Traffic Jam?

What you are seeing next to this Mosque is not a traffic Jam. These are the parked cars of everyone who is going to Friday prayer at this Mosque.  Double and triple parked on the highway! (Airport Road for those of you who know Amman)  As the Jordanians say: "adi".  To pronounce this word correctly you need to make the throaty A sound.  Stick your tongue out and say Ahhh, just like at the doctor.  Now pull your tongue back in but keep your vocal chords goin. Yes, that is a letter in the arabic alphabet called "Ain", it looks like a backwards 3.  The word "adi" more or less means  "normal" and is frequently used when something ridiculous happens and you gotta just brush it off.  If see that the tomatoes that are being put into your falafel sandwich are a bit too old for comfort, it's "Adi".  Or if you happen to be driving down the freeway and see cars double and triple parked past the shoulder and into right lane, it's no big deal, it's "Adi".

The holy day in Islam is Friday, so our weekend here in Jordan is Friday Saturday, not Sat Sun.  Here's a picture from Google images of a Friday prayer in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul:

When was the last time you saw that many men agree on one thing!? Islam truly is the beating heart of the Arab world...why it's also commonly referred to as the Islamic world.  Separation of church and state here is a very blurry line.  But at least it's known as being so.  In the US we claim separation of church and state yet have in god we trust on our money and Santorum surging forward in Republican primaries because of his Christian-ness.  (Really Colorado?? Santorum?? Since when did what goes on in a woman's uterus become your business, republicans, don't you want smaller government?) I guess "democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried"--Winston Churchill.

The call to prayer is announced from the top of the minarets five times a day to remind Muslim people to stop for 5 minutes, and say hey to God.  Sometimes the 4AM call to prayer works it's way into my dream and I wake up a little disoriented haha.  Although I am not necessarily a huge fan of spending so much of your life reciting words that you had no say in the creation of and that were written in a very different time and place, I still think that taking 5 minutes 5 times a day to stop and just read your favorite poem, or close your eyes, or go for a short walk, might not be a bad thing for everyone to do.  But that wouldn't be efficient..well neither would spending half an hour on Facebook haha.

BTW: Facebook, holy cow the info they have on all of us, no wonder they're IPO will likely be higher value than Boeing right now! Retail corporations will be lining up to get all of our life stories from our new "Timelines". They'll know everything we are willing to share back to birth! I just read an awesome article on habits, and more specifically shopping habits.  This author goes onto show how Target now predicts when you are pregnant and starts sending you ads for maternity stuff so you'll start shopping there during your pregnancy, once you have your baby and they'll win you as a life long customer.  One father stormed into a target and demanded to talk with the manager about why they were sending his high school daughter maternity ads.  Well it turns out she WAS pregnant and Target analyzed her shopping habits and knew before her own dad! Here's the article if you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto