Anyways, since I last posted, mad amounts of things have gone down! I have been super busy and unable to find time to post, so I will be doing two today!!! Super exciting, I know.
Last weekend was July 4th weekend (sorta, July 4th was wednesday, but close enough). I went to Aqaba with 8 of my gal pals here. Coincidentally most of the students on my program decided to go to Aqaba as well, so everyone except for two people ended up going. It was AMAZING and I am sooooo in love. I need to go back but from America to see if it really is amazing or just in comparison to Irbid.
You all probably have noticed I hate on Irbid a lot. Its true, I don't like Irbid much. Some of the people here are nice, and I love my classes but I have a hard time adjusting to being a woman in Irbid, aka, less of a human. It doesn't come naturally. Irbid is worse that the rest of Jordan because it is so conservative and there aren't very many tourists. There are may restrictions to being a woman that really restrict my way of life. For example:
~Women do not smoke in public. Instead, they smoke in bathrooms or enclosed spaces away from the men. I don't smoke, but when I travel on the bus and we take a smoke break, the men go outside but the women smoke on the bus and I don't like that.
~Women can't have wet hair in public. I do anyways because I often shower at the gym and then have to walk home. Usually it is dark and I don't live far from the gym, but it can be a problem sometimes with harassment and the shebab (the young men).
~Women can't have hair longer than their shoulders in public. Most here wear a Hijab or more, but some just keep their hair up. its not the biggest deal cause it is so hot I often have to put my hair up just cause I am sweating so much, but just the fact that they try to tell me how to wear my hair pisses me off!
~Women can't go out alone after 6pm! this is what pisses me off the most. Once, I went to the gym with my friend. we go around 8pm, and afterwards, she wanted to go home and I wanted to meet some friends for coffee and homework at our little 'spot' where we always go (called Cuzins and we LOVE it! its like mini america with internet and AC and coffee and Ice cream and all things sparkly and good) Anyways, I had to walk alone for maybe 3 blocks, but i got an empty pack of cigarets thrown at me, cat called, grabbed at and other ridiculous things! The Shebab here have no respect for human decency and for such a religious country they have no sense of shame. They DO look twice, they DO harass you constantly and try to grab at you. There is a double standard here. Because I am american, I don't count as a real woman so they can treat me less that the Jordanian women. This is because the Jordanian women have fathers and brothers and uncles to come to their defense if the Shebab are disrespectful. We American girls don't. I became friends with sever GOOD Jordanian boys (they are few and far between but they do exist) and often times get them to help me get rid of creepy or mean shebab. But I hate having to walk around with men to protect me. Its not how I was raised, its not how I live my life and I don't like it.
Anyways! This post is about the much better city of Aqaba!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVED AQABA!!!! It was wonderful. Aqaba is the very southernmost tip of Jordan, on the Red Sea. It is about 6 hours away from Irbid, although the bus stopped so much it took an extra hour! We all left right after classes and got to Aqaba exhausted. My gal pals and I had booked a beautiful hotel right in the city called AlQidra Hotel, but most of the others were staying at a hostel about 5 minutes outside the city. Since we had booked in advance, our rooms were cheaper anyways! WIN. It was only like 20JD for two nights including breakfast! super nice, don't you think? And the rooms were clean and nice and had AC and were right in the heart of everything. After we had checked in and dropped our bags and stuff, we headed out to find some food. We ended up eating at a nice little restaurant with most everyone else and stayed there until 3am! We snuck in some alcohol, which is illegal, but we didn't get in trouble, and some of them smoked hookah (I explained previously, but for those of you who forget, I don't really like hookah also called Argila here). They gave us tea and ice cream which was very nice and didn't kick us out after they closed. I didn't end up going to sleep until about 4am or later! The next morning came much to soon as some of us had decided to go snorkeling at 9am!
Snorkeling was soooo much fun! Aside from the fact that I don't really like fish, it was a great time!! We went out on this little boat with a bunch of people from all over. The top deck was a great place for sunbathing and a good nap, and below was for all our gear and going into the water. most of the people were going scuba diving, but I don't know how. They said I could have done a special kind of dive where I go with an instructor and they make sure I am okay the whole time. My friend Nicole did that, and she had a blast. If I do it again, I think I wanna do that. But for me and my friends, snorkeling was good enough. The water was saltier than I expected, but the reef was beautiful! So many fish and turtles and clear blue sea! Around 3pm or so they surved us a delicious meal with plenty of veggi options for us. We talked with the woman who ran the company (the woman who cooked the delicious food for us). She was actually from Irbid and said her father was amazing and had let her do and wear whatever she wanted, and when she got married, her mother in law started pressuring her to be more like an Irbid woman, and when her first husband died her MOL got really obnoxious and she had to just take her kids and get OUT of Irbid. She married a British guy and they now run the diving center in Aqaba and she is super happy. She made us so happy, to know that not all the women who come from Irbid are stuck without any sense of choice or self derived power.After snorkeling, we headed home and got amazingly wonderful pedicures, showered, and headed out to dinner at a well known fish restaurant. What a good friend am I, to go to a fish restaurant when I don't eat fish! There was a lot of bread and Humus and Babaghanoush and Salad for me to eat. And it was only like 1JD!
After dinner some of us went to a (BAR) which was super nice and hung out and got a little drunk and played pool. I am ashamed at how bad I was, (Sorry Kieran) but we there were a bunch of British Navy boys who played with us and it was a lot of fun.
The next day, I got up a little later and went to meet my friends at the private beach for the hotel. That included a pool with a swim up bar (I accidentally forgot to pay for my drinks but its their fault cause they didn't ask me to pay). After the pool, we had to book it back to eat and then take the long long bus ride back.I LOVE AQABA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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