July 9th, 2012

I'm really struggling to have enough motivation to write this post, but I'll do my best.

Last weekend I visited a few different locales, including Karak Castle, Dana Reserve, and Wadi Mujib. We did probably the most driving in a day since I've been here so that was very draining, but overall the trip was a very worthwhile experience.

Karak Castle from Inside

Karak Castle, a Crusader castle from the 12th century-ish, played a very important role in the Crusades and was featured in Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" as the castle besieged by Saladin. If you noticed in my earlier blog posts you'll see that I make note of Saladin as one of the more admirable historical figures in my eyes, so it was very cool being able to see an integral part of his history within the Arab world. One of the more interesting facets of Karak is the view from atop the battlements, where you can see in each direction for quite some distance. Overall, pretty awesome.

Dana Reserve

After Karak, we sat on the cramped bus for a few hours until arriving at the Dana Reserve further south. Dana is the largest reserve in Jordan, and is honestly looks a lot like the Southwest states back in America in the sense that there are plenty of very large rocks, extensive forests, and very vertically variable geography. There's also a decent number of ibex in the reserve, which are sort of like a mix between mountain goats and gazelles. The staff made some interesting rules for us including keeping sound down to a minimum and not to take any rocks, plants, etc., back with us. The group of students I was with plus our favorite Qasid staff member Abu Theib went on a hike for an hour or so around the vicinity of our campsite, watching the sunset on top of one of the taller hills. Following that, we grilled up some kebabs, ate, hung out for a bit, then passed out in tents.

Wadi Mujib -- Note, not my own photo

The next morning we woke up, gathered our things, and proceeded to continue the bus riding to Wadi Mujib. Now, I didn't really have any idea what to expect for Wadi Mujib because I didn't read the email our Student Services coordinator sent us very thoroughly, but essentially what we ended up doing was hiking through a canyon... with a river at the bottom. Now know this ahead of time, I neglected to bring an extra pair of shoes or a towel so suffice it to say, I got wet and stayed that way for quite some time. There was a series of about four waterfalls that you have to climb up in order to get to the end, with the waterfall at the right being the final one at the end. I enjoyed being in the water for such a long time, it's definitely very dry in Jordan and we have to keep our showers very short in order to save water. My shoes are still drying out, though, so that sucks. I had a lot of fun with Wadi Mujib and would love to come back at some point.

After that, we returned to Amman and I attempted to get some homework done before giving up after an hour since I was so exhausted. Class has been pretty okay this week so far, I'm really starting to get the hang of it (I think) and now we're covering material that's actually interesting in Al-Kitaab. We're about halfway through the summer semester here, but time has been flying by lately and I'm sure it'll be over before I know it. Masallama, ya America

July 4, 2012

Trying not to wait too long before I forget half the stuff I want to write about, so here's what I've been up to since last entry.

The Caverns at Petra

Last weekend was pretty active. I went to Petra and Wadi Rum, two locations south of Amman. Petra is considered one of the "new" Wonders of the World (with the likes of the Taj Mahal, etc.), and is more or less a city carved into a series of canyons. Imagine a smaller grand canyon but with huge buildings carved into its walls. Wadi Rum is a desert where some of Lawrence of Arabic was filmed and had a lot of scenery to it which was pretty nice. Overall it was pretty cool and I got to take part in a lot of really cool experiences.

We left for Petra immediately after my last class of the day on Thursday (remember, Thursday is the last work day of the week here with Friday being the holy day). The bus ride was a few hours long, but we arrived in Wadi Musa (the neighboring town) sometime around 8:30pm, and we got to stay in a four star hotel that was pretty nice. The best part about the hotel was unlimited water, so I could take a shower longer than three minutes for the first time since I've been here. However, I didn't bring any soap or shampoo with me to the hotel and there wasn't any in the bathroom so I kind of just stood in the shower for about five minutes before getting out since I had nothing to do.

The Treasury

The next day we woke up early in the morning so we could spend the whole day at Petra, which was well worth it. If I had to put a number down on how many miles I walked that day, it'd be somewhere around eight, including up and down mountains. One of the more interesting facets of Petra is the Bedouin population that inhabits it, mostly selling trinkets and what not for hardly any money. Some of them spend the whole year up in the mountains with just a tent, a bit of food, and a kettle to boil water and live their entire lives that way. Pretty fascinating. To get to the mountains, you walk through a series of caverns with various carvings and what not in them stemming back from the original inhabitants of the area some thousands of years ago, then there's a bit of open land with ruins of theaters, governmental-looking buildings, and some other architecture before heading up into the mountains to get to the Monastery. Now, before this hike up, there's a structure called the Treasury that is pretty captivating in its own right. Interestingly enough, it's called the Treasury not because it served as a financial center for the Nabateans (the civilization that constructed the site), but because many people thought that a vase atop the building held gold, treasure, and riches or what not. The way these people tried to acquire the riches was by shooting at the vase from the ground with guns and trying to bust it open. They achieved their goal of riddling a historical monument with bullets, only to find no riches inside. Bummer. On another note, for those that have seen Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, this is the building the crew enters to get to the Holy Grail at the end of the movie.

The Monastery

Climbing up the mountain to the Monastery was pretty exhausting and took a lot longer than I originally expected, and numbered somewhere around 900+ steps from our initial level to the very top. Some students in our group weren't man enough to make the whole trek and rented donkeys for 5 dinars, but they also were in way better condition when we made it to the top when I was so I'll give them a pass on this one. The Monastery was one of the most impressive sights I've seen in my whole life, and the long walk was most definitely worth it. Another bit of movie trivia, the Monastery is the building that houses some of the Transformers in the second movie, although I never saw it so I may have screwed up my facts a little bit. Regardless, at the top there was another Bedouin who hung out with us in his tent where we drank some tea and listened to him sing a bit before just chatting about his life, what he does all day, how he learned English, etc. All in all it was pretty enlightening and ended up being a great experience.

The Sunset at Wadi Rum

After that, we took another bus ride to Wadi Rum and spent the night in the desert with more Bedouins. After watching the sunset over the mountains, we had a pretty excellent meal which they had spent the entire day cooking underground in pits covered with sand, roughly five feet deep. They basically function like a slow-cooker.. but nature-ized. A few hours after that we hit the sack and woke up the next day to go a jeep tour of the desert for a few hours, and even got to climb a bunch of the rock structures which was a good time. The Bedouins with us were crazy agile and were basically Spider-Maning all over the rocks while most of the group was moving at a snail's pace to avoid falling and cracking a vertebrae or some other debilitating injury. Being a pasty white guy almost could have been a problem, but luckily I brought SPF 50 sunscreen to keep any shred of a tan from reaching my skin and retain my status as La Flama Blanca. After the jeep tour we ate lunch with the Bedouins and had some maqloub (rice, chicken, lebna, and vegetables that basically look like pico de gallo) and tea before heading back to Amman.

Since the trip I've been really busy at school once again. I don't think the workload I have is going to let up anytime soon so I've basically just accepted the fact that I'm going to be swamped during the week and then have the weekends somewhat free to do stuff. This weekend I'm going on another trip, this time to Jerash, and I'll update the blog again after that. Peace out, girl scouts.

P.S. I realize the formatting for the pictures is a little weird but I've tried fixing it to no avail. Blonde hair don't care.

June 23, 2012

Ancient City I Forgot the Name Of

It's been a pretty busy week for me, so now I finally have some time to sit down and relax for a bit. Yesterday around twenty of us went to a few different locales in Jordan, namely Madaba and the Dead Sea. On the way to Madaba we stopped by an ancient city that was dated to be around 3,000 years old, which was pretty sweet. Our faculty said it dated before the Arabs were even an ethnic entity in this part of the world, and it may have been closer to the Mesopotamian time period if anything. After all, I *am* in the fertile crescent of the world. The view was also pretty solid, and I forgot to snap a picture of a cool looking mosque at the bottom of the hill we were on, oh well.

Byzantine Era Church

After departing from the aforementioned, we stopped in Madaba for a few hours. Madaba has a lot of Byzantine influence, which was most notable in the Church of the Virgin Mary that we visited. The whole place is littered with mosaics as well, a lot of them relating to Christian themes. The city is one of the more Christian areas of Jordan, and they practice a form of Christianity closer to Greek Orthodox than anything else from what I gather. The mosaics were the coolest part of the area I'd say, and I got to see one of the oldest mosaics in the entire Middle East. On an unrelated note though, this whole day was yesterday (Friday), which is the Muslim Holy Day much like Sunday is for most Christians. When we arrived in Madaba, there was NO ONE in the streets but you could hear the Friday prayers over the speakers set up on the minarets in town, which offered a very strange experience for someone like myself.

The Land of Milk and Honey, AKA an arid
stretch of unusable land

After Madaba we got back on the bus and made our way to Mount Nebo, the site where Moses is said to have first seen the Promised Land (and then died I guess. Noob.) Apparently God buried him in the mountain somewhere but no one has found him or the Ark of the Covenant so we'll just chalk that one up as the Nazis having already nabbed them. One thing of note, all these historical sites have a special Jordanian police force at them all called the "Tourism Police", which seems slightly excessive to me. These guys are all younger men probably around my age with sub-machine guns and all sorts of lethal force for if sometimes tries to steal Moses' corpse or something. Maybe they're just slightly more badass versions of park rangers at American national parks, but it's sort of strange nonetheless.

The last stop of the day was the Dead Sea, and on the way there I had some pretty delicious schwarma. Milwaukee needs to get on its A-game and get a good schwarma place because it's fantastic -- I'd eat it every day if I could. I don't have any pictures of the Dead Sea right now unfortunately, one of the guys I'm here with snapped a bunch on his camera so I'll see those eventually. I'd always heard that the Dead Sea was cool because you just float in it with no effort and it's 100% true. The water is so unbelievably filled with salt and other minerals that you just float on top of it. One thing that sucks though is getting water in your eyes, it's probably one of the more searingly painful experiences I've had in Jordan since I've been here. I had read beforehand that a lot of people with skin conditions go to the Dead Sea so it was really comforting to know that I was swimming in a pool of psoriasis and leprosy also.

That's basically what I ended up doing all of yesterday; the rest of the week was pretty much just a slew of homework. The pace here at Qasid is very fast, and we covered one lesson in Al-Kitaab in just five days. In comparison... my Arabic class at UWM last year went through one lesson in about 2-3 weeks. I've had to do a bit of catching up since my third year of Arabic at UWM was pretty bad, but I sort of have a grasp on what's going on. One of my teachers speaks at about a mile a minute so she's tough to comprehend a lot of times and I hate being put on the spot in that class, but my other teacher is really solid and I don't have a lot of issues with her which is good. We had a test on Thursday that I'm pretty sure everyone failed but whatever, pretty par for the course in my experience with this language so far. The thing I absolutely detest about Al-Kitaab is how the examples they always give you are of the easiest principle they teach you, then you get drills that go completely off the deep end and make little to no sense. Minor complaint, but it's lame. My Reaction to Test #1

Outside of academics and travel, the apartment I live in has steadily gotten filthier over time but we did some cleaning up today to get rid of the garbage hanging around. Also, our water ran out yesterday, which is a huge bummer until we get it refilled. Apparently they refill the water today at some point, but I'm not really holding my breath. Anyways, I suppose it's time to try to prepare for class tomorrow before I inevitably become clueless around twenty minutes into it. Massalama ya asdaqawi

June 11, 2012

Today was a pretty cool day, but definitely an exhausting one. I still haven't gotten my sleep schedule figured out – basically I'm “sleeping” for four to five hour periods at different times of the day rather than all at once. Generally I take a Nick Hiller-esque nap around 3pm that lasts four hours or so, then I go to sleep again around 1am and wake up to either the first or second call to prayer. I don't know if I've really emphasized this in my other blog entries (I'm typing this off-line and don't really feel like editing it later), but the call to prayer is very... omnipotent. It's not necessarily loud but when it's going on you definitely know it's going on. Usually the way it works is mosques play a recorded version of it over a loudspeaker atop the minarets, although they don't necessarily start at the exact same time so there's a bit of an echo if you're within range of two more large mosques. The first ones are around 330am, then another one at 430am.

Castle Exterior

Regardless, I woke up around 530am this morning on my own accord despite setting an alarm for 630, but I don't really mind waking up early. After breakfast and gathering some of my things, our class took a bus ride to Ajloun Castle in the northern part of the country, pretty close to Palestine and Syria. The bus ride there was pretty entertaining, one of the teachers on our bus is a hilarious dude who basically thinks everything is life is the funniest thing ever and always jokes around. A few other students and myself call him “Tamam” because he says it at the end of basically every sentence, and it essentially means “good”. I can't really do any of his comments service since they're pretty context-laden, but one of my favorites was when he was talking about the forests in northern Jordan and how there were “many types of trees”, and then after some pretty spot-on comedic timing he said “three, to be exact”. It doesn't sound that funny when I write it down but it was pretty funny at the time.

Castle Corner Post-Earthquake

At the top of the castle you can basically see some of the topography of four different countries those being: Israel (and Palestine), Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, if I remember correctly. While we were there we had a brief history lesson from one of the excavators working on the castle, which was pretty enlightening. I had read the wikipedia entry on the castle but he really elaborated on some details that weren't really highlighted online, and all in all it was pretty cool standing in a castle from the Crusader Era, even a place where Saladin once held as a command center (Saladin is a historical figure I've found to be pretty fascinating since I learned about him some five years ago).

After the castle visit we drove roughly half an hour to a restaurant in a nearby village which was pretty delicious – there were about six different types of hummus we were served, plus lamb, chicken, tabbouleh, etc., basically all the good stuff. I should have snapped a picture of one of the Pepsi cans but they're different than the ones we have in the U.S. – they're thinner and roughly the same height so it's a smaller serving size and they've got all the Arabic font on them (obviously). They almost always have pictures of famous soccer players on them, the only one I recognize is Messi but I'm sure anyone who actually cares about that sport would recognize the other ones.

Inside Looking Out

The guys I've generally been hanging out with and myself sat in front of a trio of U of Chicago students and had some pretty decent conversation with them, I enjoyed hearing what they thought of Chicago since they were all from out of state. Anyways, that's where I'm at right now. Anytime I do something cool like go out of town for a field trip or whatever I'll make a post since those are more out-of-the ordinary things. I'll upload pictures to facebook, but if for whatever reason I'm not facebook friends with someone who's reading this I can make a gallery online on some website or whatever, just leave a comment and I'll do that. Masalama, ya America.

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So I just thought I'd throw this in there since I'm awake and don't have much to do, but today I woke up at 2am after sleeping for a straight 10 hours after getting back from Ajloun. I very clearly have not adapted to a new sleeping routine, and with school starting tomorrow I should probably figure that out fast. I'm supposed to figure out what level of Arabic class I'm in at some point today, I'm gunning for level three, we'll see what happens with that. I don't think I really have a plan today, I know that I need to get a few things at the supermarket and I might do some gift shopping, but I'd also like to take a cab to the balad and check out downtown Amman if I can round up some people to go with me.

June 10, 2012

Today we had an orientation, which consisted mostly of how to function in Jordan without dying. Things like how to get a new gas tank (there's a truck that drives around, it isn't just pumped into your house like back in the States), how to deal with taxis (they generally don't know addresses, you have to point them toward specific landmarks), and some other odds and ends. After the basics were covered the Qasid (our institution) staff spoke a bit about their expectations for us as students, how classes would be structured, and some of the extra opportunities we'd be offered such as supplemental classes if students are interested in that kind of thing.

Then, after a lunch break, we had placement testing over the next two hours or so. The writing section was pretty tough; a ton of vocab was thrown around that I'd never even seen before but it was ultimately somewhat manageable. After the writing there was an “interview” which lasted about 5-10 minutes. Basically this consisted of a one on one conversation with one of the teachers, all in Arabic, where they ask you a series of questions and are trying to get a general idea of where you're at in terms of your ability to speak and converse. These two tests collectively determine what “level” you're placed in for the duration of the summer semester, although there is some flexibility to move up or down if it's either too easy or too difficult. 

The weirdest part of the day though was taking a cab back with two other guys on my floor. They'd been talking about finding a place to workout over their stay here, and we'd kept hearing about this place close to campus called “Sports City”. When they say city, they mean it. This place is an enormous complex that would probably have its own zip code in the U.S. However, our cab driver interpreted our rough Arabic translation of “weight-lifting” very literally, driving us to a building that ended up being the headquarters for the Jordanian national team. We didn't really figure this out until a few minutes after talking to the coach, but we quickly explained that we were just looking for a place to workout – not actually compete. Regardless, we ended up getting back to our apartments and just chilled the rest of the day.

June 9, 2012

Hey everyone, this is my second day in Jordan now and I figured I'd type some stuff up since my sleep schedule is still pretty crazy from the flying I've done the past few days.

In terms of the flights themselves, I took Lufthansa which was a pretty okay airline, but I hardly got any sleep from Chicago to Frankfurt because of a crying baby tandem that didn't really feel like shutting up. On the plane I talked with these two German high school foreign exchange students who went to some middle-of-nowhere school in Indiana, and I cannot think of a worse place to experience American than such a wretched state like that. I ended up just watching John Carter on my tablet to drown out the crying, then managed to get about two hours of sleep. However, at one point a bunch of the flight attendants started jabbering to each other about something, and one of the German kids told me they were saying that, essentially, there was an Arab woman who spoke very little English and that her son had a massive headache or something. So, much to my chagrin, the German kids flagged down the attendants and told them I spoke Arabic. Now, my Arabic is pretty limited to whatever my textbook taught me, so I can talk to you all day about the weather, Arab medieval history, and current events. However, I didn't really have any idea how to handle this situation... basically the attendants grabbed me and had me start speaking to the woman about her son. I didn't understand anything she was saying except for “my son”, but I asked her if, ver batim, “do you want medicine for your son's not good head?” Somehow we ended up coming to the conclusion that having an aspirin would do the trick, so threat: neutralized unless the kid has a heart condition and is now dead.

The airport in Frankfurt was really confusing, I don't understand why all airports can't just be like O'Hare and be super easy to figure out. There's random trams you have to take to get to parts of the airport and it's shaped like a giant “U” so I had to go from one end of the U to the other to get to my gate and it took forever. One thing I'd always heard about but never really considered was how McDonald's are different in foreign countries compared to the U.S., and it's totally true. The McD's in the airport had a bunch of menu options that I'd never heard of before (and they were still totally American foods... not like a saurkraut burger or something weird like that), and it was styled more like a cafe rather than a fast food place.

The flight from Frankfurt to Amman was half as long as my first one but it felt a lot longer for some reason. May have been because I wasn't talking to anyone and everyone pretty much went to sleep right away. Regardless, I got through about a third of a book I'm reading right now and then spent the last hour just looking out the window, basically. Flying over Israel and Jordan at night was cool, Tel Aviv looks pretty awesome at night. When we got to the airport in Amman I had to get my Jordanian Visa which was some 20 Jordanian Dinars (roughly $26 American), then went through customs and all that jazz. It was definitely a lot easier to get through security in Amman than in the U.S. but that may just be because it's a smaller airport and it's easier for the security guys to keep an eye on people. I was with a few other girls from my study abroad group and they took a lot longer to get their visas than I did – they had to state their business, where they were going to school, etc. I was asked no questions and they just stamped me and let me go through. Weird, but whatever.

After that we found a group of other non-Arab people and assumed they were students like us, because who else would fly into Amman at like 2am local? We turned out to be right, and we waited around for a little bit until everyone had gotten their bags (we don't want to leave any of them unattended god forbid). We ended up taking about a 30-45 minute bus ride to our apartments, so by the time that was all said and done it was about 430am. I didn't have a roommate at the time (there's three people per apartment) so I had dibs on the big room in the place. Unfortunately, after being in the apartment for only about fifteen minutes, I plugged in a power strip to the wall and fried the electricity. Woops. I had plugged in JUST my phone before that and it was fine, but I guess our place doesn't cooperate with power strips. Suffice it to say, I went the next day and a half without any power in my room which was slightly inconvenient. I ended up knocking on the door across the hall from me because I met the two guys who lived there as we were moving in and they were pretty chill, and they let me hang out at their place and charge my phone there until my power got fixed (which was at 4am Saturday morning when all the lights in the house blared on as I was sleeping). One of the guys went to sleep because he actually walked around Amman from like 5am until noon which to me was a little strange but whatever, so I went with the other guy to dinner around 6pm. Now, despite the qualms I may have with my apartment like how it smells like shit in the kitchen/bathroom, the crappy beds, lack of pillows, etc, the food here is amazing. I paid 5 JD (~$7 US) for a kebab halabi (or something like that) at a restaurant just down the road from our place and I'm definitely going to be hitting that place up a lot.

After dinner I hung out a little more across the hall since my power was still out and we watched G.I. Joe on TV with Arabic subtitles, but I was pretty much cashed out for the day at about 9pm and went to bed. I woke up at 4am like I said before and I haven't really gone to sleep since then. It's weird, normally when I can't fall asleep it seems like time goes by really slowly, but the past four hours or so have gone by really quickly and all I've done is lay in bed, really.

Anyways, that's where I'm at right now. I'm going to go to our orientation in about an hour and a half and hopefully a lot of stuff gets elaborated on more, because honestly I'd like to go out into the city and do stuff but no one has any idea where anything is yet. I don't know when I'll actually be able to upload this since we don't have wifi in our apartment (yet? Ever?), but currently it is 630am in Jordan, so back in Chicago it's something like 1030pm. I'll try to update this at least once a week, maybe more if I get bored or less if I'm super busy, we'll see. Leave questions in the comments section if you've got any I suppose, I can try answering them as best I can.