Thursday, January 24, 2013

Traveling to Amman

The trip started inauspiciously. Headed towards the elevator at White Flint metro, a middle aged man with a bicycle pressed the close button so that my girlfriend and I would not be able to get on. Its a pretty douchey move from anyone especially someone his age. It's all the worse when you realize that my girlfriend is in a wheelchair. He made the train as a result and we missed it.

On the bus from the metro to Dulles, a bag fell off the storage rack and conked two women on the head. One woman wanted to file a report one stop before we made it to the airport. The other woman may have also if she wasn't so woozy. If a report would have been filed, we would have all had to sit there for an hour the driver said. The women were pressured to drop their petition for the time being.

One man, whose international flight was scheduled 6:15 and kept punching his suitcase when the bus was stopped in traffic before, said to anyone who would listen that he wasn't going to make his flight. When I told him ours was set for 5:50, he responded, "You guys are screwed!"

Well, we weren't. After going to the wrong ticket counter, we got our boarding passes and comfortably strode onto the plane. We had a stop in Vienna. My girlfriend's chair made sure people directed us to the correct gate. In Jordan, a man helped us with the visa and our passports because she uses a wheelchair. It was a huge help.

A man from the hotel picked us up. We traveled through poor East Amman and saw the cucumber farmers who lived in tents. The driving over here isn't concerned with lanes or lights. Then we ate sandwiches and are doing alright so far. Just tired. Neither of us really slept much on either flight.

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