The Arrival.

Our last day in Rome, we woke up early and saw everything else I was dying to see: The Roman Forum, Colloseum, Pantheon, and Trevi Fountain. We ate some more of the most delicious food, especially this spaghetti place near the Trevi Fountain! 




London continued her streak as the highlight of everyone's day, first posing for a line of about thirty Asian tourists who each got a picture with her in front of the Forum, and then playing peek-a-boo at lunch with a table of adoring, laughing local grandparents. I love my baby.

We made it to the airport at 7:45pm. It was so surreal. We kept saying to eachother, "This is crazy! We're really doing it!"- a thousand times. On the flight, they brought out our "dinner", and I feel like I have to include a picture and an explanation so you can appreciate the look on both our faces when they brought it out.

Three circles of processed turkey product
One green olive*
Cucumber*
Carrot*
Cream cheese
Roll
Raw salmon
A prune
Celery
Apple slices
Yogurt
Crackers
One grape
A hard boiled egg
A single piece of raw cabbage
Warm peach(?) juice

*It should be noted that these were the exact size and circumference of a standard mechanical pencil and tasted like the nasty processed turkey product, because they had been sitting on the "meat" wrapped in plastic for who knows how long.

We landed at 2:30am, only to find that the ten-foot duffel bag containing all of me and Kyle's clothing, toiletries, shoes, AND make-up had been lost. Kyle filled out all of the claim paperwork while I tried in vain to soothe London, who hadn't taken a nap all day or slept all night. We got to our new house at 4:30am, and only put the new sheets on our bed before passing out. 
Five hours later, I woke up to find Kyle gone at an informational meeting at the University. It was suddenly kind of scary to be here alone, in a country where I don't speak the language, without any water that I could drink, not knowing where anything is, and not able to go anywhere without my husband who was gone for the morning. I turned on the lights, opened up the blinds, and began what would become twelve entire hours of scrubbing until my hands were raw. 
Let me first preface this by saying that our apartment is absolutely beautiful! It is all made of stone and the floors are shiny and tiled, all the furniture is made of a rich, dark wood, we have two bathrooms, and ours is the only apartment in the complex with an ourdoor space, rougly the size of our whole apartment. 

Now the not-so-good part. My theory is that fourteen homeless people lived here for about three years, then moved out about six months ago, and the apartment was last cleaned before they moved in. There are no words to adequately express the grime and rotting filth Kyle and I scrubbed out of the apartment. I had to leave the room several times because the stenches literally made me choke. Luckily, London slept until 4:30pm (yes, that is 12 hours straight, the poor thing!) so by the time she woke up, at least her bedroom was clean enough for her to run around in. It will take at least a week to clean all of the trash out of the outdoor space, but then it will be perfect for London to play around in! I'll take pictures of everything once it's all done.

So far, Amman has far exceeded my expectations. Think of Mexico with much taller buildings, really nice roads, half the trash, and palm trees that aren't painted. Most things are written in English too, kind of like how in America, everything is also written in Spanish. Today, we are taking a tour of the city all day, and I'm excited to get my bearings a little bit!