Night 32: Classes and my Cannibalistic Arabic Professor.

Okay, so it's kind of difficult (nigh impossible) to outdo my last post, so I'm not even going to try. This post is going to be about UJ classes, both Arabic and Area Studies, so I apologize in advance for the boring.
This week I realized that I am learning two languages here, not one. I'm learning Modern Standard Arabic as well as the colloquial Jordanian Arabic. They're pretty similar, but often very, very different. Sometimes the difference between the two is just a matter of dropping a letter (Coffee in MSA is "qawha," while in colloquial it's "ahwa"). Sometimes, however, they're two different languages entirely. It can get frustrating, especially since for the first couple of weeks of Arabic classes, there wasn't a great distinction between which vocab words were MSA and which were colloquial. Until today, I thought the colloquial way of saying "beautiful" was "jameel," but no, that's MSA. Colloquial is "helu" (sort of, it's kind of hard to transliterate).

Other than the fact that I'm learning two languages, Arabic is... well, it's hard. Also my Arabic professor, Muna, is a cannibal. She said so herself ("I put you in my stomach and you can say 'bye bye America'!"). Today we were supposed to write sentences in Arabic using new vocab-- my question was "Why did Muna eat the student?" (لمذا منى اكلت الطالب) Her answer: "Mmm... Zaki" (Zaki=delicious). So, yeah--if I don't come back to the States in December, it's because I failed Arabic and Muna ate me. I'm doing fine for now, but I've never been very good at languages... it kind of feels like math. I'm definitely using the same part of my brain for Arabic as I do for math in any case, and it's a very underused part of my brain, so I'm pretty exhausted. Can I just write a research paper on immigration in the Middle East or something? Or a project, a presentation, anything?

The answer to that question is sadly, no. *sigh* My Arabic classes may be difficult, but that's in a (mostly) good way. Muna is tough, and I'm learning a lot in her class, which is great. Unfortunately, not really the case in my Area Studies classes. I mean, I'm learning about what Jordanian professors think about conspiracy theories, Saddam Hussein, and Saudis... that's something, right? But I'm learning about their opinions, and while that's very interesting from an "I am observing this culture" standpoint, it's frustrating from an academic standpoint. Also, these are the opinions of highly educated, fairly liberal university professors. Not exactly an adequate representation of the average Jordanian. It means that neither of my Area Studies classes are particularly challenging--each only requires one paper. We also have two tests per class, and I do hate tests, but still.

Let me elaborate a little bit by discussing each class separately. Besides MSA five times a week and colloquial twice a week, I also have two "Area Studies," classes. Both are Political Science courses, although I'm pretty sure that Political Islam would be classified as a Religious Studies course at Beloit. My first PoliSci class is Conflicts on the Middle East. I've mentioned before that this class did not seem promising. It's difficult to take the professor seriously, because he frequently goes off on tangents and he likes to talk about conspiracy theories. It's difficult to interpret whether or not he likes to talk about them because he thinks they're legitimate ideas, or because he thinks they're funny. Also, on Monday he told us he thought Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrible leader, just a bad guy. He also genuinely did not seem to think that Iraq invading Kuwait was such a big deal, and didn't think that it made sense for the U.S. to get involved during the first* Gulf War.

My second class is Political Islam. At first, this class seemed like it was going to be a good one. The syllabus included a lot of good readings, the professor seemed to be interested in what we had to say... then classes really started and I was proven very, very wrong. Yes, the readings on the syllabus are good, but when we get to class, the professor lectures about the readings due that day and frequently quotes them verbatim. At the end of the lecture he asks us if we have any questions or comments. That's it. It's not nearly as discussion-based as I'm used to, and that's difficult for me. Also, this professor is aggressively secular. Yeah, you read that right. He's an aggressive atheist. I have never gotten a more pro-democracy, pro-Western, pro-capitalism vibe off of a professor. It took studying abroad in the Middle East to find a professor that thinks democracy is the obvious answer to the world's problems and secularism is the bees knees. To be fair to this guy, he is clearly embarrassed by the world's perception of Arabs as crazy "fundamentalist" Muslims that hate all things Western. He seems to want to set the record straight that most Arabs are "normal" people that like America and drink and watch television. However, yesterday he made fun of Saudi Muslims that drank wine with him in the States, only to return to Saudi Arabia and revert back to calling drinking alcohol haram (un-Islamic. Which it is). It kinda made my skin crawl. It's really difficult to describe, but this professor is discussing Islam and "Islamic fundamentalism" in a way that Natalie made me feel really uncomfortable with last year in Secularism and Fundamentalism. It's a difficult subject. I feel ishy when a professor laughs at the seemingly backwards and hypocritical ways of Saudi Muslims (I specify Saudi here because his opinion of these men has as much to do with politics and the way Jordanians feel about Saudis as it has to do with religion and how secularists view Muslims), but I also feel ishy about women not being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Where do we draw the line between cultural understanding** and just being wrong?


... Okay. That got serious in a hurry. Here, have another adorable camel picture!

Habibi Shilou.

*Here in the Middle East, what the United States calls the first Gulf War (1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) is actually referred to as the second Gulf War. The first was the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. The third is the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
**By cultural understanding, I do not mean cultural relativism. Cultural relativism also makes me feel kinda ishy. I just mean having an appreciation that we, the relatively secular West are not always "right" and "secularism" is not always synonymous with "progress." Similar to cultural relativism, but different.

Yalla, Let's Go On An Adventure! Otherwise known as My Weekend Was Better Than Your Weekend.

So, this weekend...
Did you explore a nature reserve covered in very, very climbable rocks?
Did you climb these rocks and caves as though they were a playground?
Did you ride a camel and sleep in tents in the desert beneath the stars?
Did you watch and participate in a faux Bedouin wedding?
Did you see one of the new Seven Wonders of the world?

No? I thought not. But I did!

Okay. I'm done with the blatant and obnoxious bragging. Probably. Now on to the ever so slightly more subtle bragging. I will start with a picture:

This is the Dana Nature Reserve, as seen from the top of a cliff. Dana was the first spot we visited on our "Southern Triangle Trip," or (courtesy of Jill) the "Southern Rhombus Trip," considering we went to four places, not three. Okay, now I'm going to attempt to go chronologically.
We left Amman on Friday afternoon and took a bus for four hours to the Dana nature reserve. None of us really knew what Dana was, so we were kinda un-enthused about the day and were really just looking forward to Wadi Rum on Saturday. Boy were we ever wrong. Dana was possibly the best part of the trip, actually... well, better than Petra anyway, but maybe not better than Wadi Rum. Dana is an eco-reserve with nature hikes and supposedly endangered animals, but we didn't see any. We had to hike down about a mile from the parking lot to the camp smack in the middle of absolutely gorgeous mountains and canyons:

Once we got to the camp, we got to go hiking. Most people headed for the shorter trail that had some foresty bits, but me and some other people walked back the way we had come toward some caves. Oh man was this a good decision. The trail was a little scary and I almost fell down a cliff, but it was totally worth it. Once we got to the caves, we got to climb around and play in them. The only way to describe their awesomeness is with pictures:

Later that night I climbed a giant rock that was so easy to scramble up that I didn't think about getting down until halfway up. Oops. Getting down was a lot harder than getting up and I scratched up my hands a bit, but it was still pretty awesome. After that, we were supposed to have dinner, but it was about an hour late due to--according to a program leader not to be named--"lazy bastards." In any case, the food was delicious when it did come. Most of us stayed in tents that night, but a few people stayed in a hotel a few miles away. No one really wanted to stay in the hotel, but since Dana is an eco-reserve, only 70 people could stay the night, so the program coordinators majorly pimped that hotel ("You can smoke shisha there, you can't do that at the camp!").

On to Day 2! Woke up early to head to Shobak Castle and Wadi Rum. Shobak Castle is one of the largest castles in Jordan and its so imposing that it has never been taken by invaders, but we weren't told that much about it beyond that. It's basically a typical castle ruin, with some awesome arches and turrets and tiny windows for archers. It was pretty neat, but we only spent about half an hour there because we were running late.

Anyway, Wadi Rum. Wadi Rum can be described as nothing short of awesome. After eating and watching a short movie about Wadi Rum, we all piled into the backs of pick-up trucks to race across the desert. Well, most trucks raced; ours puttered behind most other trucks. We stopped every ten or so minutes to hop out and explore sand dunes and cliffs and fantastic rock formations. Also, it turns out that running uphill in the sand is really difficult.

 Entrance to Wadi Rum. 

 Pickup truck caravan. 

 Climbing!

 Arrakis. 

 The itty bitty figure is me. 

At the halfway point, we were served tea at a Bedouin campsite and then we switched to camels. Let me tell you, camel riding is so much cooler than horseback riding. And I'm not allergic! Camels' limbs are a little bit like giraffe limbs and they look really cool when they walk. They get up with their back legs first, too, so when I first got on, I thought I was going to topple over its head. We were all hooked up to a couple of other camels at the same time, with a guide leading them. The guides were pretty great; mine kept turning back to talk to the camels or kiss them. My camel's name was Shilou and she was fantastic. Super chill and tame, the guide even let me guide her for a little while! I let her stray too far from the rest of the pack though, so then he took the reigns again. There's a special way to ride camels too, the Bedouin way. You sit kind of cross legged on the camel, so your legs aren't spread so far apart and you don't feel like shit the next day. It made camel riding decently comfy.

 Camel caravan. 

 Here's a picture of me on a camel, Dad.

Jamel Shilou. Habibi Shilou. 

We got to the camp around sunset. It was pretty fantastic, but honestly a little disappointing in comparison to Dana. In Dana we had tiny tents with mattresses and some blankets, but that was pretty much it. At the Wadi Rum camp, we not only had biggish, almost Harry Potter-esque tents with beds, but a kind of party area with couches, hookah, and a DJ. We were also pretty close to a highway and a couple of gas stations, which kind of hurt the "out in the desert with Bedouins" illusion. Still, we listened to some good Arabic music, danced, and even had a faux wedding as well as a birthday party. A friend of mine and a guy friend of hers had been joking about dressing up in traditional Arab garb and sending a picture back to his parents as a wedding photo, as though he had married an Arab girl while in Jordan. It helps that she's Brazilian, so she could pass for Arab. One of the program leaders, Ahmed (who is awesome) was part of this, so at the camp in Wadi Rum he organized a fake wedding between the two. There was a whole procession of us dancing and celebrating the wedding, singing traditional wedding songs and everything. They even got a guy to dress up as her father giving her away. It was also another guy's birthday, so we had a birthday party with cake and sparklers. We had tasty lamb cooked the Bedouin way--buried under ground:

The chef taking the lamb out of the ground. 

We got up at early o'clock the next morning to get on the bus to Petra. It was a long bus ride. We got to Petra before noon, and it involved a whole lot more walking than I was expecting. Along the road to the Treasury (the most famous building in Petra, the one in the Last Crusade) there were tourist shops with Indy's face on them, selling fedoras and stuffed camels. There were also small children selling postcards, which was kind of depressing since every time we told them we didn't want to buy anything, they would either look really sad or say things like "You dropped something... your heart." We got this all through Petra; people desperately hawking jewelry and tourist trinkets or donkey rides, shouting that they had had no business all day. It was really hard to say no, but there was just no way to buy something from every vendor.

On to something less depressing... most of the walk to the Treasury was gorgeous; even better than most of Petra itself. There are winding passages and cool rock formations all along the way. Here's the beginning of the walk:

Almost there....



And then my camera died. Damn. Right before the Treasury. Fortunately, if I left my camera alone for long enough I could turn it on for a second and take a quick picture before it died again. So I have one picture of the Treasury:

We wandered through the Petra (yes, there's a lot more to Petra than the Treasury) for another couple of hours. Petra is a pretty big city, built by the Nabbiteans in the 7th century BC. It's mostly covered in caves and ruins that resemble the Treasury, but a lot smaller. The caves are actually tombs, since Petra was originally built to be a cemetery. The last thing we did at Petra was a big long hike up a mountain to the city's highest point, the Monastery. The climb was rough, guys. I still hurt and I blame Petra. In total, from the bus to the top of that mountain and back, we walked ten miles that day. But it was totally worth it. The Monastery looks a lot like the Treasury, but with a little less detail. After snapping some pictures of that, we walked further up the mountain for the real reason we hiked up all that way: the view. It was amazing. Unfortunately, due to stupid camera, I could only take one picture, and I took it of me at the top with the Monastery behind me:

So no pictures of the gorgeous view. But there were canyons and mountains and rocks... It was worth the hike.

We got back later that evening, had some falafel and went home. I took a very long shower due to ALL the dust in Jordan being on my body, particularly in my hair. And that was my weekend, folks! I'm exhausted now, but I'm pretty sure that it was the best weekend ever, totally worth the tireds. :D

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.