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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17.9.09
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.
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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!
More...
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!
More...
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