Arrival in Jordan

Ohhhhmigosh, love it here already!! But I'll start from the beginning:
Sunday was a terrible day of travel, and lots went sour: missed rendez-vous due to delayed flights, stupid French rules about there being a 24Euro charge on every kilo over 20..? 23..? (which amounted to a lot of money because the State's rules are different, but since I'd exited into Paris....), sick on the plane (funny story though, the flight attendants were SUPER nice, and let me sit back in their prep area in the tail just sippin water. later they offered me bread and sliced cheese and grapes from their own personal first class snacks, inviting me back behind their privacy curtain. was one of the family, they said!), headphones didn't work in my tv screen, so all i heard in movies were the music and the sound effects, no one to meet me at the airport, so took a taxi alone... Ended up okay though, managed to get directions to the taxi driver.
The taxi ride itself was exhausting. It was great driving into the city, saw lots of camel riding and donkeys, picnics being held on the side of the highway..? Great sunset, and palm trees, and the buildings..ahhh!! The taxi driver managed to get a few sentences out of me, but after answering my questions, he'd go on for 10 minutes or so, forgetting that I just said I only know Arabic qaleelan (a little bit)! He drove with no hands for the most part, one hand flourishing with a cigarette, the other showing me the Quran quote thing hanging from his rearview mirror to explain classical Arabic usage. He ended up inviting me to his house in Madaba to meet his 6 sons and daughter and to have some tea. Just smiled and nodded.. at least we were warned about excessive Jordanian hospitality!!
So managed to meet up with Izabella, Ali (american girl, not like Aladdin Prince Ali haha), and two Iraqi guys (Noor and Haidar) who are students in Amman. They knew a girl from last spring who's still here and whose apartment we bunked out in that night. Went straight to a place called Books@Cafe for some hookah and for me to feed my rumblin' tummy. It was a nice evening, just chilin on the rooftop.
Went to the apartment and crashed. There were six of us bunking there (another girl tagged on after meeting one of the original invitees in the plane).
Next morning, Elizabeth made us some eggs n fried potatoes for breakfast, then we all gathered our mountains of baggage to move to the orientation hotel. Flagged down a taxi and headed to the BelleVue.
There we met some reps from CIEE, who helped us check in, gave us our orientation packets, set up phones for us, etc. My number's 0799442663 if you wanna chat me up ;) (not international phone..i'm just kidding..)
Found out who my host family is! The jist is that they're a young Christian family, mom dad and 5yo son. They live pretty close to the university, i'll have my own room, no smoking, they have a goldfish, my curfew is at 10:30, and they got a good review from their previous student guest. Kinda bummed they're not Muslim, but I'm sure I'll get enough of that cultural angle from other Jordanians I meet.
Walked around the street to get phone minutes, lunch, cash..They warned us about getting looked at and stuff, but wow...9 out of 10 cars that passed  honked at us, particularly taxis. They told us the worst thing to do was to make eye contact, which is very hard to do since we're looking around everywhere and such; but they key was to invest in some dark sunglasses! WIll do, particularly if i want to walk to uni every day.
Dinner with the group at 7, met lots of people today, kind of hard keeping everyone straight, but that'll come. Afterwards, about 12 of us went back to Books@ and met up with Noor, another friend, and Senan, with whom I'd been corresponding on facebook before the trip, asking about the country.
Very pleasant evening, but returned home in time for a quick Skype run and in bed by about midnight. Today we're off to the Dead Sea, and will have a few orientation talks there along with some free time to float and lather mud all over ourselves, the usual tourist thing, no big deal :P
Will try to write about how that goes later on tonight! Goodnight America!