Day 9

I had a very interesting couple of days.  Like I said before, I was moved into another room at the hotel, and nothing worked when I got into the new room.  I have all of that worked out now. 

We ventured out to look at some sewer manholes within the city.  They are really not much different than in the US.  One of the manholes we were looking at was near a School for Boys.  We drew an audience for that.  They were crowding around the manhole like we were about to uncover millions in gold. 
There were about 20 more behind me.
 

One manhole we were looking at had some cockroaches.  One of the engineers I was with told me that in the Muslim religion "If a cockroach touches a human, that the cockroach must wash itself."  WTF?  I thought he told me that backward at first. 

I have an International Blackberry on the way to Jordan.  It was not available when I left the US, so the folks in Huntsville decide to ship it to me.  It has been on Clearance Hold in customs since October 30th.  If you have been reading my blog, you know what dealing with customs is like.  I have no idea what I am going to need to get that out.

It is amazing here how people are very kind, but appear to have zero manners.  I think it is similar to the whole spatial awareness with cars.  They Jordanians have no respect for personal space.  They don't realize how rude and disrespectful it is to cut in line.  They will jump right in front of you while in a car, or standing in line.  I guess they were raised that this is acceptable, but most cultures, it is not. 

We finally have "The Letter" that we needed to get our equipment out of customs.  Should take a couple of days for the stuff to get released.  So it looks like I may start some real work soon.