Photos from my weekend in Amman

So we got a pretty bad room service dinner, followed by tiramisu and tea

This was the MOST AMAZING BREAKFAST I HAVE EVER HAD! One of the few reasons Amman is 100,000x better than Irbid!

Hey, so my friend Olivia is really the 'on top of it' one in the group, and she got it together to take photos during our weekend in Amman. She finally posted them online so now I can share them with you! There aren't a lot, but I haven't put up photos in a while, so I thought I would.

We were so happy to finally make it to something so familiar and comfortable....we got the red holiday cups and listened to Christmas music, and felt almost happy for a few hours- it was priceless.

Thanksgiving, conspiracies, and other dissapointing things

Happy Thanksgiving! I was so sad I couldn't celebrate with my family. I actually looked up prices for flights home for a week, and they were $1000, but I knew it was really impossible. But we tried our best. We decided to have a small Thanksgiving celebration with our group, and invited our roommates. Olivia made vegetarian stuffing, Chelsea made green bean as well as sweet potato casseroles and I made mashed potatoes and veggies, and because the boys didn't want to spend so much money on turkey, Katie made chicken. Oh Olivia made 2 pumpkin pies (from scratch including starting with a whole pumpkin!) and Peter made apple pie. He was the only boy to contribute. Orion (we call him Bitrus because his middle  name is peter and Orion is really weird here and Peter is already called Peter, but I will call him Orion because it is easier for this post) Anyways, Orion decided to invite 4 or 5 Jordanian shebab- yes, the slimy kind who sexually harass us girls on a daily basis. Then, last minute, he invited 5 of the Europeans from a different program, without telling the girls (who were doing all the cooking). So that sucked. Katie and I decided we'd better make Sambosas in case food ran short. The room was crowded and full of sleazy shebbab who were annoying us- also, the one thing us girls had asked for from the boys was some wine. That did not happen because the boys had their own arak. I HATE arak and we had asked for wine, so I was pissed. Their job was to clean up after we were done. The girls ate in a separate room, because we didn't want to get sleezed on. Oh I forgot. Orion also nearly ruined the pie and killed us all! How did he do this you ask? He didn't know how to turn the oven on. He thought we were in America and you just turn the switch. He has been here for months and apparently never used his kitchen. You have to light the gas to make it work. He told Olivia he knew how to do it, and then turned the gas on the pies and Olivia noticed 40 minutes later when she went to check on them. Then, after a meal we had slaved hours over, Orion comes in and cowardly says one of the Jordanians wanted to talk to us womenfolk. The Jordanian boy comes in (without so much as a thanks for cooking food for me) and says according to Jordanian culture, girls clean up and the boys were going to go socialize on the street. We just stared at him for a moment speechless with his audacity. Then rage boiled up and we all exploded on them (in Arabic I will add) and they retreated. That doesn't mean they did what they were supposed to. I was too exhausted to keep a constant eye on them, but from what I could tell, the American boys did most of the cleaning (although my kitchen is dirtier than when I cooked the meal in it so they did a TERRIBLE JOB) and the Jordanian boys ran around laughing and taking pictures of their friends doing this demeaning task. I keep reminding myself that in 20 days I will leave this god-forsaken place and I will NEVER RETURN. I promise you, back in the day there was Sodom and Gomorrah. Irbid is next. I promise. I was thinking about this the other day, because I have found people here that I like. Then I realized all my friends were students. None of them are from Irbid. Ra'ad and Rasha are from  Amman. Lara is from Zarqa (just south of Amman) and Khalid is from Kuwait. The teachers I like, Mannal, Mazen and Iman are from Syria. Everyone from Irbid is part of a homogeneous tribal community that rejects any attempt to change. All outsiders are not accepted, and in the case of us girls, are harassed on a daily basis. All God needs is a period where everyone who isn't from the area to go home, and I promise you he will smite this place.

The worst part about living here this semester is the American boys. In the summer, it was hot and miserable and there were two weeks of Ramadan which made the shebab ramp up their harassment out of pure misery. But the boys in the program defended our honor. It bothered me that it was necessary for them to do that, but I would rather walk around with American men around me staring down onlookers and yelling at anyone who tried to yell at us or come near us than get trash thrown at me or worse grabbed at. The boys this semester don't care. They don't defend our honor, and I am pretty sure they are just as sexist as the Jordanians here and are enjoying acting on this without guilt because they are just "integrating themselves into the local culture".

In other news, I have three weeks left, or as I like to think about it, 28726 minutes until I head off to Amman to catch my flight. I can't wait. In the meantime, I have to write a 5 page research essay in Arabic, make a 20 minute video talking in Amiyya, write a 10-12 page essay (in English thank goodness) on some topic within Archaeology in Jordan, and make a power point presentation for I think 40 minutes on some facet of the news of this year- make a 'panorama' and then zoom in on one section and discuss it in detail for my Arab media class. I have A LOT to do..Oh I forgot, I also have my Arabic final exam to take on the last day. I am getting ready to be WAY stressed, and to 'help' my body decided to reject Irbid, and I am overly exhausted 24/7 no matter how much sleep I get.

This weekend, Olivia, Chelsea, and I decided to go to Amman because we NEEDED to get out of Irbid. We left really early Friday morning, and even decided to spring for a hotel instead of a hostel. We went to study, so we didn't do too much, but we did go to 2 very important places: A chocolate restaurant (think Chocolate the movie with Johny Depp) and STARBUCKS. Our original plan was to go get food at the mall, study at wherever we ate for several hours, then go see a movie. We forgot everything is closed on Fridays, and we got to the mall at 12:30 but it didn't open until 2pm. Next to it was the Chocolate restaurant and we couldn't resist. We got fondue! with fruit and cakes - one of them was green but we could not for the life of us figure out what flavor it was! After that we studied until I was falling asleep on the table, then we returned to the hotel for a quick nap- turned into 3 hours, followed by studying and room service dinner. then we decided we had done good work, and could reward ourselves with a movie before bed. We chose the little mermaid, and of course ended up analyzing it from the point of view of the 'Arab Father'. Wow Disney is super sexist. I know this and it isn't news to me but I keep forgetting just how much. Thank goodness I didn't internalize it too much and still have some semblance of self worth and self sufficiency.

The next morning I had to get up WAY EARLY at 7:30 on a Saturday! to shower and get ready for a long day at ACOR, American Center for Oriental Research. Their library is great and it is a really beautiful, calm, and AMERICAN place to study and besides, Olivia needed to use the library. It was a conspiracy though. After 3 cabbies having NO IDEA what we were talking about when we gave them the name and the address, we got in a cab and called my teacher. She had taken us there once before, but I was sleeping and we went at night so no one remembered exactly how to go. We called her and handed the phone off to the cab driver (who shouted a lot in what sounded mean but wasn't meant to be, and he also spit in probably the most disgusting manner constantly). He got lost and so we called her again. He couldn't find it still, so we called her again. Still no luck, so we told him to drop us off at the Amman International Hotel and we asked the front desk woman if she knew. She said (and I quote), "I don't know. I have only been here for 5 years" After 5 years you should know your way around your city. Anyways, one of the men who worked there knew where it was and pointed it out to us from a window. 'Just a 10 minute walk' he said. He didn't mention up an 80 degree incline and that after 30 minutes we still couldn't find it! We looked for this place for about 1.5 hours then gave up. Is a conspiracy. Or maybe it was the Room of Requirements. We should have paced back and forth....But I swear it was moving around, eluding us! Eventually we just hopped in a cab and told him to take us to the nearest Starbucks. We saw the sign and were about 300 m away from it when we got pulled over by the police. He did a general inspection of the taxi (in America we have to get those done at a special time, not while we are generally driving around). Luckily enough after 15 minutes of turning on and off blinkers and lights and checking tires, our cab passed inspection and got a sticker to prove it! He dropped us off and I nearly cried. They had comfy chairs and good coffee and snacks and Christmas music, and was all things western. If I didn't look out the window, i would have no idea I was only 1.5 hours away by car from the worst place on earth! We stayed until 4:30, a good 6 hours of working and I feel pretty good. I was mostly taking notes and gathering information for my Arabic essay (I am writing about the Arabs during WWII. There are many cases in North Africa where Arabs saved their fellow Jews, and that made me happy. There are also many cases of working with the axis powers, which is too bad, but what can you do. Good, Bad, and Evil, right? But I am interested in learning about this, so I am happy with the topic. Anyways, I should sign off now so I can get some sleep. I have to wake up early tomorrow because I have office hours at 8:30 am.

ldskjf;sldkfj

If I have to  sit through one more racist, sexist, homophobic, ignorant fucking lesson in this G-d forsaken country I'm gonna flip a shit. 

Trouble in Paradise day 163

After coming home from our wonderful vacation, I got a new roommate! Luckily, I knew her- Lara my language partner- so I wasn't afraid of her being weird or anything. I like living with her. We cook, watch My Fair Lady, I help her with her English pronunciation and she helps me with Arabic. We have very deep and complicated conversations about politics and history. Its a lot of fun. And she makes delicious ma'luba without chicken (its potatoes and eggplant and sometimes cauliflower and rice with spices and herbs)!

Last weekend I went to stay over at a Jordanian family's house. It was the strangest experience of my life. My friend Jenny is in the Anthropology class and her teacher set up the overnight stay with one of his "real students". She had to go for class and write a paper about it. I was just being nice and accompanying her because there were three girls, and two went to another Jordanian house together, and Jenny would be on her own if I didn't go. The girl was very nice. She was wealthy up the wazoo, and her entire house was purple! She and her mother kept showing us what in the house was from America, as if it was proof that they were worthy of our time. The girl asked us if we like to go to JC Penny and Dilliards and showed us all her American clothes. The mother also kept stuffing food down our throats. The seccond we got there, we ate dinner (at 6pm about). I had told them I was vegetarian, but forgot to say I wouldn't eat rice if it was cooked with meat. I didn't want to be rude, so I ate it. My stomach was a little unhappy, but not too bad. After dinner, we were given Khunafa (a cheesy pastry thing) and some of the deserts we had brought as a 'thank you for having us' gift. After that, some family members came over. The girl's older sister (there were 6 siblings and the girl was the youngest- three were in America and one was in Hungary) and her 3 children came over- ages 7,5, and BABY! The baby was super cute! But he was left alone a lot which made me nervous...they didn't have a crib or anything, just lay him on the couch and checked on him if he cried....

The girl kept asking if Jenny and I were tired, so finally we said yes and were sent to her room for a nap. It was more that we felt uncomfortable with all the family babbling on about this and that and 'this is from America, and so is that'. When we returned, we were greeted with more desert!

The sister brought cake, and the mother made us eat it...by this point I was concentrating on not getting sick from eating so much, but it is rude not to accept the food, and I didn't want to be rude. After cake, A lot of us piled into a car. It was like a clown car, as some more people had arrived (I don't know who they were). There were two women in the front, then in the back was Jenny, the girl, and me. Oh and three children sitting on our laps! This made me very nervous as I was in the center and the boy on my lap wanted to stand on my knees and stick his head out the sunroof...I grabbed him and didn't let him do it. He and the girl on Jenny's lap were very curious with us, and talked a lot...They were young and had kid voices, so it was hard to understand and they thought it strange that two adults couldn't understand them. We arrived at a house and a lot of the people got out, so it was just the girl, the woman driving, me, Jenny, and the boy who had been on my lap (he got his own seat now). He wanted to play a game and explained it to be a riddle! We told riddles, (I was a little out of practice and forgot most of mine) and he seemed to enjoy it immensely. We went to Mcdonalds drive through and got MORE DESERT! We got ice cream! Then we drove to a little stand on the side of the road and got beans. you have to peel the skin off the bean and the little boy taught us how  to do it properly. After that, we were dropped off by the house again and Jenny, the girl, and I walked around her neighborhood for a while (the street was named after her family). Then finally, we went to sleep. The next day I woke up around 10...I stayed in bed until about 1pm when both Jenny and I couldn't take staying in bed any longer. We got up and then the girl got up when she heard us moving around. We had breakfast, and then watched tv for an hour. The the mother brought in a bowl of chocolates and the girl showed us her pictures of when she visited America. We told her we couldn't stay past 4:30 because we had a previous engagement, and she was dissapointed. She thought we were staying for 2 nights! Then we had to have lunch. This is where my problem really was. We were far from hungry as we had just eaten breakfast. But the mother had made soup. She ladled a bunch of greenbeens from the soup onto my plate along with leftover rice from the day before...I had a feeling, but I didn't want to be rude and didn't know what to do so I ate it...BAD IDEA. The soup had tons of meat in it. I told Jenny we had to leave immediately.  I made it home and then started puking my guts out. I spent a good portion of the day in my bathroom, and then lay in my bed in pain for a while. Not the most successful of ventures, but I survived.

Escape!

So last week we had a vacation! Thank goodness because I really needed one. Sorry it took me so long to catch y'all up, but I was waiting for the good pictures from the ladies to be posted on facebook so i could steel them and post them here ;)

My midterm in Arabic was on Wednesday, as well as my archaeology paper due. I made sure to finish my paper Monday so I could focus on studying for the test. It was about the archaeological history of Philadelphia (Amman). It was pretty easy, I just had to sit down and do it.

My test was really hard, and I thought I bombed it but I got an A (I have no idea how that happened, but I am not complaining). During this time, I was also stressing out about deciding to come home for spring semester, and go back to GW instead of studying abroad again. There was a lot of emailing back and forth with my millions of advisers, and I figured out that if I try, I can graduate a semester early! Also, one of the girls here who studies at American University in DC and I decided to live together in an apartment, so thats awesome. So needles to say, I was way distracted.

Anyways, all the boys went to Egypt, and the girls went to Israel. We really only went to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv- I don't really consider that as 'seeing Israel' but whatever. I bought all my gifts for people, and ran around the old city and all the shop vendors in the shook (market) were so confused as to how I spoke English, Arabic, and Hebrew. I helped one of them write a sign that said 'clearance' and he made a pair of earrings for me as a thank you. We went to Mike's (an American bar) and played a trivia game on the tv at our booth. it was really fun. Basically we just relaxed and were not in Irbid. We were in Jerusalem for 3 days, and then went to Tel Aviv. We were in Tel Aviv for 3 days too- supposed to be for 4 but we realized our last day would be Saturday, and we would never get a bus from Jerusalem to the border, so we went a day early.

 This trip was really about eating. I dont mean eating shit food, I mean REAL food...not just rice, felafel, and weird cheese bread things or bad pizza. Olivia and I were masters of eating on this trip. We are the two vegetarians, and food in Israel is really big, so we shared a lot of the time. We went to my favorite restaurant in Jerusalem- Sam's Bagels, and ordered a Salad and a bagel. The bagel was veggies and feta black olive cream cheese. the salad had quinoa and grilled veggies and corn and tons of delicious raw veggies and sweet potato, and was so unbelievably amazing! I am sooo bored with the food in Irbid- its not that healthy, and its boring and beige! The food in Israel is delicious and colorful and has tons of veggies!

 After Jerusalem, we hopped a Sheirut (shared taxi) to Tel Aviv. We went to the same hostel I have been to 2x before- when I went to Israel after the summer session, and then I flew back and stayed there for a 2 days before I came back to Jordan. So they new me, which was cool. We walked around, went shopping for our Halloween costumes, walked around Old Jaffa. We went to my favorite breakfast restaurant in the Area, Chocolulu, and got delicious breakfast foods with salads and shakshuka and omlets, and home fries. One morning we went to Jenny Sue's favorite breakfast place (I forget the name) but we met up with two of her friends, and ate delicious food again. She got which chocolate espresso pancakes. I got a fritata and it was amazing!

We HAD to get thai food because it is my favorite and I needed some before going back to the boring foods. This was the tofu salad appetizer we shared:

 We also went to the shook in Jaffa. I got a cool pocket watch necklace thing and some more gifts for friends. I also had to go to my favorite little store called Galilee, where they sell delicious sauces and mixes and healthy yummy food stuffs and wine and lotions and all this stuff made in Israel. I got some eggplant pesto, and some granola. While walking in the shook in Jaffa, we saw these big plastic animals. there was a monkey on a banana, a zebra, a dinosaur, a lion and a unicorn...I pretended to be the dinosaur, but it looks more scared of me than anything... :(

 For Halloween, I dressed up as Hipster Princess Ariel, from the little mermaid. it was difficult to do because I couldn't find any of the clothes I wanted for a price I wanted, and I wasn't about to buy something I didn't like just for Halloween. Olivia was Hipster Snow White, Jenny was a ninja princess (her head band was sparkly hence the princess part) and Katie was a pumpkin, and Chelsea was Rosie the Riveter.  It was a lot of fun, and we went out again to Mike's (in Tel Aviv this time) and they were having a Halloween party, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun, and a much needed break from Irbid! I also was able to send my ballot, and hopefully it reached America in time! Sadly, we had to leave a day early, but it gave me a day to....do nothing but stay in bed and watch movies!