Jen's Blog

So - in the summer, Amman can be an in-your-face city....in the opinion of this suburban girl (ya know, actually I'm really more of a small town girl - Fairfax, c'mon). Some places here, like downtown, I can barely handle in the daytime at all (ask poor Akram - dude, I am SO sorry). HOWEVER, there are some excellent places to chill here, with my favorite drink of all time - lemonade with fresh mint (how did I never think of this?).

Here....this is Wild Jordan Cafe. It's part of the RCSN (Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature) - http://www.rscn.org.jo/
It doesn't have the warmth of wood, but it has great views, ORGANIC SALADS, live music, and - most inspired - a libraryish place where you can chill without having to buy something. Oh yes....brunch.

This is a quiet street on Jebel Amman - the embassy and, therefore, expat district. This whole area is entirely pleasant and live-able. This pic was taken on a Friday afternoon when everyone was in the mosque (just hazarding a guess, here).

Books@cafe. Cosy (woody) English language bookstore. Front patio with views and a bar, large back patio with big shady trees, a bar, a giant screen tv, live music. Inside, some internet access and another bar. Apparently this cafe is the 'gay hangout'. I've never noticed anything, uh, Gay, there. But since I've done the Folsom Street Fair, my meter is probably shot.

Oh, they also have brunch.

Farah hotel in downtown. This place is the suprise, cause in downtown, you just don't expect any peace. It's a cute backpacker-style hotel.

Souk Jara crafts market - held Fridays

Pizza! Quite good pizza too. No pepperoni - these folks have a little thing about eating pork...

This place is here to promote the local handicrafts. It's also part of the RSCN

So, I've been busy up to HERE. Following is an explanation of some of what I've been up to when I'm not in school.

First Arab wedding:
Haya invited me to her cousin's engagement party and also to her brother's wedding. She helped me buy clothes. I now own gold glitter sandals.

For the engagement party, Haya had said I could dress in my regular clothes. However, while we were getting ready at her house, her mother kept looking at me uncomfortably and asked if I was going to do something with my hair. I wound up wearing one of Haya's sister's dresses, hand made by their mother. She makes amazing traditional wedding clothes which can best be described as 'fairytale princess dresses'.

Haya and I before the engagement party:

At both the engagement party, which is strictly women, and the wedding, which was all women except for the groom, the outfits ran the gamut. Anything from tight jeans with a blouse to the aforementioned fairytale dresses to a boudoir milkmaid outfit and 80s flashdance stuff. Once inside, many of the women who cover, uncover. Some can't be bothered and maintain the hijab. Others don't cover anyway.

At the wedding, the bride and groom came in together, stood and exchanged rings, and then danced together. Following this, the music pumped up and everyone was dancing. It was like a women-only disco for the next coupla hours. I was up there. Can't not dance to the ME beat. It's tough, though. ALL the women can belly dance. All of 'em, 8 to 80. It's just how they dance. And the groom is up there, able to see for the first time since he was too young to care, what women have going on.

At some point, they paused for cake and for the delivery of gold jewelry to the bride from the groom's mother. Toward the end, the women covered and the men came in and did a traditional wedding dance (which I recognized because, for some reason, they have videos of this on tv all the time).

First time driving in an Arab country:
We had a girl, Ida, staying with us at our apartment. She's a couchsurfer (see my links) and she had just been travelling solo through much of Africa (hmmmm....). She's a writer and is working on a documentary, gathering personal truths from people all over the world (utruthproject.org).

I inadvertently convinced her to visit Wadi Rum...my contagious enthusiasm apparently. Of course, she thought it would be great if I went with her and I wasn't difficult to convince. Due to the funky logistics of getting to Rum village, we decided that renting a car would be most efficient.

Fools.

We went to the rental agency which is in the heart of Amman. Once they showed me the car, we did the usual 'looking over the car for dings' thing. I lost track but I was pretty sure that they were all covered on the little diagram, which already looked like a cross-hatch drawing. Then the guy told me that the first thing we needed to do was fill the tank because it was empty. He kinda described a place up the road where we could go. He also gave Ida, my navigator, directions to the city edge. Threre is apparently no good map of Amman (I've been trying to find one since I got here). Amman is a city of 3 million people built on 12 hills. Unlike San Francisco, where the roads are still generally on a grid, Amman's roads look more like Christmas ribbon. It took us over an hour to get out of the city. To my credit, I didn't hit anyone and really only got honked at two times (which I think is actually below the average). Once out of the city, the desert is a straight shot south.

Next time I'm taking the bus.

First time teaching:
So, I got a job teaching English technical writing. Previously, I've been known to have a strong fear of public speaking (some of you have seen this in action). So, there I was, auditing one of the classes at the language center to see how they do things when the director told me she had a class she needed me to take - in two days. It's a five week course, she said, with classes lasting THREE hours. Unfortunately, this particular course had no cirriculum and no teacher's guide. Two days later I'm up in front of fourteen people trying to muddle my way through, hoping they don't smell blood. I actually had no clue about what I was teaching because we started with formal business letter format. Did you know that if you begin a letter 'Dear Sir', it is to be signed 'Yours Faithfully'? Not only did I not know this. I can't even care. So when someone in the class asked if they could sign 'With Regards', I said that it was up to them. Holy Cow.

By the second class, we'd changed to a two-hour format and I had moved on to email correspondence. Also, we're focusing more on grammar...which I'm pretty good at (for an American). So things have mellowed out. It's even kind of fun. Now it's just a matter of picking a pace that works. Proper pacing - the bane of teachers throughout the world!

The Good

[*]Registration was super-easy. The form asked for my name, local phone number, and why I want to study Arabic. I attached a couple of passport-type photos (worst photos ever) along with a photocopy of my passport and gave it to the Language Center. Then I went to the registration office to hand in my 500JD. Then I opened a Cairo-Amman bank account with $20 (still not sure what that was about). I'm in. This was two days before classes stared.

[*]Jordan University is covered in trees. This is particularly nice 'cause summer in the Middle East is kinda hot. It's not really THAT much worse than, say, Sacramento. The difference is that there is almost no AC anywhere.

[*]The cafeteria: The tables have tablecloths. The food is excellent and very cheap. I can get a half roasted chicken and rice with yogurt and bottled water for 1.20 JD. Students ALL bus their own trays.

[*]Our teachers are EXCELLENT

The Bad

[*]Maybe the first teachers we had weren't so excellent.

[*]My walk to school is 10 minutes along a busy, crazy, noisy, filthy, four (or maybe six - hard to tell) lane road with taxis, service taxis, local busses, and big busses pulling in and out along the whole way. Anyone who knows me knows that I shouldn't be anywhere near three-ton hurling masses of metal within two hours of waking up.
I must note though, that drivers in Jordan are leagues more sane and courteous than, say, Syria. But. DANG.

By the way, the writing on the McDonald's sign says 'Macdownaldz', phonetically speaking:

The Funny

[*]I can find my way to the lanuage program director's office with my eyes closed.

The first teacher we had began class by putting up random words on the board - at least we think they were words as no one had yet covered the arabic alphabet with us. Many of the students were yelling at him to cover the basics - this was moot because he spoke no English. Another guy came in - some administrative dude. He spoke English and, I think to pacify the mob, began teaching the class. The other guy just walked out. It took about five minutes to realize we had just taken a big step down in teaching quality. After class, a delegation went to the director's office to 'give feedback'.

The next day, the first teacher was organized and teaching close to our level. But the second teacher came in and it turned out to be the same overwhelmingly horrible guy that we had the day before.

I was part of the second delegation.

The director agreed to let us keep the first teacher for both classes each day. We were satisfied.

The NEXT day, we indeed had the same decent teacher. But apparently he could only maintain a sense of organization for that one initial class period. Over a period of one week, all the students (exept one) slipped out of his class and into the other Level One class being taught by two women. My defection was rather difficult because he tried to stop me and kept redirecting me back to the his room. Then he stood in the doorway of the other room so I couldn't get in and proceeded to get into a long discussion with the teacher of the other section (who at this point had already started class). I waited outside for my sentence. Eventually, I was allowed to pass into the room.

THEN, the....what is he, exactly....department logistics type guy came in and said we had to go back to the other guy's room; that there were too many people in one class. Many of us spoke up and said that we would get our money back before we'd go back to class with that guy. He said we needed to talk to the director.

Delegation #3. We couldn't get in to his office. We talked between two different go-betweens. Eventually we were sent the message to go to the class we had chosen and they would talk to us later.

Now - We're still in the excellent class. Insha'allah we will stay there.

I am now settled into the student life here in Amman. I have a four hour Arabic lesson each day...really more like 3 hours. But more about that later...it's just funny all on its own.

I have very few new photos to post because Amman isn't beautiful....wait, here's an example:

It kinda reminds me of SF....kinda.

But, I've discovered that there are some great oases (oasises?) around town so I'm hoping to get pictures of them. Also, there's some good peeps I gotta get photos of. Like my roomies...Sophia and Maryum. They are also studying Arabic at the university. Essentially, we bumped into each other while looking for places and decided to get a place together. We have a two bedroom apartment across the street from Uni. We pay 400JD/month, so about 135JD each. For students, we obtained an excellent price (some are paying 400JD for a studio or 300JD for a room with a 9pm curfew)...but the locals laugh at us for getting ripped off. Eh, whatever. It's cheap enough.

We largely owe our success to Haya, a girl from here who is studying German at the language center. I had seen her at the center and she appeared to know her way around so I had asked her if she knew of a place to find 'roommate wanted' postings. By that evening she had invited me to live with her family until I found a place. I went for dinner and met her mom and bro. Her mom launched into an Arabic lesson as soon as I arrived. She was just great. However, I didn't take them up on the offer because, with Haya's help, we found a place the following day.

Getting an apartment in Amman:
It looks like this: Walk up and down the hill across from the university in 100F weather until you see a sign in Arabic with a phone number. If you don't speak Arabic, you call the number in case it's a rental sign. If you speak Arabic, you only call the numbers that are actually rental signs. After you call, you hope the person on the other end speaks English...unless you have Haya with you, and she deals with all this crap for you. Then you go to the place and the person meets with you NOW. And you haggle, if you speak Arabic or have Haya, to make sure that the price is inclusive and there's no extra charges, say, for the super to provide you with groceries (?!). OK, this is done. Now, the beautiful thing: The guy pulls out a sheet of paper with the agreement on it and you put down name, phone number, passport number and hand him 400JD cash. The place is yours and you may now move in.

That's it.

No background check, credit check, employment check, prior residence check, personal references...

Caveat to the cool thing: We are not permitted to have men in the apartment.

Toh!

In case my dad is reading this, it's not that I need to have guys in my room or anything...it's just that I've been on the receiving end of amazing hospitality over here and I'd like to return the favor. We have an insane number of tea glasses in our kitchen taunting us.

The apartment:

I've left the secure insanity of the desert and am presently hiding in a budget hotel in Amman, trying to get used to the din.

I've left people behind who miss me as sorely as I miss them. I have an arabic placement exam at Jordan University on the 17th. If I haven't settled in, I may just go back to Rum and continue to learn Bedouin colloquial arabic at a snail's pace. Ali & Faris did tell me they would teach me five hours a day if I stayed. Ali has picked up English so quickly. We speak all the time now. I had accused him of being a spy because for the first month he didn't speak at all, stating 'no speak English'. It turns out, however, that he's picked it up in the past two months and truely didn't speak it before. Faris has spoken it all along, which one may or may not know depending on whether you are someone he wants to speak to. Everyone back at the camp can now be seen, on their free time, studying the English books.

Hmoud and I communicating

In a way, it's so easy to get in trouble in the desert. But nothing is consequential (as long as one doesn't have brothers who are required to defend the family's honor). I got in an yelling match with the Aqaba bus driver one day and he warmly greeted me at the shop a few days later. If I hadn't argued with him, he may not have remembered me for greeting. No one bothers to filter nor do they bother to hold a grudge.

But it's hard to hang on to anything there, from holding grudges to trying to plan anything for the future. Each of us who volunteered wound up staying long past our intended departure date. Jessie had intended to pass through in three weeks on her way to Egypt. She'd ask if I would go with her when she left and all I could say was 'I don't know, that's, like, two weeks from now'. Then it was one week out and she asked if I would go and it was still impossible for me to project ahead one week. Then she extended her stay. Then again she asked if I would go with her. I asked when she was going. She replied she didn't know.

Jessie

It took a little while for me to realize that seeing consistency as a virtue is ethnocentric. It's confusing to be told one thing one moment and then another two hours later. At first people seemed dishonest. But everything said is true in the moment it's said (unless they're playing with the euro-female population - then it's more about strategy - but endearning nonetheless).

Faris and I in the 'siarra'