Productive Thursday

Howdy howdy,

Today was really good.  Benjamin had a fussy time taking his morning nap, but eventually settled down.  We ate a quick lunch and went with Kristin to Spinnys, a grocery store at the Taj Mall which is pretty near the embassy, and basically a straight shot from our neighborhood.  It's funny to me that the malls are the places for the nice grocery stores, but hey, I'll take it.  We parked in the underground garage and took the cart-escalator up.  It's a huge store, and they had plain Cheerios.  That was a big surprise.  But of course, only one box.  And it was probably $8 or so, but whatever.  I guess I should set up an Amazon shipment.  Another funny thing, they don't have honey nut Cheerios, just honey Cheerios.  I'm not eating them, but Thomas likes them okay.

I was able to stock up on some cleaning supplies so hopefully Emy will have what she needs when she starts working for us on Sunday.  I'm really excited to have someone to clean and watch Ben.  My class time got moved to earlier in the morning, which I'm bummed about 'cause I was looking forward to maybe eating lunch with Thomas occasionally.  I guess I could wait around for an hour, but that sounds boring.  Kristin and I will hopefully go and get our nails done sometime this week.  Yay!  I'm in dire need of a pedicure.  It's really a public service at this point, since I'm wearing sandals every day.

Tonight was BBQ night at the embassy outdoor cafe by the pool, so I got a cab around 5:45 and we met Thomas for dinner.  Getting a cab was no big deal, and I even counted out the correct change to the driver.  The coins are very similar, at least to me, so it takes me a while to figure out which one is 10 piasters, which one is half a dinar, etc.  Dinner was okay, it's never great but definitely passable.  And it's fun to sit in a group of Americans and relax.  There were tons of families, with kids running around in bathing suits.  I imagine we'll go to the pool sometime this weekend, it's a good fall-back plan.  Since we still don't have a car (argh) we can't really do the day trips, like to the Dead Sea or to the ruins around Amman.  But Insha'Allah (God willing, or basically, whenever it happens) we'll get our papers this next week.  And also maybe our UAB soon, which would be amazing.  


There's a sweet couple who work at the embassy and actually live just two buildings down from us, they were super kind and drove us home.  It'll be fun to have friends close by and hopefully we can have them over sometime, if I can get up some energy to cook.  One thing I forgot to pack is a baking sheet, I just need to buy one somewhere.  They didn't include one in the temporary housing package, which had utensils and plates, etc.  So the oven is basically useless to me until I find one.  Things to remember for the next time.


Tonight Thomas went to bed early, so I stayed up late and watched "Captain America" on Netflix Instant View.  It takes about two weeks for the Netflix DVD to get here, so we may up our subscription to two at a time, so we aren't just twiddling our thumbs waiting for the next one.  But the VPN is great, I'm so glad we can watch stuff online.  I feel a little left out of the Olympic stuff, I wish I could see the women's gymnastics stuff.  I guess it's probably on YouTube somewhere.  But it's also nice to be insulated from all the political commercials and idiocy.  


I hope everyone has a good Friday and weekend!  We're looking forward to hopefully, finally, going to church tomorrow.  


-Rachel