bored

We just finished our first two days of classes here at the Qasid institute. Having only two hours of class from 8-10 makes it seems like we don't have class at all sometimes since we are done so early in the morning and have the rest of the day free. They haven't made us do any 'external activities' yet either, so I really haven't had too many opportunities to get into town and see things.

Two nights ago I did get a chance to go out to a very western/upper class cafe two watch the turkey/croatia game on big screen, but it was a place i knew well before and it was kind of weird to be around Jordanians who were so english-ized that they were speaking english to each other... not just to foreigners. It kind of through me off at first... but I guess it makes since. I did get to see a nice souq (market) that night which was down the street in Jabal Amman. They have concerts there every friday night along with the souq.

I also got to learn some fun facts about the Chechnian (sp?) community in Amman... apparently it's not that small. We saw a group of Chechyan guys doing some time of dance in the street. The jordanian friend of my friend Emma here was explaining to us that they come and take certain jobs in the police force, which i thought was weird because I had believed those jobs were reserved mostly for Jordanians, but either way, who knows.

I'm having trouble thinking of things I want to put down. my mind is on something real specific right now that i can't really work out, so maybe i'll write again later. but that's all i can really offer for now. maybe i'll put some pic's up tomorrow.

phone number

here's my phone number.

country code. 963

number for out of jordan calls= 796314701

in country... just put a 0 before the in country number.


ok later

Mostly for mom and dad

This post is mostly for my parents... as it informs you of all the small basic details that parents worry about. There are some observations at the bottom that you might find interesting, but really nothing special... just day to day stuff. More interesting stuff will hopefully be coming soon once I get a phone and feel more comfortable going off on my own.

in the mean time, enjoy. and forgive the grammar mistakes. I'm not reading it over. you can't make me.

June 19th 10:30-

Wow. the past 18 hours or so have been pretty interesting. I still haven't gotten more than three consecutive hours of sleep since the monday night. This morning we had yet another orientation at ACOR (American Center for Oriental Research) which is coordinating our program (although we are studying at an Institute named Qasid which is just a 5-8 minute taxi ride down the road... thank goodness because it only takes a 1 Dinar ride to get there). After our first part of orientation we had a great lunch provided by ACOR. it was delicious.

After lunch some people from the embassy came over and talked to us about jordan. mostly things I hadn't heard before. Except for the new fun fact that you can now actually get second temporary visas SPECIFICALLY for traveling to Israel (as in, the government gives them out just for the people who need to travel to both Israel and states like Syria that don't let you in with an Israeli stamp). That's definitely cool, and I definitely think I'm going to do that. Only $70. We'll see when my plans start to fall into place.

Ok, so after that we went to Qasid and had our placement exams. No big sweat, although for some reason I was extremely nervous. That subsided as soon as everything was underway though. I am a bit frustrated with how slow my writing has gotten, since I haven't been practicing for almost a year now, but I'm sure it will come back quickly.

After the test is was already pretty late (probably around 8) so me and a couple other girls and the group went over to the mall right next door to get some basic food supplies. (Ketan, it was Mukhtar Mall... and they were selling Malto....I almost grabbed 10 and ran). They gave us half of our stipend this morning, most of which I'm keeping in the safe at ACOR right now until I'm in need of it.

Now I'm back at the apartment. I got to finally take my first shower tonight since leaving... our apartment is really nice. There are 6 girls living in a 3 bedroom, 2 bathe, kitchen, and living room space. This is definitely a step up from most places I've ever stayed in the Middle East, with the exception of my home stay here in Jordan previously... but that was just ridiculous.

We have wireless internet downstairs in the lobby. Our laundry will be done for us at a price of $5 a load up to as much as every week. Haven't checked out the sports options yet, given that I haven't had any time, but supposedly Qasid is very close to the sports park in Amman, where even running outside might be allowed (amazing!).

I'm not gonna be able to get a phone card for a while though because our passports have been in the hands of various people and will continue to be for the next few days as we set up all of our arrangements in town. You need your passport to buy a card, so most likely it could be a few days.

Meanwhile, tomorrow we have a 9 oclock tour of Amman, and then our first free afternoon. I hope to rest up, perhaps do a bit more shopping for things needed in the apartment, and then get to talking with as many people as possible.

Today was a great day.

As far as we know our arabic program is going to be a bit odd. We actually only have 2 hours of class each day. Then we have to go on 'excursions" two of which we have to write a report on within a week. We then have nothing else mandatory. It's actually quite absurd. Hopefully I'll be able to set up appointments with tutors 3-4 times a week, because otherwise I know I will quickly become frustrated with the pace of the course. I am excited about the teachers at Qasid though, as well as the size of our classes. We will only be having about 6 kids per class, and after this placement exam I'm nearly certain that I'll be with people that are at my level and higher. Most of all I'm excited to learn with others.... it's been a very long time since I felt like I was sharing a learning process in Arabic, so I can't wait to feed off of that energy. Already a lot of us have been speaking in Arabic with each other at about 50%, and I'm sure this will only increase as we become more comfortable with each other and have more things to share and work on.




Observations from today:

1) the smell is still coming to me. I'll get passes of it when a dusty breeze comes through the window, or when I step outside, or even in the odd smells of the bathrooms and the water. Today it was much more pleasant, in fact it was almost soothing. For some reason though it's reminding me more of Damascus now, than it is of Amman. Perhaps it's the summer that's really affecting it, since I first went to Damascus while it was in similar heat.

2) The dust. every now and then i close my mouth and i can feel the grit soaked into my tongue and lips. It's so fine that you almost can't tell, but it's a nice reminder that I'm in desert country.

3) The heat. We are lucky enough to have an airconditioned apartment in addition to all of our classes and buildings being in air conditioning. There have been moments when rooms were getting a bit too hot today though, which was a bit rough on top of jet lag, but overall I don't think it's that much worse than home. We'll see how the rest of the summer pans out.

4)Azzan. the called to prayer is beautiful in Amman, echoing off of the mountains and penetrating your spirit.

First feelings:

It hit me harder than I had expected. The moon. Outside the window as we were landing in Amman was the brightest white I had ever seen. I thought a helicopter spotlight was shining in my eye.

The smell. I stepped off the plane and took a whiff of something that I haven't smelled, felt, remembered, forgotten, licked, coughed, picked, had soaked into me for just over a year now. I'm now in my hotel where I'll be staying for my two month journey through the governments idea of intensive arabic study. I'll have more to write about that on once we have orientation in a few hours.

I could write about our 30+ journey to get here, the amazing people that are with me on this program, the niceness of the apartments where we are staying, but i my mind is stuck on that smell. I had never felt that feeling before. It was like all of the emotions, the horrors, the memories, details that I had purposefully put aside for the last year came running into me like a mac truck. It was shining in my eyes like an interrogation light (the helicopter...moon), it was seeping into my blood through the oxygen I breathed, and is now soaking into my mind. There is so much that I have put aside in this past year in order to cope with some of my time here in Jordan and in Syria. I knew that I would have to face it when I got here, but I didn't know it was be as invasive that this surgery feels.

Now without being to allusive or lyrical about my experience, let me just make clear that now, only 3 hours after arriving in Jordan, my feelings are intense. That's the only way I can put them. I'm already feeling the frustrations that being a woman come with in terms of access to certain communities and places-- which for me seem as the perfect opportunity to really use my arabic. I have the fears of running into certain people. I am also extremely excited to see others though. I'm excited to have those moments when I'm surprised by the genuine spirit of someone I misjudged. Like today on the plane, when I had one of my first 'exchange' of languages where I felt as if we were both learning the same amount from each other (me from his arabic, and he from my english). I'm so happy about learning from those around me. I'm excited to rediscover this city. I'm so excited to find myself in this city, to remember myself in this city, and the be myself in this city. I'm excited to have absolutely no time on my hands. I'm stoked to march up and down the hill outside our apartments when I don't have a place to run, or don't have time to go to a gym (one of the steepest hills I've ever seen). I'm scared that I'll get too wrapped up at moments, But I'm thrilled to find myself in those moments, realize it, and get myself out of them.

Most of all. I'm speaking Arabic. and i love it. I have boundless opportunities in front of me to not only learn a language, but to challenge myself in doing it, to overcome my personal fears that hinder me when in the highest need to learn. Who could ask for anything more?

chillen

returned from Disi

this is just a blog to let anyone know that I've returned safely to Amman from my stay in Disi. I spent to two weeks living with two separate families, researching a type of traditional song/poetry called Samir. The song is traditionally sung at weddings and circumcision ceremonies. unfortunately i didn't get to attend either of these types of ceremonies where it is traditionally sung, but instead was able to speak to people, young and old, about the vanishing art form. Hopefully I'll be able to write more about this (if i can find time between my four papers to write in the next two weeks).

For an overlook of the average day:

wake up around 7-8, wash up, sit to eat breakfast with whomever was around. breakfast consisted of bread, lebneh, thyme, olive oil, olives, perhaps some type of cheese, and of course, the sweetest tea (perhaps with camel or goats milk). then sitting around and looking over works, asking comers and goers simply questions about thoughts from every day life, to Samir, and of course in the end it would somehow come back to Islam. nap. lunch. talk with more people (perhaps be taken to meet someone). sit and go over work. nap?. sit around with visitors outside or inside, drink tea. once it became late, eat dinner. tea. watch TV/ talk until everyone is tired. sleep.

Of course this varied depending on the two families i stayed with. In the second family I spent countless hours sitting with my friend who was like my host to his family, discussing the verses of poetry from Samir, learning the endless names for "camel" in arabic, and bedu dialect words that can only be explained by sentences in English (or atleast my english isn't strong enough to know the correct translation into one english word... for instance).

names for camel i learned:
إبل (camels)
هجن (a bunch of camels)
قعود -male camel (possibly young?)
ناقة -female camel
فطر -old female camel
حيل- the pregnant camel
عفر- camels
ذلول - camel
غوج- camel
زمل - male camels
حوار -baby camel

that's right... that's 11... and there are more

but yes, I'm still trying to figure out how i can ever fully reflect in writing the experience that i had... hopefully it will come soon enough.

that's it for now.

flower power

looking forward to a few weeks from now...







Yesterday a friend came to speak in Arabic class, one of the Jordanians that Ketan and I have been meeting with on an off for 'language exchange'. Muhamad: the poet, actor, volunteer, company owner, and engineer. In just two days he's going to be leaving Jordan for the first time in his life to travel to Kuwait and work there for a contract that he has for a year. His last words to our class were ones that i wouldn't have doubted to come from his mouth, but which i'd like to discuss because they addressed a topic that has been on my mind recently. He essentially said that it was great that we were all learning Arabic so that we could be able to explain ourselves, and have ourselves be understood by Arabic speakers (just as it is good for Arabic speakers to learn English so that they can have their thoughts reach English speakers), but even with that, there are still people who speak the same language, be they two Arabs or two English speakers who can still not understand each, despite the fact that they have a common language.

After hearing his words I thought immediately back to the lecture we attended yesterday at the Diplomacy Institute where an American political scientist and writer, Dr. Philip Gordon, spoke about American politics in the Middle East. Although I've been in the Middle East for nearly 5 or 6 months now, and heard the wide ranging (or perhaps less ranging) arguments on American Policy in the Middle East from locals, this was the first time i actually saw these arguments juxtaposed to an American academic who was less willing to simply give into the 'mistakes of America' and lamely nod their head in agreement (usually my position for fear of losing some level of respect, and also because i don't have enough political or historical background to really defend any other standpoint most of the time). It quickly became clear during the question and answer period that there was going to be a difference between the speaker and the Middle Eastern scholars in the room who attended the meeting (who were few in number mind you). Although Dr. Gordon was just as quick to criticize American Policy and the choices it's made over the past few years in concern with the war in Iraq and such, he would not secede the point that the major fault of it all was America's support for Israel... which appeared the be the major issue in need of addressing from the M.E. scholar's points of view. I don't know that the arguments can be as easily summed up as I've just summed them up, but it's not really the political arguments that I'm as concerned about here. What concerned me was how quickly the Q&A question reached a point where neither side seemed open to a real discussion, but rather simply to some level of insulting the other. The only way for one side to really listen to the other, was for them to simply agree with the other side... and if they didn't agree, it seemed that only a larger gap was made.

During the discussion many ideas popped in my head... were these seeming attacks coming from the ME scholars simply posed with cultural inflection? So that although the speaker might have found them insulting, they may not have intended to be... or that had they intended to be insulting, was the insult a way in which new ideas were supposed to be brought up, rather than speaking about specific ideas directly (for instance how one of them had to clear up after the first round of questions, that the intention in almost all of the questions was to deal directly with the Israeli issue, although that hadn't necessarily been made clear through the words posed in themselves)? (my mind raced back to the very first article we were to read about Arab communication skills, and the meaning of metaphor more than words themselves, how were their questions inflected, and what did they really mean?). Then I started thinking about the "power of knowledge" and all the problems that are within such a power, but then all the problems that exist within the idea itself given that knowledge seems such a relative term at times. In what ways were either side already coming with such a strong belief in their own knowledge that they felt they should be able to control the opinion of the other (thus perhaps closing themselves off to the others knowledge)? Of course the problem with such a question is also easily answered by the fact that this lecture was presented in a very 'political way' so to speak... where Dr. Gordon made many points and only referenced briefly the historical/economic/ perhaps even cultural reasonings that factor into the largest political stances of America, because I'm guessing he assumed that the knowledge he based his works off of was already understood by the audience... perhaps there would have been more open ears had he been willing to really flesh out such details without assuming them as "all-understood".

And so Muhamad spoke... speaking the same language may not necessarily lead to understanding. Indeed. What does lead to understanding then? Willingness to listen, for sure. But how do you reach that? What is knowledge and why does the assumption that we have it lead to a feeling of power or right over someone else? I hate writing questions like this because they seem so useless. i really haven't done a good job trying to think them out in this entry. In fact, i feel rather much like a flower power child high on something (not that i really know what that feels like, but i can only assume). I'm really only writing this entry because i haven't written in a while...

In other news for people who I haven't been in contact with. After next week on April 14th I'll be heading back to Wadi Rum, the town of Disi to study a type of poetical song called "Samir" that the 'bedouin' perform, and which i detailed previously in my discussions of my previous stay. I will be staying with the family of one of the people i stayed with before... so I've heard. Thus far they've refused my offerings of paying, as I will be completely dependent on them for the entirety of two weeks. I'm currently reading Layla Abu-Lughod's "Veiled Sentiments" in what little time I have here. I'm really enjoying the read and recommend it to anyone (it's easy).

Tomorrow is also our last day of classes. We have our final test in Arabic as well as last lecture for our "thematic seminar." Studying for the Arabic test will be interesting because I have been studying independently outside of class ever since we got back from Egypt, but will be held responsible for what was taught in their class. Thank God I like reviewing Arabic grammar.

That's all for now.