Last day in Jordan. I definitely have mixed feelings, because I'm way excited to see my family and friends back home again (and my dogs!!!), and I do miss a lot of things in America. Like the ability to walk down the street without notice from every sketchy guy in the area. But today I definitely got a little sad about leaving the program- I had some fabulous professors and even more fabulous friends here. And regardless of any negatives here, I definitely love Jordan enough to come back in the near future for a longer stay (not in Irbid, though).
So today we had our little graduation ceremony (I passed! Yay!), I did my last-minute packing and shopping errands, and then one of our Advanced-level professors invited the girls from our level to a girls-only party thrown by his daughter and wife at his apartment. The girls-only deal is pretty important in Arab parties, because it means that the girls who normally wear hijabs and abayyas can remove all of that and just dress in what we would consider "normal" clothing. So it was really cool, we arrived, the girls took off their hijabs and abayyas and were all wearing cute party dresses or similar clothing underneath, and almost immediately there was dancing. Like literally, we walked in, sat down, drank coffee (also an important part of visiting an Arab home), and then the music started and people started dancing around the sitting room.
I am very afraid of dancing. I feel like I am the world's WORST dancer, and any dancing I've done this summer has only come after a tequila shot or something similar. However, sitting on the couch and clapping along was only an option for so long, because everyone there really wanted us to dance with them. So I was peer-pressured into a dabke first (a Jordanian folk dance), and then later was pulled onto the living room dance floor by my professor's nine-year old daughter, who was an amazingly good dancer. That's the thing, though, ALL Arab women are good dancers. It's in the blood or something. I've very rarely felt so white as when I was dancing in a living room with a bunch of Arab women and trying very hard to not look like the Tin Man. My friends assured me that it was just in my head and I really wasn't the world's worst dancer.
Aside from dancing there was also really delicious cake, and a little after the cake we were like "Okay, we need to go back and finish packing", but the professor's wife was like "Oh, no, just wait for a tiny bit longer!" So we waited, and danced, and then pistachio ice cream was brought out for everyone and we were glad we had stayed for that. And then after the pistachio ice cream was conversation, and then tea, and then conversation...this is definitely a typical Arab home visit- it's hard to escape! And I really didn't WANT to escape, it's just that we are leaving the country tomorrow and it's kind of necessary to prepare. It was SUCH a nice evening with the girl party, though- it's a one-of-a-kind cultural experience here, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world!
And now I'm really leaving. It's bittersweet, for sure. I don't even want to think about saying goodbye to my friends tomorrow. Ma'a salaama, al-Urdun. It's been an interesting summer.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Doing cultural things in my last week here.
If there's one thing I've learned in Jordan it's that doing seemingly strange and/or sketchy activities usually turn out for the best. In America, for example, I would rarely go to a wedding with a large group in which none of us knew the bride or groom, or go with the same group to eat dinner at the groom's brother's house the following day, or let off fireworks in a construction site. And to think this all started (except the fireworks part) because we went to a dance club above a McDonalds in Aqaba (yet another seemingly sketchy but actually fun decision).
So. My friend Genevieve, along with a couple of the program people that were with her at the time, met this guy in Aqaba at the dance club I just mentioned, and it turned out that he had family living here in Irbid. I showed up to the club with a different group a little later and met this guy briefly (particularly when he dragged me and couple of the guys forcibly onto the dance floor). At some point he was telling Genevieve that his brother was getting married in Irbid and she should totally come to the wedding, yadda yadda yadda.
And then this week arrives, and it turns out that his brother is getting married on Wednesday and this guy actually wants us to come to the wedding reception. In America, this is not a usual occurence, to invite a large group of strange foreigners to a wedding party, right? This is why I love Jordan! So we had to go to a big fancy dinner party on Wednesday given by the university in our honor, but after that a group of like 16 of us ended up going to this wedding. A lot of things are pretty familiar to American wedding guests- the bride was the pretty girl in white, the reception was in a large hotel, there was dancing and such, etc.
And then there were new things: men and women guests were separated for the bulk of the reception in completely different rooms (except for the groom, who was with the bride in the women's reception area), the bride had to look all stoic for most of the time, the dancing music was much cooler than the Macarena and everyone there could actually dance without the help of alcohol, and the wedding cake was cut with a SWORD!!!! That was probably the best part. There was also a crazy old man with a cane that turned into a sword, which was both strange and awesome. He apparently pointed the cane at our guys in a threatening/joking/insane kind of way when they were in the men's reception area. Nice.
After the reception, there's always a parade of cars that drives around the city honking (I know this much from living in Irbid for so long and hearing it every night), and then at some point they go let off fireworks. Most of us chose to go back to the campus after the reception because we had our last day of class and some tests the next day, but several from our group did go on the ride-along and had some adventures getting to know the family, and they apparently had a really good time.
So this guy from Aqaba (brother of the groom) also invited us to come eat mansef with him and his family yesterday. In order to get to his brother's house, we had to take some sketchy unmarked van-bus deal, which is apparently a normal thing to do here. We all had a fun time- the Aqaba guy was really the only one who spoke much English, so we had a lot of awkward and funny experiences trying to talk to all of them. And by "all of them", I mean Aqaba guy plus 4 of his brothers and his cousin. The youngest brother was 10 years old and so adorable! The rest of the guys were very funny and incredibly nice to have invited the whole crowd of us over for dinner. All in all, I was glad that I went and finally got to experience some of the Jordanian home life.
Oh, and after we had all returned from the Jordanian home experience, the guys of our program decided it was finally time to let off the rest of their fireworks (some of which had been let off in Petra a couple weeks ago). So we trekked out to a sketchy construction site and enjoyed some much better fireworks than are legally available in America. Nobody was arrested, nobody was exploded, so all was well.
My time in Jordan is very quickly coming to an end! Oh, and my Jerusalem pictures are still not posted. If anything, I'll get everything up when I get back to the States and then post links here for you non-Facebook users. Off to Amman tomorrow for one final shopping trip, and hopefully all my gifting will be finished. Until next time...
--K
So. My friend Genevieve, along with a couple of the program people that were with her at the time, met this guy in Aqaba at the dance club I just mentioned, and it turned out that he had family living here in Irbid. I showed up to the club with a different group a little later and met this guy briefly (particularly when he dragged me and couple of the guys forcibly onto the dance floor). At some point he was telling Genevieve that his brother was getting married in Irbid and she should totally come to the wedding, yadda yadda yadda.
And then this week arrives, and it turns out that his brother is getting married on Wednesday and this guy actually wants us to come to the wedding reception. In America, this is not a usual occurence, to invite a large group of strange foreigners to a wedding party, right? This is why I love Jordan! So we had to go to a big fancy dinner party on Wednesday given by the university in our honor, but after that a group of like 16 of us ended up going to this wedding. A lot of things are pretty familiar to American wedding guests- the bride was the pretty girl in white, the reception was in a large hotel, there was dancing and such, etc.
And then there were new things: men and women guests were separated for the bulk of the reception in completely different rooms (except for the groom, who was with the bride in the women's reception area), the bride had to look all stoic for most of the time, the dancing music was much cooler than the Macarena and everyone there could actually dance without the help of alcohol, and the wedding cake was cut with a SWORD!!!! That was probably the best part. There was also a crazy old man with a cane that turned into a sword, which was both strange and awesome. He apparently pointed the cane at our guys in a threatening/joking/insane kind of way when they were in the men's reception area. Nice.
After the reception, there's always a parade of cars that drives around the city honking (I know this much from living in Irbid for so long and hearing it every night), and then at some point they go let off fireworks. Most of us chose to go back to the campus after the reception because we had our last day of class and some tests the next day, but several from our group did go on the ride-along and had some adventures getting to know the family, and they apparently had a really good time.
So this guy from Aqaba (brother of the groom) also invited us to come eat mansef with him and his family yesterday. In order to get to his brother's house, we had to take some sketchy unmarked van-bus deal, which is apparently a normal thing to do here. We all had a fun time- the Aqaba guy was really the only one who spoke much English, so we had a lot of awkward and funny experiences trying to talk to all of them. And by "all of them", I mean Aqaba guy plus 4 of his brothers and his cousin. The youngest brother was 10 years old and so adorable! The rest of the guys were very funny and incredibly nice to have invited the whole crowd of us over for dinner. All in all, I was glad that I went and finally got to experience some of the Jordanian home life.
Oh, and after we had all returned from the Jordanian home experience, the guys of our program decided it was finally time to let off the rest of their fireworks (some of which had been let off in Petra a couple weeks ago). So we trekked out to a sketchy construction site and enjoyed some much better fireworks than are legally available in America. Nobody was arrested, nobody was exploded, so all was well.
My time in Jordan is very quickly coming to an end! Oh, and my Jerusalem pictures are still not posted. If anything, I'll get everything up when I get back to the States and then post links here for you non-Facebook users. Off to Amman tomorrow for one final shopping trip, and hopefully all my gifting will be finished. Until next time...
--K
Monday, August 3, 2009
Jerusalem and Crankiness
I'm way cranky right now. Which is terrible, because I'm trying to blog about my really cool trip to al-Quds (AKA Jerusalem), and I'm afraid that all of this pessimism will just seep into my descriptions. The crankiness is totally stemming from the fact that this is my last week of classes in Jordan, I have no will to keep studying, and I'm finally homesick. I have to force myself to put the slightest effort into my homework and classes, and it makes me very not happy.
However, I had a fabulous weekend trip to Jerusalem! I went with a small group- just me, Alice, Stephanie, and Kevin. We stayed in East Jerusalem, which is an Arab section of the city, and our hostel was right outside the Damascus Gate, which is one of the gates leading into the walled-in Old City. Yes, we did stay in a hostel. No, it was not like the horror film (which I did not see because I'm afraid of horror films). It was actually kind of cool to be there with a bunch of other young travelers, and also with a big parrot that suddenly appeared on Saturday morning.
Getting to Israel was an adventure in itself. It involved shouting at a bunch of people in Arabic and asking them about the bus to the border, to which they all responded that there was no bus (clearly not true, since some of the other students had taken a bus to the border the previous weekend). After a lot of confusion, and being swarmed at the bus station by a horde of service taxi drivers who had no idea where we were going but wanted to take lots of our money to drive us there, we finally just decided to take the service to save time rather than search for the bus. So we did a lot more shouting about "THE NORTHERN CROSSING!!!!!", which was the border that we needed to go through, and picked a driver who assured us that he could take us there. As it turned out, he was absolutely not sure where we were going, asked us if we spoke Arabic (after we had negotiated with him in Arabic), and generally seemed to be a big mistake. Oh, and then when we got to the border, he got a ticket because he was only licensed to drive to Amman, when we had specifically told him beforehand "No, we are NOT going to Amman" multiple times, and he wanted us to pay his 10 dinar ticket.
I could go on and on about this story, which involved about 10 more minutes of confused shouting in Arabic and refusal to pay 10 extra dinar (although somehow he still kept referring to me as a "bint quayyis" and Kevin as a "rajul quayyis, which roughly means a "good girl" and a "good guy", so he still liked us), but then you'd miss the part where we got detained at the Israeli border for like an hour and a half. Because 4 American students are way more suspicious than EVERY OTHER PERSON that traveled to the border that day. And then there's the part where I asked that they NOT stamp my passport so that I could freely travel to Syria, Lebanon, and other such countries in the future, but they mixed up my passport with someone else's and decided to go ahead and stamp me. Thanks, Israel.
However, we did eventually get through, got a taxi to Jerusalem, and arrived at our hostel safe and sound. We had no actual plans for the next day, so we pretty much just woke up and started wandering. We made our way into the Old City fairly early, and it's really a great place to just wander aimlessly because you will inevitably stumble upon something important. The Old City is like a labyrinth, with all of these tunnels and twists, and it's divided into the Christian Quarter, Arab Quarter, Jewish Quarter, and Armenian Quarter. We spent the morning between the Christian and Arab Quarters, did some shopping in the tunnel stores, and accidentally came across the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was pretty fabulous.
After this we went out to the New City, which involved a failed trip to find a specific waffle restaurant and then settling for waffles at a cafe on the way (because we got lost). When we made it to the New City, we basically just walked down Ben Yehuda St, which is closed off to cars and is just lined with a bunch of cute shops. After the walking fiasco, we elected to take a taxi back to the Old City, and by some twist of fate we ended up hailing the guy who had driven us TO Jerusalem (Sifian, the most amazing/hilarious driver on Earth), and he took us back to East Jerusalem for free!
When we returned to the Old City we decided to do the Via Dolorosa (Stations of the Cross), which ended up being really cool. We got to see all of these interesting churches that were built around some of the most famous sites in Christendom (depending on if you ask the Catholics or the Orthodox, who disagree on some locations). So we saw the place where Jesus healed the paralytic, the prison where he may have been kept, the places where he fell carrying the cross, etc. The end of the Via Dolorosa is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (which we hadn't known earlier), so we did the Stations a little out-of-order, but it was no problem. Oh, and we also got to take pictures of the Dome of the Rock because we randomly wandered into the entrance. The Dome of the Rock plaza (AKA Temple Mount area) was closed to non-Muslims on Friday, but the guard let us take pics from the gate, so that was nice.
In the evening we ventured to the Jewish Quarter and down to the Western Wall (or Wailing Wall, but I think that's really the less polite term). It was really interesting to be there right before the start of Shabbat (the Sabbath), and there was a pretty decent-sized crowd. It was a pretty awesome experience to be at such an old and important site, surrounded by praying and crying people. Even though I'm not Jewish, I could still feel the power of the place, and it was really not something that I had expected.
In general, the whole trip was much more powerful than I had expected. I kind of envisioned having an exciting cultural experience, but not so much a religious one. I think I was subconsciously assuming that because I'm not Jewish, being in Jerusalem wouldn't be as meaningful in that way. However, my explorations around all of the holy sites left me with a much greater understanding of why everyone is fighting to keep a piece of Jerusalem for themselves.
In truth, Jerusalem really does belong to all of the religions and the people who claim it- I was only there for a short time, and even I could feel that. I think that anyone who's ever been to the city would have to sense that- and if you try to claim it solely for one group, you obviously haven't experienced Jerusalem in its entirety. I mean, I'm definitely not the world's best Christian all of the time, and I struggle with my faith just like a lot of people, but to be in the places where Jesus lived and died(regardless of the argument over the specific locations) was a shockingly meaningful experience for me. In some very small way, I had my own little tie to the land. And the tie that the residents, whether they are Arab or Jewish or otherwise, have to the land is so strong that it's nearly tangible. To ignore the multiple claims on Jerusalem is ignorance in the highest degree, as far as I'm concerned, and I think my visit made me understand more of why people are willing to put their lives and everything else on the line to fight for their place in Jerusalem.
But, yes, meaningful experience aside, it was also a very fun trip with very fun people. We didn't get to spend nearly enough time there (and it was a huge freaking hassle to cross borders. I hate borders.), but I think we spent our time pretty wisely for the most part and saw a lot of really cool sites. Oh, and Sifian ended up driving us from Jerusalem back to the border as well. He sang a lot, bought us popsicles, and made sure that we had pillows to sleep on. The only real hitch we had in getting back (which wasn't so much a hitch as a hilarious occurence) was at an Israeli checkpoint maybe 10-15 minutes from the border, where they searched our bags and pulled out Kevin's notebook (purchased in Jordan), which had a picture of Israel or something with the slogan "Palestine: We Will Return!" written above it (one of the many hilarious notebooks available in Irbid). Needless to say, he was cringing and the rest of us were almost peeing our pants from laughing at him. Yeah, other than that, travel back to Jordan was pretty simple.
Pictures are coming soon, whenever the internet cooperates. ALSO: I just figured out that people have been commenting me and I haven't gotten any notice of it via email or otherwise. So sorry! My ignoring you was very unintentional.
However, I had a fabulous weekend trip to Jerusalem! I went with a small group- just me, Alice, Stephanie, and Kevin. We stayed in East Jerusalem, which is an Arab section of the city, and our hostel was right outside the Damascus Gate, which is one of the gates leading into the walled-in Old City. Yes, we did stay in a hostel. No, it was not like the horror film (which I did not see because I'm afraid of horror films). It was actually kind of cool to be there with a bunch of other young travelers, and also with a big parrot that suddenly appeared on Saturday morning.
Getting to Israel was an adventure in itself. It involved shouting at a bunch of people in Arabic and asking them about the bus to the border, to which they all responded that there was no bus (clearly not true, since some of the other students had taken a bus to the border the previous weekend). After a lot of confusion, and being swarmed at the bus station by a horde of service taxi drivers who had no idea where we were going but wanted to take lots of our money to drive us there, we finally just decided to take the service to save time rather than search for the bus. So we did a lot more shouting about "THE NORTHERN CROSSING!!!!!", which was the border that we needed to go through, and picked a driver who assured us that he could take us there. As it turned out, he was absolutely not sure where we were going, asked us if we spoke Arabic (after we had negotiated with him in Arabic), and generally seemed to be a big mistake. Oh, and then when we got to the border, he got a ticket because he was only licensed to drive to Amman, when we had specifically told him beforehand "No, we are NOT going to Amman" multiple times, and he wanted us to pay his 10 dinar ticket.
I could go on and on about this story, which involved about 10 more minutes of confused shouting in Arabic and refusal to pay 10 extra dinar (although somehow he still kept referring to me as a "bint quayyis" and Kevin as a "rajul quayyis, which roughly means a "good girl" and a "good guy", so he still liked us), but then you'd miss the part where we got detained at the Israeli border for like an hour and a half. Because 4 American students are way more suspicious than EVERY OTHER PERSON that traveled to the border that day. And then there's the part where I asked that they NOT stamp my passport so that I could freely travel to Syria, Lebanon, and other such countries in the future, but they mixed up my passport with someone else's and decided to go ahead and stamp me. Thanks, Israel.
However, we did eventually get through, got a taxi to Jerusalem, and arrived at our hostel safe and sound. We had no actual plans for the next day, so we pretty much just woke up and started wandering. We made our way into the Old City fairly early, and it's really a great place to just wander aimlessly because you will inevitably stumble upon something important. The Old City is like a labyrinth, with all of these tunnels and twists, and it's divided into the Christian Quarter, Arab Quarter, Jewish Quarter, and Armenian Quarter. We spent the morning between the Christian and Arab Quarters, did some shopping in the tunnel stores, and accidentally came across the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was pretty fabulous.
After this we went out to the New City, which involved a failed trip to find a specific waffle restaurant and then settling for waffles at a cafe on the way (because we got lost). When we made it to the New City, we basically just walked down Ben Yehuda St, which is closed off to cars and is just lined with a bunch of cute shops. After the walking fiasco, we elected to take a taxi back to the Old City, and by some twist of fate we ended up hailing the guy who had driven us TO Jerusalem (Sifian, the most amazing/hilarious driver on Earth), and he took us back to East Jerusalem for free!
When we returned to the Old City we decided to do the Via Dolorosa (Stations of the Cross), which ended up being really cool. We got to see all of these interesting churches that were built around some of the most famous sites in Christendom (depending on if you ask the Catholics or the Orthodox, who disagree on some locations). So we saw the place where Jesus healed the paralytic, the prison where he may have been kept, the places where he fell carrying the cross, etc. The end of the Via Dolorosa is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (which we hadn't known earlier), so we did the Stations a little out-of-order, but it was no problem. Oh, and we also got to take pictures of the Dome of the Rock because we randomly wandered into the entrance. The Dome of the Rock plaza (AKA Temple Mount area) was closed to non-Muslims on Friday, but the guard let us take pics from the gate, so that was nice.
In the evening we ventured to the Jewish Quarter and down to the Western Wall (or Wailing Wall, but I think that's really the less polite term). It was really interesting to be there right before the start of Shabbat (the Sabbath), and there was a pretty decent-sized crowd. It was a pretty awesome experience to be at such an old and important site, surrounded by praying and crying people. Even though I'm not Jewish, I could still feel the power of the place, and it was really not something that I had expected.
In general, the whole trip was much more powerful than I had expected. I kind of envisioned having an exciting cultural experience, but not so much a religious one. I think I was subconsciously assuming that because I'm not Jewish, being in Jerusalem wouldn't be as meaningful in that way. However, my explorations around all of the holy sites left me with a much greater understanding of why everyone is fighting to keep a piece of Jerusalem for themselves.
In truth, Jerusalem really does belong to all of the religions and the people who claim it- I was only there for a short time, and even I could feel that. I think that anyone who's ever been to the city would have to sense that- and if you try to claim it solely for one group, you obviously haven't experienced Jerusalem in its entirety. I mean, I'm definitely not the world's best Christian all of the time, and I struggle with my faith just like a lot of people, but to be in the places where Jesus lived and died(regardless of the argument over the specific locations) was a shockingly meaningful experience for me. In some very small way, I had my own little tie to the land. And the tie that the residents, whether they are Arab or Jewish or otherwise, have to the land is so strong that it's nearly tangible. To ignore the multiple claims on Jerusalem is ignorance in the highest degree, as far as I'm concerned, and I think my visit made me understand more of why people are willing to put their lives and everything else on the line to fight for their place in Jerusalem.
But, yes, meaningful experience aside, it was also a very fun trip with very fun people. We didn't get to spend nearly enough time there (and it was a huge freaking hassle to cross borders. I hate borders.), but I think we spent our time pretty wisely for the most part and saw a lot of really cool sites. Oh, and Sifian ended up driving us from Jerusalem back to the border as well. He sang a lot, bought us popsicles, and made sure that we had pillows to sleep on. The only real hitch we had in getting back (which wasn't so much a hitch as a hilarious occurence) was at an Israeli checkpoint maybe 10-15 minutes from the border, where they searched our bags and pulled out Kevin's notebook (purchased in Jordan), which had a picture of Israel or something with the slogan "Palestine: We Will Return!" written above it (one of the many hilarious notebooks available in Irbid). Needless to say, he was cringing and the rest of us were almost peeing our pants from laughing at him. Yeah, other than that, travel back to Jordan was pretty simple.
Pictures are coming soon, whenever the internet cooperates. ALSO: I just figured out that people have been commenting me and I haven't gotten any notice of it via email or otherwise. So sorry! My ignoring you was very unintentional.
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