Night 25: Dust, and not the good kind.

Amman is covered in dust.
I left the house yesterday morning to find the sky seemingly overcast, and everything was hazy and smoggy. At first I thought it was fog, but that would be impossible. In order to have fog, you need water and clouds, neither of which are present in Jordan. I have not seen a single wisp of a cloud since I left the States almost a month ago. It turns out that Jordan does not get fog, or smog, or haze. It gets dust, and it's unpleasant. Mostly because everything inside gets dusty, and it's impossible to stay clean. I doodled in the dust on my desk in class yesterday. Here are some pictures of the dusty sky from the view of the women's bathroom in the Khalifeh Plaza building across the street from campus (where the CIEE office is):

I wish I had a "before" picture; usually it's bright and sunny and the sky is really blue. All that gray? Dust. Also you can see the Main Gate of the University just behind the McDonald's sign and to the left.

 Dust. Also a couple of academic buildings. Not sure which ones, I don't take classes near there. 

Anyway, the dust was the major update of this particular blog post. A couple of other random things: 

Today I tried to explain/defend LARP to people. It did not work out. I'd forgotten what people dressed up as  fairies and vampires and Rokugani royalty could look like to people not at Beloit. It didn't help that these people were only familiar with socially awkward D&Ders and boffer LARPers.

Also, I forgot something on the "Like" list. More like the "Love" list. The coffee. How could I forget the coffee. Arabic coffee is wonderful and all coffee should taste like it. It's made me like black coffee, too. At home I put a decent amount of cream and sugar in my coffee, but I drink it black here and it's great. However, they also have Nescafe here, which is not tasty. It's basically coffee powder that was maybe made my Nestle... it's way too sweet even when black. 

Also, ALSO. I found Fall-ish leaves today. They're yellow: 

These were all I could find of the Fall-ish leaves. This is what I miss the most about the States: Fall. Autumn. The season where the leaves are gorgeous and the weather manages to be both cold and sunny. It actually pains me to be missing Fall, so if anyone has any awful things to say about Fall, please tell me. I can't think of anything. 

Lastly. I'm going to Petra and Wadi Rum tomorrow! No really--we're meeting at the University so I am unlikely to go to the wrong place. Also I will leave much earlier than necessary. 

Anyway, the actual itinerary means that I'm going to a hiking place tomorrow, then Wadi Rum on Saturday (as well as a castle somewhere), and Petra on Sunday. I will ride on a camel, sleep under the stars in the desert with Bedoins, and then wake up, drink Bedoin coffee, and go to the place where Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail in the 80's (or 40's, depending). Yeah. Be jealous. 

Night 22: Things.

Okay, so. Pictures from Um Qais!

Oh wait, I didn't go.

Yup. This was bound to happen eventually. I am Meg, the person that managed to get to the South Beloit bus station (a 10 minute drive, not even, from Beloit) over an hour after I left campus. I have driven to Rockford by accident, and I once almost drove to Milwaukee instead of Beloit. See twenty two nights ago; I accidentally went to France. I get lost. I'm good at it. However, until Saturday, I had not gotten lost while in Jordan. I have taken taxis and buses to and from school and not gotten lost a single time. I got used to it. Silly me; I will never not have issues getting places and should not forget this fact. I got up on Saturday morning, headed to the bus stop and I was 20 minutes early. Awesome. Except that it was the wrong bus station. Long story short, I called a friend, found out I was at the wrong bus station, jumped into a taxi, took forever to communicate my destination to the cab driver, and got to the bus station.... about 2 minutes after the bus had left.

I ended up going back home to bed and slept for another four hours. I also watched some Glee and ate quite a bit of chocolate.

Anyway, on to what this post is actually about: Things. Specifically, things I like and don't like about Jordan.
Supposedly over the course of study abroad, you're supposed to go through four study abroad stages: the "Honeymoon" stage, where everything is lovely and new and exciting (I experienced this stage for about 20 hours). The second stage is the "Frustration" stage, where everything is stupid and you get really cranky, and some people even get physically ill. Then there's the "Acceptance" stage and finally the "Acclimation" stage. Honestly, I think these stages are full of crap, but they serve a purpose for this blog post.

I want to talk a little bit about the "Frustration" stage here. Supposedly, during the Frustration stage "You might reject your new environment and begin to have a lack of interest in your new surroundings." Don't worry, I'm not experiencing this stage to its fullest extent right now, but it made me think about Things here that Frustrate me. I'm going to include a list of Things that make me happy about Jordan too, because optimism and positivity (totally a word, stupid red squiggly line) are important parts of not being Frustrated. So, on to Things:

Things I Don't Like About Jordan:
1. Traffic/Cars: 'nuff said, I did a blog post about this already.
2. Lack of Lines: From lines on the road to grocery store lines, no lines are to be found in Jordan. I've gotten used to the fact that lines on the road--cross walks, car lanes, what have you--are largely ignored. When I get into a cab, I put my faith in the cab driver and just let go. If I didn't, I'd have to stop eating cheese for fear of being at an even greater risk for a heart attack (and that's not happening. I love cheese). Lines of people waiting for things, on the other hand... I am really, really starting to get sick of. In Jordan, people can be very "me first" and as a result, structure here is lacking. The rule at the cash register at the coffee shop is "whoever gets their money onto the counter first gets to order," instead of "wait in line until you are served." I left an entire foot of space between me and the register today getting coffee. Two women managed to stride up to the counter and whip out their wallets before I could order. Grr.
3. The fact that in Arabic, my name doesn't exist. "Margaret" exists, but that's not my name. It's Meg. But no, here it's either "Mayg" or "Maag." That's معغ or ماغ (read from right to left).
4. The inconsistency of traffic. Yesterday, I left the house at 7:20 and did not get to class until 8:05. Today, I left the house at the same time and got to the University at 7:43. How am I supposed to plan ahead in getting to school on time? I don't even.

And on to...

Things I Do Like About Jordan:
1. The food. Yeah, they may sometimes give me too much of it, but it is really good. Meat, potatoes, cheese, and recently, quite a bit of cake. What's not to love?
2. My host family. I will say it again: I lucked out with this family. They're fantastic and quite possibly my favorite part of this experience. I love how excited my host mom gets when I learn new Arabic words, and Lara is the best host sister ever. When I was feeling down the other day, she could tell even though I was trying really hard not to be obvious about it, so she told me I'm awesome. :)
3. The fact that the guys at the coffee shop know my name. Sure, they call me Maggie, but whatever. At least they're consistent about calling me the wrong thing.
4. The view. Everything here is limestone, and you might think that that sounds boring and drab, but it really isn't. I really love the view from the hill on bus route on the way home from the University. There are hundreds and hundreds of buildings and minarets as far as I can see, and it just looks so incredible. The monotone of it doesn't actually feel monotonous, if that makes any sense at all.
5. The people. Yeah, yeah, I just spent a paragraph ranting about how Jordanians are "me first" and can't understand the concept of waiting one's turn. What's your point? They're also super welcoming of Americans; I've been told "Welcome to Jordan!" so many times in the last three weeks. Also, it's really fun to people-watch here. I like watching how Jordanians walk and talk, what they wear (the women have really cool coats that look ridiculously impractical in the heat, but also very pretty), what they eat. I may be too shy to imitate them, but I like absorbing it through watching it.
6. I think it's hilarious that every single market that I have been to in Amman has Shaun the Sheep backpacks.  Also Spongebob backpacks and I've even seen one Yoda backpack. I just love Jordanians apparent fascination with cartoons. Especially Shaun the Sheep. On a similar note, I love it that every market I've been to is really cheap. Bootleg DVDs for 2 dinar? Okay.
7. The culture. This is so difficult to describe, but I love it that there's a distinguishable sense of culture here. The hodge podge that is the United States is too spread out, too big to have an obvious sense of culture. Someone from the South could potentially have a very different idea of what being an American is than someone like me, from the North might. But here, it's pretty easy to get a sense of what it means to be Jordanian. They're proud of their country, and they're proud of the relatively stable place their country has in the craziness that is the Middle East. I love it that they have isms here. There are hand gestures and flicks of the tongue here that mean the same thing no matter where you go in the country, and I really like that.

Oh, hey, look. The "Things that Frustrate Me" list is smaller than the "Things I Like" list... It turns out I like more things here than I dislike them. What do you know, maybe I like it here after all. :)

Night 19: Politics and Protests in Amman

Today Palestine is making its bid for statehood at the UN. In the coming weeks (or less, or more, I honestly don't know how long this will take) Palestine will certainly lose this bid. Today, this bid is having an effect on my ability to leave my house.
Normally, protests going on outside my house that prevent me from going outside (not really, but CIEE keeps texting us telling us to avoid certain areas with demonstrations) would be annoying. But this really isn't. This is really cool. If I were at home, I would be sitting in bed right now, laptop in my lap, reading articles about the bid. I'd go to Beth's Arab/Israeli conflict class (which I would definitely have taken if I were at Beloit this semester) and talk about it there, and that would be that. Not so here in Jordan. Instead, I'm sitting in bed right now, typing with my laptop in my lap, listening to the protests of Jordanians outside my window. I may be homesick, I may be kinda lonely here, but I love that I get to be here for this.

A little context for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: Palestine is attempting to get statehood recognition from the United Nations. It seems as though Palestine has been long fed up with attempts at negotiations with Israel and is trying to go around that issue by going through the UN instead, which isn't going well for them.The physical borders that Palestine wants recognition for (and has been trying to get back from Israel for years through failed negotiations) include the territory that Israel took in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem). This is, as most of you will have guessed, not going to happen.

President Obama said yesterday (I think yesterday, it might have been the day before, time zones are confusing) that he was opposed to statehood recognition for Palestine and openly said that the U.S. would veto Palestine's bid. Palestinians are not happy about this, nor are Jordanians. Most Jordanians that I've talked to think that Obama is just trying to get votes, and in order to do that, he has to put forward a pro-Israel stance. So Jordanians have been protesting in the streets for the last few days, very peacefully and mostly pretty quietly (there was a protest near my neighborhood the other day that was supposed to have over a thousand attendees, but the turn out was more like a couple hundred). Over half of the population of Jordan is either of Palestinian descent, or is actually from Palestine (like my host mom, who only managed to get out of Bethlehem in 1967 because her mom had a job in Amman), so the Palestinian support here is overwhelming. Some Jordanians that I've talked to only begrudgingly recognize Israel as a state.

However, Jordanians are fully aware that this bid isn't going to go through. Palestinians are fully aware of this. So why are they going through with it? I think it's because at this point it's kind of the only thing they can do. The Arab/Israeli conflict has been going on since Israel's birth in 1948. Attempts at peace negotiations have failed repeatedly. The tricky thing is that Israel actually has a lot to lose from peace negotiations, and Palestine has a lot to gain. Israel has significant military power over Palestine, it has more territory and it barely suffers the consequences for encroaching on territory that doesn't belong to them. Palestine wants Israel to cut out its settlement building and put reverting the borders back to what they were before 1967 on the table before it even agrees to negotiate. Israel is having none of that, so peace negotiations have been stalled for some time now.

So what's my personal opinion on all of this? Tough to say, since I'm learning this on the fly by talking to heavily biased Jordanians. I would have benefited from taking Beth's class this semester, since Israel/Palestine is not my general area of interest. However, from what I do know, I think that the Palestinian bid for statehood isn't a good idea, even ignoring the fact that we all know that the U.S. is going to veto it (side note: I really, really hate the Security Council and veto power). Even if Palestine was recognized as a state by the UN, it doesn't have that much to gain from this. Israel would still have authority over Palestinian territory, and attacks between the two would certainly continue. But since Israel has so much to lose, and Palestine has so much to gain, peace negotiations just aren't going anywhere, and I kind of feel like at least Palestine is doing something.

If anyone has any questions, please leave them in comments or email me. However, I'm not currently taking a class on the Arab/Israeli conflict and I never have before, so all of my knowledge on the subject is self-taught. So I also welcome any corrections or challenges to what I've said here, because it's quite possible that I've got some facts mixed up, or that I've misunderstood something (Eric, I'm looking at you. Seriously, fill in the gaps in my education, they're pretty big). It's a very, very complicated topic.

In other news, I'm going to Umm Qais tomorrow, and I will return with pictures soon!

Night 16: A Day in the Life Of

I'm starting to get used to Amman. I no longer wake up at the morning call to prayer (at 5:30 in the friggin' morning, only about an hour before my alarm goes off...), I understand the bus system, I have a routine, and I can now cross the street without waiting ten minutes for zero traffic. I'm learning. Not a whole lot has happened in the last few days though; I got my visa extended for 90 days yesterday (which involved getting manhandled by a police officer and getting my fingers covered in ink), I met with my peer tutor today, learned some new words, I went up to the roof with Lara to watch a demonstration going on outside the Palestinian Embassy next to our apartment building, talked about Israel and Palestine with Janet (more on that later, after I've gotten comfy asking more sensitive questions). Now that I have a routine (kinda), I think I'm going to give you guys an idea of what a "day in the life of Meg" is like here in Amman.

6:45: Alarm goes off. I hit the snooze button. 

6:55: I actually get up, do morning things. Grab some cheese and an apple from the fridge and I'm out the door by 7:20. 

7:30: I reach the main street where I can catch a cab. I have to walk to this spot since there aren't many cabs near my street. I take a cab in the morning because I would have to get up at six-ish in order to take a bus that would actually get me to school on time. I take the bus in the afternoon because I'm not in a hurry and it's a lot cheaper. 

8:00: Arabic starts. I try to get to school 10 or 15 minutes early, but there have been a couple of days of terrible traffic where I've been 10 or 15 minutes late. Yesterday the cab driver missed a turn and ended up in ridiculous traffic on the opposite side of campus from my Arabic class. Muna (my Arabic professor) was not happy. Today I was 15 minutes early. 

10:00/11:00: Depending on the day, I get out of Arabic. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, Arabic is from 8:00-11:00 with a 10 minute break. This includes Ammiyya (colloquial) Arabic. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we just do MSA, so we get out at 10:00. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm then done for the day and I'll hang out with people and study, go to lunch and I go home around 4:00. I'm also now meeting with my tutor, Doaa, on these days between 1:00 and 2:00. 

10:00-1:00ish (Mondays and Wednesdays): Here begins my lovely four hour block of Free Time. I head over to Khalifeh Plaza across the street from campus (there's an underpass so I don't have to cross the busy street. There are a lot of shops in the underpass. I bought a pair of sunglasses there), where the CIEE office is, as well as the TAGKS center, where there's a computer lab with a lounge and couches and a snack bar. TAGKS also has this cool fingerprint system for signing in. They recorded my fingerprint when I first got here, so I use my thumb to sign in. Then a female voice says "You are authorized" and I get to use the computer lab. Me being me, I repeat "You are authorized" back to the machine, in the annoying tinny voice. No one understands my tendency to repeat electronic noises here though... Anyway, I've been going to the CIEE office before doing anything else in the last few days so I can check my mail. I never have any. Supposedly Sam sent me a postcard almost two weeks ago, but Jordanian mail is reaaaaaaaaaally slow, so it's not here yet. Then I go downstairs to TAGKS and hang out, do homework, check my email. 

--Between these times I will probably drink at least one entire bottle of water. I will search every bathroom in the building for tissues or toilet paper with which to blow my nose because I always forget tissues at home. I never find any (the bathrooms at the University are really terrible. Fortunately that's not the case for the bathrooms in homes). It's really dry here and my nose doesn't like it, so this is a frequent problem.--

1:00ish (Mondays and Wednesdays): At around 1:00 some of us will head to lunch, either at the cafeteria or a local place. The cafeteria here is good, and cheap, but it serves basically the same thing every day. Personally, I like the heart-shaped falafel place. They also have ful, which I'm a big fan of. Also the pizza place at Khalifeh Plaza. I had a turkey sandwich there today where I actually watched them make the bread that they then used for my sandwich. Freshest bread ever. I also had apple and strawberry juice that was distinctly not as good as the juice I had at Souk Jara. It turns out apples are hard to blend. 

2:00 (Mondays and Wednesdays): I have my Conflicts in the Middle East class. It's okay so far, but right now we're doing theory. I hate theory. Quite a bit. I understand that it has its place in the world of academia, but it's boring and it's kinda black and white, and my worldview is gray and fuzzy. To me, it seems like PoliSci theory generalizes too much and it treats the world as though it's predictable. It's sort of an "If this, then that" way of looking at things, which doesn't work for me. It totally has its place in the world of academics, but we covered it in International Politics last year, so I'm excited to move on. This probably made sense to about two of you, so Too Boring, Didn't Read: PoliSci theory is boring, I don't like it. 

3:30: My Political Islam class, which I like much better. We talked about democracy yesterday and whether or not it's compatible with Islam. I brought up some points made last year in my Secularism an Fundamentalism class, which was good, but I don't think people understood my point. I need to learn how to articulate what we learned in that class better... it's in my head, I just have trouble getting it from my brain to other people. 

5:00: Done with classes for the day. Sometimes I head over to TAGKS again to hang out with people, or I just go to the bus stop and wait for the bus to fill up, get home around 6:00. 

6:00-10:00: Homework, reading, internet-ing. Hang out with host family, maybe watch a movie... They made me watch "Little Man" the other day. I do not recommend it. I left halfway through because it was so bad; I did not feel like I was getting any kind of cultural value out of watching a grown man act like a really horny baby. 

10:00-11:00ish: Bedtime.Yeah, that's right. I go to bed before midnight here. Don't judge me. See above, I get up early. 

Speaking of, Castle premiered yesterday and it turns out Sidereel works here, so I'm going to go watch that now so that I can go to bed early. Mas'a-al-kheer (goodnight)!

Night 13: The Amazing Race

Guys, guys, guys. Shebab, shebab, shebab*. I went Out. At night time, with a person not in my homestay family. Until the craaazy hour of 9:30PM. Whoa!

...Hey, I'm learning, m'kay?

Sarah and I went out last night to a semi-touristy market called Souk Jara, near Rainbow Street. Rainbow Street is a trendy spot in Amman, with a lot of stores selling jewelry, clothing, and lots and lots of food. The souk is technically open every day, but it's bigger and cooler on Fridays. Stalls go all the way down one street, filled with LOTS of jewelry, souvenirs like the popular bottles of sand, scarves, Spongebob backpacks, and artwork. Also food. Goooood food. We had some cheese and potato things that looked a little bit like wantons, but less squishy. I had a lot of juice. Kids were wandering around giving out free samples of juice, including watermelon juice (Sarah bought that one and I tried it,  it was tasty) and lemon mint juice, which is really popular here. I ended up ordering apple and kiwi juice, but was given strawberry and apple juice. Welcome to Jordan. In any case, it was extremely tasty and I can't wait to get more of the stuff--I was so sad when I had finished it! We also got ice cream, wandered around Rainbow Street, and found this cool rooftop hookah bar/cafe that had an excellent view of the city. The Citadel was all lit up in the background but I couldn't get a good picture since it was nighttime. Neither of us smokes, so we ended up ordering tea and juice. Sadly, the apple juice there was not as good as at the souk.

The end of Souk Jara.

In other news, we had a peer tutor activity today. This would have been more fun if it hadn't been Saturday, the last day of weekend here. I miss sleeping in. But it was a good "bonding activity" with our peer tutors. The peer tutors are University of Jordan students paired up with CIEE students to help us with our Arabic. We are all committed to three hours (or more) of tutoring a week. Today, our activity was The Amazing Race, Jordan style. The idea was to help us get to know the city better, specifically about transportation, and at the same time get to know our tutors. The latter was pretty successful, but the figuring out the city aspect of it was a fail. The race involved trekking around Amman, going to different locations to complete challenges, and moving onto the next stage of the race. The only rule was no taxis, and no private cars. We could use only the bus system (which I have talked about a bit here, so you should know that this is difficult), and service taxis. Service taxis are basically buses, but they're taxis... The taxi goes on a certain route and you can catch the cab, but he won't drive you to your destination unless its on his route.

Anyway, the morning started off with a giant gathering of multi-colored hats. The group that organized this event with CIEE had brought us brightly-colored, numbered caps that screamed "I AM A TOURIST, PLEASE STARE AND GAWK AT ME." Things that make me stand out make me uncomfortable, but I went with it. It helped that my hat was white. We were split up into groups of four (there were five or six different hat colors, but the teams were based on the numbers on our hats, not on the hat color); two CIEE students paired up with two UJ peer tutors. My peer tutor's name is Doaa (I am going to have trouble pronouncing that), and she's pretty nice, and understands that I speak zero Arabic. After we met our tutors, we were given a packet with instructions and a waiver saying that if we were mugged or assaulted during the race, it's our own fault and the organization running the event was not responsible. Great. Then, three kids showed up onstage (we were in a theater) to give us a demonstration on kite-making. Yup, kite-making was our first "challenge." The kids didn't speak during the presentation, they just stood up there and made a kite out of garbage bags and some sticks. When they were finished, each group was given their own kite-making kit and we were off. Kite-making is hard, guys, but we managed to get the kite done pretty quickly. It was a kind of a pretty kite, too. Our next task was to get to the Citadel and go fly the kite, which we were also pretty successful at. Here are some pictures:

The rest of the race didn't go so well. Figuring out the bus/service taxi system here is hard. Especially when your peer tutors figure it all out for you and don't explain what's going on. That's where the "fail" part of this activity came in. Both tutors in my group have excellent English, but they spoke primarily in Arabic (which was fair; we're supposed to be able to speak Arabic with them and the other CIEE student in my group is in the Advanced Arabic class), so after a certain point I stopped trying to help get us to our next location and just followed the person in front of me because it seemed faster. Even so, we came in almost dead last. Out of about 50 teams I think we might have been the 40th team to finish. I think this is in part due to the puzzle. We had to piece together a piece of artwork that was not cut very well and we had difficult with it. Also, we decided to take a bus to the last location and we had to wait 20 minutes for it to fill up.

I have class tomorrow, and I'm exhausted from this race, so I will be going to bed now. But here are some pictures of the train station where we had one of our most bizarre challenges. We had to find hidden stickers in this old train museum exhibit and then put the stickers in the right place on a map. The weird part about it was that even though most museums have "do not touch" signs, we went through this one picking things up, moving things out of place, standing on possibly really old chairs to look at high-up spaces, and generally messing the place up to look for these stickers. Funny, but weird:

Puzzle.

*Shebab=Guys.

Night 11: Driving in Amman

It's the weekend! I'll have more to say when I've actually experienced the weekend, but for now I have what was meant to be a brief post, but turned into a longish one about driving. I've talked about the importance of eating in Jordanian culture a few times here--and I think I probably will again--but I think now it's time to talk about another integral part of living in Amman: Driving. I've talked a little bit about the bus system and cabs, but there's so much more to driving in Amman.

Driving here is scary. I miss stoplights where people actually stop. I miss speed limits. I miss crosswalks. I miss lanes. Most of all, I miss seat belts. There are a few "speed-controlled" areas here in Amman, but not very many, and I have no idea what would happen to someone if they didn't follow the limit. I have never seen a car pulled over for a violation of any kind and I can't imagine how that would even work here. There's nowhere to pull over for the cop, and I'm pretty sure that most drivers would just ignore the cop. Parking tickets are also non-existent here. People park very haphazardly, wherever there's enough room for their car, facing whatever direction. Lara told me that people are only supposed to park in places for 10 minutes (or possibly half an hour. I don't remember, but it wasn't very long). I asked her what would happen if someone parked somewhere for longer. Nothing would happen, of course. Duh, Meg.

Fortunately, my means of transportation is mostly the bus, and sometimes taxis. Taxis are actually pretty nice here, I've been in some very cushy, well taken care of cabs this week. Cab drivers have to take care of their taxis because if they're in an accident, they could have their license taken away, so they drive *slightly* more carefully (and they're generally better drivers) than the average Jordanian. Buses feel safer for obvious reasons: they're bigger than the other stuff on the road. I'm more likely to be squished in a car than in a bus. Still, when drivers go over 60 here (which is basically always unless there's traffic), in my head I'm going "ohgodohgodohgodohgod," hoping that I get to my destination in one piece. No wonder they're so religious here. Every time someone says they're going somewhere they say "Inshallah," which means "God willing." Or, "Hopefully, god willing, I will get to school on time and without getting in an accident."

The lack of lanes, safe drivers, and speed limits is why there are so few pedestrians here. People don't walk in Amman, and I haven't seen a single bike since I got here. There are very few good sidewalks, none of them go very far and are always broken up by construction or the sidewalk just ends and you end up walking in the street. Also, I hate to say this, but Jordanians are really bad at being pedestrians when they do walk. I have seen SO MANY people walk RIGHT IN FRONT of a bus or a car and I SWEAR they are going to get to get squished and I'm thinking ohmygodyoucrazypersongetoutoftheway. Fortunately, I've never actually seen anyone get hit.

Also, car horns. I don't think it's possible to go for more than 5 seconds during the waking hours without hearing a loud HONK or a beep. The distinction is important. As far as I can tell, "HONK" means "Hey, watch it!" or "Hurry up, asshole!" just like it does in the States (only it happens far, far more frequently). But a short "beep" is often (as far as I can tell) used when a car is rounding a sharp turn or going around a corner so that they can tell other cars they're there/tell pedestrians to get out of the way. Sometimes another car will respond with another short beep, like "Okay, I'm here too." It's kind of cool actually, and I like it because it means I know when to get out of the way when I'm walking. There are also some beeps that seem to have no purpose; Jordanians just like to use their horns.

Anyway, I don't want to freak you guys out or anything, I'm getting used to the transportation system here. Cars and driving shape my life a lot more than you might think here. It's a very big part of living in Amman. It's scary, but I'm learning to kind of like it.

Night 10: In which Arabic is not Spanish and Going Out is hard.

It's noon here, not exactly "Night 10," but whatever. I like consistency in my blog posts. 

The last couple of days have been a lot better than Sunday. I'm getting used to the campus and I'm getting into a routine, I'm even making friends! Sort of. I've only been here a week though, and I know things are only going to get more familiar and "normal" from here. 

We started our first Area Studies classes on Monday and I'm pretty excited about them. I'm taking Conflicts in the Middle East (current conflicts between and within states in the Middle East; Israel/Palestine, revolutions and dictators, etc) and Political Islam (the political nature of Islam; really similar to my Secularism and Fundamentalism class last year). All of my professors are Jordanian, and we were warned that professors here are seen as "fonts of wisdom" and their wisdom was not to be questioned. However, I haven't really experienced that yet. My professor for Conflicts in the Middle East was half an hour late to class on Monday, and in the States he might have apologized for that, but here it's like professors are entitled to be late and students just have to deal. However, he also spent the class asking us about ourselves and asking about what we wanted to learn so that he could shape his syllabus, so he's definitely taking our thoughts and interests into account. He's a little soft-spoken though, so I'm going to have to sit closer to the front when I have class today. 

I think I'm most excited about my Political Islam class. The professor seems fantastic and his syllabus was very clear. We're also reading a few texts that I've either read before or whose authors I recognize. We're reading Karen Armstrong later in the semester and I'm really excited because I DETEST her and can't wait to rip into the book we're going to be reading. Another girl in my class has similar feelings, so it was fun to geek out about how much we hate Karen Armstrong. Also, the professor is really flexible with what we'll be writing our final (and I think only) paper on. 

My Arabic classes are a lot harder than the Area Studies classes and they're getting to be less exciting. We have Arabic everyday, and we're supposed to have Colloquial Arabic three times a week, but right now I think it's all Modern Standard, since we're still focusing on the alphabet. We know 11 Arabic letters now, out of 28. Speaking the language in class is difficult, too, because Spanish keeps popping into my head. If I don't know something I'm tempted to say "No se..." or when I'm supposed to say "I want chicken with rice" I end up saying "Biddi dajaj con roz" which is like Spanabic or something. The word for "with" in Arabic is "ma," by the way. "Roz" really is the Arabic word for rice. I can do nouns in Arabic, but a lot of phrases that have been drilled into my head in Spanish come out randomly. It's like my brain goes "Foreign Language mode, activate!" and the only setting is Spanish. Hopefully, I'll come out of this program speaking better Arabic than Spanish, though. 

Also. Going Out is hard, guys. Especially if you go to a small school in a small town that has one bowling alley, one non-skeezy pub, and your local grocery store is Wal-Mart. That would be me. At Beloit people don't leave campus; we stay in our Beloit Bubble and party in our rooms or hang out and watch YouTube videos and play Settlers of Catan on the weekends. This state of being causes problems when you're taken out of the Beloit Bubble and plopped down in a major city, living and studying with students that go to big-time universities of ~40,000 people. They know how to Go Out. It comes naturally to them--finding something to do in a big city, taking a cab to get there, and staying out until 2AM, all with very little planning. I don't know how to do that. We have a lot of free time here too, so I feel like I should be utilizing that time by going out and absorbing the culture here, going to restaurants and shops and hanging out with people... I suppose I'll learn in time, but for now I'm spending a lot of time in the study center across the street from campus. Fortunately, it turns out that quite a few other people in the program are doing the same thing, and I like hanging out with them, so for now I think I'm satisfied with not Going Out too often. 

Oh, I have pictures! Here: 

                                                        

My room! Very comfy.

 This is from the internet. I did not take this picture. It's really awkward to take pictures on this campus. This is the clock tower at the University, where students meet. It's the go to meeting place.

This is also from the internet. The main gate at the University where I enter campus.

Okay, yalla bye!

Night 7: Thank You Cake Wrecks (No joke).

Okay, so I originally had a happy intro to post here before slowly devolving into how shitty my day was, but then I looked at today's Sunday Sweets over at Cake Wrecks (http://www.cakewrecks.com/) and I just had to start with the quote Jen the Cake Wrecks lady used, it totally made my evening: 

"Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost."

— Helen Keller

She put this quote up because it's 9/11 today (for those of you who don't know, Sunday Sweets is a thing that the blog Cake Wrecks does that features really, really pretty cakes every Sunday. Every other day of the week she posts lots of gross and ruined cakes and makes funny, snarky comments about them). For 9/11, Sunday Sweets was about making readers happy, because today everyone needs a smile. Now, my day was not shitty because of 9/11, it was just a regular bad day, but still. This quote is VERY relevant to my day---it's how I should be feeling right now even if it's not exactly how I am feeling at the moment. So thanks Cake Wrecks, you made me smile. :) 

So in my last post I mentioned that I lucked out with my family. After going to classes and talking with other students today, I came to appreciate my host family even more. Other people were talking about shouting parents, loud, large families, and lots and lots of partying. My family doesn't do any of that--they're very laid back and pretty quiet, which I like. Lara talks a lot, but I like talking, and she always makes sure I understand what she's saying. I talked to a CIEE coordinator today, the woman in charge of placing students with families, and when I said that this family is good for those of us who are shy, she told me that yeah, that's why I was put with this family. Good to know my shyness was that obvious based on a homestay application... Still, even though my family is great, today was hard. Today was our first day of classes and it made me really, really miss Beloit. 

This morning I got up at 6:30AM. Bad right from the start; I'm not a morning person. I have to take a bus to the University, which is fine and I prefer it to taking a taxi everyday, but it was packed. I had to stand in the doorway with four or five other women for the first ten minutes of the bus ride, even though the windows very explicitly said in red lettering "NO STANDING." I got to the University okay, though, I didn't miss my stop or get lost or anything, which was a big surprise for me. Once I got to the University, I had my first day of Arabic 101. Most people had their review for their placement test today (the test is tomorrow), to see what Arabic class they're going to be in for the semester, but for those of us who don't know any Arabic, it was just regular class time (we don't have to take the test, haha). My professor's name is Dr. Muna and she's pretty fantastic. We learned a few Amiyyaa (Colloquial) words today (Marhaba! Or, "Hi!"), as well as some of the Arabic alphabet. 

Later, we all met up for lunch and an Amiyyaa activity at a market called Souk (Souk=market) al-Sultan, which was bizarre, difficult, and stressful. That was really the beginning of my bad day, so it was more of a bad afternoon/evening. All we knew about this activity prior to arriving was that it had something to do with the colloquial language, and that it would be at a market. They bussed us over to the market at around 3PM, handed us each a worksheet with some pictures and transliterated Arabic words on it, and then they started. No introduction to what we were doing whatsoever. We were split into haphazard groups and my group had the unfortunate experience of being the first ones to enter the butcher shop. Suddenly, there was this  guy behind a counter holding what looked like a piece of liver high up in the air, shouting at us very loudly in rapid Arabic. Over the course of the next few minutes, it became clear that we were supposed to identify what the pieces of meat he was holding up in the air were and write them down on our sheet in Arabic. The problem was that I had no idea what most of the meat he was showing us was in English, let alone in Arabic. He would shout the Arabic word at us over and over again, but I didn't know if the bloody heart he was juggling was a sheep's heart or a cow's heart, so I wasn't able to put much on my sheet. He also had a whole skinned sheep's head, complete with eyeballs and teeth. It was gross. 

After the butcher shop, we went to a few other market stores; a place selling fruit, a beauty store, and a home furnishings store. The fruit place wasn't great either, because we were supposed to write down how much every kind of fruit was, but I don't know Arabic numbers yet, so I was very lost. At this point, I was fairly stressed out, but pretty much fine. Then the program coordinators were like "You're free, yalla bye!" ("yalla" is a word Jordanians use a lot, it means "let's go" and they frequently use it in conjunction with the English word "bye") and then they left. We were left to our own devices in downtown Amman (which is more conservative and harder to navigate than West Amman, where all of us live) with no transportation back to the University other than taxis. So after a lot of staring into space, roughly 70 American students were hailing cabs on one small street. Not the best planned activity, CIEE. 

I ended up sharing a cab back to the University with a few people. I was going to spend some time there to use Skype and check my email, but my computer was dead, so I went looking for my bus home. This was the hardest, most stressful, worst part of my day. I found the bus "station" after a little while, but this being Jordan, there's no organized bus schedule, so you just wait until your bus shows up and hope you get wherever you're going on time. However, this evening, the bus drivers didn't seem to be in the mood for driving. I don't know if they were taking a really long smoke break, or three buses broke down at the same time, or what, but the three buses at my stop weren't moving and they didn't look like they were going anywhere any time soon. I wandered around a little bit, ready to burst into tears at any moment because I was afraid of not being able to get home. I ended up taking a cab. This is harder than it sounds. Cab drivers don't recognize street names in Amman, they recognize landmarks. So you have to know a landmark near your destination and direct the driver from there. I live near the Palestinian Embassy, so I directed the driver there in English, and apparently got lucky since I got home safely and for only a little bit more than I think I should have been charged (they cheat foreigners that don't know Arabic. My Arabic isn't good enough for me to convince the drivers that I know they're cheating me yet). 

Ufta, long post is long again. Anyway, that was my day. Looking back on it I guess it wasn't actually that bad, I just got very overwhelmed, and being on a college campus made me REALLY miss my college. You have no idea guys, Beloit is so amazing and I can't wait to get back to it. I like it here, but I miss my routine. Study abroad is difficult and I kinda want a pause button. Unfortunately, it turns out there's no "Out of Character" option in Jordan. 

Night 5: Long Post is Long.

Aghdshf. So much stuff in the last two days, how do I cram it into one post? I'm basically going to skip over Day 2; we toured the University of Jordan and got our second or third safety presentation, but I've covered safety a little bit in here, and I'm sure I'll mention stuff about the University itself once I get to know the ginormous (35,000 students!!) campus better.
Anyway, yesterday. Moving in day. Oh man, guys, did I luck out. I wish that I could show this to myself about two or three weeks ago. I was all anxious about my host family not liking me, about them not speaking much English, about being shy and awkward (which I often am), about not having internet, and most of all, about not having my own room. It turns out I have my own room, I have internet (although my host sister claims that this should have been gone 4 months ago...), and both my host mom, Janet (pronounced with a long, French sounding ja, rather than the American way) and my host sister, Lara, speak basically fluent English. I'm still a little shy and awkward, and I'm worried about whether or not they like me (I think I always will be though, I worry about that kind of thing a lot), but the fact that there are only two women makes it WAY more comfortable. Lara is 16 and a chatterbox; she speaks fluent English and is more up to date on American pop culture than I am, especially when it comes to music. By the way, if Alex or Toby is reading this: Thank you for showing me the Ke$ha unicorn music video, I got to tell Lara that I was familiar with it. Janet is quieter, and I'm pretty sure that she knows just as much English as Lara does, but she doesn't practice it as often.
I really like how laid-back this family is. Today we went to a baptism of a family friend's and we spent more time getting ready for it than we spent at the church. We arrived late so we were only there for about 20 minutes, but I'm told baptisms here last maybe half an hour to 45 minutes. Very different from Catholic baptisms at home. After the baptism we came home and Lara and Janet immediately changed back into pajamas. We watched some TV and ate lunch and napped until the evening. It was a little busier between 8 and 11. They took me to a Friday market called Souk Jarra, where there is a TON of jewelry and tourist trinkets, as well as small animals like turtles and fish for sale. We bought some dinner from a vendor called ful (pronounced "fool"), which was kind of like salted beans with lime. I made a pun later: ful makes you full! I was very proud of myself when Lara laughed. We also took Lara to basketball practice--she's very aggressive and reminds me of Lucy, and we visited a friend of Janet's where I mostly sat on a couch and watched TV in Arabic while people talked around me in Arabic.
A lot of the day is spent watching television, which is very normal for Jordanians. The TV is always on, even if no one is watching it. They're very energy-conscious here; lights are always turned off if a room isn't being used, or if there's an adequate amount of natural light, and public lights (like in the hallways in apartments or public buildings) automatically turn off after a certain amount of time. But the TV stays on always, if that gives you any indication of priority here. Thus far, we've spent a few hours both days I've been here in front of the TV. Fortunately, Lara watches a lot of American television, so I can understand most of what she watches. We watched The Prince and Me last night, and some Harry Potter today (although Lara claims to hate Harry Potter). Unfortunately, Jordan no longer gets foreign films due to an increase in taxes on these films, so they only have the first through fifth Harry Potter movies. Today I told Lara what happened in the 6-8th movies/6-7th books. She is possibly the only person I have met in the last few years that didn't know about Dumbledore's death. :(
Also, a note on food: I'm learning that it's best to try as hard as possible not to become full at a meal unless you are absolutely positive that it will be your last meal of the day. People will try to feed you wherever you go; including at the gym where your host sister plays basketball at 10PM, and you will have to refuse because you just ate two pieces of something weird but tasty at your host mom's friend's house and you are really full. And just when you think you've let everyone know that you're full and will remain full until morning, your host sister will dash this wishful thinking and offer you cake. Yes, yes, I am speaking from experience. Also, Jordanians will try to make you taste something to the point of putting it in your mouth themselves. Don't bother trying to fight this.
I'm not going to post pictures now because 1. I don't have anything new, it's weird to whip out your camera when you're living with locals, and 2. This connection is a little slow and I don't want to crash it by uploading pictures. I'll upload any future pictures at the University or an internet cafe.
Edit: Sorry for the run-on-y post, but I'm too tired to fix it.

Night 3: Goodbye Summer, Hello... Summer?

I made it to Jordan!
Last some of you reading this heard, I was in the Paris airport on a 7 hour layover. I thought the layover was going to be boring and I was going to try to sleep (I didn't sleep on the plane at all), but when I got there (about an hour and a half after my flight landed, due to the aforementioned going through customs debacle) there were a couple of CIEE students waiting. We started chatting and every hour or so another couple of 20-something Americans would show up and we'd ask them if they were CIEE, and they all were. The flight ended up being filled with 15 or so of us. The rest of the night was surprisingly uneventful--we arrived, went through customs, got to the hotel, ate, and went to bed. So I'm going to move on to the official Day 1 now, the day after I arrived in Amman. First though, here is a picture of the Queen Alia airport, the first thing we saw upon arrival:

We got up at really early o'clock on the first full day to start touring Amman. The day was basically dedicated to doing all of the touristy things, which meant it was a PACKED day. There are a lot of touristy things to do in Amman. First we went one of Amman's most famous tourist sites, the Roman Amphitheater. It was pretty cool, and super, super steep to climb up. The view from the top was pretty excellent though, and you could really hear people from all the way down at the bottom: 

The view of the Amphitheater from close to the top

The stairs were very steep. 

View from the top. 

After that we walked a very long ways, up many steep steps, to a local restaurant. It wasn't a sit down and order kind of restaurant; instead, waiters brought out a lot of sauces and condiments (like hummus) and some bread. They kept bringing out more sauces, over the course of about a half an hour. We kept loading up on bread, because after a while it seemed like that was all we were going to get. They brought us some cheesy, doughy things too. Then I was full. Immediately thereafter, they brought out the real meal: a plate of rice, lamb, chicken, beef, and potatoes. WTF. Virtually everyone glanced around like, "Wait, seriously, they expect us to eat all of this?" The worst part was that it was REALLY good. The meat was cooked really well, I'm a meat and potatoes gal, it was great. But I was full and my stomach could not take more than a few bites of each thing, and my plate was still way more than half full. We had all decided we were done when they brought out dessert. It had little, really sweet raisins that were really tasty, but again, I was FULL. Sam says we're each in the wrong country, at least in terms of food. I have no doubt he could have tucked in all of the food they gave us. 

After the gigantic lunch, we had a session on "Where You Aren't," kind of a "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto" lecture. We were given some pretty interesting statistics--turns out Jordanians have an average life expectancy of 78, whereas the average American (at least according to the CIA World Factbook) will live to be 71. Also, 101% of Jordanians own a cell phone. There are more cell phones here than there are Jordanians. 

Aaaaand, finally, we also went to the Citadel. It's an old historical site, with an archaeology museum and a lot of crumbling old buildings. There's an old mosque reception hall, and columns from thousands of years ago... it would be great if I had retained any information on this site, but I didn't really--we were all too busy taking pictures: 

The Citadel

This was in the archaeology museum; for some reason I thought it was sort of a silly sign. 

The view from the Citadel is amazing; it's a totally panoramic view of East Amman. I can definitely believe that nearly 3 million people live in Amman. This city is PACKED.

Jordanian flag in the distance.

And a hand. I don't know if it ever had a body.

Today was equally packed, but it's almost 1am here and I have to get up early tomorrow. I'm moving into my homestay tomorrow and I don't know if I'll have any access to internet there... if I do, I'll probably update soon, if not, not until next week sometime. I'm experiencing some homesickness here, and a decent amount of fear and anxiety and general nervousness. I like it here a lot, but I also miss home and Beloit A LOT, so I would greatly appreciate any and all emails from people. I'll be sending postcards and letters to those who give me their address!

In which the stupid, sleep-deprived, excuse-making, self-deprecating American accidentally goes to France.

I knew this was going to happen. I knew this was going to happen as it was happening. Me being me, however, I did nothing to stop it. I'm a go with the flow kind of person, and the flow was going to France. So I went  to France.
You know how sometimes people say that they've been to France, or the Netherlands, or some other European country but what they really mean is that they've been to a European airport? This is not what I mean by "I went to France." I mean I left the airport and was in France. Because I'm a stupid American and I accidentally went through customs. As Margaret said, "Well, we all know how you are about getting to the right place." The customs line looked surprisingly short and simple, so I thought it must not be a customs line, just another line where someone had to check my passport. It's where everyone else was going, and there seemed to be no other obvious place to go, so I got in line, got my passport stamped, and then I was in Baggage Claim. To be fair, the sign also said "Connecting Flights." I still don't know what that was about. So I had to go through security again, which fortunately had a very short line, but it was VERY DIFFICULT to find. Turns out French people don't much like it when Americans ask for directions, either.
I will be in Amman in a few hours, but I thought that this was a silly, amusing story (especially for those of you who actually know me and know that this was not an unusual adventure for me) that I could share while waiting at the airport for six hours.
Also, I hate this airport. Not just because it took forever to find the security line (I had to cross the street outside the airport--twice--in order to find it). I hate this airport because there's very little food here. If you are looking for perfume, designer bags, or wine, you're golden. In fact, I'm pretty sure that every brand of perfume ever made is sold here; the whole airport reeks of perfume. If you want food (other than Coke and some tiny pastries) though, you're shit out of luck.

I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm leaving tomorrow!

Okay, so I lied. I'm not typing this from Amman, I'm typing this from Saint Paul, Minnesota. I'm just posting my address though, so this barely counts as a post. If you guys want to send me mail, please do, I love mail! But please do not send packages; it is not recommended and it may not get to me. If you're going to email me, email me at squeakytomato@yahoo.com.  I wouldn't recommend trying to get in touch with me on Facebook--I might not have much access to it since the University blocks it (it slows down the server, it's not a censorship thing). Also, if you want mail from me,  leave me your address in the comments (I've edited the settings so anyone can post, not just people with Google addresses) or email me. If I get your address, I promise I will send you at least one postcard and a letter!
Okay, here's the address:

Margaret (Meg) Brown

C/O CIEE

P.O. Box. 13434,

Amman, 11942

Jordan