This morning I finally got to find out what a "Jordanian blizzard" really is.
Lets first back up to Thursday afternoon. Despite having caught a nasty cold (its been circulating around the American students since day 1 of the program), I went downtown with some friends. Getting downtown proved to be a hassle because every taxi we tried to take tried to rip us off (despite the fact that its the law to use the meter here). So after refusing 3 or 4 taxis we finally got in one that took us downtown. He however, also tried to rip us off as we were paying saying "traffic busy---more money than meter!". We just paid him what the meter said and booked it out of the cab. We were planning on meeting some friends downtown at a particular restaurant (nothing fancy, just a cute little outdoor place that serves killer falafel for dirt cheap). We got there early and because we were three American girls, got doted on and called "habeebee" (my love) by pretty much every waiter. Funny how once the others showed up (which included a guy) they stopped coming to our table :) Just to show you how amazing this restaurant is, seven of us got enough falafel, hummus, fuul, bread, fresh vegetables, and tea to fill us up for only 1JD. Beat that Mcdonalds value menu! Afterwards, we spent a few hours just walking around downtown and doing some small shopping. When it came time to go home, a friend and I decided to share a taxi together. Five minutes into our taxi ride, our driver tried to tell us he was going to charge us more than the meter (my friend speaks way more arabic than me and could understand what he was saying). We tried to argue with him but to no avail. So I made it look like I was taking down his taxi information (every legit taxi is required to have his/her taxi information visible, usually on the dashboard). This triggered a reaction neither of us expected. After a moment, he violently ripped his information off of the dashboard and threw it in the passenger seat, all the while glaring at us. Luckily, we were just down the street from where we needed to be dropped off. It must have done the trick though, because he didn't ask for extra money when we left. It did shake me and my friend up, though.
The rest of the weekend was spent curled up in bed with tea, trying to fend off my host families adament requests that I take some antibiotics for my cold (one doesn't need a prescription to get antibiotics here, so they tend to use them for everything...or at least, my family does). I have to admit, my colds probably draw a lot of attention because mine are always accompanied by a real nasty cough.


Back to the blizzard....
Its been raining nonstop since Thursday night and a "blizzard" was predicted sometime this weekend. Well, no snow but definitely a lot of rain. So much in fact, that most schools were cancelled for today. I recieved an email last night from my program director saying that we were still going to have class unless it started snowing and that we would recieve a text at around 7:15am if class was cancelled. Well, 7:15am came and went and it wasn't snowing so I met with my friend as usual and we proceeded to walk to the highway (usually we can catch a taxi closer but because of all the rain, taxis have been kind of sparse by my building). We get there, after crossing a half dozen Jordan rivers and get a call from the program director saying that class is cancelled. Good timing because 30 seconds later huuuuuuuuge wet flakes started falling. For about 15 minutes these huge snowflakes came down almost thick enough to constitute a white out. Not that it was any use. The ground is so wet anyway that theres no hope of any snow actually sticking. It at least made for a pretty display.

Now, for some reason things just don't translate well to host parents. When I came back, I found a semi-flustered host mom waiting for me. She could not understand for the life of her why I had actually left in the first place. The whole concept of having school, rain or shine, doesn't seem to be a big thing in Jordan. So she thought it was rather dumb of me to have left in the first place. She would have rather had me skip class than walk out in the rain. Does she not realize I come from one of the rainiest places in the world?

So now, I'm left with yet another day to relax, recover, and avoid antibiotics at all costs.