Voting PSA

This is your official Public Service Announcement from us... You'll only get this once.

Vote.

We did and we're half way around the world.  All you have to do is walk down the street to your local elementary school.  Or library.  Or neighborhood Church.

The world is watching.  They want you to vote.  Don't disappoint the rest of the 6,427,874,040 folks who don't get to decide who becomes the next Decision-Maker...

Vote.

Taffy plays the role of witness to our absentee voting

Jr. High Band

Remember being in Band?  Or Choir?  Or maybe after-school community something or other?  A few days ago we stopped by Sarah's Symphonic Band Fall concert at the Baptist School here in Amman. She's in the trumpet section and attends our Sunday Fellowship with her family.  The band is a community effort and is led by Ms. Barbara... a very efficient and professional director.

The playlist was varied, covering the Theme from St. Elsewhere, Raindrops and Liza Jane among others.  We attended with Cyndy, Nasri, Natalie and Jon.  Natalie and Nasri went to the Baptist School from KG to Senior year so this was a bit of homecoming of sorts for them to wander the halls and reminisce of their glory days.

BTW, if you're in town, stop by Bennigan's... mention you support the Baptist School Music program and they'll donate 10% of your bill to the school!

Cleaning Day... or Month

We've been doing a bit of Fall cleaning at the church to get ready for our Conference in November.  One recent Saturday, we pulled down all the curtains, took out all the chairs, washed every accessible surface and shampooed the carpet.  Good times and wrinkly fingers, you know?  Getting the curtains back from the cleaners and rehung seems to be taking a tad longer than expected, but that's life in Jordan.  Today I picked up the last of the curtains.  We'll have the guy come hopefully this weekend to put everything back up.

Prepping for cleaning

Our To Do list

 Suzi deep cleaning

Natalie gets a turn with the Shampoo

 Jon gets busy on the doors

Suzi & Ariana take a break

Everybody gets in on the shampoo action

Tamara hits the windows

Sari & Son: Prof Window Powerwashers

Dead Sea Quickie

So, there's advantages to living on the south of Amman... and one of those is a quick 30 minute trip to the Dead Sea when we have an afternoon off. 

Amman is 773 M (2,356 FT) above sealevel.  When you head west down, literally, the highway, the elevation begins to drop dramatically.  The drive takes you along a ridgeline and then into the Jordan River valley.  Our destination this afternoon was Amman Beach, 420M (1,378 FT) below sealevel.  Bonus: Since it's the middle of the week, it was empty!

The Dead Sea is more like one of America's Great Lakes... there's just nothing alive in it, and, due to the incredibly high saline & mineral content, anything thrown in it floats.  Everything is more harsh in the valley.  When we left Amman, it was 21 (69).  By the time we reached the beach parking, it was 34 (93).  The Dead Sea receives an annual rainfall of about 2 inches a year.  Due to the high demand for water from the Jordan River, the Sea has been dropped consistantly, losing one meter of surface area annually for the past few years.

Suzi explores before hitting the water; the Palestinian Territory is in the background

 

Anything that stands still long enough will be encrusted in salt

 

(Coolness Factor: On the way, you never know what you'll see on the road... a random camel or two or a herd of goats!)

Note the Omega/George Clooney billboard in background

 

Nigerian Independence Day

We were so honored to be guests at the Nigerian Embassy's celebration of their country's independence on Tuesday.  The reception, hosted at the Radison in Amman, featured a meet & greet with the ambassador & dignitaries, networking... and a great buffet!  Two of our church families are ranking embassy officers and we blessed to spend some time with them, along with several of our friends.

We discuss politics & dessert with Mr. Basi

Suzi & other beautiful ladies from our Fellowship

Our group camped out at a high top

How many nails does it take?

So, September kicked off quite nicely as I pulled up at the office to find that one of the Camry's tires was pretty low.  Thinking we could just throw some air at it and keep rolling, we had our meeting and came back out to leave... only to find the thing was pretty much flat as a katayef.  So, we did the quick and dirty task of being our own pit crew (thank the Lord for a full-size spare!).

Amazingly, the tire guy found 3 nails of various sizes in the tread!  There were already two patches in the tire, making for a total 5.
Now, fast-forward to the end of the month... I ran out to the Embassy to drop off our Absentee Ballot registration (don't want to miss THIS election!) and thought the handling was a bit squishy.  Sure enough, the same tire was going flat!  Another quick-change and trip to the tire guy who pulled out Exhibit B:

Craziness... Who knows where this stuff comes from...?