yella bye

so, as i write this, it's raining cats and dogs in amman (masha'allah!), and i'm hoping that i'll face better weather tomorrow when i fly to GREECE. most of my friends left this morning, meaning last night was spent crying in public, much to my embarrassment (friends, if you're reading this, i don't miss you AT ALL, especially you, Boeuf). thank god natsi is still here to console me, and we went on an excellent double-date today with dropek and jane.

i guess the most appropriate thing to do now is to make lists, my favorite hobby.

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT JORDAN

1. the SIT tribe, i guess.
2. waking up at sunrise to the sound of the call to prayer/my host dad praying in the room next door.
3. reem shwarma.
4. the architecture, and the way all the buildings are white and turn pinky purple at sunset.
5. "welcome to jordan!"
6. my host mom.
7. generally not ever knowing what's going on, but being ok with that slash always being out of my element.
8. feeling like i actually sort of understand arabic, which i'm sure will disappear as soon as i don't have to rely on it anymore.
9. the amazing natural beauty.

THINGS I WILL DEFINITELY NOT MISS ABOUT JORDAN

1. bread
2. bread
3. bread
4. the harrassment ("hey! shakira! shakira!")
5. having to think/stress so much about being culturally appropriate.
6. generally not ever knowing what's going on.
7. feeling like i really don't know any arabic.
8. the fact that it's not california.
9. the lack of greenery.

THINGS I AM EXCITED FOR ABOUT AMERICA

1. preparing my own food (that's not bread).
2. generally feeling in control of my own life.
3. being able to go for walks, runs OUTSIDE.
4. california.
5. greenery.
6. my house/bed/family/dog.
7. everything.

OK, i think i'll have more insightful reflections later, but for now i'm stoked to leave tomorrow for a romp around europe with juliet.

maasalema, al urdun. it's been real.

the war is won?

here is an email i just recieved from the academic director at SIT:

"Dear All,

We all want Peace and stop the terror everywhere in this planet not just in the Muslim world. The USA managed to achieve their dream after 10 years of following up Osama, therefore, Kindly Please be low profile regarding this issue, there are Jordanians who will be upset about his death and they consider him as Martyr.

Please don’t defense the USA position in this regard, and don’t show public happiness about it.

Your safety and security is high priority for us."


on a related note, i just read a very interesting article in the NYT magazine about the current legal actions by the US military regarding the premeditated murder of three afghan citizens. here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/magazine/mag-01KillTeam-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast. it serves as an important reminder of the psychological toll taken on soldiers by war (especially a war as chaotic and disorganized as this one) and how failures to deal with problems in the system and turning a blind eye to inhuman behavior lead to innocent deaths. and we wonder why osama is a martyr and we are viewed less than favorably in the middle east...

but how weird are cell phones really?

behind a house in sebha, a village in the northern badia, i sat down in a tent on the rug, careful not to show my host the bottom of my feet (which is very haram in bedouin culture). i leaned up against the camel saddle being used as a back support and sipped my small cup of bitter coffee. my host moved a scarf away from his throat, held a tissue to it, and cleared his throat via the HOLE IN HIS NECK (a heads up on his traecheotomy would have been nice. the family later showed us a photo album from when he went to new york for the surgery). i pulled out my notebook and ash flurries from the fire pit at the center of the tent settled on the pages, welcome warmth from the spring rain that was falling outside. i was interviewing my host for my ISP (independent study project) about shared water resources between jordan and syria, as he is a prominent farmer in the northern badia. just as he started to answer my first question in frog-throated bursts, my cell phone rang with a call from my mother. i knew i couldn't answer, not because it would have been rude (arabs tend to answer all phone calls no matter the situation and without apology), but because i don't think i could have mentally coped with occupying two such different spaces at once.

i've been thinking a lot about these two worlds (and though they aren't so different as to call them different "worlds," i lack a better alternative to use). i've been quite homesick lately (reading joan didion's "slouching towards bethlehem" and her remarkably accurate depicitons of life Out West aren't helping) and have been pondering just how it is that i can feel so connected to two places that are halfway around the world from one another. i'm literally living two parallel lives. one by keeping in touch with family at home, wasting time looking at facebook photos of my friends having a ball at college, getting an easter phone call and being able to hear the voices of my entire extended family on the other line (but how weird are cell phones really?). the other, by speaking half in arabic, by spending 20 minutes planning my outfit in the morning as i ponder whether or not showing the bottom half of my calves at an interview with the jordanian secretary general at the ministry of water is culturally appropriate, by generally not undersatanding what the hell is going on most of the time.

i feel like right now i'm occupying both these worlds simultaneously. the smell of the pacific ocean and the feel of a coastal breeze are as strong in my mind as the taste of shay marameeya or the sound of the call to prayer. i don't exactly know what this means, or if this is damaging to my psyche or whatever, or if i should just "carpe diem" and all that jazz. all i know is that it's exhausting, and i miss home, and as much as i love jordan and i love SIT and the fact that it's not actually school and my host mom and i had a good cry last night over tea and dessert about how we both don't want me to leave, i feel mentally like "hallas," i'm done, let's wrap this up, let me enjoy some of my mom's delicious grilling on the back porch because that's what summer means and right now all i want is SUMMER please allah. because while i've gotten used to functioning in this culture, and i really do LIKE this culture, and i feel that i have learned so much that i could never have learned back home, it's not HOME and i don't think it could ever be home because home is california and it will always be california and please GIVE ME CALIFORNIA. now, preferably.

but maybe i'm just overwhelmed with emotions (lots of crying this week, incidentally) because i'm stressed with this dumb ISP and i'm worried it's going to suck and i hate handing in a sucky end product and what the heck am i doing with my life and i'm a crap researcher and do i really want to even be at college because all i really want to do is hang out with babies on a farm and eat vegetables or something. and maybe it's just because the end is nigh and with only 3 weeks here in amman i'm sort of just feeling like "ok well just hurry up and end already" because the deadline is in sight and i feel i'm inching towards it at a snail's pace. and i just applied for a job in MN and if i get it i will literally have 2 days at home before i have to turn around and jet off to st. paul, which is putting a tarnish on my otherwise happy silver 4-week eurotrip fantasy that looks something like that movie "if it's tuesday, this must be belgium" but without all the protagonist's casual girlfriends and am i going to be in belgium on a tuesday? cuz that would just be too much. and then if i don't come home for thanksgiving and go to chicago as per usual then i will have spent 2 days at home in 11 months which is just absurd, really.

and even though it doesn't seem like it, i'm really quite alright, but this quote by joan didion did make me cry yesterday because did i mention i miss california?:

"California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent."

happy easter!!

this morning i went with dave's host mom, who is christian, to easter morning services at her evangelical church. i've had a very diverse springtime religious experience, i guess you could say.

earlier in the week we had a passover seder at SIT. ben led the meal/service/i don't know what exactly you call it, and he did a GREAT JOB (ben, if you're reading this, you did a great job!!). he also did something that almost made me cry. traditionally, at the end of the seder, you say "next year in jerusalem" in hebrew. but he changed it slightly to say "next year in jerusalem...for everyone." also, i found the afikoman, which is half of a piece of matzah that the oldest memeber of the family hides somewhere in the house for all the kids to find. mabrook to me!

so yeah today i went to church for easter services and learned how to say "god is risen" and "risen indeed" in arabic: "al-misah (messiah i guess) qam" and "haqqan qam!" so that's neat. dave's mom, nancy, is this tiny little woman, seriously no more than 4'10", and it's funny because everyone we met at the church thought that i was her daughter. HA. we arrived at 5 min. to 10:00, and the service started at 10, and we were literally the only people in the church. nancy started to get a little upset. she said "time is sacred," that people here seem to take their sweet time and always show up late to church.

anyway, the service started with "god is risen" in ARABIC! i followed along in the hymn book and actually was able to keep up and follow along with most of it, at least the chorus. the entire service actually was in arabic, so that made it sort of boring as i couldn't understand any of it except for "allah" and "amen." but nancy wants me to come with her next sunday (i think she thinks i'm a lot more religious than i actually am, which is like 2% religious) and she says next time we will sit in the back so she can whisper me a translation of the sermon.

she kept on mentioning how "david's father is a jew" which i already knew. then she gave me a copy of the new testament that has both the english and the arabic (again, thinking i actually read the bible), and then told me to give it to dave after. she "really wants him to read it."

sadly, this easter didn't have the usual flair that i'm used to at home, the kind that i haven't had since going to college. i miss getting dressed up in springtime church wear and walking down to piedmont community church and seeing everyone and everyone's parents and cousins and grandparents in their easter best, and getting my toes wet from lawn sprinklers on the way. and if we go up oakland ave and down pacific insteadand of down oakland ave and across on highland we pass by the rosemary which wafts into the warm spring air. and PCC is just the right size and the stained glass makes the morning light dance and the sermon is always lively and energetic. and the music is amazing because the piedmont church choir is unbelievable and easter music is so joyful and the organ must somehow be a little bit magical because every time i hear it it makes me with that i were a better christian, which means i wish that i were a christian (in my heart, not by birth) at all. this service only had a piano, no small instrument, but def not a church organ. easter always fills me with hope. sadly, today i didn't quite get that same feeling.

however, it is a beautiful spring day, and there is something to be said for that.

"we exist so we are winning"

yesterday i attended the TEDxRamallah event in amman, an all-day marathon of speakers and performers participating from 3 cities (bethlehem (it had to be moved from ramallah), beirut, and amman) and all connected via live video streaming. the vast majority of the speakers were either palestinian in origin or now called palestine their home, and they shared inspirational stories of their personal successes in transcending the occupation.

for those of you who don’t know, TED is an american organization that puts on an annual convention in california during which people speak about their “ideas worth sharing.” in their spirit of what they call “radical openness” they have made all their lectures available for free online. and, in order to get the speakers’ inspirational messages to as wide an audience as possible, they have invited the online community to translate lectures from english into their home languages, which people now can enjoy as subtitles on the videos they stream from http://ted.com. TED has been such a success that there have been hundreds of TEDx events, or independently organized, TED inspired/endorsed events around the world. TEDxRamallah was one such event.

but its tri-city character was unique and an important component of the message this event sought to send. due to recently-imposed travel restrictions by israel in response to renewed violence (as well as long-standing bans on entry for many palestinians), many scheduled speakers were unable to make it into the west bank for the event. and so they transcended (buzzword of the day), using that ever-powerful tool called the internet, and showed up anyway, albeit in beirut or amman.

there were over 20 speakers and a handful of artists performing, including the infinitely wise alice walker (the color purple); palestine’s first hip hop crew and the startlingly clever DAM; huwaida arraf, founder of the international solidarity movement, which has been twice nominated for the nobel peace prize; and numerous other scholars, activists, CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc., all with an important and inspiring story or idea.

i have to say that my favorite lecture came from a woman named julia bacha, who is a brazilian of lebanese descent and an award-winning filmmaker. she talked about her 2009 film “budrus,” which told the story of the village by the same name in palestine that successfully staged a non-violent protest to resist the construction of the israeli dividing wall that, if built, would divide and demolish the town. she played for us the film’s trailer, and now i want nothing more than to see that film. it showed palestinians and israelis, men and women and even children, peacefully resisting the demolition of homes and olive trees (several women actually put their bodies between a bulldozer and an olive tree to keep it from being uprooted) and the construction of one of the most glaring symbols of oppression today.

bacha said that after her film came out it received a lot of attention from mass media. this surprised her, not because she didn’t have faith that budrus’ story would strike a chord with audiences, but because when budrus launched its non-violent campaign about 7 years earlier it received virtually no mainstream media coverage. she asked a journalist she knew why this was so, and he said something bacha found shocking coming from a respected and established journalist: at the height of the second intifada, budrus’ story “wasn’t part of the narrative at the time.” meaning because budrus showed nonviolence from palestinians, showed palestinians and israelis working together at a time when the dominant message was that palestinians were all stone-throwing terrorists, it wasn’t incorporated into the intifada’s history.

ms. bacha linked this back to a term she learned from a psychologist friend of hers: confirmation bias. this principle states that humans have the tendency to be attracted to, and accept, stories that confirm our narrative of understanding. this is related to another phenomenon bacha described for us called cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable feeling we get when we receive new information that challenges or runs counter to our internal narrative. when this happens, your brain actually physically and chemically generates/experiences pain, and you are forced to either ignore the pain-inducing information, or rewrite your narrative to incorporate it.

ms. bacha enlightened us the work of norman holland, who is a neurologist who studies the effect of literature on the brain (cool, right?!). he proved that there is neurological evidence that people, at least briefly, accept and believe stories. there is proof that people respond better to stories than to facts. that is exactly what julia bachus has tried to integrate into her filmmaking company JustVision: to use story-telling as a means of challenging people’s narratives, and to provide them with that moment of pain in the hopes that they will rewrite their narratives to incorporate a new bit of truth.

my other favorite presentation was by khaled al sabawi, a palestinian-canadian engineer and the father of geothermal energy in the middle east, who envisioned not a one- or two-state solution to the palestinian-israeli conflict, but a “green state solution.”

the palestinian territories are among the most densely populated in the entire world, and given their extremely high birth rates, growing denser by the minute. by 2050 they are projected to be more densely populated than bangladesh. palestinians also pay among the highest prices for energy in the entire middle east. so high that it has become unaffordable for many. but with the enormous population growth expected in the territories, new buildings will be needed, buildings that account for the largest segment of energy consumption in palestine (through heating/cooling). to make things worse, palestine is almost entirely (97%) dependent on israel for its energy.

and so al sabawi envisioned a solution that was not only extremely sustainable environmentally, but also would give the palestinian territories more energy independence. he titled his lecture: “keeping palestine cool: a different kind of underground movement.” his solution lay underneath the surface, 2 meters underneath to be exact.

the earth, solid ground, absorbs 50% of the sun’s energy and stores it under the surface. in the middle east, at 2 meters below the surface, the earth’s temperature remains constant throughout the year. in ramallah, it stays at a constant temperature of 17 degrees celsius/63 degrees farenheit. al sabawi’s geothermal system looks like this: a series of pipes pump water 2-plus meters below a house or other building. in the winter, the below-ground temp. of 63 degrees F is warmer than room temperature above ground. the water, when it is pumped below ground, absorbs this energy and carries it back up to heat the house. in the summer, it’s just the opposite: the 63 degrees F is cooler than the above-ground temp, and when water is pumped below-ground it loses heat and cools the house.

the only hitch in this ingenious plan is that the initial cost for installing this kind of system is very high, though it is a wise investment that more than pays for itself in the long run. in the US or canada, such a system would take 9-12 years to pay off. al sabawi recognized that this would never work in palestine, and so he took measures to make it more cost efficient and sustainable at the same time. for example, his system uses limestone powder as grout, which is a by-product of the limestone cutting industry already in place in palestine. a great recycling of materials, and a cost-cutter that helped reduce the payoff time from 9-12 years down to 3 or 4. so far, al sabawi’s company has installed 3 of these systems in buildings in ramallah, and it has cut their energy consumption by a whopping 75%!!

he spoke to the challenges of operating a business under occupation. one of the biggest challenges, he said, was making it a sustainable business in palestine; he finds it difficult to hire educated palestinians. this is not from lack of talent. on the contrary, palestinians are some of the most educated in the middle east. the problem is foreign aid: the amount of money being pumped into NGOs enables them to offer salaries 3-4 times higher than the rest of the private sector.

the TEDxRamallah event was long, sometimes frustrating due to technical difficulties, and was sometimes (literally) a pain in my butt (it was hard to sit for 12 hours!!). but it was at times extremely enlightening and indeed inspiring. the event is already up on the website (http://www.tedxramallah.com/eventday/) and i encourage all of you to check it out!

TED

on saturday i'm going to a TEDTalks event called TEDxRamallah. it was going to be held in ramallah but was moved to bethlehem, with participating events in beirut and here in amman. the bethlehem event will be streamed to beirut and amman (as well as over the internet to the WORLD), and speakers who cannot enter palestine due to travel restrictions will speak in beirut/amman and get streamed over to bethlehem. the talks address palestine-specific issues. i'm stoked!
here is more info about the event:
http://www.tedxramallah.com/en/home/index.php?

ana bohebik, khitam

my host mom is the cutest.
last night she came home from the gym feeling good. she asked me (in arabic, she speaks about 2 words of english) how she looked and did a little twirl. she looked great!

later she said she was going to the bank and asked if i wanted to come with her. i tagged along, and she hooked her arm in mine as we skipped down the stairs out of the apartment. we had a great conversation (the fact that i could understand her speaking so quickly and then respond in arabic was a huuuge confidence booster). she asked me if i drove at home. i said yes. she was very happy about that. she said she thinks it's important for women to be able to drive and to have independence. she said that the prophet mohammad (PBUH) thinks so too. he wants all things for women as well as men.

she asked me about my studies, when i'm going to graduate (spring 2012, "insha'allah"), and what i want to do after graduation. i said teach, partly because it's in my top 5 careers, and partly because i don't know how to say "map store owner/cupcake seller" in arabic. teacher ("mo3lima") is a little easier to explain.

she asked about my family. i said my sister is moving to china and i am very sad but also excited because maybe i can have christmas in china. the first thing she asked is if she's married (naturally). i said no, she's only 21 and she's not done with school yet. she asked what she was studying and i said chinese language, which she didn't like that much. she said chinese is not an attractive language. i think her opinion was also a bit colored by the fact that arabs here have very few interactions with pan-asians other than custodians or maids (jordan is not the most ethnically diverse of countries). we don't have a maid, but a lot of families have relationships with their maids that in america we would consider disrespectful; jordanian norms regarding service are much different than american.

anyway, after the bank we stopped for ice cream and happily nommed on it as we drove back home. ana bohebik (i love you), khitam.

i'm just a girl

this blog seems to have ended up being a run-down on the exciting events in my life here, and then some musings about being a bint fi al-urdun (girl in jordan).

i realized that i think about gender here on the daily, which is something i'm not really used to. at home i'm one of the bros, and often find myself the only girl in a group of boys. when this happens in jordan, i'm forced to reassess. is this culturally acceptable? what do people think of me? especially on a thursday evening. (keep in mind prostitution is a problem here, and the prostitutes are usually white)

male-female interactions are more nuanced. when dave and i met with our ISP advisor and he drove us to a local environmental NGO, dave offered me shotgun. i realized i probably should have declined, as women always ride in the back of cars, or at least in taxis. sometimes i go to shake a man's hand and he politely puts his hand over his heart and bows slightly, indicating that he doesn't touch women. normally i wouldn't think twice about using a men's single-person restroom (i mean, come on, it's exactly the same as the ladies room!) at a gas station or in a restaurant, but here i've gotten several dirty looks from doing so.

more than that, all the women on this program have at one point or another experienced some form of harrassment. this has ranged from over-conversational cab drivers to my friend getting sexually assualted when we were in petra. my experiences tend to fall on the "sarah, i love you" side (i always say my name is sarah when a cab driver asks) or proposals so that the cab driver can get a green card. but i also had a disturbing groping incident on a public bus on my way to jerash (remember that solo trip i was proud of myself for? i actually spent about an hour of it crying in a bathroom by myself).

in these instances, it's natural to seek blame, whether it be yourself, the perpetrator, or the entire culture. granted, i should not have been traveling on a public bus by myself, but also that dirtbag should not have violated my person. i could have easily gotten angry with the entire culture: the way women are second-class citizens; the way minimal contact between young boys and girls leads men to developed a warped perception of what women are like as humans and instead views them as physical objects; the way sexual assault or harrassment is not dealt with openly and is seen as more shameful for the woman than for the man.

but i'm in a unique position as an american woman in jordan. do jordanian women recieve the same treatment as i do? probably not, and if they do, they are much better equipped linguistically and culturally to deal with it and defend themselves. for all the benefits of globalization, it has also led to america exporting probably the worst version of itself possible to middle eastern countries. women in american pop culture/media are highly sexualized, one-dimensional characters who fall as easily into bed as into love. if this is the only side of american femininity that arabs are getting, naturally a certain number of sexually repressed men are going to take advantage of a young naive american student in jordan. (maybe if we were exporting more sydney bristows to the world it would be a different story!!!)

yet it is still indescribably frustrating that i receive certain treatment not based on my actions but based on my identity alone. in many instances, there is nothing i could have done to avoid these unfortunate situations. what can i do? am i supposed to never take a taxi? never walk down the street? but i always have to be on my guard, and it's a constant source of stress. and the things that i normally do at home to relieve stress are the things that cause problems here in the first place (i.e. go for a walk). it's a stress that i'm sure the other women in my program feel too, and something that the boys will never really understand.

for more information on this topic, please refer to the the lyrics of no doubt's "i'm just a girl."

on protests

2 days ago a jordanian man self-immolated in front of the prime minister's office. here is an al-jazeera article about it:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/2011487431621214.html

the article fails to mention a few crucial points: the man who self-immolated had an extensive criminal background; none of his crimes were political or up for debate. second, that this act was basically not political at all, despite the article's suggestions to the contrary; this criminal was trying to earn sympathy to get his record exponged. thirdly, everyone in this country thinks he's a complete moron.

from what i see, protests here are largely under control, even after the march 25 protests which turned violent, killing one and injuring 160. king abdullah responded quickly, voicing his support for reform while insisting that his people remain peaceful. it was kind of a brilliant move, actually. he said that anyone who doesn't want reform is not interested in what's best for jordan. but jordan prides itself on being one of the most (if not the most) stable countries in the region, and a lot of people are upset about the protests and the violence with which some people are responding.

personally, the protests haven't affected me much at all except blocking traffic in certain neighborhoods. life goes on as usual. i have noticed many more flags on people's cars and houses, though, and some new banners and graffitti calling for peace and unity, as well as a few more posters of the king around town.

al-janoub days 3 and 4 (or, nothing about this country is beautiful)

DAY 3: WADI RUM

after the single most visually spectacular bus ride of my life wherein i reunited with my long lost love, the cure's live album "show," we arrived in wadi rum from petra. our sleeping quarters were small 2-person tents with cots which were nestled against some sandstone to shelter us from the sandy wind (only half-successfully). natalie and i of course shared a tent, being spouses and all. there were some larger tents for dining and keeping warm by some fires, as well as a fire pit where we enjoyed tea. here's the group on the first afternoon, and a picture of it lit up later in the evening (ROMANCE):




there was a small sand dune behind our tents, and we saw no choice but to climb it to see what was on the other side. there were more tents! also, camels (jamal in arabic). also, sir ian smith in the fetal position (only sadness):


we were like small children, so excited. 6 others and i went on a walk into the wild before our scheduled jeep tour and climbed some rocks to enjoy the scenery (which turned out to be the same exact scenery we would enjoy on our jeep tour, but whatever). this included a brief, yet intense, sand storm, in which we all had to stop walking and turn our backs to the wind. the sand rippled like snakes across the valley floor giving me the feeling of being in motion. i spent some quiet time pondering the meaning of life (again! man, i'm so deep) and also god, and also my future. kateer introspective, though i came away with no definite opinions on any of these topics. also i did a lot of dancing and frolicking:




the jeep tour was amazing, if not terrifying. i piled into the bed of a trunk with megan, dropek, natalie, ben, and andy, where we bounced and bounded our way through the wadi and some unexpected rain. eminem and kanye provided the soundtrack for the adventure. our first stop was a sand dune/photo opportunity of epic proportions. we raced up the dune, an event that required so much effort and so little progress. natalie and i re-enacted the first scene of the lion king (i was rafiki) and then raced down the dune again.





next stop: some cave drawings that no one really cared about. but we took a group photo of everyone making finger moustaches (EPIC). after, a shrine type thingy for my main man larry the arab (lawrence of arabia for those of you not down with the lingo) and more dunes:


final stop: sunset at the same spot i went to earlier with my shebab. there was constant heavy wind, so much that i literally almost fell of a cliff. there was some great romantic time between the wife and me, which turned into a shway double date with megan and dropek (we are all women). we couldn't really see the sunset because it was cloudy (remember how it rained?) but it provided a beautiful and dramatic scene nonetheless. i think wadi rum is now my 4th favorite place on earth (behind my house, four winds, and silver lake, naturally). i will undoubtedly pay another visit during the independent study period (which starts in a mere number of days!)





DAY 4: AQABA

the last day before home started at 6 am and continued for another 21 hours of absolute joy and ridiculousness before sweet sweet slumber.
i took a sunrise walk with ben, and we soaked up the quiet and the pleasant absense of wind. after that: JAMAL RIDE. i was on a shway emaciated camel that couldn't walk straight, and spent most of the time playing bumper jamals. ouch! but it was fun and camels are so silly. i love them.
then we had breakfast (so many hard-boiled eggs) and i helped lead a discussion about the environment in jordan with zein, one of the SIT staff with a background in arid land environments. then, a short bus ride further south to the port city of aqaba on the red sea.
no big deal, we took a boat cruise where we snorkeled and danced to celine dion and some jordanian national songs. i saw many fishies before i got too cold and commenced with the dancing. also no big deal, from the boat i could simultaneously see jordan, isreal (the city of eilat ("eilatta what?")), and egypt. biff and i got our minds blown a little bit, and shouted many absolutely untrue proclamations in our overwhelming satisfaction, such as "nothing about this country is beautiful!!!!" dave and i reminisced about sailing and living on the ocean (he's from portland, maine) with a lot of satisfying sadness, at least on my part. if there had been an FJ that i could have sailed, i would have had a heart attack from happiness. actually.



then there was a night of true-to-college shenanigans which i won't repeat here. i can tell you that it did involve karaoke, as all good nights do. but i stayed up until 3 am, making day 4 in al-janoub one of the most action-packed and epic of my life.

as sarah mink said on her blog, i had loved jordan mostly for the people before this trip, but after these 5 days and 4 nights i fell in love with its natural landscape as well. the trip was a perfect mix of social time, quiet personal time, and especially nature time that i've been sorely lacking. i got a chance to step back from all the stresses i'd been overwhelmed with before the trip and think them through in peace without other distractions occupying my thoughts. and i got to do a little daydreaming as well. thank goodness for al-janoub. now back to work.

al-janoub days 1 and 2 (or, human history is long and i am small and insignificant)

i just returned last night from a 5-day stint in the south of jordan, more exhausted but also happier than i'd been here in a while. before i left i really didn't want to go. i'd been feeling down and out, stressed about school work, unsure about my employment plans for the summer, and struggling with whether or not to do an honors thesis next year and wondering what my mac education was really doing for me. all those uncertainties remain, but i feel ready to tackle them head-on and with renewed energy.

DAY 1: AL-KARAK CASTLE AND DANA NATURE RESERVE

the SIT tribe drove about an hour and a half south to the impressive castle in al-karak. my wife natalie and i managed to get a free tour with our charm and good looks, and saw many hidden gems. this included a deep water well, and our tour guide lit a piece of paper on fire (without a heads up) and threw it down the well shaft to show us just how far it went. we unfortunately didn't go to the carnival that was raging nearby, and instead continued southeast to the dana nature reserve.







dana is a gorgeous reserve perched atop a huge wadi (valley), whose greenery made me feel like i was in the garden of eden (compared, at least, to the arid sparseness of the rest of the country). el hob called it the shire, i think, which goes to show how deprived of green we are in this country. we traversed the valley for a few km along the old town's waterways. the water flowed from a natural spring down a system of gutters to the town. we stopped and drank fresh from the source. i remarked that it was the most fresh water i've seen in the whole country combined. we stopped and ate bitter almonds from the tree, and sat and enjoyed a gorgeous view and the wind at our faces. i pondered the meaning of life (with much haneen, or nostalgia in arabic) and debated whether i want to live in a desert or by the ocean when i'm older.
at night we stayed at a youth hostel, where i stayed in a large tangerine-colored room with 7 other of the binat. we were absolutely giddy, and parkoured off the walls and sang "hard knock life" from annie. i had a major ah-i-miss-college-in-america when we had a co-ed bathroom for all of us to share, then we ran outside and played frisbee and kurat al-qadm (soccer). we watched the stars by the warmth of a fire. i got the worst night's sleep of my life, but i couldn't have cared less.







DAY 2: PETRA

we arrived in petra around 11 am, threw our bags down at the hotel, and immediately went into the city of petra where we had the whole day to explore. 6 hours was not enough. the city was gigantic, and i read later in my guidebook that they recommend at least 5 days for a visit.
you enter the park and are met almost immediately with rock-cut facades, mostly tombs, lining the road. there were so many tourists, so natalie and i ran ahead to try and beat them. after a while the road becomes narrower and you cut through an artery in the rocks. the shade is a sweet relief from the heat of the valley, and trees spring up here and there as you continue on. suddenly, so suddently that i exclaimed out loud, there is the treasury. i'm sure you've seen the picture before, but it's more amazing than that even. i couldn't really talk i was so excited and nervous. last semester i started having a recurring dream of the treasury, and i was nervous about whether or not it would live up to the dream. if i could have removed all the other tourists from the equation, it would have surpassed it.
sarah and natalie and i managed to get away from the crowd for a while when we climbed up a million (approx.) steps to the sacrificial site, a huge panoramic view of a large portion of the city where the nabataens used to sacrifice animals to their gods. we were all alone for a while, and had a half-hour meditation session. i thought the wind would blow me away it was so strong and constant.
after some aimless wandering, snapping countless pictures of facades that popped up out of nowhere, and serveral offers of donkey rides, we made our way back to the main road toward the monastery, which lay at the end of the city. after a climb of 800 steps (not approx., almost exactly), we came upon it. it resembles the treasury, but is larger. truly impressive. natalie beat sarah and me up there, and while she turned around pretty quickly, sarah and i continued on to the "view at the end of the world." but not before i accidentally started a dog fight by offering a few parched pups some of my water. dog #1 got jealous of dog #2, and i almost got my hand bitten off. classic.
the "view at the end of the world" was after another small climb and looked into the valley boyond petra, all the way west to israel. from this view we could see mount aaron/jebel haroun, where aaron, brother of moses and miriam, is buried. if we had stayed longer we could have maybe made it out there, but alas, we only had one day. we talked to a guy who lived up at the end of the world in his tent, and he pointed out a number of sites to us and offered his binoculars. while up there, i decided the world is split into two categories. the first, when considering the length of human history and all the accomplishments achieved, realizes his/her insignificance in the grand scheme of things and finds comfort in this fact. the second, when faced with the same prospect, is terrified. i don't know which category i'm in quite yet.
afterwards, sarah and i booked it back to the entrance (we had already been there an hour longer than we were supposed to), and decided to take a man up on his offer for a donkey ride. we managed to haggle the price down by about 50%. not too shabby.
unfortunately, i only have pictures from the end of the world because the rest were taken with my film camera. here they are:

mawwiage

so weddings here is jordan seem to be all about the bling. i have to say, jordanians' tastes aren't exactly in line with my own. but all the time spent sitting or dancing, but not really being able to communicate with anyone got me thinking about how much NOT like this wedding mine will be. there were some big mistakes (in my opinion).
1) the bride had the same dress for both the ceremony and the reception. how are you supposed to dance or sit in that? answer: you can't. and she didn't. not very fun!
2) they had hired two cameramen (video cameras) to record the event. the wedding felt more like reality tv than a celebration. plus, the cameras had giant blinding lights that made everyone feel super awkward. also, this involved a choreographer of sorts who ushered the couple around and told them what to do. hm. strange.
3) gold jewelry.

it was pretty fun though, despite these mistakes. the couple danced their first dance to "hello" by lionel richie under the magic of a combination bubble/smoke machine (i couldn't stop myself from giggling a little). and i got some great pictures because my host parents forced me to, and i also danced a lot. when everyone found out i was american they made me dance BY MYSELF in the middle of a huge circle. mortifying, but also hilarious.

jordanian weddings seem to be a lot like american weddings, with the exception of a few details. a lot more bling, first of all. also, part of the party involved the presentation of jewelry to the bride (gold, like i said). they also cut the cake with a huge sword instead of a regular knife. also, dancing was sort of segregated with all the shebab dancing together in one circle and all the binat dancing in another. and, true to jordanian fashion, the line for the buffet dinner was less of a line and more of a ravenous free-for-all, as lines always are in this country. my host mom grabbed me by the arm and shuffled me into the crowd. but other than that, it was pretty standard, except no one was drunk, obviously. we got home SO LATE for a weeknight (1 am, and i usually have the lights out by 10:30 or 11) and my host dad definitely didn't wake up for his sunrise prayer like he normally does.

here are a few choice pictures from the event:

BREAKING NEWS

in other, perhaps more important, news, my watch tan is almost back to its summer 2010 status. ace ace ace!

everybody be calm

so, more protests have broken out around amman in an escallation of the usual friday downtown demonstrations. i drove past one yesterday on my way home from the university. it backed up traffic for a while, but that was the extent of the effect it had on me personally. apparently, a little while later, pro-gov. counterdemonstrators started throwing rocks at the protesters. in egyptian fashion, that particular group of demonstrators has started camping out at that circle.

i know my family is worried about me, but errybody should chill out. SIT is really on top of stuff, they always err (air? i don't know) on the side of caution. and so far, they haven't said anything to us. so chill!!!

here's an article if you want to know more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/world/middleeast/25jordan.html?ref=middleeast

yesterday was a great day for the following reasons:

1) i found out i’ll be going to a WEDDING on saturday!! that means i need to go shopping, as i brought nothing even remotely fancy to this country. though my friend megan, who just went to a wedding this weekend, said i should hardly bother; no matter what i do i’ll definitely be shown up by all the jordanian ladiez with all their color and bling.

2) it was mother’s day in jordan. i made my mom a card in arabic, which she loved. she was asleep when i went to school, but in the middle of the day i got a text message from her expressing her gratitude. winning points all over the place!! this also meant GIANT CHOCOLATE CAKE. mohammad went back for 4ths, then made khitam give him a belly rub after he got pains from eating too much. love them.

3) i had the best taxi ride ever on the way home: 2JD exactly, all the windows down, the magic hour splashing sunlight onto the faces of white stone buildings, yo la tengo blasting through my earbuds. #californiasummer (is that how it works, @youngpb??). serious flashback to the best coast, driving gladys around town. also i’m starting to read east of eden, and steinbeck’s descriptions of salinas make me long for golden hills, oak trees, and the smell of the pacific ocean. teensy bit homesick, moomkin?

on saturday i took a solo trip up to jerash (i’m patting myself on the back for using my arabic to navigate the public bus station all on my own). i ended up meeting a nice dutch girl who i spent the day with. she’s been working in bethlehem for the past few months, but has had such an impossible time getting an extended visa that she has to pop on over to jordan every 3 months, then lie her way back into palestine, pretending to be a tourist so she can get another tourist visa. what a process! we had a great time, and exchanged info so that we can meet up when i visit amsterdam this summer (shout out to juliet, can’t wait for eurotrip 2011!). here are some pictures of this ancient city:

i hate oman

ok, that's not true. but after spending a week in oman on our "spring break" (and truly having a fantastic time, mind you), i was still too happy with my decision to study abroad in jordan. before i get into why, here are a few background facts of this country that may not even be on your radar:

oman is a small country (slightly smaller than kansas, as the CIA world factbook tells me) in the ARABIAN (not persian, as was emphasized to us several times throughout the trip) gulf. it has shared borders with yemen, saudi arabia, and the UAE. just a jump across the oman gulf is iran, and pakistan and india aren't too far away either. this geographical location makes tense power dynamics, but also a cuisine that is the bomb.com. it has about 3 million people, about 1 million of which are under the age of 14! it became independent after it kicked out the portugese in 1650, and has a history of imperialism, once controlling parts of present-day tanzania and zanzibar (as a result, there is a large african, swahili-speaking population in oman). it is a sultanate, and is under total rule (essentially) by sultan qaboos. sultan qaboos is an interesting fellow (not to mention he has the funniest name in the world) and there is a strange personality cult surrounding him in oman. he makes public appearances about once a year, if you're lucky, and he hardly ever makes public statements on anything. but over the span of about 40 years he single-handedly transformed oman from a country with no economy, virtually no education, and no political power to a modern nation (mcdonalds and everything!) built on a fuel economy whose reputation is that of a peace-keeper.

oman is a much more ethnically diverse country than jordan, largely because of the job opportunities provided by oil. interestingly, omanis have a sort of snobbery when it comes to the jobs they'll do. they look down on blue-collar work, and as such, these jobs are mostly filled by indians, pakistanis, and east africans. but in oman, as in many all the other gulf countries who are witnessing the same trends, there is an effort to "omanize" the workforce, wherein there are certain quotas that businesses have to fill of native omani workers. it's a strange idea: omani's don't want certain jobs, but then they complain that there are no job opportunities for them, so the government provides a certain percentage of jobs for them, which allows them to bargain for better salaries ("you don't want me for 50% above minimum wage? i know you need to hire another omani, and try to find another who will do the job for anything less.").

you can tell a native omani (non-"expat") apart from his dress usually. they are wear dish-dashas (which many people in jordan do too), but the omani dish-dasha has a tassle coming out from the collar. they wear scarves around their heads like a turban or they wear the kofia, a traditional east-african hat. if you aren't omani-omani, you would never wear this. it's considered disrespectful. and in oman, disrespect can get you thrown in jail. seriously!! even if someone, say, accidentally ran over your foot with his car, if you were to, in a fit of rage, spit on the ground in front of him and call him a bad name, you could be fined and spend about 3 months in jail.

talking to the kids at SIT oman, i think i would have had a really tough time. social roles are even more cemented in oman than in jordan. we always talk about jordan as being extremely influenced by tribalism; in oman, it's even more so, especially, it seems, for women. you are not even supposed to ask a man about how his wife is doing because it implies that you were thinking about her. however, women make up about 70-80% of this university we went to in nizwa. this is partly because nizwa is more rural, so families who are more nervous about sending their daughters to muscat (which used to be defined separately from the rest of oman, and still is by many citizens) where they might be corrupted can send them instead to nizwa. still, i found it interesting that so many women were in university when their job opportunities were essentially limited to teaching or nursing.

the SIT kids felt they were in a weird limbo because of these strictly defined social roles. while they weren't tourists, they weren't really a part of society either. they can't make friends with young omanis. they can't really go out. seriously. we asked them where there were fun places to go and they could offer no suggestions. "i haven't done anything in this country" one of them said. they just go to school and then go home. i'm sure they are learning a lot from class and from their families, and i'm sure all that free time makes them extremely well-read, but if i were in their place i would go majnoona (crazy).

but, oman is STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS. the slogan of their tourism website was "beauty has an address." nothing could be truer. crystal-blue waters push up against dramatic orange mountains that look like they are climbing higher before your very eyes. the buildings are fresh white in color with blue and purple and orange tiles outlining every window. paradise? i think so. the only downside was that it can reach up to 125 degrees F in the summer!!! as such, i overheated just about every day.



our first day we went to the ras al jinz turtle reserve, where many green turtles come to nest. we spent the night at a campsite in these tiny huts. so much fun, so little sleep. the next day we went to the town of sur where we saw a dhow (boat) factory. here is a picture of some dhows in front of an old outpost:



then that afternoon we hiked into wadi shab, a true oasis. after scrambling over rocks that seem to be almost alive (i immediately was reminded of zion national park in utah), we came upon bright blue freshwater pools that we spent the afternoon swimming around in. blissful relief from the oppressive heat.





the next day essentially consisted of me with my head in a toilet (thank you sketchy omani "fast food") and then a meeting with the SIT students.

monday we visited nizwa university, jabreen castle, and the old town of misfat 'abreen. my favorite part of the castle was the view it afforded. how some of these towns sprung up in the middle of the desert is beyond me.








misfat 'abreen is an old town that reminded us all of something from the land before time. on the cliffs of mountains, people have built steppes of agrigulture that have propered largely thanks to an ingenious water system called the "telege." people still lived there and yet it was a tourist destination, and something felt slightly "off" as i walked on a tourist path right past people's homes. it was almost as if the feeling we were supposed to get was that we were looking through a window into the past. weird, and sort of unethical? to make me feel a little less guilty i made sure i greeted everyone i saw (in arabic) and definitely didn't take pictures of anyone.












the last day we went to the sultan qaboos grand mosque, a structure completed in 2001 that combined mosque design from all over the muslim world. seriously grand. it coveres 416,000 sq. m. a little too opulent for my taste, but i enjoyed the gardens (i forgot what a park looks like. there are none really in amman).











we were all SO HAPPY to be back in amman. after going around in a comically small bus in a country that was underworldly hot, being sort of treated like children and getting creepy stares, we were pretty glad to leave. don't get me wrong, oman was OMAzing. but when i got my passport stamped and heard my one thousandth "welcome to jordan," it felt as good as hearing it for the first time.