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.