March 18, 2001
Amman is an interesting mix between East and West. Clearly Arab and clearly a monarchy (King Abdallah's pictures are everywhere), nonetheless almost every street sign and storefront is bilingual - the years of British influence have clearly left their mark.
We picked up our passport photos at the Safeway (18 different kinds of mayonaisse!) and headed to the heavily-fortified American Embassy. Within minutes, our paperwork was finished and we had but to return later in the afternoon to pick up our new passports.
In the meantime, we headed off sightseeing with our host (who was so kind as to ferry us here and there). Our first stop was the town of Madaba (pop. 60,000), one of the important Christian centers of Jordan. Christians make up about 5% of the population of Jordan, twice the Palestinian percentage. Madaba is currently 30% Christian, and has been an important religious center since the early era of Christianity, partly because of its connection to the ancient land of Moab. Several ancient churches are here with important mosaics. The first was the unearthed Church of the Apostles from the 6th century (now owned by the Latin church) with exquisite mosaics of birds and youth and John the Baptist. It has been fairly well preserved. Then we saw the Orthodox church of St. George with its historically important map mosaic of the Holy Land. From this ancient map, scholars have been able to locate the likely historical site of Jesus' baptism by John. We met with the priest, Archimandrite Innokentios, who was born in Greece but has been here for forty years. He showed us around to their new school and hostel, and chuckled that he was grateful that we were Protestants (since our ancestors protested against Rome, not Byzantium).
Our last pilgrimage site was Mt. Nebo, from which Moses viewed the promised land before he died. There, too, is an ancient church, again with remarkable mosaics, now maintained by the Franciscans. It is quite the view across the Jordan Valley into places like Jericho.
Our lunch was the fulfillment of Amman's mix of east and west, as we ate Popeye's chicken (here called "Bobeye's") and drank Pepsi ("Bebsi") while we also dined on homemade "malfouf" (meaning "rolled", cabbage leaves with meat and rice). After picking up our new passports, we made one final stop in Amman, visiting the ancient Roman theater briefly before coming home to relax in front of the TV and admire anatomically-correct teeth carved out of soap.