Eli's first day of school/camp

Wednesday, June 23rd

Funniest question we got today, “So, what is your typical schedule?” This from Jason’s family at lunch. We really don’t know yet! But Eli begins school today and so a semi-predictable schedule should be possible in the near future. We went grocery shopping in the morning in preparation for having them over for lunch. We did a hybrid American/Jordanian meal with flat bread, hummous, baba ghanoush, white bread (in actual loaf form!), sliced cheese, lunch meats and soda as a treat for the kids.

While at the grocery store the kids and I also decided to embark on a little investigation. You may be familiar with Kinder Eggs—a foil wrapped hollow chocolate egg with a prize inside. We use these eggs to get the kids to go to the grocery store willingly (which is a big deal if it means walking to the top of the hill!). The Kinder Eggs we find here are not foil wrapped, and instead are made of 2 pieces of plastic that are each sealed with more plastic and include a plastic spoon to eat the chocolate cream in one of the halves. The amount of packaging overall has at least doubled. So we decided to try out the other brands of foil wrapped eggs. There’s the fulla egg (Fulla being the local version of Barbie, with dark hair and a head-covering) which always seems to have something princessy inside. There’s the hamtoro egg, which has one of a series of hamster figurines in it (Japanese, very cute—or kawaii, I suppose). There are a few other eggs that have images on them, but no names. The car image egg reveals a car inside, etc. My personal favorite (and one of Eva’s) is the hamtoro egg. She’s even got hamtoro cereal and shampoo now. Any guesses which is Eli’s favorite?

Before lunch we picked up Eli from school. He seemed to have had a great day, BUT he won’t use their toilets. That’s going to have to change, because he’s there from 8:30-1:30 and we’ve only got so much clothing here!

Once we had Eli, the family came for lunch. It was nice to show them where we’ll be living for the summer, and we got to have a nice long chat with them before they headed back for naps. They’ll be leaving late tonight (1 am departure, I think), which will make for a LONG day if they don’t get some sleep beforehand. It’s been great to have them here, and we’re so grateful for the opportunities Eva was given in terms of broadening her travel experience, but it’ll also be nice to settle into a schedule and start making appointments to meet with people for our research.