friends, neighbours

One of things that I love about living abroad - both now in Amman and elsewhere in the past - is how it forces me to confront myself and consider what I value on a daily - maybe hourly - basis.

This is a fairly banal observation, especially for those readers who have spent time living overseas. But coming to terms with different ways of being, finding out what parts of your lifestyle you can compromise on (vegetarian diet, clothing choice) and what things are fundamentally important to your quality of life (strong coffee, walking, tolerance) allows you to learn about your own limits and peculiarities and biases, every moment of every day.  Insights that may require hours of determined journal-writing or piles of junky magazine self-help quizzes back home (Are you destined to succeed?  What kind of female are you?) emerge self-evidently without having to think deliberately about them.  It is something akin to introspection, only active and exhilirating.  And exhausting.  Your brain is working overtime, constantly processing all this new information - which translates into very sound sleep at night and vivid dreams - an added bonus.

At a certain point, after a few months, the state of wonderment decreases as you get used to a new normal - the fact that your colleague has two wives, or that giant cockroaches are living in your kitchen drains - but the potential for being truly surprised never really goes away.  It is all a part of the full-body learning experience of living in a very foreign place

I knew all this before I came, but living it is another thing altogether.  I was fully prepared to be surrounded - and even, in happy circumstances, embraced - by people with very different world views and backgrounds and opinions than my own.  I was ready for that and excited by the prospect.  What I absolutely didn't expect was that I would encounter someone exactly like me, with whom I have everything in common.  And that has been its own amazing surprise and learning experience.

Paul, until yesterday, was my neighbour and colleague.  He lives in Tucson, Arizona where he studies architecture, but has been spending time in Amman this summer working at the Institute where I work. Yesterday he left town for more adventures in London and Paris and New York before he heads back to  Tucson.  I will miss him.  We saw a lot of each other.  His (former) front door is about 12 feet from mine and his desk at work was about 20 feet away.  For about 6 weeks straight we shared the same schedule:  8:10am walk to work;  work all day; 5:30pm walk home and often in the evenings something social.   Along the way, through the course of our time together, we covered a lot of ground - topographical and conversational.

It is fairly unremarkable to me that through our conversations it emerged that we share similar political views - liberal, green, socially progressive.  Given our workplace, it is also not surprising that we have a a shared interest in buildings, housing, transportation.   We are both cyclists and downtown city dwellers with a penchant for transitional urban neighbourhoods.  It is even understandable to me that despite being from opposite ends of the same continent, and with a gap in age and a difference in gender,  we share the same cultural references with an astounding overlap in the music we listen to, books we read, movies, blogs, websites, news items that we jointly draw upon.  These are the external, contextual things that contribute to who we are, I guess, as a certain type of liberal, intellectual North American.   Other  preferences that we shared were endless: like a love of cats, or the sound of cottonwood trees rustling in the wind, or the slant of sunlight on Jebel Lwebdieh in the late afternoon.   The list goes on and on.

But what was really a learning experience for me was seeing Paul's approach to the world - his way of breaking down a question and figuring out answers and his openness to the people and experiences around him.  I learned a lot.  Also about a certain north american logic.  I realized that I bring it with me everwhere I go and it is the frame through which I interpret the world and connect with people.  I guess I never really realized before how much I belong to my own culture.  Or that I am "type" of person.

A couple of days before he left, Paul and I talked about the fact that we have so much in common, despite our obvious gender, age and geographic differences.  He attributes it to growing up in the sticks with professional parents - something we have in common - and bicycles.  I tend to agree with him.

I asked his permission to write this.  I hope he doesn't mind what I have written.  I will miss him and see this city a bit differently now as a result of his influence.  Happy travels, friend!