Birthday Party and Salsa in Amman

Here are my friends Katie and Greg as we celebrate Katie's 23rd birthday out in Amman.  We were also joined by Katie's brother, Steve, who is this cool, smart English teacher with an MFA and the craziest stories from his travels all over the world, and Greg's friend, Kate, who works for the Peace Corps and essentially learned Arabic in a year (very impressive) because she uses it all day at work. She had been working with Operation Smile 24/7 for a few days and had some interesting stories about her encounters with Libyan expat fighters who'd shown up at the hospital. We ate dinner at this great restaurant and as you can see, we had two MINI shawarma poles.  (Generally these structures are as big as a full-grown male).  It was the best shawarma I've had.  The white scarf that Katie is wearing is very traditional and common here.  The white and black checkered scarf represents Palestine and Palestinians.  Jordanians wear the same patterned scarf but in red and white.  I think it was worn originally by the Bedouins.  After dinner, we went to a "salsa" place in Amman.  It was one of the strangest restaurants/bars I've ever seen.  The decor/theme they were perhaps going for was "West African trader" or something because there was the oddest assortment of old-fashioned Columbus-style carracks, black mud African figurines and statues and huge rope baskets hanging from the ceiling.  The music, however, was salsa and there were salsa dancers performing and singing on stage.  What a confluence of cultural influences in one place!  It's been difficult to be away from home lately for a couple reasons, but I'm looking forward to regenerating over the winter break and I've just bought an airplane ticket to Japan for the holidays. (More on this later!)