After waiting at the Syria-Jordan border for 9 hours, I made it to Damascus late last Saturday, and had three excellent days wandering the souqs, visiting the Ummayyad mosque and traveling to Palmyra for a day (bus trip: 6 hrs round trip, touring the ruins: 1 hr), which was awesome.
And today we headed into Lebanon, a much easier border crossing and currently I am in Beirut. Tomorrow we are headed to see a really cool cave and Baalbeck, home of awesome ancient ruins and Hezbollah.
Much love,
Happy holidays,
Kirsten
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23.12.09
17.12.09
Updates!
I'm leaving for Syria on Saturday, so it seemed like a good time to add some new posts, before I go off and have adventures that will require even more posts. I had a couple other adventures (hello, massive Dana hike) but hopefully those will come with time. Insha'allah. Who knows. Maybe sitting on a train to Istanbul for hours and hours will prove beneficial to my writing. Until then, Happy Holidays! (If you were curious, I'm hoping to spend Christmas Eve in Beirut, Christmas Day at the Cedars ski resort, and New Year's Eve in Istanbul, all with good friends.)
Love, Kirsten
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Love, Kirsten
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A few notes on language
So... Arabic is really hard. There are lots of weird letters, some of which I still struggle with pronouncing. There are two letters represented by the English "s", "d", "t" and (the one that I think is hardest to tell the difference between) "h," as well as three different "th"s. Modern Standard Arabic (fus'ha - formal Arabic used in newspapers, on TV, and in official contexts but not really spoken) also has ridiculous grammar rules and case endings. Even a lot of Jordanians don't really know how to speak fus'ha well.
A'amiyya, colloquial Arabic, is a lot easier. It has very few grammar rules, no case endings, and a lot of the words are much easier to say. In addition, because its almost exclusively a spoken language, there are no hard and fast rules for spelling, which makes it a lot easier for me since I don't have to remember which letter is being used. Plus most of the "th"s are actually pronounced "t" or "z".
What this means is that I am almost learning two separate languages, although there is some overlap between the vocabulary and very conjugations. As a result, I've gotten pretty good at speaking - my host mom and I communicate almost exclusively in Arabic now - but my spelling is not great. Reading can also be difficult, because I may know a word from hearing it but not necessarily recognize it written out.
Also, though I'm pretty good with the vocabulary from the first ten chapters of my Arabic book, it's much easier for me to speak in a'amiyya, but this limits the people I can talk to, because I struggle with accents that aren't what I'm used to. For instance, one of my office mates is Iraqi and I can only speak to him in fus'ha. And sometimes people will assume that because I'm foreign I'll only understand them if they speak fus'ha, when in fact this is pretty much the opposite of the truth.
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A'amiyya, colloquial Arabic, is a lot easier. It has very few grammar rules, no case endings, and a lot of the words are much easier to say. In addition, because its almost exclusively a spoken language, there are no hard and fast rules for spelling, which makes it a lot easier for me since I don't have to remember which letter is being used. Plus most of the "th"s are actually pronounced "t" or "z".
What this means is that I am almost learning two separate languages, although there is some overlap between the vocabulary and very conjugations. As a result, I've gotten pretty good at speaking - my host mom and I communicate almost exclusively in Arabic now - but my spelling is not great. Reading can also be difficult, because I may know a word from hearing it but not necessarily recognize it written out.
Also, though I'm pretty good with the vocabulary from the first ten chapters of my Arabic book, it's much easier for me to speak in a'amiyya, but this limits the people I can talk to, because I struggle with accents that aren't what I'm used to. For instance, one of my office mates is Iraqi and I can only speak to him in fus'ha. And sometimes people will assume that because I'm foreign I'll only understand them if they speak fus'ha, when in fact this is pretty much the opposite of the truth.
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Food!
Definitely one of the best parts of living in Amman is the food. Honestly, though occasionally I wish there were more fresh fruits and vegetables, I think I could live on Middle Eastern food for the rest of my life (and to be honest, its not that there aren't fruit and veggies, its just that I am not very good about seeking them out).
My first meal of the day, before I go to school, consists of bread and a shifting array of toppings. Generally there is honey, cream cheese, jam, olive oil and zattar, and sometimes yogurt cheese as well. After my morning classes, I get something to eat - falafel sandwiches or schwarma are common. Across the street from the university is a fast food restaurant called Lebnani Snack, and I go there a lot. In addition to delicious wrapped sandwiches, they have amazing fruit cocktails (here, the word doesn't generally have any alcoholic connotations). There are also a number of little shops around school and near my internship offering sandwiches for as little as 30 garsh (less than 50 cents). When I get home, no matter what time it is, my mother will have some "lunch" for me. Lunch, which is eating sometime in the afternoon, is the biggest meal of the day. If I stay up late enough, there will also be dinner, probably just a sandwich with cheese or yogurt.
I've learned to cook a number of Arabic dishes - most of them aren't really that hard, just some combination of rice, vegetables and meat. One of the things I was most excited to learn was mansaf, which is basically the Jordanian national dish and seems pretty hard to find in the US, since most Middle Eastern restaurants are Lebanese (although I've done some research and there is a Syrian restaurant in Portland that serves it). My host mom has been promising all semester to show me and finally last Friday she made it on a day when I wasn't in school. The way she makes it, its not that difficult, but I've heard that it's supposed to be very time consuming, so possibly there's another way.
I had another cool cooking experience two weekends ago. My Arabic professor is totally awesome and very sweet, and since there were only four girls in my class she invited us all to her house to cook with her. We made a number of really delicious dishes, including tabouli with spinach and a eggplant-pita-yogurt layered thing, but the things I was really excited to learn were stuffed grape leaves and stuffed kousa (a vaguely zucchini-like squash, but one that I actually like). I've watched my mom and her sisters rolling grape leaves, but I've never actually tried it myself. It's difficult, but I think with enough practice I could be pretty good at it. The kousa is easier, the hardest part being hollowing it out, but they have specific utensils designed for the purpose.
Other favorite foods:
Mamoule, which are date-filled cookies made for the Eids. My mother's are amazing, and she gave me her recipe...
Kenafa, another sweet, made of crunchy, sugary stuff over cheese, which sounds weird but is actually delicious.
Magloubeh, literally "upside down" because you cook rice, potatoes, meat, and vegetables all together in a giant pot and the turn it upside down onto a tray.
Kubbeh, which my host mom said is actually more Syrian/Lebanese, but she showed me how to make. Basically a bulghar wheat shell stuffed with meat.
Manaqish, Arabic pizza without sauce, generally just cheese, zattar, or both.
Spicy eggplant in a jar, which I forget the name of, but my host mom's sister made a big batch for us and it is so delicious. My professor described how to make it, so I may be able to attempt it at home.
Basically any sandwich with french fries on it. It's amazing how the most basic turkey sandwich can be improved by the addition of hobez arabi (Arabic bread) and batata (potato).
Also, I am learning to love cucumber, which has never been a food I've liked much, and even to tolerate olives - they're actually pretty good raw and plain, though I still prefer to avoid them on sandwiches and pizza and the like. The one thing I've been served that I really just couldn't deal with was the yogurt-milk-salt drink, which I'm sorry but ick. My salt tolerance has definitely increased since I've been here, but still! Fortunately, that's pretty much the only thing I've found that I don't like. Everything else is at least edible.
Basically, you should all just be prepared to eat lots of Middle Eastern food whenever I'm cooking.
More...
My first meal of the day, before I go to school, consists of bread and a shifting array of toppings. Generally there is honey, cream cheese, jam, olive oil and zattar, and sometimes yogurt cheese as well. After my morning classes, I get something to eat - falafel sandwiches or schwarma are common. Across the street from the university is a fast food restaurant called Lebnani Snack, and I go there a lot. In addition to delicious wrapped sandwiches, they have amazing fruit cocktails (here, the word doesn't generally have any alcoholic connotations). There are also a number of little shops around school and near my internship offering sandwiches for as little as 30 garsh (less than 50 cents). When I get home, no matter what time it is, my mother will have some "lunch" for me. Lunch, which is eating sometime in the afternoon, is the biggest meal of the day. If I stay up late enough, there will also be dinner, probably just a sandwich with cheese or yogurt.
I've learned to cook a number of Arabic dishes - most of them aren't really that hard, just some combination of rice, vegetables and meat. One of the things I was most excited to learn was mansaf, which is basically the Jordanian national dish and seems pretty hard to find in the US, since most Middle Eastern restaurants are Lebanese (although I've done some research and there is a Syrian restaurant in Portland that serves it). My host mom has been promising all semester to show me and finally last Friday she made it on a day when I wasn't in school. The way she makes it, its not that difficult, but I've heard that it's supposed to be very time consuming, so possibly there's another way.
I had another cool cooking experience two weekends ago. My Arabic professor is totally awesome and very sweet, and since there were only four girls in my class she invited us all to her house to cook with her. We made a number of really delicious dishes, including tabouli with spinach and a eggplant-pita-yogurt layered thing, but the things I was really excited to learn were stuffed grape leaves and stuffed kousa (a vaguely zucchini-like squash, but one that I actually like). I've watched my mom and her sisters rolling grape leaves, but I've never actually tried it myself. It's difficult, but I think with enough practice I could be pretty good at it. The kousa is easier, the hardest part being hollowing it out, but they have specific utensils designed for the purpose.
Other favorite foods:
Mamoule, which are date-filled cookies made for the Eids. My mother's are amazing, and she gave me her recipe...
Kenafa, another sweet, made of crunchy, sugary stuff over cheese, which sounds weird but is actually delicious.
Magloubeh, literally "upside down" because you cook rice, potatoes, meat, and vegetables all together in a giant pot and the turn it upside down onto a tray.
Kubbeh, which my host mom said is actually more Syrian/Lebanese, but she showed me how to make. Basically a bulghar wheat shell stuffed with meat.
Manaqish, Arabic pizza without sauce, generally just cheese, zattar, or both.
Spicy eggplant in a jar, which I forget the name of, but my host mom's sister made a big batch for us and it is so delicious. My professor described how to make it, so I may be able to attempt it at home.
Basically any sandwich with french fries on it. It's amazing how the most basic turkey sandwich can be improved by the addition of hobez arabi (Arabic bread) and batata (potato).
Also, I am learning to love cucumber, which has never been a food I've liked much, and even to tolerate olives - they're actually pretty good raw and plain, though I still prefer to avoid them on sandwiches and pizza and the like. The one thing I've been served that I really just couldn't deal with was the yogurt-milk-salt drink, which I'm sorry but ick. My salt tolerance has definitely increased since I've been here, but still! Fortunately, that's pretty much the only thing I've found that I don't like. Everything else is at least edible.
Basically, you should all just be prepared to eat lots of Middle Eastern food whenever I'm cooking.
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Internship
One of the classes offered through my program is an internship for credit. You submit a resume, they try to match you with a Jordanian NGO or company, you go to some classes and write a case study on your organization and it counts as college credit. Though I'm not actually doing this program for school credit, doing an internship sounded like a really good experience. I had some trouble finding an organization, but at the last minute I was offered a spot at the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature and I have been working there since the beginning of October.
It's been a really interesting experience, especially since I've had to keep a journal of my work and my thoughts on the organization to help me write the case study. Writing the case study (the final version is due today) has also been really interesting. It's forced me to take note of details and ask questions I might not otherwise think to, and really helped think deeply about the mission and functioning of RSCN in particular and NGOs generally.
I've actually been working in the Public Relations department, which I have to admit was not exactly my first thought when I decided I wanted to intern with an NGO, but has definitely been a good experience. I've been doing a lot of different things, ranging from as boring as entering membership data to exciting things like getting a free trip to one of the Reserves. I've probably spent more time doing data entry than anything else - RSCN has a new free membership program called Friends of RSCN that always has some new names and emails to enter - but its hardly been the majority of my time. I have also had to spend quite a while recording and trying to fix email address that come back undelivered, which is pretty similarly monotonous, but I've also gotten to write quite a few (English) press releases and articles, which has helped me learn a lot more about the organization. In addition to writing English, I also occasionally edit it, as in tourism brochures and sometimes my supervisor's emails.
Probably the most exciting part of my internship, though, was the day I got to go to Dana Biosphere Reserve in southern Jordan with a team doing evaluations, computer work, and interviewing for a new manager. That was a really great day, partly because I got the opportunity to talk to a group of employees with perspectives and tasks I don't normally really get to see (almost all the staff in Amman speak English, so communication is not a huge problem), and partly because Dana is absolutely gorgeous. I walked through the village and down to the gardens, but didn't go too far because it was hot. I got to visit both the fruit preserving and silver working workshops, where local women create products for the RSCN gift shops. One of the things RSCN really emphasizes is combining socio-economic development with environmental conservation. Dana was actually the first place they started a handicraft enterprise, and now they have workshops at all the Reserves, employing local women who have very few other opportunities for work. (Sorry if I sound a little bit like a press release; at this point I've written so many articles and brochures about the Reserve and RSCN that I can't help it.)I got to talk to some of the villagers working at the Guesthouse and workshops as well, partly in English and partly in Arabic, which was really interesting as well.
I've also gotten to attend a few RSCN events. The first week I was there, they were having a clean-up in Amman National Park, so a friend and I went. Most of the time was actually spent waiting - I helped by passing out membership brochures - and then listening to the Minister of the Environment speak. Afterward we spent about 45 minutes picking up trash, which to be honest didn't make a huge dent - litter is a big problem here, and people don't seem to think twice about just throwing garbage out of car windows and so forth.
A few weeks later, we had a jewelery launch for a line of necklaces created by a Dutch designer using rocks from the shores of the Dead Sea. That wasn't super exciting, another visit from the Minister, some of the Cafe's amazing herbal tea, and browsing through the gift shop. The stuff there is really nice, although pretty expensive for Jordan. I guess its going to a good cause, though.
One other really excellent part of my job is the office I work in. The Public Relations Department has its offices directly underneath the Cafe, and the window next to me looks out over downtown and across to the Citadel on the hill on the other side. (The neighborhood I work in is called Jabal Amman, meaning something like "mountain of Amman," with good reason.) I had an exciting moment wandering around downtown the other day when I encountered the "Quick Sandwich" sign I stare at when I get writer's block on one of my articles.
Also really enjoyable is the Arabic fondness for sharing food. There are occasional big inter-departmental breakfasts (at 1 in the afternoon - meal schedules are weird here) and sometimes smaller breakfasts with the other employees I work with. The food is basic, pita and things to dip it in, but always really good, and its nice to relax and meet the other people in the office.
Overall, its been a really rewarding experience, and despite my complaints while struggling to write it, I think being forced to write a case study was really educational as well, and I'm glad I did it. (It's pretty long and probably not of interest to everyone, so I won't post it here but if you are interested in NGOs and the environment and would like more information about my experience at RSCN, just let me know and I can send you the case study.)
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It's been a really interesting experience, especially since I've had to keep a journal of my work and my thoughts on the organization to help me write the case study. Writing the case study (the final version is due today) has also been really interesting. It's forced me to take note of details and ask questions I might not otherwise think to, and really helped think deeply about the mission and functioning of RSCN in particular and NGOs generally.
I've actually been working in the Public Relations department, which I have to admit was not exactly my first thought when I decided I wanted to intern with an NGO, but has definitely been a good experience. I've been doing a lot of different things, ranging from as boring as entering membership data to exciting things like getting a free trip to one of the Reserves. I've probably spent more time doing data entry than anything else - RSCN has a new free membership program called Friends of RSCN that always has some new names and emails to enter - but its hardly been the majority of my time. I have also had to spend quite a while recording and trying to fix email address that come back undelivered, which is pretty similarly monotonous, but I've also gotten to write quite a few (English) press releases and articles, which has helped me learn a lot more about the organization. In addition to writing English, I also occasionally edit it, as in tourism brochures and sometimes my supervisor's emails.
Probably the most exciting part of my internship, though, was the day I got to go to Dana Biosphere Reserve in southern Jordan with a team doing evaluations, computer work, and interviewing for a new manager. That was a really great day, partly because I got the opportunity to talk to a group of employees with perspectives and tasks I don't normally really get to see (almost all the staff in Amman speak English, so communication is not a huge problem), and partly because Dana is absolutely gorgeous. I walked through the village and down to the gardens, but didn't go too far because it was hot. I got to visit both the fruit preserving and silver working workshops, where local women create products for the RSCN gift shops. One of the things RSCN really emphasizes is combining socio-economic development with environmental conservation. Dana was actually the first place they started a handicraft enterprise, and now they have workshops at all the Reserves, employing local women who have very few other opportunities for work. (Sorry if I sound a little bit like a press release; at this point I've written so many articles and brochures about the Reserve and RSCN that I can't help it.)I got to talk to some of the villagers working at the Guesthouse and workshops as well, partly in English and partly in Arabic, which was really interesting as well.
I've also gotten to attend a few RSCN events. The first week I was there, they were having a clean-up in Amman National Park, so a friend and I went. Most of the time was actually spent waiting - I helped by passing out membership brochures - and then listening to the Minister of the Environment speak. Afterward we spent about 45 minutes picking up trash, which to be honest didn't make a huge dent - litter is a big problem here, and people don't seem to think twice about just throwing garbage out of car windows and so forth.
A few weeks later, we had a jewelery launch for a line of necklaces created by a Dutch designer using rocks from the shores of the Dead Sea. That wasn't super exciting, another visit from the Minister, some of the Cafe's amazing herbal tea, and browsing through the gift shop. The stuff there is really nice, although pretty expensive for Jordan. I guess its going to a good cause, though.
One other really excellent part of my job is the office I work in. The Public Relations Department has its offices directly underneath the Cafe, and the window next to me looks out over downtown and across to the Citadel on the hill on the other side. (The neighborhood I work in is called Jabal Amman, meaning something like "mountain of Amman," with good reason.) I had an exciting moment wandering around downtown the other day when I encountered the "Quick Sandwich" sign I stare at when I get writer's block on one of my articles.
Also really enjoyable is the Arabic fondness for sharing food. There are occasional big inter-departmental breakfasts (at 1 in the afternoon - meal schedules are weird here) and sometimes smaller breakfasts with the other employees I work with. The food is basic, pita and things to dip it in, but always really good, and its nice to relax and meet the other people in the office.
Overall, its been a really rewarding experience, and despite my complaints while struggling to write it, I think being forced to write a case study was really educational as well, and I'm glad I did it. (It's pretty long and probably not of interest to everyone, so I won't post it here but if you are interested in NGOs and the environment and would like more information about my experience at RSCN, just let me know and I can send you the case study.)
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Arabic Wedding
So as you may recall, the son of my host mom's aunt got married back in November and so I got to go with my family to all of the wedding festivities, which was a really interesting experience. Though the wedding itself was on Friday, the fuss surrounding it really got started on Wednesday, when Niveen's older sister Nisreen and her younger son, who is four, arrived to stay at our house. That first night, Niveen and her sister shared the bed with the three kids on mattresses on the floor and Hamada on a mattress in the living room.
On Thursday, in the evening, all of us but Hamada went to a pre-wedding party at the groom's mother's house. It was all women (except for the bride, who was probably somewhere else getting her henna done) so there was music, dancing, and de-hijabing, which is always really interesting. (I love it when we're with Niveen's sisters without any men around so they can take theirs off - it makes such a difference.) At the end of the evening, Niveen's youngest sister Naimeen howed up, with her husband, son and Nisreen's older son in tow. They had a car so we all (if you're counting, that makes a total of ten) drove back to our house together. The sisters took the bed again, with the littler kids on the floor in the bedroom and the older son by himself in the living room, while Hamada and Naimeen's husband went to stay in Niveen's brother's apartment in Jabal Amman.
Friday, the wedding day, was mostly just sitting around the house entertaining the guests. In the morning, since it was just Niveen's sisters in the house, it was pretty relaxed. Part way through the day Niveen's other sister, Suher, came with her husband and three kids, and then the other men came back, which made everything a lot more formal. There was a lot of sitting in the living room with tea, coffee, a cake that Niveen baked, plus seven little kids chasing each other around.
And then in the evening there was the wedding itself. Now there were two cars for the sixteen of us, and since that number included the seven kids this was a lot more comfortable than the night before, although as it turned out the wedding hall was just down the road from us while the aunt's house was out near the airport. When we arrived, there were a lot of men standing around outside, but the women and some of the children (some of them stayed with their fathers) were directed to a room upstairs. There were a bunch of tables scattered around the room for guests and a platform in one corner for the bride and groom, decorated nicely, with a fancy couch and low table on it. There were just women, so there was dancing again for a while. On a screen on the wall, they had a video feed of the bride's progress. She wears the hijab, so while she was outside surrounded by men she wore a cloak with a white hood.
Eventually she and the groom made in inside and upstairs to where we were all waiting for them. The first step was to take about a million pictures together. There were no vows or that kind of elaborate ceremony that Americans expect. They just exchanged rings and danced two dances together, one slow and one fast. After that the other women started dancing for a while, until the cake was brought it. It was multi-tiered, really pretty, and the bride and groom cut it together like at an American wedding - except that they used a sword. Which I thought was pretty cool. Then there was the feeding each other the first bite, which was familiar, although there was no cake smeared in anyone's face. Then they went through a few other cute little food-sharing rituals: there was a slice of pineapple that they both bit into from opposite ends at the same time so they were almost-but-not-quite-kissing (public displays of affection, even between married couples, are not really approved of here) which I actually thought was a lot more romantic than I've made it sound here, then they took sips out of each other's glasses, then out of the same cup (using straws) - I'm not sure what they were drinking, though I can say pretty confidently it wasn't champagne.
After that, they returned to their couch for the "Wearing of the Gold." There was a red heart-shaped box filled with various pieces of gold jewelery - in Islam, a man is supposed to give his wife a certain amount of money when they get married, and often this comes in the form of gold - which the groom then had to put on the bride. He actually did pretty well, though he needed a little bit of help from her sister for the earrings.
After that, it was mostly just more dancing - the bride and groom danced together again, and some other women danced, and then the bride put her cloak back on and all of the men came in. At this point a lot of the women left - probably their husbands and family left as well, but that was less noticeable for me. However, the dancing continued. In addition to just dancing to the music, they do a circle dance called the dubkeh, which is mostly pretty simple once you get the hang of it, but looks really cool when everyone is doing it. I know the most basic steps, but I'm not very good at it. At this point I think it was mostly just the closest family of the bride and groom, and everyone was really happy. They lifted the groom up onto one of his friend's shoulders, and then also his father, I think. My host mother's younger brother jumped up onto a table where a lot of his aunts and older female relatives were sitting and started dancing, which everyone found really entertaining.
In the end, everyone filed out, with a lot of people packing into two buses or their cars, and the bride and groom getting into a nice, new, well-decorated convertible. I think generally there's some sort of car procession, with everyone honking and yelling, but if there was I didn't get to see it because we were just driven back home - not without some honking, though - and all of the Irbid families set off home (hamdulliliah).
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On Thursday, in the evening, all of us but Hamada went to a pre-wedding party at the groom's mother's house. It was all women (except for the bride, who was probably somewhere else getting her henna done) so there was music, dancing, and de-hijabing, which is always really interesting. (I love it when we're with Niveen's sisters without any men around so they can take theirs off - it makes such a difference.) At the end of the evening, Niveen's youngest sister Naimeen howed up, with her husband, son and Nisreen's older son in tow. They had a car so we all (if you're counting, that makes a total of ten) drove back to our house together. The sisters took the bed again, with the littler kids on the floor in the bedroom and the older son by himself in the living room, while Hamada and Naimeen's husband went to stay in Niveen's brother's apartment in Jabal Amman.
Friday, the wedding day, was mostly just sitting around the house entertaining the guests. In the morning, since it was just Niveen's sisters in the house, it was pretty relaxed. Part way through the day Niveen's other sister, Suher, came with her husband and three kids, and then the other men came back, which made everything a lot more formal. There was a lot of sitting in the living room with tea, coffee, a cake that Niveen baked, plus seven little kids chasing each other around.
And then in the evening there was the wedding itself. Now there were two cars for the sixteen of us, and since that number included the seven kids this was a lot more comfortable than the night before, although as it turned out the wedding hall was just down the road from us while the aunt's house was out near the airport. When we arrived, there were a lot of men standing around outside, but the women and some of the children (some of them stayed with their fathers) were directed to a room upstairs. There were a bunch of tables scattered around the room for guests and a platform in one corner for the bride and groom, decorated nicely, with a fancy couch and low table on it. There were just women, so there was dancing again for a while. On a screen on the wall, they had a video feed of the bride's progress. She wears the hijab, so while she was outside surrounded by men she wore a cloak with a white hood.
Eventually she and the groom made in inside and upstairs to where we were all waiting for them. The first step was to take about a million pictures together. There were no vows or that kind of elaborate ceremony that Americans expect. They just exchanged rings and danced two dances together, one slow and one fast. After that the other women started dancing for a while, until the cake was brought it. It was multi-tiered, really pretty, and the bride and groom cut it together like at an American wedding - except that they used a sword. Which I thought was pretty cool. Then there was the feeding each other the first bite, which was familiar, although there was no cake smeared in anyone's face. Then they went through a few other cute little food-sharing rituals: there was a slice of pineapple that they both bit into from opposite ends at the same time so they were almost-but-not-quite-kissing (public displays of affection, even between married couples, are not really approved of here) which I actually thought was a lot more romantic than I've made it sound here, then they took sips out of each other's glasses, then out of the same cup (using straws) - I'm not sure what they were drinking, though I can say pretty confidently it wasn't champagne.
After that, they returned to their couch for the "Wearing of the Gold." There was a red heart-shaped box filled with various pieces of gold jewelery - in Islam, a man is supposed to give his wife a certain amount of money when they get married, and often this comes in the form of gold - which the groom then had to put on the bride. He actually did pretty well, though he needed a little bit of help from her sister for the earrings.
After that, it was mostly just more dancing - the bride and groom danced together again, and some other women danced, and then the bride put her cloak back on and all of the men came in. At this point a lot of the women left - probably their husbands and family left as well, but that was less noticeable for me. However, the dancing continued. In addition to just dancing to the music, they do a circle dance called the dubkeh, which is mostly pretty simple once you get the hang of it, but looks really cool when everyone is doing it. I know the most basic steps, but I'm not very good at it. At this point I think it was mostly just the closest family of the bride and groom, and everyone was really happy. They lifted the groom up onto one of his friend's shoulders, and then also his father, I think. My host mother's younger brother jumped up onto a table where a lot of his aunts and older female relatives were sitting and started dancing, which everyone found really entertaining.
In the end, everyone filed out, with a lot of people packing into two buses or their cars, and the bride and groom getting into a nice, new, well-decorated convertible. I think generally there's some sort of car procession, with everyone honking and yelling, but if there was I didn't get to see it because we were just driven back home - not without some honking, though - and all of the Irbid families set off home (hamdulliliah).
More...
9.11.09
2.11.09
When it rains...
I feel like, having grown up in Eugene and studied in Portland for two years, I am a pretty well qualified judge on the subject of rain. And the rain in Amman is CRAZY! It doesn't rain very often, but when it does, it rains buckets and dogs and basically floods the city for the duration. The ground doesn't really absorb water, and there are very few flat places in the city, so the result is massive rivers pouring down most streets and large lakes forming at the lowest points. As soon as it stops raining, though, things start to dry out, until sometimes only a few hours later you can see stretches of dry street between the puddles.
I've been told that Jordan really does have four seasons, but right now I'm having trouble believing it, since we went from a week of +70 F temperatures to wind, rain, and chill. I actually considered wearing my down jacket today. This transition was made even harder by the fact that I spent the weekend in Aqaba, where it was even warmer, while in Amman in rained and got cold during that time.
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I've been told that Jordan really does have four seasons, but right now I'm having trouble believing it, since we went from a week of +70 F temperatures to wind, rain, and chill. I actually considered wearing my down jacket today. This transition was made even harder by the fact that I spent the weekend in Aqaba, where it was even warmer, while in Amman in rained and got cold during that time.
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29.10.09
The Day of Exceeding Strangeness
Yesterday was just one of those crazy, slightly unbelievable days. To begin with, we were scheduled to go on a field trip to a waste water treatment plant and King Talal Dam with the water politics class. Alright, so far so good, we all met at the bus at 9 AM to set out. From there, events just sort of progressed.
Step one: Drive to Samra wastewater treatment plant near the town of Al-Hashimyya in northern Jordan, about an hour from Amman. Stop at several points outside the town to take pictures of the oil refinery and power plant, earning more stares than normal from the local population.
Step two: Tour of the Samra plant. There were too many of us to take a walking tour of the plant, but they showed us a video (followed by a coffee break), a explained the process using a model, took us up to the plant overlook, gave us a guided bus tour of the plant – we were only allowed to get out at the last stop, between the final settling pools and the chlorine purification – and finally they took us to where the water, now clean enough to be used for irrigation, is released. The smell in certain parts of the plants is incredibly horrible, but remarkably almost nonexistent once you reach the final stages of the cleaning process. (If you want more information about any of this, let me know. I have to write a report on the entire trip so I have lots of notes about it all..)
Step three: Board the bus. Eat whatever lunch you had packed. Drive for an hour to Irbid, where we stopped at McDonald's for more lunching. Then back on the bus headed for extreme northwest Jordan (we'd wondered when he said it, but yes, we really were going to go look at the Golan.)
Step four: Our peaceful bus ride towards Syria is interrupted by texts from several people's friends claiming that there is no class Thursday or Sunday. After some initial confusion about whether this refers to one specific class or all the classes, Stewart (our academic director) is called and he confirms that ALL classes are canceled on account of an outbreak of the flu, giving all of us an unexpected four-day-weekend. Casual ideas about extending trips to Wadi Rum or Aqaba quickly spiral out of control into wild speculation about the possibilities of hopping on a plane to Kurdistan or India.
Step five: Plotting is semi-interrupted by our arrival at the “highest point in Northern Jordan” where some government official wants to charge us three dinar to enter some old ruins so we can try to spot Lake Tiberius. A helpful local says he knows a better place where we won't have to pay, so we get back on the bus and proceed through a series of military checkpoints towards the border. Our student IDs are checked, and we are forbidden from taking pictures.
Step six: Arrival at a rocky overlook near a cave where Jesus allegedly hid when he was fleeing from Nazareth (we can see the mountain from where we're standing. We are surrounding by olive groves and litter, leading to questions about who, exactly, is being permitted to come out here to create so much garbage. Below us, we can see the path of the Yarmouk River, and on the other side, Syria-as-occupied-by-Israel – the landmine fields of the Golan Heights. Our teacher points to the vehicles traveling along a road on the other side of the river and tells us, “Those are Israelis.” A little further away, we can see the clean waters of Lake Tiberius and on the other side, the town of Tiberius. The contrast between the greenery of Israel proper and the arid land of occupied Syria is stark. After the view, stepping into the sheep-poop carpeted cave is kind of anti-climatic.
Step seven: Head back toward Amman and King Talal Dam. Stop by the side of the road several times in order to, respectively: see a large dead snake near one of the checkpoints; take pictures of cows standing near some cacti; have the teacher buy us all a pomegranate from a roadside stand (ie a collection of boxes of fruit set next to the highway).
Step eight: Continue the long busride back. Weekend plotting continues, but reality increasingly forces its way in. Numerous phone calls and texts are sent to friends in Amman in attempts to facilitate plans.
Step nine: Attempt to stop and see the King Talal Dam. The bus driver asks for directions from several locals, but the closest we are able to come is a hillside that overlooks the lake but does not actually permit us to see the dam. Our bus pulls up next to a lone couple leaning against the from of their car. The woman shoots us one of the evilest looks I have ever seen, but its hard to blame her. The sudden arrival of a busload of American students would be a mood-killer for anyone. We all dutifully take pictures, then wearily pile back onto the bus to return home.
Step ten: Arrive in Amman, finalize weekend plans (I am going to Aqaba, just as I had been planning before we got school off), check email (I will have to translate my resume to French for my spring internship in Morocco) and of course get on Facebook (first live interaction with Jackie since I've been here!), then finally at 8 PM get a taxi home. Arrive, eat dinner, watch a little TV, then fall asleep at 10, before my host father has even returned from his job at the airport.
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Step one: Drive to Samra wastewater treatment plant near the town of Al-Hashimyya in northern Jordan, about an hour from Amman. Stop at several points outside the town to take pictures of the oil refinery and power plant, earning more stares than normal from the local population.
Step two: Tour of the Samra plant. There were too many of us to take a walking tour of the plant, but they showed us a video (followed by a coffee break), a explained the process using a model, took us up to the plant overlook, gave us a guided bus tour of the plant – we were only allowed to get out at the last stop, between the final settling pools and the chlorine purification – and finally they took us to where the water, now clean enough to be used for irrigation, is released. The smell in certain parts of the plants is incredibly horrible, but remarkably almost nonexistent once you reach the final stages of the cleaning process. (If you want more information about any of this, let me know. I have to write a report on the entire trip so I have lots of notes about it all..)
Step three: Board the bus. Eat whatever lunch you had packed. Drive for an hour to Irbid, where we stopped at McDonald's for more lunching. Then back on the bus headed for extreme northwest Jordan (we'd wondered when he said it, but yes, we really were going to go look at the Golan.)
Step four: Our peaceful bus ride towards Syria is interrupted by texts from several people's friends claiming that there is no class Thursday or Sunday. After some initial confusion about whether this refers to one specific class or all the classes, Stewart (our academic director) is called and he confirms that ALL classes are canceled on account of an outbreak of the flu, giving all of us an unexpected four-day-weekend. Casual ideas about extending trips to Wadi Rum or Aqaba quickly spiral out of control into wild speculation about the possibilities of hopping on a plane to Kurdistan or India.
Step five: Plotting is semi-interrupted by our arrival at the “highest point in Northern Jordan” where some government official wants to charge us three dinar to enter some old ruins so we can try to spot Lake Tiberius. A helpful local says he knows a better place where we won't have to pay, so we get back on the bus and proceed through a series of military checkpoints towards the border. Our student IDs are checked, and we are forbidden from taking pictures.
Step six: Arrival at a rocky overlook near a cave where Jesus allegedly hid when he was fleeing from Nazareth (we can see the mountain from where we're standing. We are surrounding by olive groves and litter, leading to questions about who, exactly, is being permitted to come out here to create so much garbage. Below us, we can see the path of the Yarmouk River, and on the other side, Syria-as-occupied-by-Israel – the landmine fields of the Golan Heights. Our teacher points to the vehicles traveling along a road on the other side of the river and tells us, “Those are Israelis.” A little further away, we can see the clean waters of Lake Tiberius and on the other side, the town of Tiberius. The contrast between the greenery of Israel proper and the arid land of occupied Syria is stark. After the view, stepping into the sheep-poop carpeted cave is kind of anti-climatic.
Step seven: Head back toward Amman and King Talal Dam. Stop by the side of the road several times in order to, respectively: see a large dead snake near one of the checkpoints; take pictures of cows standing near some cacti; have the teacher buy us all a pomegranate from a roadside stand (ie a collection of boxes of fruit set next to the highway).
Step eight: Continue the long busride back. Weekend plotting continues, but reality increasingly forces its way in. Numerous phone calls and texts are sent to friends in Amman in attempts to facilitate plans.
Step nine: Attempt to stop and see the King Talal Dam. The bus driver asks for directions from several locals, but the closest we are able to come is a hillside that overlooks the lake but does not actually permit us to see the dam. Our bus pulls up next to a lone couple leaning against the from of their car. The woman shoots us one of the evilest looks I have ever seen, but its hard to blame her. The sudden arrival of a busload of American students would be a mood-killer for anyone. We all dutifully take pictures, then wearily pile back onto the bus to return home.
Step ten: Arrive in Amman, finalize weekend plans (I am going to Aqaba, just as I had been planning before we got school off), check email (I will have to translate my resume to French for my spring internship in Morocco) and of course get on Facebook (first live interaction with Jackie since I've been here!), then finally at 8 PM get a taxi home. Arrive, eat dinner, watch a little TV, then fall asleep at 10, before my host father has even returned from his job at the airport.
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27.10.09
!الحمد لله
Alhamdulilah! I am finally, finally done with midterms! I am only taking two classes this semester, but somehow that meant a total of 6 separate tests (one in water politics, and 5 - FIVE - in Arabic) spread over a period of a week and a half. Plus I was at Wild Jordan for 8 consecutive hours last Tuesday because we had a big jewelery launch. Not too surprisingly, it has been a stressful, unhappy week and a half for me, but now it is over. I will be celebrating by taking a field trip with my water politics class tomorrow, to King Talal Dam and a waste water treatment plant. Joy.
In happier news, we ALMOST have residency in Jordan. We should be getting our cards and passports back soon, insha'allah. So that's good.
Spent the past weekend in Irbid visiting all of my host mom's family. Her mother is in Dubai with her father for the next few months, and her brothers are living alone at the house. So after spending the day visiting her three sisters, we went to the house and Niveen and one of her sisters did some serious cleaning. But on Saturday we went shopping, so I now have one genuine Jordanian shirt (which randomly and amazing perfectly matches a scarf that one of Niveen's sisters gave me on Friday) and a pair of Jordanian jeans.
I'm learning to cook some Jordanian food from my host mom. Current favorites: stuffed chicken, rolled grape leaves, several wonderful rice dishes, cucumber yogurt, salsa, and of course ice cream. I'm still hoping to get to watch her making mansaf, though.
New french fry food: turkey and cheese sandwich on pita.
Also, despite being left all weekend without food, all four fish are incredibly still living. Apparently Jordanian pet fish are a hardier breed than the ones you get in the US.
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In happier news, we ALMOST have residency in Jordan. We should be getting our cards and passports back soon, insha'allah. So that's good.
Spent the past weekend in Irbid visiting all of my host mom's family. Her mother is in Dubai with her father for the next few months, and her brothers are living alone at the house. So after spending the day visiting her three sisters, we went to the house and Niveen and one of her sisters did some serious cleaning. But on Saturday we went shopping, so I now have one genuine Jordanian shirt (which randomly and amazing perfectly matches a scarf that one of Niveen's sisters gave me on Friday) and a pair of Jordanian jeans.
I'm learning to cook some Jordanian food from my host mom. Current favorites: stuffed chicken, rolled grape leaves, several wonderful rice dishes, cucumber yogurt, salsa, and of course ice cream. I'm still hoping to get to watch her making mansaf, though.
New french fry food: turkey and cheese sandwich on pita.
Also, despite being left all weekend without food, all four fish are incredibly still living. Apparently Jordanian pet fish are a hardier breed than the ones you get in the US.
More...
21.10.09
Miscellaneous
- Almost two weeks later, the fish are remarkably still alive
- Foods I have eaten with french fries in/on them: falafel sandwich, two different types of chicken sandwich, scrambled eggs
- New favorite sandwich: chicken, french fries, ketchup, coleslaw, garlic. Mmm.
- Favorite part about my internship: "breakfast" at 1 in the afternoon with my coworkers - pita, hummus, assorted other yummy things to eat with pita including aforementioned eggs and french fries.
- I have a peer tutor. She speaks Arabic, English, German, and Urdu - and is pretty much fluent in all of them. I am in awe (although it really doesn't help me when she starts chattering in German)
- Went to a really cool environmental film festival at the Jordan Royal Film Commission. Amazing venue (views of the citadel and downwtown behind the outdoor screen) and really interesting movie (The Age of Stupid - go watch it) that was partly set in Amman - at the end, there's a shot of a Middle Eastern street with a Burger King and McDonald's on it - the University of Jordan is across the street and I walk by those restaurants every day on my way to the computer lab.
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- Foods I have eaten with french fries in/on them: falafel sandwich, two different types of chicken sandwich, scrambled eggs
- New favorite sandwich: chicken, french fries, ketchup, coleslaw, garlic. Mmm.
- Favorite part about my internship: "breakfast" at 1 in the afternoon with my coworkers - pita, hummus, assorted other yummy things to eat with pita including aforementioned eggs and french fries.
- I have a peer tutor. She speaks Arabic, English, German, and Urdu - and is pretty much fluent in all of them. I am in awe (although it really doesn't help me when she starts chattering in German)
- Went to a really cool environmental film festival at the Jordan Royal Film Commission. Amazing venue (views of the citadel and downwtown behind the outdoor screen) and really interesting movie (The Age of Stupid - go watch it) that was partly set in Amman - at the end, there's a shot of a Middle Eastern street with a Burger King and McDonald's on it - the University of Jordan is across the street and I walk by those restaurants every day on my way to the computer lab.
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19.10.09
The most fantastic place on earth
On Saturday I (finally) went to Wadi Mujib and I have to say it is now one of my favorite places in the world, and definitely one of the most incredible hikes. I have no photos (I didn't bring my camera, for reasons that will become obvious) but I really wish I could have, because there is no way I can adequately describe its mumtastic-ness (mumtaz = excellent or fantastic in Arabic).
This photo was not taken by me (you can find it and several other nice Wadi Mujib pictures on Flickr or by doing a Google image search for "Wadi Mujib") but I think it'll help you get an idea of why I'm so in love with this place. We didn't actually climb the waterfall depicted (you need a guide and equipment for that) but we did hike to it.
There were four of us (we were supposed to be joined by some other friends, but they got a super late start so we hiked separately. We were expecting to see them at some point on our hike back, but we were almost to the end by the time we passed them) and we hired a taxi from Amman for the day (only 30 dinar = about $10 apiece!). According to new RSCN rules, you have to wear a life jacket on your hike, kindly included in the price of admission.
We took the Siq trail, which is about two and a half hours round trip hiking through an incredible canyon. You walk in the river (shockingly clean, especially for Jordan) essentially the entire time. Almost all of the pictures you'll see of the canyon will be of the beginning of the hike or the end at the waterfall, for the reason that it would be very difficult keep a camera dry and in your hand for most of the rest of it.
Not too far into the hike, you have to climb your first waterfall. This one is short and easy to get over, but as you continue the falls get higher and more difficult to climb. In some places, you have to haul yourself along a rope just to get close enough to scramble up the falls. You clamber across wet rocks and through torrents of water, with the walls of the canyon rising up around you and occasionally overlapping above you until you finally arrive at your destination, a gorgeous waterfall. You walk through it, the water pounding your head, and there is a small hollow. There are fish in the calmer water back here, and they nibbled at your legs until you wedge yourself between two rocks. Don't try to talk too much, because you won't be able to avoid getting the spray from the falls in your mouth and the noise will drown out your voice anyway.
The walk back is easier (and cooler) if you give up on walking. You can float almost all the way back (occasional climbing down rocks is still required where the falls are dangerous, and at some points you do have to roll from one side of the river to the other) with only a few bumps, enjoying the view of the canyon as you go.
As if the hike itself wasn't awesome enough, on our taxi ride back to Amman we passed a large fleet of motorcycles. Now, in Jordan, not many people have motorcycles and there are pretty strict limits on the amount of horsepower you can have. So when you see a bunch of massive bikes coming down the road followed by a string of black cars with tinted windows, you know something's up. As the motorcycles went by, our taxi driver indicated the last, largest, shiniest motorcycle and told us, "That's the king." So, so, so cool.
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This photo was not taken by me (you can find it and several other nice Wadi Mujib pictures on Flickr or by doing a Google image search for "Wadi Mujib") but I think it'll help you get an idea of why I'm so in love with this place. We didn't actually climb the waterfall depicted (you need a guide and equipment for that) but we did hike to it.
There were four of us (we were supposed to be joined by some other friends, but they got a super late start so we hiked separately. We were expecting to see them at some point on our hike back, but we were almost to the end by the time we passed them) and we hired a taxi from Amman for the day (only 30 dinar = about $10 apiece!). According to new RSCN rules, you have to wear a life jacket on your hike, kindly included in the price of admission.
We took the Siq trail, which is about two and a half hours round trip hiking through an incredible canyon. You walk in the river (shockingly clean, especially for Jordan) essentially the entire time. Almost all of the pictures you'll see of the canyon will be of the beginning of the hike or the end at the waterfall, for the reason that it would be very difficult keep a camera dry and in your hand for most of the rest of it.
Not too far into the hike, you have to climb your first waterfall. This one is short and easy to get over, but as you continue the falls get higher and more difficult to climb. In some places, you have to haul yourself along a rope just to get close enough to scramble up the falls. You clamber across wet rocks and through torrents of water, with the walls of the canyon rising up around you and occasionally overlapping above you until you finally arrive at your destination, a gorgeous waterfall. You walk through it, the water pounding your head, and there is a small hollow. There are fish in the calmer water back here, and they nibbled at your legs until you wedge yourself between two rocks. Don't try to talk too much, because you won't be able to avoid getting the spray from the falls in your mouth and the noise will drown out your voice anyway.
The walk back is easier (and cooler) if you give up on walking. You can float almost all the way back (occasional climbing down rocks is still required where the falls are dangerous, and at some points you do have to roll from one side of the river to the other) with only a few bumps, enjoying the view of the canyon as you go.
As if the hike itself wasn't awesome enough, on our taxi ride back to Amman we passed a large fleet of motorcycles. Now, in Jordan, not many people have motorcycles and there are pretty strict limits on the amount of horsepower you can have. So when you see a bunch of massive bikes coming down the road followed by a string of black cars with tinted windows, you know something's up. As the motorcycles went by, our taxi driver indicated the last, largest, shiniest motorcycle and told us, "That's the king." So, so, so cool.
More...
12.10.09
Daily Life
So I haven't been writing about a lot of things that I've been doing because they seem really normal and everyday to me, but it occurred to me that most of ya'll probably have no idea what a normal day is for me here. Weekends are different, but I'm starting to get into a schoolday routine.
My school week is Sunday through Thursday. I wake up around 6:30 every morning. My host mom is usually up helping Yazan get ready for school, and most of the time she gets breakfast out for me - if not, I get it out for myself. We have bread with yogurt, cheese, olives, zattar, and sometimes fuul or eggs as well. Around 7:15 I leave to catch the bus to school with Kris, another girl in my program who lives in the neighborhood. We have to walk down to a big street a little ways below our apartments in order to flag down the bus, which is basically just a van with the route written on it in Arabic. They're called services, they're privately owned, and they just run specific routes constantly. We just go down and wave one down, like waving down a taxi, and it takes us to school, stopping occasionally to pick up more people. During Ramadan, the trip took a really long time because a lot of the buses would wait at one of the circles to try to get enough people to fill it, but not many people were going to UJ because it wasn't open yet. Now that classes are in session, though, it only takes 15 or 20 minutes.
From 8 to 10:30 or 11 everyday, I have my Arabic class. Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday I have two hours of Modern Standard and then an hour of colloquial, and Monday and Wednesday we have two and a half hours of Modern Standard. It can be kind of a lot, and I always feel a little overwhelmed when we leave, but I think I'm learning. There are only four of us in the class, so we all get to talk a lot, which is really nice, but it does mean that the teacher can kind of pick on you if you don't know what's going on.
On Sunday and Tuesday, I have to go to my internship (with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature - more on that later) around 12 or 1. I've been going to get lunch near campus beforehand with one of the other girls from my class, but I think I'm going to start going directly to Jabal Amman - the area where my internship is - and exploring the places to eat there instead. (I had really good shwarma there yesterday). I've been going to RSCN on Thursdays as well, but in the future I think I'm just going to go then if there's something specific that needs doing, to give me more time and to cut taxi costs. I'm there until 4, so I get home around 4:30.
Monday and Wednesday, I have another class in the afternoon, so I go to lunch with friends around 11 and hang out in the computer lab (like I am now) until I have to leave for class around 1:30. The class is from 2-3:30, but the building is really far away. The class is the Environment and the Politics of Water, and it's a combination of scientific discussion of hydrology and a political discussion of water shortage in this region. It's all really interesting, though some of the science seemed a little basic. We're definitely getting just one perspective of the political situation - Israel stole all the water, and now they're giving it to the settlers and not letting the Palestinians have any, and isn't their lifestyle so extravegantly wasteful of water? - but as long as you keep that in mind most of the information is at least useful, and defintely does provide a good idea of the Jordanian viewpoint. Sometimes I go to the computer lab afterward, or else just go straight home. I take a different bus to get home. The final destination for this one is Zarqa, another city near Amman, so I have to explain to the control (the guy who takes your money and figures out where the bus needs to stop) that I want to get off in Arjan, which can be difficult.
I started meeting with a peer tutor last week, so far just Mondays at 4. We try to talk as much as possible in Arabic, and she says she's going to show me to all her favorite hidden places in downtown sometime. We're both really busy, so it's a little hard to plan meetings, but (insha'allah) we're meeting again this afternoon.
Every other Monday, I have an internship class (I'm dong it for credit) at 5:15. It lasts till at least 6:30 usually, so I don't get home until around 7. When I get home, Niveen usually has food ready. Depending on what time it is, whether Hamada is coming home soon and who has already eaten, I may eat by myself, with just the kids, or with the whole family. After dinner I study, play with the kids, watch TV, and just hang out in the house. Usually around 7, we'll have something else to eat - sometimes chips and chocolate bars from the little store next door, sometimes apples and grapes, sometimes cucumbers and carrots.
Sometimes in the evening I go out with friends to a bar or cafe. Kris and I hang out a lot, which means we can share a taxi (there isn't really anything to do within walking distance of Arjan). We have a couple drinks, or smoke some arghilah, or get something to eat (and I like to watch football, which is available at most places we go), all very chill and laid back - Amman is not really a party town. My weeknight curfew is 11, so I'm back and in bed in time to get at least a little sleep before I have to get up and do it all again.
More...
My school week is Sunday through Thursday. I wake up around 6:30 every morning. My host mom is usually up helping Yazan get ready for school, and most of the time she gets breakfast out for me - if not, I get it out for myself. We have bread with yogurt, cheese, olives, zattar, and sometimes fuul or eggs as well. Around 7:15 I leave to catch the bus to school with Kris, another girl in my program who lives in the neighborhood. We have to walk down to a big street a little ways below our apartments in order to flag down the bus, which is basically just a van with the route written on it in Arabic. They're called services, they're privately owned, and they just run specific routes constantly. We just go down and wave one down, like waving down a taxi, and it takes us to school, stopping occasionally to pick up more people. During Ramadan, the trip took a really long time because a lot of the buses would wait at one of the circles to try to get enough people to fill it, but not many people were going to UJ because it wasn't open yet. Now that classes are in session, though, it only takes 15 or 20 minutes.
From 8 to 10:30 or 11 everyday, I have my Arabic class. Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday I have two hours of Modern Standard and then an hour of colloquial, and Monday and Wednesday we have two and a half hours of Modern Standard. It can be kind of a lot, and I always feel a little overwhelmed when we leave, but I think I'm learning. There are only four of us in the class, so we all get to talk a lot, which is really nice, but it does mean that the teacher can kind of pick on you if you don't know what's going on.
On Sunday and Tuesday, I have to go to my internship (with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature - more on that later) around 12 or 1. I've been going to get lunch near campus beforehand with one of the other girls from my class, but I think I'm going to start going directly to Jabal Amman - the area where my internship is - and exploring the places to eat there instead. (I had really good shwarma there yesterday). I've been going to RSCN on Thursdays as well, but in the future I think I'm just going to go then if there's something specific that needs doing, to give me more time and to cut taxi costs. I'm there until 4, so I get home around 4:30.
Monday and Wednesday, I have another class in the afternoon, so I go to lunch with friends around 11 and hang out in the computer lab (like I am now) until I have to leave for class around 1:30. The class is from 2-3:30, but the building is really far away. The class is the Environment and the Politics of Water, and it's a combination of scientific discussion of hydrology and a political discussion of water shortage in this region. It's all really interesting, though some of the science seemed a little basic. We're definitely getting just one perspective of the political situation - Israel stole all the water, and now they're giving it to the settlers and not letting the Palestinians have any, and isn't their lifestyle so extravegantly wasteful of water? - but as long as you keep that in mind most of the information is at least useful, and defintely does provide a good idea of the Jordanian viewpoint. Sometimes I go to the computer lab afterward, or else just go straight home. I take a different bus to get home. The final destination for this one is Zarqa, another city near Amman, so I have to explain to the control (the guy who takes your money and figures out where the bus needs to stop) that I want to get off in Arjan, which can be difficult.
I started meeting with a peer tutor last week, so far just Mondays at 4. We try to talk as much as possible in Arabic, and she says she's going to show me to all her favorite hidden places in downtown sometime. We're both really busy, so it's a little hard to plan meetings, but (insha'allah) we're meeting again this afternoon.
Every other Monday, I have an internship class (I'm dong it for credit) at 5:15. It lasts till at least 6:30 usually, so I don't get home until around 7. When I get home, Niveen usually has food ready. Depending on what time it is, whether Hamada is coming home soon and who has already eaten, I may eat by myself, with just the kids, or with the whole family. After dinner I study, play with the kids, watch TV, and just hang out in the house. Usually around 7, we'll have something else to eat - sometimes chips and chocolate bars from the little store next door, sometimes apples and grapes, sometimes cucumbers and carrots.
Sometimes in the evening I go out with friends to a bar or cafe. Kris and I hang out a lot, which means we can share a taxi (there isn't really anything to do within walking distance of Arjan). We have a couple drinks, or smoke some arghilah, or get something to eat (and I like to watch football, which is available at most places we go), all very chill and laid back - Amman is not really a party town. My weeknight curfew is 11, so I'm back and in bed in time to get at least a little sleep before I have to get up and do it all again.
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11.10.09
A most profitable visitation
This is going to be just a brief note (I promise more is coming soon) to describe several interesting things to happened to me this weekend, mostly involving going to visit Niveen's aunt. Hamada works on Saturdays, but Niveen and the kids and I spent most of the day there, with good results.
1) They were making filled pastries (with meat, cheese, spinach, or zattar) when I got there, which were excellent. They wouldn't let me help, but I got to watch, and I think if I knew how to make the dough and what the baking instructions are I could do the same thing.
2) The aunt's son is getting married in November, so we're going to his wedding! I'm super excited to get to go to a real Jordanian wedding.
3) A cousin somehow convinced Niveen that it would be a good idea to buy some fish for Yazan (they had a tank there and he was fascinated by it) so we now have a fishbowl with four fish in the kitchen. Knowing the delicate nature of most pet fish, I have serious questions about their long-term viability in our house, but we'll see. Expect samak updates in the days to come...
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1) They were making filled pastries (with meat, cheese, spinach, or zattar) when I got there, which were excellent. They wouldn't let me help, but I got to watch, and I think if I knew how to make the dough and what the baking instructions are I could do the same thing.
2) The aunt's son is getting married in November, so we're going to his wedding! I'm super excited to get to go to a real Jordanian wedding.
3) A cousin somehow convinced Niveen that it would be a good idea to buy some fish for Yazan (they had a tank there and he was fascinated by it) so we now have a fishbowl with four fish in the kitchen. Knowing the delicate nature of most pet fish, I have serious questions about their long-term viability in our house, but we'll see. Expect samak updates in the days to come...
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8.10.09
Eid
I spend the first few days of our break with my host family in Irbid. My host mother's mother lives there, as well as my mom's brothers and sisters. The first night, Friday, all of them came over for dinner. The sisters are all married and have kids, most of whom are in the same age range as Yazan and Sadeel, so the apartment was loud and could be dangerous to walk around in. We ate on the floor, from a large spread of shared dishes, picked up using pieces of pita (although I was given a plate so they could try to force extra food into me). There were kebabs of various types, meat cooked between pieces of bread, cucumber and tomato salad, pickles (the only thing I was permitted to do to help out was cut the pickles), and juice, which seems to be the Ramadan drink of choice. None of them speaks much English, but with my limited Arabic and Hamada as translator, I managed to tell them, when asked, that I liked Jordan, liked Obama and not Bush, and was not currently looking for a husband.
Niveen's brothers are the youngest in the family, I think, around my age, and still live at home. In Jordan, children typically are supported by their parents while in college and in fact live with them until they get married. Niveen's mother wears the hijab (Niveen seems to be the only one in her family who doesn't) so when they have friends over there is a specific room where they can hang out. I was confused when I arrived about why the apartment had two doors right next to each other, but it's so that the boys' friends can come and go without ever going into the apartment proper – the door between that room and the rest of the residence is, of course, kept closed.
On Saturday evening, it was announced that Eid would begin the following day, causing great jubilation particularly among those who had been fasting. And to make good news even better, later that night I had the opportunity to learn the Arabic word for rain – the first precipitation since the spring.
As generally happens when people have no morning obligations, we had been sleeping in late every morning of the holiday, and this pattern was continued even on Eid. Even when we were all up, for a long time the day didn't seem like anything special. The only real difference was that the men in the house, who had been the only ones fasting, could now eat with us, which for me just meant more people shoving Eid cookies (we ate practically nothing else that day) at me and ordering me to keep eating.
Finally, late in the afternoon, Niveen's mother and brother got dressed up and took Yazan out visiting or maybe to ask people for money – Eid is kind of like Halloween that way, except that kids ask for cash instead of candy. A little bit later some other relatives came over – those of us who were home were still in sweats and pyjamas, this being typical garb in Jordanian houses, but apparently that was all right. Finally, after they had left, Hamada and Niveen and Sadeel put on their nice new clothes and I put on the nicest clothes I have here and prayed it would be good enough, and we went out visiting.
We went to Hamada's brother's house, where his sister in law had made her Eid cookies by hand. It started raining again while we were there, which made all the kids super excited. Hamada's brother in Oregon called while we were there, so everyone, including me, got a turn to talk to him. His daughter, who is a sophomore at PSU, is thinking about coming to Amman with CIEE next year.
We went back to collect Yazan, now armed with a brand new toy gun that someone had unwisely given him, before going on to see Hamada's other relatives. There were a lot of people at that house, and I never really figured out how all of the were related to each other and my family, partly because I had barely been introduced to everyone inside before I was kidnapped by a group of younger girls and allowed to escape outside. Unfortunately, they were just as insistent about feeding me chocolate as the older women, but it was fun trying to talk to them. They spoke in a mixture of English and Arabic, which actually made things harder sometimes because I couldn't tell what language they were trying to talk to me in. I spent the last half of my time there walking up and down the street with a chatty 12-year-old, which was upsetting for Sadeel because she didn't want me to leave but she really didn't want to go too far from the house, either. I only understood about half of what was said to me, but she and I had a very nice conversation.
The next morning, Hamada went with me to the bus station so I could take the 10:30 bus back to Amman in order to get the bus to Aqaba at 2. Rachel (the girl I was traveling with) and I spent that night in Aqaba and, since it was finally allowed, went out for drinks with some other friends who were in Aqaba for Eid as well.
In the morning, we went down to the ferry dock and spent pretty much all day taking the “fast” ferry to Nuweiba and then getting a service to Dahab. The ferry ride itself was just about as advertised, just a bit over an hour, but after it departed late and we were then forced to wait on the boat for ages waiting to get off in Egypt, the whole experience from the time we got on till when we could finally leave took probably around five hours. Once on the ground in Egypt, we had to walk into a small air conditioned pyramid and back out the other side. Nothing happened inside, and there were no fences or barriers of any kind to prevent one from going around it, but for some reason passage through that pyramid was completely mandatory and we were all herded through, the few tourists and the masses of workers returning home. (For whatever reason, Egyptians are willing to do all the menial tasks Jordanians are too proud to do, and so despite high unemployment among young Jordanians, there are massive numbers of Egyptian workers in the Kingdom.) We managed to get a service with a bunch of other tourists, most going to Sharm el-Sheikh, and the ride to Dahab was mostly without incident. We did have to pass through several checkpoints, which presented no problem for any of us except the three Syrian men in the taxi, who had their passports checked every time.
In Dahab, we met up with Kris, our third travel buddy, who was already in Dahab getting dive certified. Actually, as Rachel and I were wandering about asking for directions to our hostel and looking lost, Kris and some of her diving friends happened to be strolling down the street. We spent the next two days lazing by the beach, splashing in the ocean, drinking milkshakes and $2 beers, and eating amazing, if expensive (for Egypt) food. It was really relaxing – Dahab is a really nice little town, despite being a huge nest of drug smugglers. (Because of the weird legal situation with Israel concerning the Sinai, Egypt doesn't do a lot of law enforcement in the area, and drug traffickers take full advantage.) One of the nicest things about it was that, though it was obviously a vacation town full of non-Arabs, most of the expats I met were actually living in the region (several were actually from Amman) and we met several Arab Jordanians as well.
On Thursday night, after a satisfying day of doing nothing, the three of us took a trip to Mt. Sinai. We departed Dahab at 11 PM and started climbing at about 1:30 in the morning. The monastery at the base was closed on Fridays, and that's apparently important to a lot of people who visit, so it was just the three of us and our guide on the path. We took a back way up, so once we got close to the top and met up with the main trail up, there were more people and some camels, but we were pretty close to the front of the back and kept working our way forward – I think the three of us were probably a bit younger and fitter than the average Mt. Sinai climber.
The last stretch up to the peak is entirely stairs, supposedly 750 of them, though I would like to ask whoever counted them how exactly they determined which rocks were stairs and which were just large irregularities in other stairs. We got to the top at 3:30 or 4 in the morning – it is entirely possible that we were the first to arrive on that particular day, aside from the Bedouin guides and coffee vendors – and had about an hour and a half to wait until the sunrise. It had been nice and warm hiking up (climbing hills will do that to a person) but once we had seated ourselves on an appropriately scenic rooftop, the chill and wind really started to make themselves felt. The three of us huddled together under every piece of clothing we had brought – our guide was smarter and rented himself a blanket and two mattresses – and tried to rest despite the cold. Somehow the time passed and eventually we sat up and discovered that we were no longer alone. There weren't huge crowds, but definitely more than there had been when we lay down. Now wearing literally every piece of clothing I had with me (FYI, if your ears are ever freezing and you lack a hat, a t-shirt with the sleeves tied behind the head makes a great hijab/kufiyyah-inspired head garment that does a great job of protecting not only your ears but your neck, forehead, and even nose, if need be), we finally got to see the sun rise, which was lovely. By this point, however, sleep deprivation was making us giggly and a little crazy, so we spent as much time taking photos of each others' bundled up forms and making ninja shadows on the rock wall behind us as enjoying the traditional view.
Eventually we did have to walk back down, which would have gone faster if we hadn't been stuck behind a large family of German tourists who were for some reason very cautious about descending steep uneven stone stairs. We had to wait a bit for the bus to take us back to Dahab, and we were all pretty much falling asleep by the time it got there. I remember almost none of the ride back. We ate lunch in Dahab (a tip if you ever go: for an excellent cheap lunch, go early enough to order one of the breakfasts – the Egyptian breakfast, for instance, includes pita bread, hummous, and enough other things to be plenty filling, and its much cheaper than getting one of the actual lunch dishes) then back to Nuweiba to ferry it home to Jordan. Again, the waiting around (to get on the boat in Egypt, on the boat in Egypt, on the boat in Jordan, to get our passports back in Jordan) was what took the longest time, and it was getting pretty late by the time we were ready to go anywhere. Luckily, our hotel did serve dinner. While we were eating we made the acquaintance of the group of South African pilots drinking at the next table, and ended up staying up a bit later than we had intended. As it turned out, they all lived in Amman, so we exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up again back home.
Only Rachel's cell phone was still with us and charged at that point, and somehow in the transition from Egypt to Jordan it had acquired the wrong time, so we missed our bus in the morning. This turned out to be a good thing, because the JETT buses run from Aqaba to Amman every two hours and now we had time for breakfast. We were back in Amman by 2, just in time to get started on homework for school the next day.
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Niveen's brothers are the youngest in the family, I think, around my age, and still live at home. In Jordan, children typically are supported by their parents while in college and in fact live with them until they get married. Niveen's mother wears the hijab (Niveen seems to be the only one in her family who doesn't) so when they have friends over there is a specific room where they can hang out. I was confused when I arrived about why the apartment had two doors right next to each other, but it's so that the boys' friends can come and go without ever going into the apartment proper – the door between that room and the rest of the residence is, of course, kept closed.
On Saturday evening, it was announced that Eid would begin the following day, causing great jubilation particularly among those who had been fasting. And to make good news even better, later that night I had the opportunity to learn the Arabic word for rain – the first precipitation since the spring.
As generally happens when people have no morning obligations, we had been sleeping in late every morning of the holiday, and this pattern was continued even on Eid. Even when we were all up, for a long time the day didn't seem like anything special. The only real difference was that the men in the house, who had been the only ones fasting, could now eat with us, which for me just meant more people shoving Eid cookies (we ate practically nothing else that day) at me and ordering me to keep eating.
Finally, late in the afternoon, Niveen's mother and brother got dressed up and took Yazan out visiting or maybe to ask people for money – Eid is kind of like Halloween that way, except that kids ask for cash instead of candy. A little bit later some other relatives came over – those of us who were home were still in sweats and pyjamas, this being typical garb in Jordanian houses, but apparently that was all right. Finally, after they had left, Hamada and Niveen and Sadeel put on their nice new clothes and I put on the nicest clothes I have here and prayed it would be good enough, and we went out visiting.
We went to Hamada's brother's house, where his sister in law had made her Eid cookies by hand. It started raining again while we were there, which made all the kids super excited. Hamada's brother in Oregon called while we were there, so everyone, including me, got a turn to talk to him. His daughter, who is a sophomore at PSU, is thinking about coming to Amman with CIEE next year.
We went back to collect Yazan, now armed with a brand new toy gun that someone had unwisely given him, before going on to see Hamada's other relatives. There were a lot of people at that house, and I never really figured out how all of the were related to each other and my family, partly because I had barely been introduced to everyone inside before I was kidnapped by a group of younger girls and allowed to escape outside. Unfortunately, they were just as insistent about feeding me chocolate as the older women, but it was fun trying to talk to them. They spoke in a mixture of English and Arabic, which actually made things harder sometimes because I couldn't tell what language they were trying to talk to me in. I spent the last half of my time there walking up and down the street with a chatty 12-year-old, which was upsetting for Sadeel because she didn't want me to leave but she really didn't want to go too far from the house, either. I only understood about half of what was said to me, but she and I had a very nice conversation.
The next morning, Hamada went with me to the bus station so I could take the 10:30 bus back to Amman in order to get the bus to Aqaba at 2. Rachel (the girl I was traveling with) and I spent that night in Aqaba and, since it was finally allowed, went out for drinks with some other friends who were in Aqaba for Eid as well.
In the morning, we went down to the ferry dock and spent pretty much all day taking the “fast” ferry to Nuweiba and then getting a service to Dahab. The ferry ride itself was just about as advertised, just a bit over an hour, but after it departed late and we were then forced to wait on the boat for ages waiting to get off in Egypt, the whole experience from the time we got on till when we could finally leave took probably around five hours. Once on the ground in Egypt, we had to walk into a small air conditioned pyramid and back out the other side. Nothing happened inside, and there were no fences or barriers of any kind to prevent one from going around it, but for some reason passage through that pyramid was completely mandatory and we were all herded through, the few tourists and the masses of workers returning home. (For whatever reason, Egyptians are willing to do all the menial tasks Jordanians are too proud to do, and so despite high unemployment among young Jordanians, there are massive numbers of Egyptian workers in the Kingdom.) We managed to get a service with a bunch of other tourists, most going to Sharm el-Sheikh, and the ride to Dahab was mostly without incident. We did have to pass through several checkpoints, which presented no problem for any of us except the three Syrian men in the taxi, who had their passports checked every time.
In Dahab, we met up with Kris, our third travel buddy, who was already in Dahab getting dive certified. Actually, as Rachel and I were wandering about asking for directions to our hostel and looking lost, Kris and some of her diving friends happened to be strolling down the street. We spent the next two days lazing by the beach, splashing in the ocean, drinking milkshakes and $2 beers, and eating amazing, if expensive (for Egypt) food. It was really relaxing – Dahab is a really nice little town, despite being a huge nest of drug smugglers. (Because of the weird legal situation with Israel concerning the Sinai, Egypt doesn't do a lot of law enforcement in the area, and drug traffickers take full advantage.) One of the nicest things about it was that, though it was obviously a vacation town full of non-Arabs, most of the expats I met were actually living in the region (several were actually from Amman) and we met several Arab Jordanians as well.
On Thursday night, after a satisfying day of doing nothing, the three of us took a trip to Mt. Sinai. We departed Dahab at 11 PM and started climbing at about 1:30 in the morning. The monastery at the base was closed on Fridays, and that's apparently important to a lot of people who visit, so it was just the three of us and our guide on the path. We took a back way up, so once we got close to the top and met up with the main trail up, there were more people and some camels, but we were pretty close to the front of the back and kept working our way forward – I think the three of us were probably a bit younger and fitter than the average Mt. Sinai climber.
The last stretch up to the peak is entirely stairs, supposedly 750 of them, though I would like to ask whoever counted them how exactly they determined which rocks were stairs and which were just large irregularities in other stairs. We got to the top at 3:30 or 4 in the morning – it is entirely possible that we were the first to arrive on that particular day, aside from the Bedouin guides and coffee vendors – and had about an hour and a half to wait until the sunrise. It had been nice and warm hiking up (climbing hills will do that to a person) but once we had seated ourselves on an appropriately scenic rooftop, the chill and wind really started to make themselves felt. The three of us huddled together under every piece of clothing we had brought – our guide was smarter and rented himself a blanket and two mattresses – and tried to rest despite the cold. Somehow the time passed and eventually we sat up and discovered that we were no longer alone. There weren't huge crowds, but definitely more than there had been when we lay down. Now wearing literally every piece of clothing I had with me (FYI, if your ears are ever freezing and you lack a hat, a t-shirt with the sleeves tied behind the head makes a great hijab/kufiyyah-inspired head garment that does a great job of protecting not only your ears but your neck, forehead, and even nose, if need be), we finally got to see the sun rise, which was lovely. By this point, however, sleep deprivation was making us giggly and a little crazy, so we spent as much time taking photos of each others' bundled up forms and making ninja shadows on the rock wall behind us as enjoying the traditional view.
Eventually we did have to walk back down, which would have gone faster if we hadn't been stuck behind a large family of German tourists who were for some reason very cautious about descending steep uneven stone stairs. We had to wait a bit for the bus to take us back to Dahab, and we were all pretty much falling asleep by the time it got there. I remember almost none of the ride back. We ate lunch in Dahab (a tip if you ever go: for an excellent cheap lunch, go early enough to order one of the breakfasts – the Egyptian breakfast, for instance, includes pita bread, hummous, and enough other things to be plenty filling, and its much cheaper than getting one of the actual lunch dishes) then back to Nuweiba to ferry it home to Jordan. Again, the waiting around (to get on the boat in Egypt, on the boat in Egypt, on the boat in Jordan, to get our passports back in Jordan) was what took the longest time, and it was getting pretty late by the time we were ready to go anywhere. Luckily, our hotel did serve dinner. While we were eating we made the acquaintance of the group of South African pilots drinking at the next table, and ended up staying up a bit later than we had intended. As it turned out, they all lived in Amman, so we exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up again back home.
Only Rachel's cell phone was still with us and charged at that point, and somehow in the transition from Egypt to Jordan it had acquired the wrong time, so we missed our bus in the morning. This turned out to be a good thing, because the JETT buses run from Aqaba to Amman every two hours and now we had time for breakfast. We were back in Amman by 2, just in time to get started on homework for school the next day.
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4.10.09
I am alive!
Sorry it's been so long – we got back from Dahab midday last Saturday, I napped all afternoon and I've been trying to catch up ever since. We've had a lot of Arabic homework, plus extra studying to make up for everything I forgot while traveling and speaking mostly English, and I finally got an internship, with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, which is cool but does take up time.
But I am all right, and I'll attempt to get information about what I've been up to posted in the next few days. Hope everyone else is doing well also!
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But I am all right, and I'll attempt to get information about what I've been up to posted in the next few days. Hope everyone else is doing well also!
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17.9.09
Update
Not too much exciting going on this week, just school and the last week of Ramadan. I've got my schedule worked out - I will be taking the Politics of Water, 9 credits of Arabic, and auditing the internship class (I don't have an internship yet, so I can't enroll, but hopefully I'll be able to get one worked out after Eid.)
I'm going to be out of internet range for the next week because we're getting the whole week off for Eid. I'm leaving for Irbid tomorrow with my host family to visit their families. It's in the north of Jordan, the second largest city, but I've been told it's really more of a village. I'm coming back to Amman on Monday and heading back down to Aqaba, where I'll spend the night before taking a ferry to the Egyptian Sinai. I'm staying a couple days on the beach in Dahab, then climbing Mt. Sinai before I have to come back to school on Sunday.
That's going to be a little weird because UJ will actually be in session, so there will be about 40,000 students on campus, and everything will actually be open during regular hours, including places to eat. I'm actually really looking forward to it.
I hope everyone's doing well, and if we haven't talked recently you should think about sending me an e-mail telling me about your life. I want to know. Really!
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I'm going to be out of internet range for the next week because we're getting the whole week off for Eid. I'm leaving for Irbid tomorrow with my host family to visit their families. It's in the north of Jordan, the second largest city, but I've been told it's really more of a village. I'm coming back to Amman on Monday and heading back down to Aqaba, where I'll spend the night before taking a ferry to the Egyptian Sinai. I'm staying a couple days on the beach in Dahab, then climbing Mt. Sinai before I have to come back to school on Sunday.
That's going to be a little weird because UJ will actually be in session, so there will be about 40,000 students on campus, and everything will actually be open during regular hours, including places to eat. I'm actually really looking forward to it.
I hope everyone's doing well, and if we haven't talked recently you should think about sending me an e-mail telling me about your life. I want to know. Really!
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13.9.09
Crazy Weekend
For some reason, the people who planned our program thought that it would be a good idea to take the first week of school, cut off the last day, and attach it to an insanely busy weekend of traveling. We saw Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Petra in the span of three days, and then I still had almost 300 pages of reading to do when I got home.
We left early Thursday morning for Wadi Rum, stopping on the way at a large guest house where we were invited to buy overpriced paintings and Bedouin swords. The postcards were decent, though. At Wadi Rum, we got lunch at the Visitor's Center, watched a laughably breathless and psuedo-profound movie about the marvels of Wadi Rum, then wandered the exhibits of the Center. I'm sure that they were fascinating, but I was more interested in reading the French descriptions that accompanied the English. Most of the time, the translation was decent and seemed to say roughly the same thing, but occasionally I would run across two side-by-side paragraphs with similar headings that shared entirely different information.
When we were all totally fed up with that, they bussed us out to the middle of the desert and put us on camels. It was of course an interesting, unique experience, but camels are bad-tempered and riding them for three hours is not my idea of comfortable transportation. The sound of eighty angry camels is astounding. The scenery was incredible, but I felt as though I would have been able to appreciate it far more if I had been walking with our Bedouin guides instead of sitting on a saddle made of a worn out tweed suit jacket.
We stopped for the night at a Bedouin tourist camp. Watching the sunset from some rock outcroppings, I started to feel a bit more impressed by the area. And that night, lying under the stars, I really understood why so many people love Wadi Rum so much.
The following morning there was a three-hour ride in the back of a bouncing pickup, which was actually a lot of fun, but by the end I felt about as dusty as the time I hung out the back of a jeep on one of the dustier legs at Headwaters. The buses picked us up by the side of the highway and we headed to Aqaba.
Lunch was there, then out in boats for swimming and snorkeling. The coral reef near Aqaba is fantastic, even though I ran out of patience with salt water in my nose, mouth and eyes pretty quickly. We lept and dove off the side of the boat and hung out in the sun for several hours, then rinsed off and headed back.
We spent that night at another Bedouin tourist camp near the back entrance to Petra. We ate dinner, then climbed sand dunes and played star tipping in the dark. A large group of us took our mattresses out of the tents and slept in a prepared area outside, which was fantastic because all the lights in the camp turned off around 10:30 so we could enjoy the stars until we fell asleep.
The next morning was an early one so we could avoid the heat of the day. We walked from our camp to the Petra Monastery, about four miles up and down hills and across narrow ledges. I really enjoyed it because the scenery was beautiful and I haven't been getting enough exercise since I've been here. The monastery itself was incredible, and I hiked up to a view point with a great view of the mountains and desert around.
By the time we got down to the main part of Petra, ate lunch, and started wandering the other sights, I was getting pretty tired and hot, and so I didn't enjoy them as much, but it's all really cool.
Finally, we got to get back on the bus, and headed back to Amman for a late night of studying and finishing homework.
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We left early Thursday morning for Wadi Rum, stopping on the way at a large guest house where we were invited to buy overpriced paintings and Bedouin swords. The postcards were decent, though. At Wadi Rum, we got lunch at the Visitor's Center, watched a laughably breathless and psuedo-profound movie about the marvels of Wadi Rum, then wandered the exhibits of the Center. I'm sure that they were fascinating, but I was more interested in reading the French descriptions that accompanied the English. Most of the time, the translation was decent and seemed to say roughly the same thing, but occasionally I would run across two side-by-side paragraphs with similar headings that shared entirely different information.
When we were all totally fed up with that, they bussed us out to the middle of the desert and put us on camels. It was of course an interesting, unique experience, but camels are bad-tempered and riding them for three hours is not my idea of comfortable transportation. The sound of eighty angry camels is astounding. The scenery was incredible, but I felt as though I would have been able to appreciate it far more if I had been walking with our Bedouin guides instead of sitting on a saddle made of a worn out tweed suit jacket.
We stopped for the night at a Bedouin tourist camp. Watching the sunset from some rock outcroppings, I started to feel a bit more impressed by the area. And that night, lying under the stars, I really understood why so many people love Wadi Rum so much.
The following morning there was a three-hour ride in the back of a bouncing pickup, which was actually a lot of fun, but by the end I felt about as dusty as the time I hung out the back of a jeep on one of the dustier legs at Headwaters. The buses picked us up by the side of the highway and we headed to Aqaba.
Lunch was there, then out in boats for swimming and snorkeling. The coral reef near Aqaba is fantastic, even though I ran out of patience with salt water in my nose, mouth and eyes pretty quickly. We lept and dove off the side of the boat and hung out in the sun for several hours, then rinsed off and headed back.
We spent that night at another Bedouin tourist camp near the back entrance to Petra. We ate dinner, then climbed sand dunes and played star tipping in the dark. A large group of us took our mattresses out of the tents and slept in a prepared area outside, which was fantastic because all the lights in the camp turned off around 10:30 so we could enjoy the stars until we fell asleep.
The next morning was an early one so we could avoid the heat of the day. We walked from our camp to the Petra Monastery, about four miles up and down hills and across narrow ledges. I really enjoyed it because the scenery was beautiful and I haven't been getting enough exercise since I've been here. The monastery itself was incredible, and I hiked up to a view point with a great view of the mountains and desert around.
By the time we got down to the main part of Petra, ate lunch, and started wandering the other sights, I was getting pretty tired and hot, and so I didn't enjoy them as much, but it's all really cool.
Finally, we got to get back on the bus, and headed back to Amman for a late night of studying and finishing homework.
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Birthday Celebrations
To reassure anyone who was afraid that being in a foreign country would somehow stifle my celebrations, be reassured that I had a very good birthday. To be honest, most of the day didn't really feel like a birthday. I've spent the past month obsessing about traveling, so it kind of snuck up on me. I had to go to class in the morning, then to an internship interview which I failed because I didn't live close enough to the building.
Once I got home, though, life was pretty good. I did have to do homework, but I talked to my parents in MT for a few minutes before dinner. Iftar was a fantastic barbeque - three kinds of meat kebabs and grilled tomatoes and onions. Afterward, I went to a very cool lounge with some friends. One somehow managed to procure a mango and chocolate ice cream cake. I am determined to find it again while I'm here. We smoked hookah, ate Ramadan crescent cakes, and played charades until late.
I was thinking that spending a year traveling was a sufficient gift for any birthday, but in addition to the cake, I also got a snickers bar and a beautiful blue scarf from Syria. So yeah, I had a pretty good day.
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Once I got home, though, life was pretty good. I did have to do homework, but I talked to my parents in MT for a few minutes before dinner. Iftar was a fantastic barbeque - three kinds of meat kebabs and grilled tomatoes and onions. Afterward, I went to a very cool lounge with some friends. One somehow managed to procure a mango and chocolate ice cream cake. I am determined to find it again while I'm here. We smoked hookah, ate Ramadan crescent cakes, and played charades until late.
I was thinking that spending a year traveling was a sufficient gift for any birthday, but in addition to the cake, I also got a snickers bar and a beautiful blue scarf from Syria. So yeah, I had a pretty good day.
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8.9.09
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!
So yeah, I'm twenty today. And I'll be going out with some friends tonight, but in the meantime: I fasted for the first time yesterday, sunrise to sunset. By choice – my host family keeps asking if I'm sure I don't want to eat. It was, for me, a really interesting experience. I was really tired by the end of the day, and I did feel really hungry in the middle, but it wasn’t all that bad.
Anyway, I know you may have some questions – I've been in Jordan for over a week now, and all you've heard about is the orientation. So I wrote up some descriptions of various parts of my life. I tried to stay on topic, but most of them have a lot of random information thrown in with the main theme. I’m hoping it’s all useful or interesting, though. And if there's something you've always secretly wondered about the Middle East – or about me – I'll try to answer for you.
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Anyway, I know you may have some questions – I've been in Jordan for over a week now, and all you've heard about is the orientation. So I wrote up some descriptions of various parts of my life. I tried to stay on topic, but most of them have a lot of random information thrown in with the main theme. I’m hoping it’s all useful or interesting, though. And if there's something you've always secretly wondered about the Middle East – or about me – I'll try to answer for you.
More...
Family Life
As apprehensive as I was about my host family assignment – seriously, I was almost crying when Rana gave it to me – I have to say my first few days with them have been a success. They're taking very good care of me and my Arabic is improving already.
My host dad is Hamada. He works at the airport getting things through customs – Rana described him to me as an expediter for a logistics company. Oddly enough, his brother lives in Portland a few minutes from LC. I talked to him on the phone the other day. It was raining there, which is weird for me because I've seen maybe two clouds since I've been here. Hamada has the best English of anyone in the family, and he's super nice to me. He told me as soon as I got to their apartment that their house was my house and I should make myself comfortable. There's a minibus that I take to school and back, and he came with me in the morning then met me at school to go back so I would know where the bus stops were the first day. He's the only one in the family fasting because his wife, Niveen, is pregnant, the kids are too young, and I'm not Muslim so I can eat with them. Niveen doesn't speak a ton of English (although more than I do Arabic) but she's helping me with the words she does know. I started a notebook of words and she helps me spell or say them, and now that I've started classes offers to help with my homework.
The kids are adorable but really high energy. Yazan is five. He goes to school one day a week, likes to play with lego blocks and guns, and has so far taught me the words for airplane (tayara) hospital (mousteshfa) and animals (haiwanat). I wasn't sure we'd get along at first, but even though I still don't understand everything he says to me. Sadeel is three and just about the cutest kid I've ever met. She's kind of crazy sometimes – she spent probably the entire day Friday jumping up and down or running in circles around the living room. This led to some severe crankiness by late Saturday, but even though she's calmed down a bit she's still likes to blow me kisses and sit next to me, like she is now. Saturday, she spent at least half an hour brushing my hair, mostly the same section over and over and over.
Hamada and Niveen are trying to teach the kids English, which is really helpful because at this point the strategy is mostly to repeat English words and their Arabic equivalent over and over. I've learned most of the colors this way.
Their house is in a residential part of Amman, a neighborhood called Arjan. It's definitely not the richest part of the city, though it's hard to tell exactly how well off anyone is here, since appearances are a big deal. Hamada and Niveen's apartment is pretty small by US standards, but all of their things are nice. Around the house, everyone wears sweats or pajamas, but to go out we get dressed up. They all looked very nice when they first came to get me, in a friend's car.
I have my own room, although it used to be the kids’ and a lot of their stuff is still kept there, so they’re in and out all the time. For the most part I don’t mind, but Hamada and Niveen always worry that they’re bothering me, so last night Niveen gave me a key. I enjoy spending time with the kids, so I don’t think I’ll use it much, but it’ll be nice when I get tired of their constant energy.
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My host dad is Hamada. He works at the airport getting things through customs – Rana described him to me as an expediter for a logistics company. Oddly enough, his brother lives in Portland a few minutes from LC. I talked to him on the phone the other day. It was raining there, which is weird for me because I've seen maybe two clouds since I've been here. Hamada has the best English of anyone in the family, and he's super nice to me. He told me as soon as I got to their apartment that their house was my house and I should make myself comfortable. There's a minibus that I take to school and back, and he came with me in the morning then met me at school to go back so I would know where the bus stops were the first day. He's the only one in the family fasting because his wife, Niveen, is pregnant, the kids are too young, and I'm not Muslim so I can eat with them. Niveen doesn't speak a ton of English (although more than I do Arabic) but she's helping me with the words she does know. I started a notebook of words and she helps me spell or say them, and now that I've started classes offers to help with my homework.
The kids are adorable but really high energy. Yazan is five. He goes to school one day a week, likes to play with lego blocks and guns, and has so far taught me the words for airplane (tayara) hospital (mousteshfa) and animals (haiwanat). I wasn't sure we'd get along at first, but even though I still don't understand everything he says to me. Sadeel is three and just about the cutest kid I've ever met. She's kind of crazy sometimes – she spent probably the entire day Friday jumping up and down or running in circles around the living room. This led to some severe crankiness by late Saturday, but even though she's calmed down a bit she's still likes to blow me kisses and sit next to me, like she is now. Saturday, she spent at least half an hour brushing my hair, mostly the same section over and over and over.
Hamada and Niveen are trying to teach the kids English, which is really helpful because at this point the strategy is mostly to repeat English words and their Arabic equivalent over and over. I've learned most of the colors this way.
Their house is in a residential part of Amman, a neighborhood called Arjan. It's definitely not the richest part of the city, though it's hard to tell exactly how well off anyone is here, since appearances are a big deal. Hamada and Niveen's apartment is pretty small by US standards, but all of their things are nice. Around the house, everyone wears sweats or pajamas, but to go out we get dressed up. They all looked very nice when they first came to get me, in a friend's car.
I have my own room, although it used to be the kids’ and a lot of their stuff is still kept there, so they’re in and out all the time. For the most part I don’t mind, but Hamada and Niveen always worry that they’re bothering me, so last night Niveen gave me a key. I enjoy spending time with the kids, so I don’t think I’ll use it much, but it’ll be nice when I get tired of their constant energy.
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The First Jordanian Food Post
It may be Ramadan, but I'm definitely not starving. There's always a ton of food for iftar, and so far there are very few things I don't like. Now that I'm in a homestay, I haven't seen anymore hummus, but cheese (joobn) seems to be a fixture wherever I go. I'm always being offered juice or tea or coffee. We start most dinners with noodles in cilantro broth, and Hamada breaks the fast with dates. Breakfast is usually pita with yogurt cheese, jam, honey, white cheese, olives, cucumbers and so forth, although on Saturday we did have cereal and milk – here, they heat the milk before pouring it in, which makes cereal a little weird.
Dinner the first night (Thursday) was rice mixed with noodles and a meat and vegetable stew. Lunch on Friday was leftovers from the first dinner. That night, we had the last of the noodles and rice with baked chicken and a green sauce, and Saturday we had the same thing with just rice.
Any poor college students planning on living on their own in the Middle East will be happy to hear that there IS ramen, which is what we had for lunch Saturday. It was called something like 'instant noodles' on the package but as far as I could tell it was pretty much exactly what's available in the States. There are ads on the cartoon channel for it all the time. Actually, it seems like you can get almost any American food here in Amman, although obviously it may not be quite the same thing. There's Burger King, Subway (one of the only places open, for takeout, near the university during the day - a lot of kids get food there), Hardy's, Chili's, Tony Romo... And a lot of the grocery stores carry things like bread, jam, and so forth. Hamada brings home candy and chips a lot of the time when he goes to the store, and the first birthday gift I got today was a Snickers bar (thanks, Briana!!!)
Sunday was my first day of school, and eating is definitely not allowed on campus - most of us just sneak our food in bathrooms or stairwells - but when I got home Niveen had a snack ready. In the evening there was lentils and a cucumber-tomato salad – we mixed them together to eat – eaten by hand with pita bread, as well as yogurt and cucumber sauce, eaten separately. I stayed up really late that night that night, so we ate again, a breakfast-type meal, before I went to bed.
I decided on Monday that since I had eaten so late the night before it would be a good day to try fasting, so I didn't eat again until iftar at seven. We had the most famous Jordanian meal, mansaf, which is rice and meat with a yogurt sauce poured over the top. It is excellent, and after fasting, I had room to eat a ton of it. Our late evening snack was potato chips. They came in little bags like American chips, but instead of normal chip shape, they were formed into a little ring. They tasted pretty much the same, though. If you typically eat your chips paprika-flavored.
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Dinner the first night (Thursday) was rice mixed with noodles and a meat and vegetable stew. Lunch on Friday was leftovers from the first dinner. That night, we had the last of the noodles and rice with baked chicken and a green sauce, and Saturday we had the same thing with just rice.
Any poor college students planning on living on their own in the Middle East will be happy to hear that there IS ramen, which is what we had for lunch Saturday. It was called something like 'instant noodles' on the package but as far as I could tell it was pretty much exactly what's available in the States. There are ads on the cartoon channel for it all the time. Actually, it seems like you can get almost any American food here in Amman, although obviously it may not be quite the same thing. There's Burger King, Subway (one of the only places open, for takeout, near the university during the day - a lot of kids get food there), Hardy's, Chili's, Tony Romo... And a lot of the grocery stores carry things like bread, jam, and so forth. Hamada brings home candy and chips a lot of the time when he goes to the store, and the first birthday gift I got today was a Snickers bar (thanks, Briana!!!)
Sunday was my first day of school, and eating is definitely not allowed on campus - most of us just sneak our food in bathrooms or stairwells - but when I got home Niveen had a snack ready. In the evening there was lentils and a cucumber-tomato salad – we mixed them together to eat – eaten by hand with pita bread, as well as yogurt and cucumber sauce, eaten separately. I stayed up really late that night that night, so we ate again, a breakfast-type meal, before I went to bed.
I decided on Monday that since I had eaten so late the night before it would be a good day to try fasting, so I didn't eat again until iftar at seven. We had the most famous Jordanian meal, mansaf, which is rice and meat with a yogurt sauce poured over the top. It is excellent, and after fasting, I had room to eat a ton of it. Our late evening snack was potato chips. They came in little bags like American chips, but instead of normal chip shape, they were formed into a little ring. They tasted pretty much the same, though. If you typically eat your chips paprika-flavored.
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"Study Abroad is Not a Vacation"
So yeah, I do have to go to school, Sunday thru Thursday, at the university of Jordan. So far I’ve had three days of Arabic classes and one session of each of my other courses. Currently I’m taking a class on the politics of water and one on recent Islamic thought, but I’m hoping to get an internship and if so I’ll drop one. They both seem really interesting, though, so I’m not sure which it’ll be. It depends a bit on my schedule – if I have to go to the internship between classes I’ll keep the later one (my Arabic is in the morning and the others in the afternoon, with several hours in between) but if not I might want to go home sooner. Also, the politics of water class is held in a building that’s about twenty minutes from everything else. The teacher is trying to get a new classroom, but if it’s still that far away I may just have to take the other class.
The University of Jordan is a huge campus with around 40,000 students when it’s in session. Because it’s Ramadan right now, the normal university session has been delayed until after Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan. Even so, there are people all over the campus, and I’m not really looking forward to how busy it’ll get once classes are in session. (It will be nice to have the cafeteria open, though.) For the moment, the campus is only open from 8 til about 3, so our class schedule has been compressed to fit within that time. Normally, I’ll end class around 5, but right now I get done at 3 on my longest days (area studies classes are only M/W though), with no scheduled breaks in between. However, almost every class so far has gotten out half an hour before the time listed on the schedule, if not more. This may be partly because we’re just starting out and still figuring out where things are and how things work, but someone did tell me it’s fairly normal.
More on school later, when I know more.
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The University of Jordan is a huge campus with around 40,000 students when it’s in session. Because it’s Ramadan right now, the normal university session has been delayed until after Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan. Even so, there are people all over the campus, and I’m not really looking forward to how busy it’ll get once classes are in session. (It will be nice to have the cafeteria open, though.) For the moment, the campus is only open from 8 til about 3, so our class schedule has been compressed to fit within that time. Normally, I’ll end class around 5, but right now I get done at 3 on my longest days (area studies classes are only M/W though), with no scheduled breaks in between. However, almost every class so far has gotten out half an hour before the time listed on the schedule, if not more. This may be partly because we’re just starting out and still figuring out where things are and how things work, but someone did tell me it’s fairly normal.
More on school later, when I know more.
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3.9.09
Last Day of Orientation!
I'm freaking out a bit right now because we just had our home stay meeting, and my family speaks “functional” – i.e., very little – English, and I speak very little Arabic (and even less USEFUL Arabic). I am trying very hard to convince myself that this is a good thing, that I will be forced to speak Arabic and get much better this way, but it's still super intimidating. Plus they have small children – I'm so bad with little kids, much less those who don't speak English. By lucky coincidence, though, one of the gifts I brought is a Missoula coloring book, so I have something to offer at least. It's going to be okay. Really.
We've spent yesterday and today at and near the University of Jordan learning our way around. The campus is large, but very pretty. It's closed for Ramadan, so there are very few people around except our program. I survived the placement test, and hopefully I'll be told sometime soon that I got into the appropriate class. We got a campus tour and watched a movie about the coolest places in Jordan according to the king and his skydiving, rock-climbing, waterfall-rappelling family. So cool. The reporter accompanying the king, however, was overweight, rude, annoying, and just so unbearably American. I wanted to strangle him, I was so uncomfortable watching it.
We went to the American embassy in the afternoon for a security briefing, which was more useful than I was anticipating. The embassy, though, is basically a fortress. We had to go through probably three metal detectors, have all our passports checked and go through a long succession of revolving barred gates. There were Jordanian jeeps with machine guns at every entrance – although these seem to be pretty common throughout Amman. The military is everywhere here, lounging under shade covers or in tanks and jeeps, and they're all very well armed – constant reminders that the security forces here are some of the most powerful in the world. (And the intelligence service is better maybe even than Israel's – don't misbehave here!)
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We've spent yesterday and today at and near the University of Jordan learning our way around. The campus is large, but very pretty. It's closed for Ramadan, so there are very few people around except our program. I survived the placement test, and hopefully I'll be told sometime soon that I got into the appropriate class. We got a campus tour and watched a movie about the coolest places in Jordan according to the king and his skydiving, rock-climbing, waterfall-rappelling family. So cool. The reporter accompanying the king, however, was overweight, rude, annoying, and just so unbearably American. I wanted to strangle him, I was so uncomfortable watching it.
We went to the American embassy in the afternoon for a security briefing, which was more useful than I was anticipating. The embassy, though, is basically a fortress. We had to go through probably three metal detectors, have all our passports checked and go through a long succession of revolving barred gates. There were Jordanian jeeps with machine guns at every entrance – although these seem to be pretty common throughout Amman. The military is everywhere here, lounging under shade covers or in tanks and jeeps, and they're all very well armed – constant reminders that the security forces here are some of the most powerful in the world. (And the intelligence service is better maybe even than Israel's – don't misbehave here!)
Last night we had a fancy dinner in the courtyard of what was basically a castle. It was really awkward going in among all the other patrons, eighty loud Americans. I'm going to be really happy to get out of the tour group situation. There was so much food – soup and bread and hummus and salads and three kinds of meat, with the crescent cookies, this time with walnuts and raisins.
After we got back, I was in the lobby talking to a girl who spent the summer here on a CIEE program. She was going out with some friends and invited me along. I was tired but said yes – I was so sick of doing the big group, organized activity thing. We went to a very cool coffeeshop near the first circle (Amman has lots of circles) and met up with a friend of hers and some friends of his who were studying in Damascus and were in Amman for the week. A couple other girls from the CIEE program showed up – including one who had grown up with one of my freshman roommates. We hung out and talked, and plotted trips to Syria and Lebanon – I am becoming determined to visit both. We walked up to the third circle to visit Reem Shwarma, apparently the best shwarma in Amman. It was past one by the time we got back – my last late night for a while, since my homestay curfew is 10 PM.
Update: We got our Arabic placements and class schedules, finally. I'm in the class I wanted (on the politics of water) and the level I think is right (second beginner). So I'm pretty happy about that. I went to a bookstore and got a dictionary – I'm not sure I could meet my host family without one. And now I'm sitting in the hotel waiting to meet them in fifteen minutes. It should be a long, awkward weekend of broken conversation and TV watching.
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1.9.09
Marhaba min Amman!
I've been in Jordan for just over a day right now, and I'm not sure I'm much closer to being non-overwhelmed than I was when I got here, but I'll try to chill out enough to tell ya'll (whoever you may be) what I've been up to.
Because I know sometimes I get bored reading about everything someone's been doing, I'll simple and build up to the most detailed description of events. Just read as far as you're interested.
Important events:
Monday - arriving in Amman without loss of luggage, being really tired, meeting lots of new people, smoking sheesha with about thirty other American students
Tuesday - waking up early, orientation presentation, going to the Dead Sea, seeing the mountains of Palestine, learning about my internship options, swimming in the Dead Sea, going to a Jordanian grocery store
Assorted observations and notes:
- Jordan has a long life expectancy than the US, despite having much less money and water
- I am finding lots of people who want to travel after the program ends, which bodes well for a trip to Lebanon
- I have eaten hummus for every meal so far, including breakfast - I wonder how soon I'll start hating it (not even close yet)
- I have internship interviews with two NGOs that are promoting the development of democracy in Jordan! Wish me luck!
- I turn twenty in a week!!!
Ramadan: The lunar calendar says that Ramadan is to be celebrated from 20 August until around 20 September. (They won't know exactly until they know when the crescent moon will reappear, which makes it interesting trying to plan ahead, since holidays from school are scheduled around the end.) It's a very important holiday here, and you can get in trouble (UJ security will kick you off the university campus) for not obeying the fast in public from dawn till dusk. Even drinking water is prohibited. During the day, restaurants aren't allowed to serve anything but takeout, there's no smoking, and only five-star hotels are allowed to serve alcohol during the month, no matter what time it is. (One girl in the program turned twenty-one today. She will not be celebrating in properly American style for quite a while - and even when alcohol is sold, the 200% tax makes it a bit pricey here.) There are exceptions to the no eating/drinking rule for things like travel, and food is still served during the day at touristy places like the Dead Sea resort we went to for lunch. But starting tomorrow, we're going to have to be pretty much fasting for the rest of the month. School days will be shorter than normal, though, which makes that a little easier. One other difficulty is that many foreigners (especially Westerners) leave the country during Ramadan, so a lot of the internship interviews with foreign-controlled NGOs won't happen until after it's over - luckily one of mine is run by one of the Jordanian professors here.
First impressions of Jordan/Amman: there's not very much color here. Everything seems to be shades of brown and tan - the houses, the land, even the sky is colored by dust around the edges (although so far it's been incredibly blue overhead.) The Jordanians use a lot of limestone for building, according to the guide we had today. Nearly all the buildings are similarly colored square blocks of stone in various sizes and states of (dis)repair. From a distance, it can be hard to distinguish which buildings have windows and which don't, and none of the ones we passed seemed to be really crumbling, which made it more difficult to visualize the economic conditions than in some countries. There are some more temporary structures, mainly tents, and maybe all of the people in the stone houses are moderately well off (Amman is considerably wealthier than the south and east of the country) but I'm not getting as much of an impression of poverty from the buildings as I have in the other countries I've visited, despite the unhappy economic figures we got in part of the orientation - the numbers are pretty similar to Guatemala. Maybe I simply haven't seen the right parts yet.
Upcoming:
Tomorrow - an Arabic oral interview and placement test I am going to do terribly at
Thursday - moving in with my host family
6 September (yes, that is Sunday) - beginning of classes
8 September - my birthday (I want to be really sure you remember it's coming)
10-12 September - trip to Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Petra
More details: I got here on Monday at about 5 PM, which is 7 AM Portland time, after having slept for approximately six hours out of the previous 48. I was so tired I almost fell asleep in the car from the airport (where I arrived, obtained a visa, found my luggage and got through customs without any problems). There were ten or fifteen CIEE students on my flight (direct from Chicago - twelve hours!) so there were lots of people and cars there to meet us. There were two other students in the car, but it was entirely silent all the way to the hotel, except for one occasion, just before we arrived, when the driver pointed out the commercial district nearby where we could find shopping and - of more interest to most of us - coffeeshops where we could go to smoke sheesha (which, for any family members reading this, is simply flavored tobacco smoked in a water pipe - it's legal in the US).
We got to the hotel, got checked in and met our roommates (I'd actually met mine in the airport in Chicago - it was pretty to pick out the students on exchange from the other people on the very uncrowded flight), bought Jordanian phones, got our orientation packets and so forth. It's Ramadan right now, so only really touristy places serve food during the day, but by the time we got to the hotel we didn't have long to wait before iftar - the evening breaking of the fast - was served at 7. The food was good, nothing particularly bizarre, at least among what I tried, but my hands were shaking I was so tired.
Afterwards, a big group decided to go out to a sheesha bar. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go, but my roommate and a couple other girls I'd met on the plane or eaten dinner with were going on a walk with some of the (female) student interns from UJ. Most of them speak three or four languages (a couple are studying Spanish and Hebrew in school, and they all have really good English), and they gave us useful advice about living in Jordan. Eventually they had to go back, and the rest of us wandered on to the coffeehouse where the other CIEE kids were hanging out and smoking water pipes. The waiters pulled a table over to the end of their table and we sat and smoked and talked for a while. I was tired so the sheesha made me light-headed really quickly, and eventually it got rough and made a lot of us start coughing, but it was really cheap and lasted a long time.
We went back and I tried (and failed) to get on the internet - so many Americans trying to get online at the same time had totally destroyed the wireless network at the hotel. Eventually I gave up and passed out in bed.
We had to wake up early this morning in order to eat breakfast before being bussed to the Dead Sea. There was a mixture of Jordanian and Western food available - pita and hummus, eggs, corn flakes and milk. It took about an hour to get from Amman to our first destination, the Dead Sea Panorama Complex (exactly what it sounds like - a museum with a spectacular view of the Dead Sea and across to Palestine). We had a guide who told us many interesting things about Jordan, most of which I don't remember. When we got close to the Dead Sea, I started to get texts on my new phone from the phone company welcoming me to Palestine and urging me to "Smell the jasmine and taste the olives." I love this country already.
At the Panorama Complex, we had a chance to take pictures before we were all herded into a windowless meeting room for our orientation. We heard about strategies for coping with being in Jordan (don't forget you're not in the US!), some of the major obvious differences between the US and Jordan and their implications, reviewed the schedule, played a mass 'getting to know you' game, had a lovely coffee/tea break with yummy pastries, and at the end had some time to see the museum and explore before the bus took us down to the sea itself.
We were taken to a four-star resort hotel on the shore of the Dead Sea, where we were served a fabulous lunch buffet along with all the wealthy European tourists there. It was incredibly hot - much hotter than Amman - probably because the Dead Sea is the lowest place in the world, leading to warm temperatures year round. I had to wait to get in the water because I had a meeting to talk to the directors about internship placement - I have two interviews that I'm really excited about, and I really hope I get picked for one. After that, though, I had almost two hours to swim in the sea and the less salty swimming pools nearby. It is incredible how well you float - I didn't really get it until I actually felt it. When the waves were strong, it was really hard to stay standing because your body just wanted to float up. Also, the salt really stung around my fingernails, where the edges were a little raw.
I didn't get the black mud put on me, but there was a guy there with a bucket who would if you wanted. I did have to shower off the salt before going up to the other pools - my skin was slippery with it. Because it was a tourist place, in addition to getting lunch we could wear our American swimming suits, and luckily I picked my one-piece, because there was a lap pool and I was desperately in need of some exercise. In one of the other pools, there was a water slide, but it ran almost horizontally and if you tried to go down sitting up you had trouble making it to the bottom - I figured out that you had to go down flat but the girl in front of me hadn't, so we briefly became very close friends. The next time around, she worked out that you could go down very quickly if you went headfirst, so that became the new method and there were no further collisions.
Coming back, we went by a more direct route. At the north end of the sea, across the Jordan River, we could see Jericho, and the guide said that you could see the lights of Jerusalem in the hills above - maybe when it gets dark? I dozed part of the way, tired from sun and general lack of sleep.
Back at the hotel, I managed to get internet (hooray!) but didn't do anything useful and then we had dinner - fried fish and dates in addition to the ever-present hummus, pita, cucumber and tomato. There were crescent cakes filled with coconut and walnut, which I guess are traditional at Ramadan, as are the dates. Post-dinner, I went with some girls to an ATM and then to try to find a shop selling phone cards. We ran into another group who said all the little stores were closed, so we went to a grocery instead. They had phone cards there, but there were so many of us they were starting to run out and I decided to wait until tomorrow to get one. Other than the Arabic lettering all over the place, though, the store could almost have been an American grocery - just as well stocked, many of the same brands, bright clean modern facility (and you know, a lot of grocery stores that I can think of in America are located in square, tan-brick buildings too).
And then I came back, gave up on trying to study for the placement test (no matter how much I review, I just don't remember enough for it to be useful) and got on the internet - and this time I actually communicated with people!
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Because I know sometimes I get bored reading about everything someone's been doing, I'll simple and build up to the most detailed description of events. Just read as far as you're interested.
Important events:
Monday - arriving in Amman without loss of luggage, being really tired, meeting lots of new people, smoking sheesha with about thirty other American students
Tuesday - waking up early, orientation presentation, going to the Dead Sea, seeing the mountains of Palestine, learning about my internship options, swimming in the Dead Sea, going to a Jordanian grocery store
Assorted observations and notes:
- Jordan has a long life expectancy than the US, despite having much less money and water
- I am finding lots of people who want to travel after the program ends, which bodes well for a trip to Lebanon
- I have eaten hummus for every meal so far, including breakfast - I wonder how soon I'll start hating it (not even close yet)
- I have internship interviews with two NGOs that are promoting the development of democracy in Jordan! Wish me luck!
- I turn twenty in a week!!!
Ramadan: The lunar calendar says that Ramadan is to be celebrated from 20 August until around 20 September. (They won't know exactly until they know when the crescent moon will reappear, which makes it interesting trying to plan ahead, since holidays from school are scheduled around the end.) It's a very important holiday here, and you can get in trouble (UJ security will kick you off the university campus) for not obeying the fast in public from dawn till dusk. Even drinking water is prohibited. During the day, restaurants aren't allowed to serve anything but takeout, there's no smoking, and only five-star hotels are allowed to serve alcohol during the month, no matter what time it is. (One girl in the program turned twenty-one today. She will not be celebrating in properly American style for quite a while - and even when alcohol is sold, the 200% tax makes it a bit pricey here.) There are exceptions to the no eating/drinking rule for things like travel, and food is still served during the day at touristy places like the Dead Sea resort we went to for lunch. But starting tomorrow, we're going to have to be pretty much fasting for the rest of the month. School days will be shorter than normal, though, which makes that a little easier. One other difficulty is that many foreigners (especially Westerners) leave the country during Ramadan, so a lot of the internship interviews with foreign-controlled NGOs won't happen until after it's over - luckily one of mine is run by one of the Jordanian professors here.
First impressions of Jordan/Amman: there's not very much color here. Everything seems to be shades of brown and tan - the houses, the land, even the sky is colored by dust around the edges (although so far it's been incredibly blue overhead.) The Jordanians use a lot of limestone for building, according to the guide we had today. Nearly all the buildings are similarly colored square blocks of stone in various sizes and states of (dis)repair. From a distance, it can be hard to distinguish which buildings have windows and which don't, and none of the ones we passed seemed to be really crumbling, which made it more difficult to visualize the economic conditions than in some countries. There are some more temporary structures, mainly tents, and maybe all of the people in the stone houses are moderately well off (Amman is considerably wealthier than the south and east of the country) but I'm not getting as much of an impression of poverty from the buildings as I have in the other countries I've visited, despite the unhappy economic figures we got in part of the orientation - the numbers are pretty similar to Guatemala. Maybe I simply haven't seen the right parts yet.
Upcoming:
Tomorrow - an Arabic oral interview and placement test I am going to do terribly at
Thursday - moving in with my host family
6 September (yes, that is Sunday) - beginning of classes
8 September - my birthday (I want to be really sure you remember it's coming)
10-12 September - trip to Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Petra
More details: I got here on Monday at about 5 PM, which is 7 AM Portland time, after having slept for approximately six hours out of the previous 48. I was so tired I almost fell asleep in the car from the airport (where I arrived, obtained a visa, found my luggage and got through customs without any problems). There were ten or fifteen CIEE students on my flight (direct from Chicago - twelve hours!) so there were lots of people and cars there to meet us. There were two other students in the car, but it was entirely silent all the way to the hotel, except for one occasion, just before we arrived, when the driver pointed out the commercial district nearby where we could find shopping and - of more interest to most of us - coffeeshops where we could go to smoke sheesha (which, for any family members reading this, is simply flavored tobacco smoked in a water pipe - it's legal in the US).
We got to the hotel, got checked in and met our roommates (I'd actually met mine in the airport in Chicago - it was pretty to pick out the students on exchange from the other people on the very uncrowded flight), bought Jordanian phones, got our orientation packets and so forth. It's Ramadan right now, so only really touristy places serve food during the day, but by the time we got to the hotel we didn't have long to wait before iftar - the evening breaking of the fast - was served at 7. The food was good, nothing particularly bizarre, at least among what I tried, but my hands were shaking I was so tired.
Afterwards, a big group decided to go out to a sheesha bar. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go, but my roommate and a couple other girls I'd met on the plane or eaten dinner with were going on a walk with some of the (female) student interns from UJ. Most of them speak three or four languages (a couple are studying Spanish and Hebrew in school, and they all have really good English), and they gave us useful advice about living in Jordan. Eventually they had to go back, and the rest of us wandered on to the coffeehouse where the other CIEE kids were hanging out and smoking water pipes. The waiters pulled a table over to the end of their table and we sat and smoked and talked for a while. I was tired so the sheesha made me light-headed really quickly, and eventually it got rough and made a lot of us start coughing, but it was really cheap and lasted a long time.
We went back and I tried (and failed) to get on the internet - so many Americans trying to get online at the same time had totally destroyed the wireless network at the hotel. Eventually I gave up and passed out in bed.
We had to wake up early this morning in order to eat breakfast before being bussed to the Dead Sea. There was a mixture of Jordanian and Western food available - pita and hummus, eggs, corn flakes and milk. It took about an hour to get from Amman to our first destination, the Dead Sea Panorama Complex (exactly what it sounds like - a museum with a spectacular view of the Dead Sea and across to Palestine). We had a guide who told us many interesting things about Jordan, most of which I don't remember. When we got close to the Dead Sea, I started to get texts on my new phone from the phone company welcoming me to Palestine and urging me to "Smell the jasmine and taste the olives." I love this country already.
At the Panorama Complex, we had a chance to take pictures before we were all herded into a windowless meeting room for our orientation. We heard about strategies for coping with being in Jordan (don't forget you're not in the US!), some of the major obvious differences between the US and Jordan and their implications, reviewed the schedule, played a mass 'getting to know you' game, had a lovely coffee/tea break with yummy pastries, and at the end had some time to see the museum and explore before the bus took us down to the sea itself.
We were taken to a four-star resort hotel on the shore of the Dead Sea, where we were served a fabulous lunch buffet along with all the wealthy European tourists there. It was incredibly hot - much hotter than Amman - probably because the Dead Sea is the lowest place in the world, leading to warm temperatures year round. I had to wait to get in the water because I had a meeting to talk to the directors about internship placement - I have two interviews that I'm really excited about, and I really hope I get picked for one. After that, though, I had almost two hours to swim in the sea and the less salty swimming pools nearby. It is incredible how well you float - I didn't really get it until I actually felt it. When the waves were strong, it was really hard to stay standing because your body just wanted to float up. Also, the salt really stung around my fingernails, where the edges were a little raw.
I didn't get the black mud put on me, but there was a guy there with a bucket who would if you wanted. I did have to shower off the salt before going up to the other pools - my skin was slippery with it. Because it was a tourist place, in addition to getting lunch we could wear our American swimming suits, and luckily I picked my one-piece, because there was a lap pool and I was desperately in need of some exercise. In one of the other pools, there was a water slide, but it ran almost horizontally and if you tried to go down sitting up you had trouble making it to the bottom - I figured out that you had to go down flat but the girl in front of me hadn't, so we briefly became very close friends. The next time around, she worked out that you could go down very quickly if you went headfirst, so that became the new method and there were no further collisions.
Coming back, we went by a more direct route. At the north end of the sea, across the Jordan River, we could see Jericho, and the guide said that you could see the lights of Jerusalem in the hills above - maybe when it gets dark? I dozed part of the way, tired from sun and general lack of sleep.
Back at the hotel, I managed to get internet (hooray!) but didn't do anything useful and then we had dinner - fried fish and dates in addition to the ever-present hummus, pita, cucumber and tomato. There were crescent cakes filled with coconut and walnut, which I guess are traditional at Ramadan, as are the dates. Post-dinner, I went with some girls to an ATM and then to try to find a shop selling phone cards. We ran into another group who said all the little stores were closed, so we went to a grocery instead. They had phone cards there, but there were so many of us they were starting to run out and I decided to wait until tomorrow to get one. Other than the Arabic lettering all over the place, though, the store could almost have been an American grocery - just as well stocked, many of the same brands, bright clean modern facility (and you know, a lot of grocery stores that I can think of in America are located in square, tan-brick buildings too).
And then I came back, gave up on trying to study for the placement test (no matter how much I review, I just don't remember enough for it to be useful) and got on the internet - and this time I actually communicated with people!
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8.2.09
Basically, I'm an amazing cook
Or else just really good at finding amazing recipes. In either case, I've been bringing some pretty nice cooking smells to my hall recently.
First were these incredible triple ginger cookies - I actually stuck pretty close to this recipe. I forgot to roll the cookies in sugar, and I didn't have lemon rind so I used a tsp or two of extract instead. So good!
And after those were gone (I made many, many small ones, but they still disappeared very rapidly) I made pineapple cookies, since my collection of various interesting nonperishables was beginning to seem a bit large and I was looking for an inspiration to try a new cookie variety. I used one of the many basic recipes on Allrecipes (I think this was it), but added ground ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves, and walnuts for a more interesting taste & texture. The dough is really sticky - a little more flour might do well - but the cookies are great.
Then, yesterday I made my first yeast bread ever! I was so proud of myself! The recipe, for a Rosemary-Olive bread, came from my "Sun-Drenched Cuisine" cookbook ($5 at my favorite used book store!). I didn't have any olives (and I don't like them anyway) or fresh rosemary, so my bread was thyme and red pepper (for some reason, I have a whole jar of sweet roasted peppers right now). I have to say, it turned out pretty well. And now I can make my own interesting bread, instead of spending so much money on specialty breads at the store.
And for brunch today, since I have also a whole bag of yams and sweet potatoes needing to be eaten, I made sweet potato friatta (the original idea is here, although I only used the recipe as a really basic guideline). It's super easy, though it does take some time to cook. I chopped up a couple of small yams - I think that's what they were, though I had both those and sweet potatoes and don't necessarily know the difference. Anyway, I chopped them up (you might want to peel them at this point), threw them into a pie pan (that being the baking dish from my limited supply that seemed most suitable), and baked them at 375 degrees for a while, basically until they were soft. At this point, I removed the yam peels, chopped up some onion and some more of those sweet peppers and added them to the yam chunks - which I also cut a bit smaller, though the size is really up to your preference. For once I did the smart thing and beat my eggs in a separate bowl. I only had two, so I used those, about half a cup of cream, and the end of a bag of shredded cheese, probably somewhere between a fourth and half cup. (As you may have noticed, I was not really into measuring things today.) Instead of using nutmeg as the original recipe recommends, I stirred in some garlic powder (minced would probably have been better, but I was too lazy to bother), sage, and basil - I'm really not a salt and pepper girl, so those got left out also - then poured the whole concocotion over the veggies in the pie dish. Some thyme sprinkled on top and into the oven it went, turned down to 325 and then 315 when I decided the edges were cooking too quickly. When it was lovely and bubbly and just starting to brown on top, somewhere around half an hour, I took it out. Perfect Sunday morning food: easily adjustable for whatever you happen to have about, not too difficult to make despite the lesuirely pace of the process, and both yummy and filling!
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First were these incredible triple ginger cookies - I actually stuck pretty close to this recipe. I forgot to roll the cookies in sugar, and I didn't have lemon rind so I used a tsp or two of extract instead. So good!
And after those were gone (I made many, many small ones, but they still disappeared very rapidly) I made pineapple cookies, since my collection of various interesting nonperishables was beginning to seem a bit large and I was looking for an inspiration to try a new cookie variety. I used one of the many basic recipes on Allrecipes (I think this was it), but added ground ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves, and walnuts for a more interesting taste & texture. The dough is really sticky - a little more flour might do well - but the cookies are great.
Then, yesterday I made my first yeast bread ever! I was so proud of myself! The recipe, for a Rosemary-Olive bread, came from my "Sun-Drenched Cuisine" cookbook ($5 at my favorite used book store!). I didn't have any olives (and I don't like them anyway) or fresh rosemary, so my bread was thyme and red pepper (for some reason, I have a whole jar of sweet roasted peppers right now). I have to say, it turned out pretty well. And now I can make my own interesting bread, instead of spending so much money on specialty breads at the store.
And for brunch today, since I have also a whole bag of yams and sweet potatoes needing to be eaten, I made sweet potato friatta (the original idea is here, although I only used the recipe as a really basic guideline). It's super easy, though it does take some time to cook. I chopped up a couple of small yams - I think that's what they were, though I had both those and sweet potatoes and don't necessarily know the difference. Anyway, I chopped them up (you might want to peel them at this point), threw them into a pie pan (that being the baking dish from my limited supply that seemed most suitable), and baked them at 375 degrees for a while, basically until they were soft. At this point, I removed the yam peels, chopped up some onion and some more of those sweet peppers and added them to the yam chunks - which I also cut a bit smaller, though the size is really up to your preference. For once I did the smart thing and beat my eggs in a separate bowl. I only had two, so I used those, about half a cup of cream, and the end of a bag of shredded cheese, probably somewhere between a fourth and half cup. (As you may have noticed, I was not really into measuring things today.) Instead of using nutmeg as the original recipe recommends, I stirred in some garlic powder (minced would probably have been better, but I was too lazy to bother), sage, and basil - I'm really not a salt and pepper girl, so those got left out also - then poured the whole concocotion over the veggies in the pie dish. Some thyme sprinkled on top and into the oven it went, turned down to 325 and then 315 when I decided the edges were cooking too quickly. When it was lovely and bubbly and just starting to brown on top, somewhere around half an hour, I took it out. Perfect Sunday morning food: easily adjustable for whatever you happen to have about, not too difficult to make despite the lesuirely pace of the process, and both yummy and filling!
More...
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