Friday, December 16, 2011

Night 103: Mixed Feelings and Dabke

Holy shit, it's Night 103*! What.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, I am SO EXCITED to go home. I'm excited for the most basic things, like English and toilet paper and macaroni and cheese. Not to mention Sam, family, Beloit... Really, I'm pretty sure that no one has any perception whatsoever of how excited I am to go home.Well, it's possible that Palestinians who live in Jordan and not in Palestine understand, but that's a different story.

On the other hand... I like parts of being here. Mostly the people. It's sort of embarrassing to admit that by people, I mean Americans that I've met here. Also Janet and Lara. I'll miss them a lot. I'll miss folks that I've met at CIEE, like Rasha and Ahmad, and even my Arabic professor, Muna. But mostly I'll miss the American students that I've met here. I have friends here that I can talk to about my PoliSci papers and not only will they understand what I'm talking about, but it's likely that one of them has written/is writing a paper on the same thing and we can share notes and procrastinate by chatting about the topic for an hour or two. I don't get that at home.

We also went through "Cultural Re-Entry" training yesterday and that made me intensely excited to go home because we talked about all of the things that we've missed the most, what the first thing we're going to do when we get back to States will be (most people said eat Mexican food). But it also made particularly clingy to my Jordan friends. We talked about what an intense experience study abroad has been and how hard it'll be going home and trying to explain that to people. The only people who get it are here and we're all going to be scattered about the world as of next week. It's scary and now my feelings are in multiple places and one time and that just makes me feel mentally nauseous.


So there have been times in the last few days when I've felt like "I'm comfy here, why do I want to go home again?"

And then a skeezy man-boy calls me "sweetie" and makes hissing noises at me and I remember. These man-boys are not outliers in Jordanian society, by the way. In fact, a majority of the un-married men that I've met in Jordan (excluding most cab drivers, but not all) cannot seem to resist catcalling women. It appears as though their actual occupation is to lounge outside of McDonald's or other establishments where they don't intend to buy anything and hit on women and make them feel uncomfortable. I really look forward to going back to the States where it is not only socially unacceptable for a man to catcall a woman, but it is perfectly socially acceptable for me to call them an asshole for doing so. More than that, the man will understand that I am calling him an asshole. It is so much less satisfying to yell at a Jordanian man-boy and call him an asshole when he has no idea what I'm saying.

But then I go home and decorate the fake plastic Christmas tree with my host family and I feel cozy and homey again. We watch Arabic Jeopardy and I bicker with Lara over where to put certain ornaments (they have about a hundred ornaments for one tiny tree and not only did Lara insist on using all of them, but all of the ornaments that look the same cannot be anywhere near each other. This was a challenge) and it's nice. But it's another one of those things that manages to make me homesick and "No, I don't wanna leave" at the same time.

Then I go out into a busy Jordanian street where people are honking unnecessarily and I almost get hit by a car a couple of times and I really miss the States.

Some other fun things have gone on in the last nearly two weeks since I last posted (wow, really, two weeks? Oops). On Wednesday night CIEE hosted a dinner for host families and students, as well as the Apartment People. Not too many Apartment People showed up because Host Family People and Apartment People don't really hang out and the Apartment People were outnumbered due to all the host families. It was a nice chance for all of us to meet our friends' host families, and there were some speeches, and dancing (we were taught dabke, a kind of Jordanian/Bedouin dance), and lots and lots of food. There was even a chocolate fountain and sticks with marshmallows on them for dipping into the fountain. It was great. I think I ate more that night than Janet and Lara have ever seen me eat before, which made me feel bad. Especially when Lara commented "you never eat that much!"

Last night I went out with my host family, including my host aunt, Linda, to فحص (Fa-Hace). It's a sort of Christmas-y town where there are more Christians than Muslims so there are lot of Christmas lights and decorations. Going to فحص consisted of driving around looking at the lights and then stopping by the various Christmas trees in town to complain about how they weren't as pretty as last year. Also, there was an area that is apparently usually covered with lights and Christmas trees and decorations, but this year was totally empty. This made my host family sad. So we went to Chili Ways where Lara had a gigantic turkey sandwich and chili fries despite the fact that she had had McDonald's for lunch. She insisted that she was going to vomit as she was eating the sandwich. There was nothing I could do to stop her. Then we tried to find Janet a new purse, but no luck. Then we went home. So فحص turned out to be less of a thing than I thought it was going to be, but mosh moshkila (no problem/no worries/hakuna matata).

Anyway. I go home in less than SIX DAYS. I have mixed feelings about it, but overall I'm excited. There are just a lot of butterflies over here in Jordan.



*Okay, so I screwed up on my numbers a little bit. Not on the title, I checked that again today and I really am here for 108 nights, but I screwed up on Night 74--or actually what should have been Night 76. I repeated a number. Oops. Maybe no one will notice. Except that means that all of my posts (all three of them...) since the screw up are incorrect. Anywho.

1 comment:

  1. I'm really excited that you're coming home, and I can hardly wait to see you, but, on the other hand, I've felt closer to you than I ever have with your Jordanian postings and I am really going to miss them. Have a safe journey. Say goodbye to your host family for me too and I'll see you in Texas on the 26th!

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