Middle East

Day 28 of Jordan lockdown: Choices... We needed to make a choice during the last few days, a choice of whether to leave Jordan for Portugal or stay, most likely through the end of Ramadan…

Day 22 of Jordan lockdown: Curfew and color… Except for the loudspeakers chanting prayers five times a day from the otherwise empty mosques, Amman has been an eerily quiet city during yesterday and today. We…

Day 19: Under control and innovating… Many of you expressed such a heartwarming concern about us after our last journal post. Rest assured we are fine and apparently Jordan is even finer, flying high like…

Day 17 of Jordan lockdown: Wait and worry... Should we be worried? We’ve been very pleased about our situation in Jordan. Much as we would prefer to be a few other places, we recognize we…

Day 13 of Jordan lockdown: Decline and flee Today we celebrated some good news with a nice long walk, a tiny bit of shopping (lemon, chilis, labaneh, hair color) and amiably competitive battles of backgammon…

Day 10 – 12 of Jordan lockdown: Produce and Progress Today’s a blustery day (Day 12 of lockdown, Wednesday 1 April, 2020) so we will probably not spend our usual deck time with backgammon and…

Day 9 of Jordan lockdown: Spirits raised and acquired… We stayed up late last night in conversations back to the US, so we headed outside a bit later than usual today. Nonetheless, we enjoyed playing…

Day 7 & 8 of lockdown: The routine and the effect of irresponsibility Day 8 It seemed to us that the government here was doing a good job on covid-19, but it’s now semi-official as…

Day 5 and 6: A little bit of freedom... In the evening of Day 4 of the Jordan lockdown, we learned that we would be given a test reprieve the next day. The original plan…