Settling in

Today everything is working at last (including Mark).

After another series of phonecalls and visits yesterday, the heating in the apartment is finally on, and all's well with the world. I'm not a natural at phonecalls at the best of times, so phoning someone when I speak none of their language and they speak a fractured version of mine is not usually high on my list of fun things to do.
      Allo.
     Hello, is that Emily?
     OK.
     It's Alison here, from the apartment.
     OK.
     ...

After another visit from the caretaker I talked to her again, and we had the magic words:
     In one hour the man will come and fixit everything.

One hour turned into three, and the fixit man turned out to be two men, and it took them half an hour of poking around and shouting into their phones, but at last we can be properly warm.

It helps that today the sun came out again. On Friday our part of Amman got more rain in 24 hours than Hamilton usually gets in a whole month. I didn't get any photos of the rain, because what kind of idiot would go outside if they didn't have to in that weather? (Actually we did go out, because one of Mark's new colleagues bravely drove over to pick us up for a meal at their place, but it was definitely not camera-waving weather.)

While Mark works I've been exploring our neighbourhood. We're in 7th Circle, a pretty cosmopolitan and diverse district. Some features of the area are pretty much what I expected - especially the crazy traffic and dust and feral cats. But there are some surprises. There are far more trees than I was expecting. Most of them are planted in the middle of the footpaths, which can make the footpaths less useful than they might be for anyone taller than a hobbit (wide footpaths without trees planted in them get used for car parking, which makes them even less useful as footpaths).

Another surprise is the huge number of mobile phone stores and bottle stores within walking distance. (More Hamilton East than Middle East, right?) Also in walking distance are at least six shopping malls - all of them multi-storey outfits with flash European and American brand stores and playgrounds upstairs for kids. "Walking distance" doesn't appear to be a very Jordanian concept though; it seems the only reason for walking is to get to your taxi. My walks are punctuated by taxi drivers honking at me, not in a creepy guy kind of way or a "get out of my way you crazy woman" kind of way; more like "Hello, is it me you're looking for?" (There is plenty of the "out of my way" type of honking, just not usually directed at me. Jordanian drivers are confident communicators.)