Breakfast in France, Lunch in Italy and Dinner in Monaco

This subject sounds more interesting than Breakfast at Tiffany's and frankly it was!

Vieux Ville Nice - a picture perfect day

We had breakfast in the lovely French town of Villefranche-Sur-Mer, only a twelve-minute train ride from Nice Ville. I would love to live in Villefranche but that's not likely in my lifetime!

After walking around Menton, a town near the French-Italian border that would make for great biking, we headed to Ventimiglia, an Italian town, for lunch. We didn't stay long in Ventimiglia but it was a nice lunch complete with Italian ice cream.

We hopped back on the train to France and stopped on the way in Monaco. We toured a bit of this small country, the second smallest country in the world, and had dinner.

We actually didn't plan this trip to work out this way but it did. It's fun when countries are small and closely linked by excellent networks like the train system in France!

Speed Bumps

Just spent some time perusing the blogs of other expats, mostly foreign service officers. I'm not a foreign service officer; however I am a citizen diplomat and representative of my country, like or not. In general I accept the role especially in a country where meeting foreign service officers is not easy given all of the security considerations. However, there are days when I don't like that role.

There are days when being calm and accepting just don't seem to cut it. The worse days are when things just go wrong, really wrong. We all suffer from these days and it's hard not to be angry and really give loose to the torrent of words and expressions that one feels the situation deserves.

A few weeks ago I nearly got hit by a car. The driver intentionally acclerated his vehicle to make me run across the street. I could feel the brush of metal on my skirt - that's how close he got. Fortunately he had a speed bump to slow him down.

Did I mention that I have always liked speed bumps? When I was a teenager I learned to do a cool squealy with my tires by putting the front part of my back tires to the start of the bump and then gunning it. My father actually mentioned this to me, so I tried it and it worked. Later he reprimanded me because he said that practice wears down tires fast. No wonder I got flats fairly quickly and as much as my father tried to help me learn I was not good at changing tires.

Anyway, I really love speed bumps now.

On days like that I really don't want to be a citizen diplomat. On days like that one I would love to have ready some darts or some other items that would result in getting the offending driver's car flat tires. Yeah, definitely on days like that, I don't want to be a diplomat or a representative of my country, but I have to be. So I just look for those speed bumps in life to help out.

I'm keeping mine clean. In fact I think they need a bit of sprucing up!

Learning about your city

We were pleasantly surprised to learn about urban bee keepers in this ancient city. We hope get to try their honey one day.

Nothing to Do

What does an expat do when in a country that has no safe and accessible outdoor and recreational opportunities or scenery? Welcome to our post . . .

Applying Principle 2 - Exploration

We don’t have a car and couldn't bring our folding bikes, so we take different forms of transportation, or not.

One of my favorite is a bus with the seemingly fictional name of Abdali station. We really want to go to this station not just because guide books mention its existence as a good source of transport outside of Amman but also because it shares the name of a Southern Arabia sheikh family. However we’ve not met a taxi driver yet who knows where it is.

That's ok. We've got other modes by which to explore (or re-discover) Jordan. One involves biking. In some ways it is difficult for us to imagine serious biking in the Middle East but it exists and we've seen tour groups, individuals and even hard core racers. In fact, our first week in Jordan, we made a great new friend, Nader Zakibeh. He's nutritionist, former racer with the Jordanian National Cycling Team, coach for long distance riders, and the proprietor of Nader Bikes.

Are you in Jordan? Do you live here? Try out Nader's tours at least once - the bike ride to Wadi Mujib is seriously easy and the long straight Dead Sea road is a perfect place for learners. The wadi trip is so much fun. For more details, check out Nader Bikes Facebook page for his weekly rides and other adventure trips.

For cycling, Nader provides the bikes, helmets, water, vehicle support, and food. He often prepare a "Chinese" chicken dish in a large wok on a campfire for his trips outside of Amman. It's very filling after a ride. Our favorite trip involved a simple Jordanian meal known as ghallayeh (2allayeh) bandora. (بندورة = tomato). Sa7tain!



Coach Nader (from his Facebook page)



Principles #2 and #3

As per our last post, our first tip in an evacuation is to set and keep a schedule.Our second and third tips are:

Mar Elias, Ajloun Forrest

#2) Explore your new environs. Nothing does wonder for the soul than to explore. If you know the place, then get more intimately acquainted with it.

#3) Reclaim old friendships and meet new people. Some of the most extraordinary people can become part of your lives in these interesting times. We certainly have come across interesting and interested people! Thank you for adding color and sparkle to our lives!

So applying our three principles of evacuation, we're sharing our special experiences in travel and evacuation to Jordan in upcoming posts.

Principle #1: Schedule and Keep A Routine

When you are evacuated, the most important thing is to adhere to a routine. It might be a slightly new routine but it's important to get up in the morning and dress to go to work (even if it is at home). The idea is to set a schedule and keep to it.