Some things that suck

Not everything about life in Jordan is peachy.

1. Incessant calling from a wrong number at 2:30 a.m.  Every so often 0799298102 calls my phone over and over again, and when I answer is like "Mohammad?  Mohammad?  Mohammad?  Mohammad?  Mohammad?"  And I have to be all, "ana mush Mohammad.  Eindek THE WRONG NUMBER."  But they persist calling over and over again, as if sheer persistence will change the American girl at the other end of the phone into their friend Mohammad that they so desperately want to reach.  Last night they did this at 2:30 a.m.  I kid you not they called me about 14 times before I turned my phone off.

2. Jordanian internet.  It sucks hella balls.  And only when you have a skype date or when you need to do something important.  It takes approximately twelve thousand years to upload a picture, and it is only marginally faster to send emails.

3.  How far away Al-Ahliyya is from where I live.  I have to catch the bus by 8 a.m. every morning, which means that I have to wake up by like 7:50 a.m., which is just super early.  Also, on any given day the bus is between 5 to 30 minutes late, so you just never have any idea what's going on.  And then it takes about an hour to get to school since the university I go to is basically in Salt and I live in Shmeisani.

4.  The disapproving stares of men and women alike.  Despite my vaguely Middle Eastern eyes and my attempts to blend in, literally everyone can tell that I'm a foreigner.  Luckily, since I have brown eyes and brown hair I get harassed a lot less than my blond friends since I'm less of a novelty here.  But the women shoot disapproving glares because I am obviously a slutty Western girl here to eat pork and make out with every single boy.  And the men either don't talk to me since I am a women, or harass me because I am a woman.  One time this guy followed me into Safeway and proposed while I was trying to buy oreos.  Foreign woman in Jordan are held to an obnoxious double standard because we are both expected to conform to the modest and conservative lifestyles women here live, and also to be as crazy and liberal as Hollywood depicts us to be.

5.  How cold it is.  If you sat me down and told me that for nearly half of my time living in Amman, Jordan I would be wrapped in a wool blanket I would have laughed in your face.  Yeah right, I would have said, I go to school in Fairbanks, Alaska.  I know cold.  Except, hilariously, the dessert is cold in the winter.  Who would have thought, right?  And there's no central heating here either.  So we just sit in our apartment with stone floors and leaking windows at night wrapped in blankets, too cold to wash the dishes.

I love Jordan, but I have a perpetual headache from never knowing what's going on and dodging eye contact with every male I run into.  Also, that stupid guy that keeps calling for Mohammad.  I am obviously not Mohammad, bro.

polychromatic sunset and monochromatic city

We took a different route than normal on the bus ride home from school today.  There were a new group of students being dropped off on the tops of hills that afforded a particularly spectacular view of a monochromatic city and a polychromatic sunset.  I have never been one to think manmade things are beautiful, but Amman is a beautiful city.

There are moments in my life here that I want to freeze as perfect memories forever.  Speeding through Amman streets blasting techno, eating shawerma on top of the city, being wrapped up in blankets on a hill overlooking millions of twinkling lights.

There is nothing quite so fun as hanging out with Arab boys who want to race everyone they meet at a stoplight in their white Honda Accords.  Nothing quite like shivering in the cold desert nights listening to others explain the metaphorical resonances of their favorite color.  Nothing quite like a bright pink sun setting over a beige city.

I love the way I fit into Amman so awkwardly and foreign and welcome into this Arab melting pot of a country.  I love the 35 fil falafels for lunch, and the woman at the snack stand behind the university who explains to me what everything on the menu is.  I love the warm smiles from women, and the way Shmeisani is spelled 7 different ways in English around my neighborhood.  I love this city, this culture, this country, this corner of the world.

Going to Ghor

For most of my time in Jordan so far, I've been in and around Amman.  So today, I went and visited the village of Ghor which is right next to the Dead Sea.  We went through a program called the Zikra Initiative, which is an NGO that aims to show foreigners (and Jordanians) what life is like in the smaller villages while supporting the villages economically as well.  It's called exchange tourism, and it was honestly one of the coolest experiences of my whole life.

We started out our morning meeting some of the people that work and volunteer for Zikra Initiative and some of the women and kids that lived in Ghor.  The big plan of the day was to make qalayet bandoora, which involves a lot of tomatoes.  So, each of us grabbed a crate and went out and picked some tomatoes (even Mohammad's super cute little girl!).

After we had picked a lovely assortment of tomatoes, we climbed up to a tent on top of a hill overlooking Ghor and the Dead Sea Valley and did some really cool crafts.  I made beads from dried olive pits and strung them together in a bracelet with the help from some Jordanian women.  We also learned a few basket weaving tips, how to make kohol (eyeliner), how to grind wheat, and a lot of other cool things.

But really, the most important part was making qalayet bandoora and bread.  Of course I'm in the middle of observing the Baha'i fast (stuff like this ONLY HAPPENS IN MARCH), so I did the best I could to not draw attention to the fact that I wasn't eating.  I did take a piece of bread for after sunset though :)

Overall, it was a really cool experience.  All the girls drew henna on each others hands.  And at the end of the day, someone started playing the flute and someone else started drumming so we all clapped and danced together.

Impending hearbreak

I got a you-need-advising email today from the College of Liberal Arts at UAF.  It was a bit of a wake up call.  That- and the impending stress of applying for housing abroad, coupled with some complicated forms I needed to get signed to apply for my PFD- have made me realize in the last two weeks that as much as I feel like I'm never going home, I will eventually be going home.

I would venture to say that for the first six months of my life abroad, I was living with the large caveat of loving Alaska miles more than I could ever love Florence.  And so everything I did and felt and saw functioned around that.

But ever since I've moved to Jordan, I've found a corner of the world in Amman that I love in more ways than any place I have ever loved.  Because here I laugh so hard I spill honey in my shoes.  Here Ghadeer brings us strawberries on Tuesday mornings just because.  Here we celebrate half-birthdays with half-cakes and fruit salad.  Here we walk up hills into the night with the city around us, and sit in parked cars eating cupcakes.  Here- yanni, here- the alphabet is an art form that I have learned to sound out.

Eventually, though, I will go back to Alaska, as the email from CLA so lovingly pointed out.  And as much as people have told me, just don't think about it, I can't not think about it.  It's there.  Impending heartbreak scheduled down to the day.

Day 8

If you can measure maturity in fasts I am a million years older than I was when I was fifteen waking up on Sunday, March 2, 2008 to drink twelve hours worth of water with a groggy mother eating basically all the fruit in our house and a father who kept happily pronouncing "misery loves company!" in jest-but-also-not on the subject of my first fast.

And yet, if you're measuring maturity in fasts I am basically five years old.  Especially here in Amman where I am learning to read and taking the school bus and getting lost and asking basic questions that have simple-but-not-simple answers.

I say my prayers on the roof, and I pass my daylight hours counting the calls-to-prayer until the one that means I can eat again.  I write down concepts that interest me in my classes that touch on Islam and look them up later in The Writings.  This part of the world sheds tears that taste like God, and I have done my fair share of crying for things too large for me to understand lately.

Today was a hard day fasting.

Filling your days with photography instead of food

During the fast, I usually end up pursuing those hobbies and pastimes I let slip away all other parts of the year.  I have to find something to take my mind off of not eating.  So today, I went out on a walk and captured some pictures of my neighborhood in Amman.  It was a beautiful day.

Reflections (or Fast Day 3)

Can I stress enough the ups and downs that I have been through this year?  The fact that I'm starting to put together a meaningful existence in Amman is almost enough to make me forget the months of floundering around.

But it's the challenges we face that make us who we are, and who I am has been so changed by everything that has happened to me this year.  Going all the way back to last year's fast when I loaded up on Fairbanks campus water alone in the mornings and broke the fast at night with french fries at the cafeteria with a friend or two who could be persuaded to eat so late to right now.

I am seeing myself, my religion, my future, my culture in a multitude of new ways I never thought possible.

Baha'i Fast: Day 2

“These are the days of the Fast. Blessed is the one who through the heat generated by the Fast increaseth his love, and who, with joy and radiance, ariseth to perform worthy deeds.”

-Baha'u'llah

Fasting alone in a foreign country is lonely. I miss waking before sunrise at home with Mom and Dad. Listening but not really listening to Dad go on and on and on about proper hydration. Early, early, early morning breakfasts at Denny's with close Baha'i friends. Having water drinking contests with Valerie until we make ourselves sick.

The differences between Alaska and Jordan are magnified under this lens of fasting, and the long hours between sunrise and sunset make me miss home in a way that I have not quite experienced yet. Even the time difference makes home feel so much farther away than it has seemed in months.

Nonetheless, thinking back on all the places I have been in this last Baha'i year has made me really grateful to be able to take my first sip of water to the calls to prayer at sunrise and sunset in this region of the world that practically bleeds spirituality. From celebrating Naw-Ruz in Otovalo, Ecuador with Valerie to saying prayers in a tent in the Arctic to attending Feast in Florence, Italy to visiting Haifa, Israel not more than two months ago, this has been a wonderful year. And if missing home a little bit while waking before sunrise in Amman to get my eight cups of water and tea a day (just for you, Dad!) is how I'm going to see it out then I think I can manage.

Allah'u'abha, dear friends.

Adventures in getting places, snow in Amman, losing my phone, and fasting

First of all, to all my Baha'i readers out there: HAPPY FASTING.  Once my Dad told me that you only wish people Happy Fast on the last day of the fast, but whatevs Dad.  I am 45 minutes away from sunset in Amman!

But anyway, fasting is a very small part of this story.  This story is about adventures in getting places.  For the last two days, Amman has been experiencing snow the likes of which have not been seen in years.  Since this is Jordan, and not Alaska, no one here knows how to handle snow so everywhere has shutdown including my university.  While snow days are typically celebrated, I've mostly spent the last two days wrapped up in a blanket inside my unheated apartment.

So today, Katrina, Fathme, and I decided to venture out.  Our plan was to head downtown to Jafra and pick up the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and the complete series of Firefly.  And then go to Abdoun to check out a café we'd read about.  Upon leaving our apartment we were ATTACKED by keffiyeh-wearing-obnoxious-snowball-throwing-hoodlum teenage boys who thought they were HILARIOUS (they so weren't).  Luckily, we got a cab pretty quickly and hopped in with most of our limbs intact.  Katrina, the Arabic expert, instructed our cab driver to take us downtown.  And so, feeling relatively successful we settled into our drive.

Until we realized fifteen minutes later that we were no where NEAR DOWNTOWN.  We tried to ask our cab driver what was up, and ascertained that he has decided to take us literally on the scenic route so we could take pictures.  At which point, I was like "LA SURA! LA!"  And Katrina more eloquently explained that we didn't want to take pictures we just wanted to go downtown to Jafra and buy the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

Nearly an hour later, we ended up downtown.  At which point our cab driver tried to charge us 22 dinar.  There was a loud chorus of la's from the backseat.  We payed him significantly less than he asked, and bolted out of the cab and into the DVD store.  A week ago, I had asked the adorable hipster guy at the video store to get Firefly for me.  So I was fully expecting to be able to pick it up today.  Sadly, he told me he didn't have it, citing Syria and snow and everything closing down as the reasons.

We got a few movies and went to catch a cab to Abdoun.  We ended up finding a really nice English speaking cab driver, which put all of us in good moods.  Until we got to Abdoun and realized EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED.  After a little while of walking through slush, we ended up in a Starbucks.  Katrina and Fathme went to order drinks, while I took my fasting self upstairs and opened my laptop to start blogging about how crazy our day had been.  When I realized my phone was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.

After frantically searching through every pocket of my coat and backpack, I remembered that our English speaking cab driver had given us a business card.  So I called him with the awkward introduction of "Hi, I was a girl in your cab and I left my phone there."  Luckily, he found it and came back to Abdoun about half an hour later showing me a variety of six phones that had been left in his cab.  I picked out mine, tipped him, and headed back inside.

And now it is almost time to break the fast.  I hope, for those of you reading this that are about to embark on your first day of fasting due to time zones, that your day goes a lot more smoothly than mine did.

All things considered, I did build a snowman today.  So that was nice.