I saw one of the craziest things yesterday though, women holding the phone in their veil while driving. One of the coolest things that I’ve seen but also possibly one of the most dangerous! And I thought people talking on their phones in the States was bad lol. Anyway, onto the story of yesterday:
My host sister is getting married this Friday and so we spent all (like the entire day) shopping, kill me now! I learned so much about weddings in Jordan, like the fact that a woman has to buy a whole new wardrobe (complete with shoes and lingerie) for her “new life” with her husband and the husband pays for the entire thing! I literally don’t think that I’ve ever spent that much time shopping in my entire life. We had to buy all new bags, all new coats (I got an awesome new beige pea coat for the wedding because we’re going to be in a freezing huge church), and lingerie (I’ll elaborate on this one more). But, I was so afraid that I was going to have to buy so much for the wedding, but I was told that all that I needed to get was a long jacket and I can wear one of my long dresses underneath for the wedding pictures. We were at a small mall downtown where, I’ve seen this before, but it became much more apparent throughout the day that Jordanians don’t really pay with a credit card. They literally, no matter the price, pay with cash. This is incredibly strange for me, coming from America where it’s all plastic and no cash. It was also here that I saw another different thing when I went to the bathroom. There were women smoking everywhere! I asked my host sisters about this and they explained that it is not accepted by society for women to be seen smoking so they have to smoke in hidden places like the bathroom. As if public restrooms weren’t gross enough!
Anyway, on to the lingerie thing…
So we walked into the lingerie store and were greeted by pajamas on the first floor (long floor length, long sleeve night gowns) complete with all sorts of fuzzy and polar fleece long sleeve pajamas. We (my two host sisters and my host aunt) walked right past this and walked up to the second floor where all of the baby dolls and boxed lingerie is stored. Mind you, this is nothing like Victoria’s Secret where people are very comfortable walking around touching everything and possibly trying things on. This is where; when I first walked up I gazed upon something that I have never really seen, a long baby doll. I don’t know how to further describe this other than by saying that it looked like a halter dress except lingerie. This is also where I realized that I was slightly out-of-place as I walked in, gazing at different boxed set lingerie going ooh I have that, and that, and that (in my head of course) while my host sisters were making absolutely disgusted faces (oh whooopsssss!). We had a guy showing us around after my host sister explained that she was getting married and she was nixing everything saying that it was too “slutty”. She then was looking at some baby dolls and I decided to try to help and held up what I thought was a really cute red baby doll that my host sister looked at and said “Red?? No no that’s the color of prostitutes!” And then I tried to explain that men really like the color red with the worker agreeing with me and yeah, it didn’t go over well. It was after this that I decided to back off and let them do their thing so they were all over in the corner looking at some stuff while the worker came up to me and was speaking to me about some things and goes, “You’re not from here are you? You seem very comfortable with lingerie!” Well, cats outta the bag, huh? I admitted that yes, I was from America and he started laughing and leans in close and whispers, “If you would like to see some um, thongs, we keep them in a box in the back…” Yup, people, apparently Americans have a great reputation out here lol. Needless to say, I hung out with the worker for the rest of our time there.
ThisSpaceBetweenUs 