Medina or Amman? Yesterday I began to wonder...

Medina or Amman? El 3atal and I were confronted with the surreal site of a taxi from Medina driving in front of us along the streets of Amman. Unfortunately, my camera phone doesn't have a zoom or you could see it better. The tax is min Saudia. The Top says Taxi min Medinah. Oh, and he has passengers! :)

Further odd evidence that we are actually in Saudi Arabia... El 3atal and I went and dealt with transferring my license to Jordan (another post on that later). While we were there dealing with them we overheard a troubling conversation.

A driver's ed instructor was in the office of the Mudir (a fine man, I assure you) in Marka. He was trying to get his license back. Earlier in the morning, he had been issued a ticket and had his license pulled in front of the Marka DMV office because he had a female student with him - alone. That's right, his only crime was providing driving lessons to an unchaperoned female student. What?! His argument (and listen to the unassailable logic here) was that as a woman is free to drive alone and ride in a taxi alone, why would you draw the line at driving lessons? When El 3atal explained to me what the hoopla was about, my first question was, what are we in Saudi here? The Assistant Mudir (also a fine man and very helpful) told him they'd let him off with a warning this time, but don't let it happen again! Yikes! Maybe there's a swing coming in the conservative direction. I certainly hope not, but who knows.

Happy Saudization?