and i want to know...

It rained yesterday in Amman (get the reference? anyone? maybe? I don't get to make jokes to often these days because they're in Arabic and even I fail to understand them). Which is the 3rd time I have seen rain in the last 6 months (once before here, although that was a very light drizzle at best, and once in Denver between Morocco and Jordan). Yesterday it was actually cold and wet though. As in, the rain had substance to it. It was a very off-putting experience, and forced me to realize that I am probably totally unprepared for winter in this country (there was no thought in my mind of even considering to pack an umbrella). Well, we'll see where this goes for my next two months...

And a clarification of the previous photos:

The Roman Show is this bizarre tourist experience in Jerash (one of the largest sites of a Roman city in the Middle East) that is mostly staffed by retired police officers. Basically, they all dress up in the AUTHENTIC ROMAN COSTUMES as seen in the photos and "re-create" gladiator battles and chariot races for us, the spectators (please don't think I paid for this. It was one of our many voluntary-obligatory experiences in Jordan. Though this one was totally worth the free I paid for it in its oddness). So, anyhow, the entire time we get a commentary by the one ROMAN who spoke some English (although he had that interesting speech condition kind of like a lisp but where all Rs become Ws. Like the bishop in the Princess Bride. Is there a word for this?), mostly about how fierce his legion was in this, the time of Hadrian, while the others ran around responding to commands in Latin. Then the slaves were dragged in to do gladiator battles, which the officers, who otherwise seemed rather bored, got really excited for, as they could pretend to hit each other with tridents and throw nets over each other before the announcer asked us if we preferred life or death. Our audience was in generally fairly not Roman, at least by my standards, and tended to prefer life, but I think he was obligated to show us what death looked like, so he began to ignore our verdicts and kill the gladiators anyhow. Finally, we got our AUTHENTIC ROMAN CHARIOT RACE, which consisted of about three laps while the soundtrack from the movie Gladiator played. I kid you not. After the show ended, we were encouraged to go down and take pictures with the Romans. There are certain things I never expected to do in the Middle East. Then I do them.