Keep On Goin'...

I am gearing up for my Arabic midterms next week. Last Wedenesday, we had our spoken 3mia (jordanian dialect of Arabic) midterm. My friend Ashley and I memorized a dialogue and performed it for our class. It was quite scandalous, you see we were on our way to a party and i wanted to dance with khalid but khalid had kissed maha yesterday and also hugged muna (haarrrrrraam!), so instead i danced with ahmed. I think we performed it well and with enthusiasm and completely memorized (my host brother made me memorize ashley's lines too) so I was happy with the results.

I still have my listening 3mia, and the written fousha (standard arabic) test to take next week. I am feeling pretty good about it, but we will see. The hamza charts and nunnition are killing me.

LAST NIGHT I HAD PIZZAAA!! it was so exciting. I went out to dinner with a guy (and my roomate and his roomate) I met randomly, Max, who is here this semester (obviously) and going to be in Korea next semester! strange... but we get a long great and just gives me another reason to look forward to korea. There is a pizza place in the building where the CIEE office is that smells amazing but for some reason i haven't gotten it yet...but last night i saw turkey pizza on the menu at a restaurant downtown and just had to have it. He also showed me this awesome fruit market that I didn't know existed so hopefully I will have some awesome figs and persimmons in the near future.

Also this week I went swimming in a pool! My friend Waleed is a physical education major at University of Jordan and so he has a hook up at Fitness First, a super nice gym in Amman, who got us into their pool for free (usually it costs 15 JD to get into JUST the gym, which is over 21 bucks). Waleed is on the national boxing team of Jordan so it was nice to finally be better at him than something physically. I mean swimming isn't all that popular in Jordan simply because there is nothing to swim in so I could swim laps around most everyone there. I taught Waleed, Waleed's swimming coach friend who got us in, and some random guy in the lane next to us a little synchronized swimming; it was pretty priceless. It was such an awesome afternoon.

Alright I have to get back to hitting the books. This friday I am off to Egypt and Tunisia so I have to make every minute count! And if anyone was worried about my American and the Arabs midterm, I talked to my professor who was not fussed in the slightest I wasn't going to be present on test day. I will just make it up whenever I have time. holllla!

some interesting articles about where i am/been/going to be : )


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/world/asia/26korea.html?scp=1&sq=korea&st=cse

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/23/vatican-meeting-demands-i_n_772913.html

Pre-Eid plans!

I just booked my tickets to go to Cairo and Tunisia the week before Eid!! I am so excited. My Arabic teacher, Muna, inspired me with a speech about how we are not here to just learn the Arabic language, and shouldn't be in the library but out exploring and traveling (not that anyone had to tell me but it is nice for an authority figure to reinforce your plans to skip class).

I met a guy named Amine in Korea and he sent me a message on facebook the other day saying he was going to be in Tunisia (he is from there) and that I should come visit! But the only time he would be there was the week before Eid. Unfortunately I have all of my midterms then. woops. I guess I will have to go talk to my teachers but I am (unusually) not worried in the slightest. When will I be back here? I mean I obviously plan on it but there is no way a test is going to stop me from doing what I came here to do (even though it is called STUDY abroad...).

My friend Veasey is studying abroad in Cairo so I am going to visit him on my way to Tunisia. I think it is going to be a great trip. And then, the night I return to Jordan my dad arrives! What could be better?! We will then proceed to galavant across the country, and into Lebanon as well. Apparently Lebanon is very crowded during Eid so my condition for going there over somewhere else was that we follow in Anthony Bourdain's footsteps from No Reservations when he went to Beiruit (inshallah our episode won't end like his did in 2006...).

So I have some exciting travels coming up! Until then I will be dutifully studying (to some extent) to make up for my absence : )

Annyeonghaseyo?

AThis past weekend I went to Aqaba to celebrate my friend Ashley's 20th birthday. On the bus ride down (the 5.5 hour bus ride down might i add...) I heard some guys speaking in Korean behind me. When we had to get off the bus to have our bags searched before entering the Aqaba Special Economic Zone I started talking with them and got to pracice my Korean. It felt super weird to be an American in Jordan speaking Korean but it was really fun!! Turns out the guy actually lives right near Yonsei University, where I will (inshallah) be attending next semester. I went home early one afternoon when nooooo one was in the house (a rarity with my family) and did all of the paperwork for Korea. It was such a relief. I feel much more on top of my game for going abroad next semester than when I was preparing for Jordan but I think it is just the pressure of not havign internet constantly and not being able to call the office easily or just being out of touch that I am actually sending my paperwork in on time.

Anyway I had a great weekend in Aqaba. There were marines there that hadnt seen females (or anyone else for that matter) in several months so they were more than willing to by us dinner, argilla, drinks (thats the only way to go, so expensive otherwise!) so we had a great night. The Red Sea was, as always, amazing. The water was so clear that I had no trouble seeing the sand colored fish more than 30 feet below me on the sandy bottom. Its remarkable. This coming weekend we are heading to Jerash for the day and maybe, inshallah, i will get some sleep in!

I have been practicing spanish with my friend Ali since his spanish is better than his english so hasta luego!

The Golden Triangle

This weekend was the epic “Golden Triangle” CIEE trip. We went to Wadi Rum, Aqaba, and Petra.

Wadi Rum is a valley dessert that has large beautiful rock formations and waves of sand dunes. We spent the first three hours riding camels. Let me just say that is about 2.75 hours too long. Not that my camel was mean (I think three people got bucked off their camel) but man those saddles are not built for comfort. However the day did contain a major revelation. Believe it or not, Arabs actually know what they are doing when they cover their heads in the sun, IT MAKES SUCH A DIFFERENCE!! I was in the dessert, in the sun, on a camel and didn’t sweat the whole entire time because I had something on my head. I was amazed. Not that it should be all that shocking; they have been living here forever.

Our camels took us to a Bedouin camp where we ate some awesome food, danced, had some argilla, shaay (tea), and laid out in the desert under the stars. I thought the stars were good in Maine, but they can’t even compare. There were so many it seemed we could connect stars anywhere in the sky to make any constellation. There were even shooting stars. However we did have to watch out for trucks barreling towards us. Since we were near the Saudi border we had to be careful cigarette smugglers did not scoop us up or run us over for that matter. I hope it is just as beautiful when I (hopefully) go camping in Egypt with my friend Veasey.

The next morning there were maybe 25 trucks waiting outside the Bedouin camp. I was reallllly excited for this activity. It was super fun but I was expecting driving up sand dunes, maybe flipping the car over, but everything was pretty tame. Towards the end our driver finally got some pep and would drive out of the line of cars, and over plants and such. We cheered him on calling him Ricky Bobby, not really sure if that translated but he laughed, we laughed, it was great.

Our next stop was Aqaba, a port on the Red Sea. We got off the bus and went straight on to three big boats. It was a beautiful ride where we passed Israel and saw Egypt and Saudi Arabia across the way to get to the coral reef where we snorkeled. It was the coolest thing ever, just like the pictures in national geographic. I had never been before and everything was just so exciting. I saw sea urchins, a puffer fish, sea cucumber, tons of vibrantly colored fish and lots of coral.

The boat I was on had a ledge on the second floor that we could jump off of into the water. My friend Karina was a little nervous about jumping and said she would jump if I would. I instantly started counting to three and when I jumped I did a dive in the pike position. Little did I know that at that moment not only everyone on my boat was watching, but the other boat too. When I resurfaced (and got my bottoms back on super quick) everyone seemed super impressed, it was my five minutes of fame. Even getting off the boats I had people coming up to me saying how pretty my dive was. Score. Thanks Andy : )

As soon as we got off the boat we went straight to Petra. We didn’t get to see any of Aqaba except our exclusive boats so I definitely have to make a trip back. We arrived at our second Bedouin camp at 10 30 and we were starving! I shared a tent/room with my friend Emily, had some nice pillow talk with the guys next door, and then hit the hay to get ready for a full day at Petra.

Petra was cool. I personally liked the snorkeling more but I guess you can’t live in Jordan and not go see Petra.

Overall the weekend was realllly fun. I was so tired afterwards though, and I had class at 9 am the next day! I am really looking forward to this weekend so I can just sleep in. Waking up each morning has been made easier by the fact there is a tub of hummus in the fridge that I make a pita sandwich with each morning and grab a piece of fruit on the way to school. Best breakfast ever (well obviously second to chocolate chip pancakes and home fries but you can’t really have that every morning). Only one more day to the weekend!

My Internship at Al Jidara

One of determining factors that led me to choose CIEE was that it offered an opportunity to get an internship. After a little bit of confusion and last minute running around I finally got placed at Al Jidara! Al Jidara is an economic development firm. When I first heard “economic development firm” my first reaction was uuuuh who doing what now? Al Jidara works almost exclusively with the government of Jordan, and regional and local governments, to implement programs that help expand the economy of Jordan. Usually a big international organization will have a project in the country and needs a local counterpart and Al Jidara is that local counterpart. However, since they are now expanding to the UAE and already do some work in the West Bank they will start bidding for contracts on their own instead of being just the on the ground helpers.

We were forewarned that working in Jordan was very different that working in the United States, that many previous students just end up frustrated. With this in mind I was surprised when we had specific job description, deadlines, and what seems like a functioning work environment. Another CIEE student, Kendrick, and I will be working on developing the content of their website to keep up with the international expansion. As it is, the website is outdated and does not have that fresh look that will attract clients. Since the company is going in a new direction, the website needs to do the same.

Kendrick and I have been researching other development firms’ websites and will be giving recommendations on changes to the content and style of the website. We’re not doing the actual HTML but rather doing research so Al Jidara can keep up with the times. I think this will be perfect actually because since I am learning the history of the company and all of their pervious projects I am basically learning the economic history of Jordan, which is such a major part of the political history. It will be great research for my thesis. I am comparing Korea and Jordan and economy will definitely be a major point so I am excited!

The work environment seems very Western compared to my expectations. Part of the deal of getting an internship is also attending a class that has a few readings, which so far have just given detailed descriptions of the disasters of what Jordan calls NGOs. Al Jidara is nothing like this. All of their work is conducted in English first of all, so frustration due to language barrier is not an issue. Everyone seems to be productive, there is no chaos, women are wearing tank tops in the office, it seems very….what I am used to (you know, with all of that office work experience I have…). Regardless I think it will be a really productive internship. We are already giving a presentation on Sunday on our recommendations of the basic structure and layout of the website. The nice thing about interning here is since people are not used to the concept of someone working for free we get much more involved in the company than the typical scanning and copying job an intern in the US might have to put up with.

I am really excited to just have another contact point with Jordanians, especially since it is in a completely different setting than the University. There is a lot to learn about life here and the more I get involved the better, more authentic experience I will have : )

Blatant Racism

We read about racism and know it still exists but I have never seen it manifest itself in a single person so strongly. When I think of racism in the United States I think of opportunities that are not given to everyone and quick assumptions that are made but never admitted. No one says they are racist. I have seen racism but I think of institutions, not another human being (even though that obviously exists too).

I was walking one day with my two friends when a Jordanian girl cheerfully approached us. It was the first time a Jordanian spoke to me unsolicited so when she asked to be friends I said sure, why not? We hang out a lot; I have met her friends and really like her, we have tons of fun.

One day we were at lunch together and she asks me, “Would you ever consider marrying a black guy?” Not really realizing what she was getting at I just had a confused face and said of course, if I loved him. I am not one to be speechless but what she said next my brain could not comprehend. “nigger nigger nigger, they are so disgusting. So gross, ew.” I was so taken aback that I couldn’t speak for the next five seconds and when I finally could I began speaking about how no one should be treated differently because of the color of their skin and how can you expect to be treated with respect if you don’t respect others and that we are all people, no matter what we look like. Obviously my explanation was not going to change a lifetime of indoctrination but I had no idea this even existed here.

I was so confused because she seemed so normal. She is a young woman at a university; she is not stupid. How can these racist ideas still exist? And I am torn, I feel like I can’t blame her because it was what she was taught and how she was brought up. But if it is no one’s fault, how will things change? We look back on the South with slavery and wonder how such atrocities could have happened but if that was what you were taught could it excuse your behavior? Can you be held accountable for something that isn’t your fault? Or is it her fault? Should each individual that doesn’t break the mold be held accountable; if you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem?

Even just writing this I am confusing myself. Well not confusing myself but realizing how much gray area there really is. Sometimes I think growing up in a progressive environment simplified too much, made right and wrong too easily distinguishable, when the only way to see reality and how people think is to see it for yourself.