Omran Naeb Maata St.

Many of my friends and family have been asking for me to start my blog again. So here I go at it one more time. Hopefully, it will stick this time.

So...some visuals! This is the street where we live in Amman. The neighborhood is called Sweifiyeh and its in West Amman. The west side of Amman is where the foreigners (like us) and the wealthier people of Amman live. The East side of Amman is where the poorer sections are.

We live on the right hand side of the street that you see in the picture. The street is Omran Naeb Maata Street. (Yep, say that several times fast!) We live just a few houses down from where that jeep is. The church you see is a Syrian Orthodox Church and the church bells ring every Sunday and sound really beautiful. Down the road from the church is...ta da! a Starbucks! Also, Zait & Zatar which is our local supermarket. Next door to that is Rawan, our local pastry shop and a bit down the road is Meat Master, our local butcher.

Since Maya was born, she has been walking down this street almost every day to each of these shops. Today, when she comes in, all the employees of Starbucks, Rawan, Zait & Zatar know her by name and call out to her, pick her up, and play with her. There is even a guy who works in front of these stores as a valet parking and he has conversations with Maya all the time and gives her lollipops, which I quickly hide from her. The Rawan guys giver her tiny cones of ice cream! When she is not with me, all these folks ask for her. I just learned today that the employees of Starbucks just call me Im Maya (mother of Maya) probably cause they have no clue what my name is.  On a side note: Out of respect, all the taxi drivers that we use (we are regulars with a few taxi drivers) refer to Tony as Abu Maya (father of Maya). (They insistently call me Joviana but that is another story).

Anyway, this is our neighborhood and we love it. We have nice long walks in the afternoons when we can as a family.