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