and so I dwell in all the possibilities

My assimilation into life in Jordan has been seamless.  I'm not homesick, I'm not culture-shocked, I'm not frustrated when things don't happen the way I want them to.  Yanni, it'll work out, inshallah.  And maybe this is a grace period, but more likely it's not.  Italy taught me a few decent things, and how to live abroad was one of them.

How much I love Amman has surprised me.  This semester has surprised me.  In Florence, I craved a challenge, an embracing culture, students that were motivated and smart, a place where I would learn and grow.  Because in Florence I found none of those things.  So like a fish out of water, I desperately looked for change.  Closing my eyes and picking a future at random.

The truth is that before I fall asleep at night, I think about moving back to Amman after I graduate from college.  Spending next summer here.  Perhaps never leaving at all.  There is no falling in love with Jordan about it, I have well and truly fallen.

“The journey changes you- it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body.”

- Anthony Bourdain

More than once in the past week I've had the thought this is what I want to do with my life run through my head.  And I don't even know what that means really.  Because you cannot study abroad in Amman for the rest of your life.  But when the coffee guy at school gives us four coffees even when we only pay for three just because there are four of us sitting next to the window or when a kind Baha'i family picks you up and takes you into their community no questions asked; it aligns with the emotions you felt driving through a refugee camp and the motivation you embraced when you listened to citizen journalists talking about why they do what they do.

So here I am.  Memorizing both the Arabic alphabet and the city skyline at sunset.  I desperately want to remember both when I leave.

Ayyam-i-ha in Amman

Today marks the beginning of the Baha'i celebration, Ayyam-i-ha.  The Baha'i calendar is 19 months of 19 days, which leaves 4 days (5 on a leap year) left over to line up with the solar calendar.  The days of Ayyam-i-ha are generally spent eating, celebrating, and gift-giving before the 19 day Baha'i fast starts.

I went to an Ayyam-i-ha party tonight, which ended up being fabulous amounts of fun and also sort of I-have-no-idea-what's-being-said awkward.  It was sort of like going to Feast in one of those all Persian Baha'i communities in Los Angeles.  Everyone is so nice to you, but honestly you have no idea what's going on.  Mostly, though, tonight was so much fun!!!  I ate delicious food, played games, made new friends, mispronounced things.  The usual.

This time of the year is such a wonderful time for Baha'is, and since I can't be in Alaska with my family I'm glad that I'm kind of finding a place here.  It has definitely been a year of ups and downs, and I'm finally settling into my grove in Amman, Jordan of all places.  I was sort of dreading fasting alone in a foreign country, but now I'm starting to look forward to it.  And I am especially excited to observe the Baha'i fast in a society where religion permeates every part of life.  Also because the call to prayer will serve as my sunrise and sunset calls!

On that extremely positive note, I'll leave you with a really long exposure picture I took from my rooftop around sunset the other day.  Ma assalama!

Yesterday was such a good day

We left Amman in the morning, and drove to Ajloun.  It took about an hour and a half, and on the way we drove through al Baqa'a, the largest Palestinian refugee camp outside of Palestine.  I'm taking a class on the Israeli-Palestine conflict this semester, and even though I've only had a week of classes I already feel like I'm approaching the conflict with a completely new perspective (i.e. I have a perspective).  It's really interesting to be in this region of the world learning about these things, especially with the perspective of an American Baha'i.  At some point in the semester, our class is going to visit al Baqa'a, a field trip that I am extremely excited for.

Right before we got to Ajloun, Mohammad turned around in the car and asked us if we liked bread.  We replied yes, and he hopped out of the car and ran across the street and bought a whole bunch of the most delicious bread I have ever tasted.  Eventually, we got to Ajloun, and got a tour around the old castle from a man who was part of the archeological team that had dug up some parts of the castle in the ground and discovered them.  Everyone was just so happy yesterday, so it was really fun to be running around this ancient castle with all my new friends taking pictures and listening to a wise old man tell us all the history.  When we finally made it up to the top of the castle, Mohammad pointed off into the distance and told us that we could see Palestine from where we were.  At which point, drunk off proximity to places we had only ever read about, I took the best jumping picture I think I've ever taken.

After we finished exploring Ajloun, we headed back into town and ate a delicious (and cheap!) lunch of shawerma and hummus in this cute-borderline-tacky restaurant.  And then we set off for Jerash.  Jerash is basically a bunch of old Roman ruins, but really really cool ones.  As someone who just came from Italy, I personally thought Jerash was way more interesting than Rome.  It was raining, but raining lightly so that you weren't really getting wet, but everything was glistening in the light drizzle.  The grass was greener, the rocks were beiger, the yellow flowers were yellower.  Again, we lucked out with a really good tour guide and spent an hour and a half wandering through the ancient city of Jerash listening to him tell us stories.

Along the way, Ghadeer helped me finally name my camera, who will henceforth be referred to as Tosweera (or "dear little picture" in Arabic).  She also taught me how to tie a hijab, which was something I've been thinking about a lot lately since about 80% of the women in town cover their hair.  And with all different women wearing hijabs, there are so many different styles and colors and ways to tie it!  It's just another accessory for the girls here, which I think is something Westerners fail to grasp sometimes.  They think that the Muslim world oppresses women, which yeah, it does.  But it isn't the hijab's doing.  Point being, hijabs are cool, guys.

After our long day of excursion-ing, we finally headed back to Amman around dinner time.  My roommates and I were hanging out listening to foreign dance music and brushing our hair, when Katrina pops up and decided to assign us all Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants personas.  Weirdly, it worked out really well.  Katrina, the quiet, beautiful type, was Lena.  Stephanie, the blonde soccer player, was Bridget.  Fathme, the computery person, was Tibby.  And me, the loud, obnoxious, bi-racial type, was Carmen.  I've never been in a group of four girls where everyone is obviously one sister from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, so it was pretty exciting.  Anyway, after that we took some pictures in our parlour for the cover of "Shmesani Life: Season 1."

After my roommates and I were done with our awkward parlour photoshoot, we went out for dinner.  Wherein we observed our first Jordanian fight, complete with onlookers phoning up their cousins and an angry waiter running out the door and chasing a cab down the street.  After dinner, we went downtown to a café, and hung out until 1 in the morning drinking tea, smoking hookah (well, those of us who could smoke without coughing smoked), and talking about how great our day was.  Which it was.  Yesterday was such a good day.

Karaoke Jordanian style

On Saturday night, I headed to Books@cafe with a few friends and hung out during Karaoke Night.  And it was awesome.

First day of school in Amman

I live with three girls, so between the four of us someone's alarm should go off, right?  Wrong.  Today was our first day of school at Al-Ahliyya Amman University.  Stephanie was planning on getting up at 6:15 to shower, Fathme was going to get up after her, and Katrina and I were going to get up at 7 and blearily eat breakfast before we caught the school bus.  Except I woke up on a fluke at 7:30 to a sleeping apartment.  Three of us were out the door in about 15 minutes (Stephanie decided since she didn't have class, she would stay home), and we ended up waiting around for a late school bus for a while anyway.  Enter living in Jordan.

Our university is about 45 minutes to an hour and a half away from where we live by bus (depending on traffic).  The actual university is beautiful.  It's a real school where real Jordanians (and foreign students from around the Middle East) go to school.  This is a really nice change from Italy, where I felt like I was going to a fake school designed entirely for American exchange students who were around to take a semester off from studying.  The university is actually really similar to UAF.  The campus and student population are about the same size, and walking around a real college campus again just fills me with happiness.  There's a bowling alley, and computer labs with free printers, and a registrar office, and pool tables, and a gym with a pool!  Suffice to say, I love it.

MY STUDENT ID WHICH IS IN ARABIC!!!!

So today was my first day of school.  I caught the school bus at 8, got to school at 9, and spent two hours bumming around campus until class started at 11.  I'm taking mostly useless but incredibly interesting courses here that promise to be really, really great.  As in my Gender in Islam class I had this morning where the teacher told us that she didn't like tests, but she did like field trips!  I also had Arabic 101 today, and I feel like I'm going to learn a lot.  People don't speak nearly as much English here as they do in Italy, so I'll be forced to practice speaking Arabic all the time!  Also, I'm in class with students that are really dedicated to learning Arabic, unlike the students I was in class with last semester (but with Italian).  Plus, Jordanians are SUPER nice, so I feel like I won't be too intimidated to speak by the proud Italians that breeze past you on the sidewalk and won't give you the time of day like I was last semester.

To wrap up a really good first day of school, Jaime and I caught the public buses home instead of waiting around until 5 for the school bus.  And we made it (mostly) successfully!!!  We almost didn't get off at the right stop, but a really sweet girl on the bus helped us out.  Of course then we casually walked across super busy intersections without looking both ways, but that's kind of a routine part of life here.

Maybe making it home is a minor victory, but I'll take what I can get.