A Marriage of Convenience

Yesterday I was exploring downtown Amman with Peter, who I met at the University of Jordan's Language Program. He's 6'5 so you can imagine the looks we got between the two of us. It was particularly cute when little boys would gawk openly at Peter and I'm pretty sure they were thinking 'wow, I hope I get to be that tall!"

We ended up talking to several different vendors/shopkeepers and one of them asked if we were married. We kind of laughed about it but then I thought, 'wait! you could be my creepy guy decoy'! So we developed a system. If we're ever together, and I'm getting a creepy vibe from someone who asks if we are married, then we'll say we're married. It's brilliant. I have a 'secret signal' that I'll do and boom! more respect and less ogling of the "married" American.

For those of you who have wondered what beer and milk would taste like combined, I have an answer. It tastes odd, but not as bad as it sounds.

There is a yogurt drink called shanineh here, which is very similar to doogh in Iran. It's thinned drinkable yogurt with salt. Sounds weird but it's good. Unless you get an uber-fermented batch. While walking around the massive fruit and vegetable market downtown, I stumbled upon a little shop that sold cheese, olives and other random things. Peter and I ended up talking to one of the workers and I inquired about the substance being poured into a bottle from a silver vat. He explained that it's shanineh, and offered us a sample. Now, I really do like this salty yoghurt drink, which is also supposed to be quite good for you. If the amount of fermentation has anything to do with the health benefits, then I'm pretty sure this stuff can cure anything. It was so fermented that it kind of tasted like beer. Lesson learned; keep trying new food and drinks because even if it's not great, it can be a pretty entertaining experience.