Snow in Jordan!

The last few days have been a smorgasbord of crazy weather.  Starting Wednesday morning, while I was waiting for the school bus in the rain.  When it rains in Amman, it’s not so much that it pours as that it floods.  The streets turn into rivers, the potholes turn into lakes, everyone’s feet are perpetually soaked.  So Wednesday morning I donned my raincoat, thinking that rain would be the worst I’d have to deal with.

But when I got to school, the rain was gone and in its place were tornado velocity winds.  A group of us discovered this when we tried to venture across the street for lunch and practically got blown away.  After lunch, we went back to class, ready for an hour and a half of Arabic and some respite from the wind.  Halfway through class, our professor gave us a break.  So I went outside to check and see if it was still extremely windy.  It was, and it was also dust storming!!!  On February 29th in Amman, Jordan I was in the middle of my first dust storm!

But soon our break was over and we went back to class and learning the alphabet.  And not twenty minutes later a frantic looking man burst into class and said something in rapid Arabic to our teacher.  I picked out a few words, but not enough to lead to “It’s raining!  Classes are cancelled for the rest of the day!”  Such is life in Jordan, I suppose.

The wind and dust were gone, and now it was raining pretty heavily.  The remaining students on campus filed onto the buses and headed back into the city.  By the time we had made it close to our neighborhood it had begun to snow!  As an Alaskan and an ardent lover of winter, I didn’t think I was going to get to see any snow this year.  But it’s been snowing off and on (mixed with rain) since Wednesday night!  Yesterday ended up being a snow day from school, so my roommates and I bundled up in blankets with lots of movies in typical snow day fashion.

I woke up this morning fully expecting all the snow to be melted, but there’s more snow than ever today!  Our landlord gave me a snowball as I was headed up to the rooftop to take some pictures of the snow.  Up there I ended up building a snow man with some friends and in general reveling in my favorite kind of weather :)

Elika Roohi
Amman, Jordan
Spring 2012