Besides the unearthing of Artemis, which was a huge boon for everyone (especially for all of us up on Area A), I'd have to say that discovering the many delicious Middle Eastern foods was my next biggest surprise! I'm guessing, though it's probably safe to assume, that by the first time I ever traveled to Jordan everyone else who lived in any large U.S. city, and had any curiosity about foreign cuisine, had probably already been tipped off about the amazing dishes offered by local Middle Eastern restaurants, many of which are tucked away in some quaint corner of their favorite neighborhood. And while I was quick to learn where I might locate such restaurants once I returned home, up to this point food was just another aspect of Middle Eastern culture for which I had no clue! Remember, I grew up eating mostly southern cooking, a lot of fried meat and potatoes, as well as all the other typical American foods. (I will state for the record, however, that when I moved to California I learned to love both Mexican and Chinese cuisine, something we did not have in West Virginia at the time, at least not to my knowledge. I also tried Hungarian, German, and Vietnamese foods, thanks to my mother's boyfriends and husband). Still, experimenting with what I considered "exotic" foods when not in the company of a person encouraging me to do so was out of my range of experience. On the dig, the cooks who kept us fed tried their hardest to make anything American they knew how to make. I can't imagine that our Director encouraged them in this, as I'm not sure he cared about anything other than saving money, but somehow, out of their strong belief in being as hospitable to their "guests" as possible, combined, maybe, with their sense that not doing so could have led to a total revolt on the part of many of the college students who were away from home for the first time, and who were already trying to cope with so many other new experiences and hardships, we ended up eating a lot of cold French fries, served alongside our daily fare of chicken and rice! To any Jordanian who worked in the food industry, the idea was that the majority of young and middle age Americans lived mostly on hamburgers and French fries (don't know where on earth they could have gotten this notion from), but since beef was extremely expensive, having a juicy hamburger just wasn't going to happen (and while I'm not that big a fan of the burger, most afternoons I would have died for one!). In any case, our cooks were so happy to serve us French fries, that in their eagerness to make us all as content as possible, they made up a bunch almost every other day. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume they had to cook, by the time they ended up on the table for our consumption, they were always hard and cold. The salt purchased for the dig was so old that it had no taste, and the ketchup, if you could call it that, was some Jordanian brand, so nobody got that excited, especially since they were sorely missing their much coveted Heinz or Hunt's, whichever was the case! So, each one of us just had to make due with that runny, semi-pastey red liquid they served, or else go without, and afterwards, if we could muster up any graciousness, thank the cooks profusely! At least they tried. I always felt sorry for them because, while they did have experience cooking in large volume, they had to cook for us from a very tiny school kitchen that had only one stove and one refrigerator, and had been constructed to feed only a small number of middle school children. One of the cooks did bring (from her own home) her own hot plate. (Thank god for an extra burner, right?) Another considerate thing they did was that whenever anybody had a birthday, they would try to bake an American cake, topped with icing (which I think someone actually brought one can of from the states). Our American deserts were also very foreign concepts to them, and so these cakes were never as good as we dreamed they might be (especially since most every American was suffering from chocolate withdrawals, another food staple not readily available in the whole region of the Middle East!), and while they were often barely even edible, we still thanked them for their efforts. You never wanted to be on the bad side of the cooks! J had told me how back in 1986 he and his buddy had taken the cook at ACOR (The American Center of Oriental Research, a center that housed visiting American archaeologists, located in Amman) bags of chocolate chips and brown sugar, neither of which were available in the grocery stores, even in Amman. The two of them were on a 90 day trip, part of which would include Syria and Israel, where they would use local bus transportation, before heading off to Abila for the dig. Needing to leave their dig luggage (and remember what that consisted of) at ACOR so that they would not have to haul it all around with them, and needing permission to leave it, they tried gaining favor with the cook. I'm sure J was hoping to get some chocolate chip cookies for himself out it as well. He had already worked on "friending" the cook two years earlier, and so basically had free reign of the kitchen (something I would be grateful for on this trip), and the cook knew how much J loved to eat (something all cooks appreciate), so the deal was sealed! For anybody traveling in a foreign land, let alone living under such conditions as we were at Abila, what you get to eat becomes of supreme importance! And while our cooks tried their hardest, and did manage to put on the table some excellent local dishes, they didn't compare to what we could get if we ventured out beyond the perimeters of our camp. It was to this end that J made certain that he took me into Irbid, the closest city to Abila (less than 10 miles away), at least once every Tuesday or Wednesday evening for dinner.
As soon as we got into Amman's downtown bus station we would take a taxi to ACOR where we would promptly check into our rooms (usually located down on the basement level), strip off all our clothes and add them to the rest of our dirty laundry which we would send to the laundress for washing (and while there was a small fee for this service, it was well worth it! Whoever did the laundry at ACOR did a marvelous job, as everything came back within hours smelling and looking clean and bleached, softly machine dried, AND neatly folded. Needless to say, I saw this as a reason to never do laundry at camp!). Within minutes of dispensing of both clothes and laundry J would jump in the shower for about 10 mintes, at which time I would follow, an order we agreed to since I usually took longer. And Oooooh, how unbelievably GOOD that hot, steamy water felt as it powerfully sprayed down over my head and body! I could have stood there forever, lathering up, rinsing off, over and over. Plus I could finally shave my legs decently, and generally pamper myself like I could never do at Abila! The showers here were so clean, and there were no spiders or lizards running over the walls. I would have been in no hurry to get out EVER if it hadn't been for the fact that J and I were both usually starving half to death, and here there was the promise of some real food. On Fridays we always skipped lunch at the dig in order to make our early getaway, so after having taken care of one very essential luxury we embarked on another. Upstairs, the main floor housed a large industrial kitchen used to cook all the meals and desserts which would feed weekend visitors a full lunch (the cost of which was included in the price of the stay), and which fed the archaeology teams who were digging nearby, but who lived at ACOR, three meals a day. I couldn't help but feel jealous about how much nicer these dig crews had it than we did at Abila. The difference between their accommodations and ours was like night and day! Oh well. I at least got to experience a reprieve on weekends, something most of our team members were not so fortunate to get, and I clung to this very selfishly, as there were only a limited number of rooms left on any given weekend, and we three had standing reservations! 
Fridays at ACOR the standard dinner fare was spaghetti, and we had permission to help ourselves to the leftovers! J would heat up a big pot of spaghetti, while my assignment would be to make a pitcher of freshly brewed tea (shay, in Arabic), which, let me tell you, was a real luxury, poured over tall glasses of an unlimited supply of ice! All week long at the camp I would drink plain water, sometimes refrigerated, but usually not, and even on our treks into Irbid I could barely satisfy my craving for ice, so this became one of my biggest challenges on our outings, especially since I am a huge ice fanatic, something I didn't fully realize about myself until I left the familiarity of my own country. In American restaurants it's no problem to get all the ice you want, so at the Pizza Hut in Irbid, when I saw pictures on their paper place mats of tall glasses of Coke filled with ice cubes, I felt encouraged to try to communicate my desire to have that which I so desperately lusted after in the illustrations. I would point to the picture and use the Arabic word for ice, talj, and then point to myself, all the while shaking my head yes, and saying "I want, please" (biddi, min fadlak) in Arabic. When the waiter would finally understand what I was requesting, there would be great joy, accompanied by lots of smiling and laughing, followed by my eager anticipation of a glass soon to be filled full with ice cubes. But alas, every single time the waiter would return holding up a bag of about 12 individually wrapped frozen cubes, smiling, offering me very graciously, ONE (wahid)? Oh! You would like TWO (itnen)? Ha! This was very funny! Oh, but could I possibly have THREE (talateh)? Asking this always made me feel like a greedy American who wanted everything in excess. But in America ice was not only abundant, it was free! It was just frozen water! Unfortunately, a commodity that was NOT that abundant in other parts of the world, and especially not in the deserts of the Middle East. And while the waiter at Pizza Hut wasn't going to charge me for that ice, and while I'm also certain that he was indeed very happy to serve it to me, I'm also certain that he never understood why on earth I would ever want such a thing in my drink in the first place. How very odd! Apparently, those packages of ice were something the franchise shipped to them, along with those Coke advertisement placemats that were lying out on all the tables, as was the chrome salad bar that just sat in the middle of the floor with a big bowl on it for serving iceberg lettuce salad, something also not available in the Middle East. Either because lettuce didn't ship that well, or because Jordanians don't use lettuce in their salads, or both, that bowl just sat there empty, as did the rest of the salad bar in most areas. A very visible reminder of a piece of American food culture that was out of place here. So I didn't push it. Most of the time I lived with two cubes and felt happy for what I got, always profusely thanking the waiters, repeating over and over in Arabic, shukran, shukran! But at ACOR, why, I had all the ice I wanted! And so J, Tim, and I almost embarrassingly, yet happily, scarfed down our amazingly delicious early evening meal, and then washed the dishes and wiped off the stove and countertops, making certain that we didn't wear out the good graces of the kitchen staff, before heading back to our rooms for a restful nap, setting the alarm clocks for about 8:00 p.m., so as to leave ourselves a reasonable amount of time for an early night on the town.
