breakfast
Thursday, August 22, 2013
al-maghrib
breakfast
jordan: last thoughts
in an airport in algiers, waiting for my transit flight to casablanca. can’t believe i’m not in jordan anymore. the sun was rising when i left for the airport at 6 am, and it was so beautiful to see the peachy hue of the morning splashed across the sky. jordan is a gorgeous place. it’s got some really great sites. jordan is pretty conservative, most women dawn some sort of head/body covering. it’ll be interesting to compare the degrees of conservation in jordan with those in morocco, it’s been 5 years since i’ve been so i can’t really recall my impressions from last trip. amman is also very modern. It’s interesting because it’s a city in country so very seeped in history. petra is like seattleites going to Vancouver bc, a fun place to go, no big deal. except that it is. and the dead sea! wow! amman is actually a very cool city with different subcultures – on the one hand it is religiously conservative, but it doesn’t mean everyone observes to the same degree (e.g. the wearing of the hijab, for example). It has a raging art scene and indie music scene. you can always find something to do, see, get involved in. overall, i think it is a great place to study arabic. it’s safe and the local dialect is close enough to the modern standard arabic (used in formal contexts – media, the quran, ect.), which i have studied for the last 2 years that it’s not too hard to pick up. although i was reminded of being a foreigner all the time – constantly getting “welcomed to jordan,” had comments related to my race and cat calls directed at me on the streets, being overcharged for taxi rides --, even though all i wanted was to feel completely apart of the culture (that includes being treated like i belong in the culture), i made jordanian friends that make me feel i have roots in amman now. not everyone i met was the greatest person, but the quality people that i did meet made my stay that much worthwhile. learned lots about the culture – jordanian (perhaps arab, as well) values, local foods, some slang, how to walk on the streets, how to catch a cab without getting ripped off, best times to catch cab, how to take the bus, ect. ect.
it’s one thing to stay in the middle east for 2 weeks like i had in 2008, and going with an itinerary: 1 week homestay then tour the country with other moroccan girls your age. it was set up in way that cultural exchange and friendships could occur fluidly. in jordan, i had to work for it more. in jordan, i was forced to carve out an existence for myself, a routine. you had to adjust your mindset for the 2 months, for the long stay, and to remind yourself how blessed of an opportunity it is, that if you don’t make the most of the moment, you’ll regret it when it’s gone. i don’t know that i always did that and those were the hardest times for me. i think i did an okay job with that. made some friends, plugged myself into church, formed friendships with people in my class, volunteered. it’s funny, i feel like i formed more lasting bonds with the jordanians that i met than my pre-dominately american classmates.
studying abroad is hard because while you want to do well in your classes, you also want to feel like you’re abroad. coffee shops got expensive after a while, so i would often study and do homework in my room and there was this great disconnect from the rest of jordan. this internal battle. at the one hand, i wanted to study enough arabic to see great progress later, but at the same time, i don’t just want to be reading about the language, i want to go out and use the language. i think abroad experiences for girls are different than guys because as girls, we are more limited in when and where we go out. i would’ve gone to parks and explored the city on my own more, expect that it is not very safe and everytime i am out on my own, i have this unstead feeling that prevents me from really enjoying the country. so there’s that factor as well. and qasid institute, the language institute that i was taking arabic 4 hours a day from. honestly, if i were to do it again, i don’t know if i would choose qasid. it was hard not to feel closed off from the rest of the world. maybe an on-campus study abroad would offer a more ideal experience. don’t get me wrong, the instructors are so personal, engaging, and invested in their students success; the staff is fantastic and everything is so well organized (you definitely feel like the support that everyone wants from their host site); there was enough rigor in the curriculum to challenge you, but i just felt like, again, i often found myself in my room. but if I were a student at jordan university, the libraries would be that much more accessible, and i would be able to compare my experiences as a university student in the states with my experiences as a university student, at a university, in the middle east. but enough with the “what if’s,” this has honestly been a really great experience. not always easy but i think i definitely experienced growth from the troubles i faced.
In closing, i’d just like to discuss my thoughts on the language. the great education at qasid coupled with the immersion experience of being in amman was really good for my language, growth, i think. there are phrases you hear from people all the time, it makes it easier to remember them. also, i was always forced to think and use the language. because my class is so small, we were speaking all the time. also, i was constantly thinking of ways to word things, use certain grammatical terms, in a way that i would be able to communicate with the people around me (e.g. friends, taxi drivers, store clerks). i wanted to be understood and i had the basic tools to do that. it was a lot of work to have your mind always fired up like that, but it was pretty neat in terms of the language maturity i gained from it, i think. because i was already active in thinking about how i would say certain things, my brain was already turned on and ready for comprehension. i think I still have this problem, but noticeably before, language comprehension would scare me. i hated OPI’s and would get really stressed about it because a slew of arabic would come at me and i would just blank out. now, i have learned to be afraid of it. maybe because i’m already thinking of the language, it’s not something that catches me off guard. but also, arabic isn’t something that i’m afraid of anymore. i’m making baby steps but i feel like it’s a language that i slowly, slowly able to call my own. there was definitely a point where i was so sick of arabic, there was just so much of it going on it in my life, i was done. i think that often occurred when i got frustrated with the level of difficulty. so more to come of that in the future, i’m sure. my happiest achievement is the confidence i have gained with my language use. even if i’m unsure of a word or how to say anything, i am more concerned with reaching people, communicating with them, than looking good. often, i make a fool of myself, but i learn from my mistakes. and i think the greatest catalyst to my growth in confidence is the sense of achievement i gained whenever someone understood me, whenever i felt like, “man, this fucking language? i know it! i just said something in it! and people got it!” as i head into the next 10 days in morocco, i hope to continue to exercise my language as much as i did and needed to in jordan. i’m excited to compare and contrast things i observe about the language, people, culture. and i’ll finally be free of my studies, so i’m excited to just vacation, have fun, relax. enjoy.
al-waha (oasis) restaurant
our harass (guard), also works at al-waha restaurant as a chef. we had been talking about visiting him at his restaurant for weeks now and finally got around to it. it’s a huge place. our harass was saying that during ramadan, the place would extend to the space in the back and seat hundreds of people for iftar. the place is pretty nice; the atmosphere is good. we were enclosed in this huge bedouin tent (goat/sheep wool?). the air was really fresh. we sat in a corner; a great place for people watching. we got fatoush salad (like an arabic salad but with dried bread pieces), waha kabab (?), rice & veggies, hummus & pine nuts. the waha kabab was amazing – the chicken has this great smokey flavor. rice was really good, also. it was also coco’s last dinner, so it was kind of like giving her an early send off. there was live music – some guy on electric keys and a singer. at one point, people got up to dance. the cutest thing was seeing these mid-aged guys in kuffiyehs and (what’s the white dress thing muslim men wear?), linked armed in arm and dancing in front of the stage. it seems pretty common to dance with your prayer beads – to swing them around like a cowboy lasso. saw that again tonight. we stayed a good while – until our harass got off his shift – so that we could all taxi back to the apartment complex together. by then, we were extremely tired and so, so happy to go home.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
JC:HEM
writing lab
in front of the school.
nearby. you can see the students crowded out front.
Monday, August 19, 2013
lunch at khaleel's
i went to petra with khaleel (taxi driver friend) and coco during our eid holiday this past weekend. (will post about this later!) on the trip, khaleel talked about his dad wanting to have us over for tea/lunch. on friday, he had us over. his mom, dad, and twin sisters were there initially. after arabic coffee and juice in the sitting room, we were served lunch from a huge plate of maqluba (rice, pine nuts, roasted eggplant, onions, potatoes). BEST maqluba i have ever had! additionally, there was fried chicken, yogurt, & arabic salad (tomato, cucumber, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice). we kept eating and they kept serving. while we were eating, a family friend and her daughter came over to the house. this friend used to be a neighbor of khaleel’s family but she and her family moved to salt. she works as a cartographer at a hospital in amman. after lunch, we were served tea, turkish coffee, and cola. in addition to the drinks before lunch and the 2 glasses of juice i had during lunch, this amounted to 8 cups of drinks! the family was so very hospitable. oh, and while we were in the sitting room after lunch, an aunt came by and joined us, as well. we woud’ve stayed longer, but i had to rush home to study for my final the next day. it was nice to meet khaleel and his family. they seem to be very good people and he seems to be close to his parents. his dad was saying that he called khaleel 2-3 times every day. after lunch, i was talking to the family friend about the state of jordan and its problems. she was saying that their great healthcare is all that they have going for them. everything is expensive but the people have no money. gas prices and electricity have gone up. soon, the price of bread is going to go up. she said that people have concerns but don’t voice them because there is fear. people see syria, egypt, libya and they decide to live with their fear instead of sacrificing the safety that jordan possesses during the tumult of the arab spring. khaleel agreed to take in leila! so my goodbye to him will happen tomorrow evening.
until next time church of the nazarene...
last service of this trip at church of the nazarene philadelphia. (warning: the next couple of posts are going to be about last times and goodbyes). i had attended 2 services before this one after my initial post about this church. last week, i had met maha, she was raised catholic but felt that what she experienced during mass had been just ritualistic movements and no really substance. she has been attending church of the nazarene for 2 years now. she says she feels like, “these are the real christians.” the church may be small but there is definitely a lot of passion and love. at this last service, we were joined by a church from mafraq, a city on the border of syria. the church of nazarene supplied an electric keyboard and the mafraq church brought a drum and oud. i wasn’t a huge fan of the instrumentals, but it was/has been interesting observing (at all church services), the types of music that are sung. for one, i am familiar with none of them, except for when we sang “how great thou are,” in arabic. in the states, there is such a thing as contemporary christian music. these are the sorts of songs that i am used to hearing on christian radio, at church, ect. maybe there is such a thing as “contemporary christian music” here but it doesn’t sound anything like the music at home. i guess it’s taken song getting used to. it’s interesting to see the different sorts of melodies different cultures compose for worship. after attending this last church service, i can say (though i can’t really say how much) that my arabic has improved. before, i had only been able to pick out single words from the sermon but at this service, i found myself being able to understanding phrases (i may have been able to do this before, but i feel like the quantity of phrases i can understand now has increased). this made me so happy. it’s usually hard to gage your own progress, but when you are able to witness it, you feel pretty good. i’m thinking of attending arabic church services when i return home – i think my attendance at church of nazarene was a good decision – socially, spiritually, and in terms of my arabic studies. while i have been able to understand phrases, i could still not get the gist of the message, so after the service, i asked maha about it. here’s what i got from her… you can know as much about the bible as you want, you can attend church, pray every day, give money, but if you don’t apply what you know about the bible to be true to your life, it doesn’t mean much. don’t live as two people – the person you are at church and the person you are the rest of the time. maha and i exchanged contact info, so i hope to keep in touch with her. oh, at the end of the sermon, the pastors’ wives went around and handed out gifts to the ladies of our congregation and the congregation from mafraq. men didn’t get anything… the gesture was super cute, though. later, a woman asked if she could trade with me because she already had red nail polish at home but not blue. mind you, this woman was married and had kids. lol, i thought it was cute of her to want to trade.
my little beauty pack, complete with lipstick, lip gloss, nail polish, and a jesus loves you this i know sticker.
goodbye church. until next time.
2nd-to-last full day
I don’t know if you can tell from this picture, but on the wall behind the dude, there’s a little girl with a pen strapped to her back like a weapon. i’ve been seeing this icon all over amman and a friend of mine from class had been saying that it had significance, though when we were talking about this, he could not remember exactly what the significance was. i looked into this and found out that it is a logo for project pen, which is a space for writers to publish their work online. it’s based in amman, and project pen designed this logo out of their belief that “writing is a personal battle.”
more info about them here:
website
here’s a clearer image of project pen’s catchy icon:
later tonight, played a 2 hour game of soccer with my friend hamdan from wild jordan café and 6 of his friends. it was so much fun but pretty rough on me physically. 20 min in, i didn’t think i could do the whole hours. i am extremely out of shape. and i’m a terrible shot. haha, should practice more when i get home. i pulled through, though, and it felt so good afterwards. we played at the best time of day – right before sunset. not sure what the score ended up being; i think by the end of it, though, most people were pretty tired and were just messing around (i.e. goalie ran way out of the goalie box and suddenly became a forward). the guys were really nice though. we played at an elementary-high school. apparently, it’s a thing here for schools to charge a fee for people to come and rent their soccer space for so and so hours.
picked up on some useful things to say when playing soccer, as well...
• يالا go! = go! go!
• حارس = goalie
• اِرجع = back!
• اُخرج = return!
tonight is also my last evening with my feline companion. will miss this cutie pie.
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