Mustanji Family Dinner

Jerid and I took a trip to Dead sea about two weeks ago with our friends Matt and Melody. They are the other married couple that is here with BYU doing the same internship. While swimming in the Dead Sea (I'll have to tell the story of that experience another time) we met this family that was infatuated with talking to us and feeding us their home grown VaGoose (similar to a cucumber). The didn't speak an ounce of english but they managed to get our phone numbers so to invite us to their house for dinner. We didn't expect the call the next day but we were happy to meet them for some great Jordanian hospitality.

Matt and Melody weren't able to come out with us so we invited our friend Caleb to join us. We met the Father of the family as well as his brother (the only one with a car) at the seventh circle. Their house ended up being about 45-50 minutes outside of Amman in a little farming village. When we pulled up I knew we were in for an eventful afternoon.

The women and girls greeted us at the door with huge smiles and hugs and kisses to go with it. They had four beautiful teenage daughters that I couldn't help but notice, stared at Jerid and Caleb with googely eyes. :) The women do not eat with guests, so it was us three and the two men sitting around a big oval table being served by all five girls. They brought out the largest platter of Mansiff I had ever seen! This is the traditional Jordanian dish although they prepared it with chicken instead of Lamb (the Palestinian way). Thank goodness! It was actually pretty good other than the bowls of lemony goats milk that they are supposed to drench the rice and meat in. In the Arab tradition the more you eat, the more you love them. We ate until we had rice halfway up our throats and that wasn't the end of it. Lubna, the wife was hysterical. She would laugh and laugh and she kept grabbing huge spoonfuls of the disgusting goats milk and would feed it to me. I honestly thought I was going to loose it! They boys just sat there laughing. Jerid was sure I was going to puke but I held back and kept showing the family that I "loved" them.

After dinner they proceeded to feed us desert and then some weird fruit off their trees, and spicy trail mix, and dates, and candy, and on and on. This is on top of the orange soda and Coca-Cola that they are refilling every time we take a drink. They were just so happy to have us! We laughed through the evening as we tried miserable to understand one another. We ended up having push-up contests and fun holding their pet turtle. It was a great time. They wanted to take a million pictures of us on their camera phone and I snapped a few with my camera. We ended up getting home around midnight, exhausted and grateful for our experience.












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Location:45 min. outside Amman