This April marks two years since I left Jordan and inevitably, honouring the annual tradition of Blog About Jordan Day is somewhat complex.

Jordan is a kick-ass country; before heading over for fieldwork I was at a loss on what to expect.

What I did find excelled my wildest imaginings in both a positive and negative manner that ensures that my experience of the country will outlast any that I have accumulated in Europe.

Complex yet imbued with a beatific simplicity; hectic yet vastly empty; freezing damp yet equally arid, it is a country of contradictions, and if she had been a contestant on one of my favourite guilty pleasures, Jordan would be the ‘ugly-pretty’ girl on America’s Next Top Model.

Her buildings variously dilapidated and glossy, her roads cluttered with cars of all ages and sizes – an endearing quirk that rendered all roads a living transport museum – and her history utterly rich and deep, Jordan has so much to offer within a neat, albeit dogeared, package.

To muse about the people, the communities, and the food would be to hash over old ground.

At the moment I sincerely wish that my future research will take me to Jordan’s neighbours: Syria, Palestine, Lebanon; yet regardless of the grandeur and repute of these countries, I am positive that I shall always look askance and secretly compare subsequent sites with the Kingdom.

And somehow, Jordan will always win out, because it will always be the place where life was finally exposed in all its brilliant, shocking, and vivid rawness.

So here’s to Jordan, on BAJD 2009.