on the food. Probably 10 plates of the traditional Arabic food and drinks.

It was bad because we were both stuffed from a huge dinner and the Arabic food I really don’t care for. But anyways you can imagine what time it was --- time to dance. So they insisted that we get up and start dancing with them. And they loved us we were as much entertainment for them as the party was for us. And they danced and danced especially with Amanda all the uncles wanted to dance with the blonde girl. But it was soo much fun seeing the family and the kids playing together. When finally we had to call it a night about 1:30am or so. We ended up meeting a few of her cousins that actually go to school in California but were back in Jordan for the summer that said that they would call us and we would go out some time.

Well they did and last night they made reservations for us to this club across the street from the le royal hotel. This is a big thing here people do not go out to clubs or dinner till late especially on the weekends maybe 10:30 at the earliest and every place has to have a reservation. Infact the funny thing is about the reservation it doesn’t matter if there are several tables empty with no reservations if you do not call ahead to make a reservation they will not let you in. Anyways it was a cool lounge type atmosphere with all kinds of beautiful people and Amanda and I were the only gringos there. And of course they had invited a few of their cousins to come join us, and we invited one of our Italian friends as well. It is very interesting because not only do you have drinks at everyone’s table you have what they call huble bubley which is the hookas. We had a lot of fun listening to all of the different music when American music would come on people would dance in their chair and when they would play an Arabic song everyone would start clapping in unison very interesting seeing the two cultures combined into one.

Well that’s all for now email me and let me know whats going on with you!!!