Living in Amman so far

After a week here, some observations.
You develop good leg muscles.
Amman is built on several hills/mountains, I think like six or seven.  Each is a separate neighborhood.  So proper Amman is on Jabal Amman.  So whenever you go anywhere you are climbing or going down a pretty steep incline, even if you are staying in the same neighborhood.  Just to give you an idea, when I was here last time, the hotel I stayed at was almost at the top of Jabal Webdeh (probably not the right spelling).  To get to downtown Amman using a short cut (there are a lot of shortcuts and sometimes the difference is a lot between the real road and shortcut.)  Anyway to get to downtown Amman, I went down about three steep streets, about 3 blocks.  Then I went into a garage and took the elevator 10 stories down to get to downtown Amman.  Now if you don't take the short cut it is probably half an hour walk equaling the 10  stories vs less than 10 minutes. Going back up it's probably even more time, like 40 or 45 minutes.

The second thing you become used to quickly is conserving water.  Water is rationed in Amman.  So each house/apartment has tanks, two cubic meters, 2,000 liters or about 500 gallons.  I think the water is turned on once a week, like Wednesday or Thursday and the tank gets filled and then the water is off.  If you run out of water you have to pay a truck to bring water to the house.  It costs about $60 to fill the tank.

Third.  It's hard to find good espresso.  I have tried and finally spoke to another espresso lover who has been here for a while.  He has not found a good place and I think he makes his own and gets his coffee shipped from somewhere.  He is my grammar teacher.  We did not finish the conversation because class started.

The food is not the healthiest in general, although the local stuff can be healthy.  The super market stuff usually has all the chemicals, preservatives etc.  Same goes for soap.  While there is good soap in Jordan and exported to US, at the local super market I could not find any soap that did not have fragrance, and other stuff that I don't care for.  Cleaning stuff is worst.  Now I understand why the eco-lodge is having a very hard time getting detergent and cleaning material free of phosphates etc.  Although I hear ecover is making an entry in this market.

There is a Safeway about a mile away so I will have to check that out to see if there is anything better than the local carefour which is about 10 minutes away.