concert? nooo...teapot? yes =)

Last night we were told that a local Amman orchestra was performing some arabic music at the Al-Hussein Cultural Center near downtown.  I hopped in a cab to meet up with friends at the Al Hussein Cultural Center...and the adventure began.  I didn't know exactly where the center was, I'd recognize it when I saw it, but I didn't exactly know how to get there....and neither did the cab driver.  Regardless, I hopped in the cab and told him to go to downtown, where we'd ask for directions.  The cab driver didn't speak english, so it was perfect to practice my arabic on the drive down. The driver was 21 years old and had only been driving taxis for 5 weeks! pretty crazy to have someone my age be my cab driver.  We reached the Roman Theater downtown and started asking random people on the sidewalk how to get to the Al Hussein Cultural Center, after some mis-communications and wrong turns we arrived and he dropped me off around 7:40.  The concert was supposed to start at 7:30 and the announcement we read told us to arrive no later than 7.  No bigggie, I walked into the center, asked/hand signaled the metal detector technicians "where's the concert?" and they pointed me to the stairs.  I had already talked with a friend of mine who was there and she said to shoot her a text when I got to the bottom of the stairs.  Perfect.  I get to the bottom of the stairs and hear music! great! I grab the big wooden door which I thought was the entrance to the back of the hall and walk right onto stage by mistake. Just kidding =) but the door was locked! I shook it a bit, it didn't budge.  As I was trying to contact my friend who was inside, another guy comes frantically running down the stairs and asks me if the doors are locked.  I say yes, so he proceeds to shake the doors with all his might as if to hope that nobody inside is hearing the rattle and that the doors will magically swing open.  Go figure they didn't.  He shakes his hand for me to follow him and we run up a small staircase and he shakes another door with the same force, it doesn't budge.  He looks back and me and let's me know the doors are locked.  Luckily my friend who I was supposed to meet there calls

"Hey Yazan, so the concert actually happened last night, tonight the orchestra is just rehearsing. We were misinformed haha. We all just had to hop in a cab and are on our way home cause on our way out some guys started harassing us and wouldn't let up, sorry!"

I got the whole harassing story this morning.  So a couple classmates of mine (girls and guys) were leaving the cultural center and walking down a somewhat dark street to get back to downtown proper when a group of 12 year old boys started asking them for money, kicking/punching them, etc. etc. etc.  A local walking down the street actually hailed a cab for my friends and they hopped in, evading the mugging-by-12-year-old scenario they were about to experience.  They were truly pleased with how quickly other locals on the sidewalk started yelling at these 12 year olds, and that a cab was hailed for them by a total stranger.

I decided that getting back in a cab and going home would make for a pretty lame blog post, so I point my feet downtown and start to walk down the 1/4 mile doomy gloomy stretch of road that will take me to "wast al balad" (downtown).  but before I make the trek, I need a goal...Teapot it is! You can buy these cheap aluminum tea pots on the side of the road, they're perfect and I don't have one.  I put my key in between my fingers in case I needed to throw a punch or two, hike up my pants tighten my shoes, and walk with authority.  It really wasn't that bad, there were actually manned guard shacks the whole way since the Al-Hussein Cultural Center is an enormous campus that stretches all the way to downtown.  As I reached a major intersection of downtown I saw a little metal shimmer on a cheap card table across the street. My teapot! I quickly run across the street, and buy the teapot as the store was closing.  The guy seemed confused/amused as to why I was so eager to make the purchase.  I couldn't have been happier.  I continued walking downtown seeing what else I could find, with my new teapot in hand as a signal to any shady creatures of the night, "Don't mess with this guy, he's got a teapot and isn't' afraid to use it".  It was awesome walking downtown as the stores were closing on a weeknight, I feel like I saw a true glimpse of "life".  Not a touristy front, or a bunch of super eager stores trying to make a sale.  As I was walking through the late night fruit market, I even considered not taking my phone out to snap some pictures, but luckily I did.  Here they are--wish I had a better camera: