I find it interesting that the news is slanted from country to country. Here in Jordan, the news makes it seem like Israel is the wicked satan nation while in the United States and on the BBC the news is in favor of Israel. For example, on the BBC when they show a Israeli led attack against Lebanon it’s “an air raid”. But if the any force from Lebanon (hezbollah or not) it’s an “attack”.

Everything here is kind of tense because of the conflict but it’s still very safe. Today at church, I the branch president let out church an hour early so we could get home before Friday prayers at the mosques were over because sometimes the speeches at the mosques are politically charged. In church today, two Arab guys got in an argument over wearing white shirts with the sacrement. Things like this don’t usually happen in Utah so it really shocked me. The church was packed to maximum capacity because all the BYU students were there today. I met up with two who live behind my apartment who I commute with to church.

Mrs. Ann Kok, from the University of Green Bay left us the other day which was really sad. She was here setting up all of our service projects and also as just another adult. We had a going away party for here at this really fancy restaurant which is designed to look like a Bedouin tent. The food was incredibly expensive at 10JD ($16), but well worth it. On the ride home, the cab driver was really friendly and told us that he was mad about Ossama Bin Laden attacking America. It just mad me feel really good inside.

All the international students went on this big excursion to a famous restaurant called Kan Zemat which is the first restaurant I’ve ever been to where you had to go through metal detectors. We all payed 5JD ($8) to go. When we arrived, we were led through the gift shops for a while (and interestingly, the gift shops were aimed towards Christian tour groups), until we arrived at the actual restaurant. We walked in and were impressed by how luxurious it was, but were then led to the family section which was a bunch of coffee tables with stools. When they brought out the food, it was bread, just Bread. It was good bread, but I don’t think anyone realized that that was just what we were getting. At one point the waiters got up and danced Depka (Jordanian folk dance) around the restaurant and forced people to dance with them. Then the bus got stuck between two cars and it took a long time for the driver to maneuver it out. What a night.

I spent my second day volunteering at the King’s Academy by helping kids write Tanka’s (form of Japanese poetry) in their English classes. Now I’ve never heard of a Tanka before, so I was really worried I was going to screw some kids poem up. The teacher is from Ireland and has a very thick accent. She was quite strict at first so she reminded me of Cruela Deville at first but by the ned when she read the Frog Prince to the kids, she completely changed. All of the kids are so happy to talk to us because America is this huge icon for them. Their English ranges from perfectly fluent to perfectly un-fluent. I really wish I could live with the kids like the counselors who are graduates of Deer Field Academy are. The University is paying for a car to take us out there everyday because it’s about a forty minute drive. But unfortunately the bus driver is different everyday and they never speak English, so that has caused some interesting situations when the people at the gate wont let us in and we have to make a lot of phone calls.

We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 last night at Mecca Mall. It was one of the most confusing and boring movies ever! Everybody in the group was really mad that they had wasted JD 5 on it. Before the movie we went to a place called “Chips and Dips” which had real live Utahn fry sauce. It was wonderful. And then these two women got in a fight and hundreds of people gathered around to watch it but it was broken up pretty fast. I think Arabs get really excited when they see that kind of stuff because nothing quite like that has ever happened before my eyes.

Something funny happened this afternoon. We frequently eat at this restaurant called Al Bal because it’s just downstairs and it’s really good. Well today we were eating lunch and this guy came over and asked us why we always ate there. We had never seen him before, but it turned out that he was the owner. We told abut how much we enjoyed the food and the people are really nice. Someone asked him where a good place for ice cream was and it turned out that he owned a ice cream store across town. He asked what flavors we wanted and had someone drive across town it. Now we just kind of assumed for some reason that it was on the house because of the way he talked about it. But when they came back, it turned out to be 14JD ($20) for about 12 scoops of Ice Cream.

Well that’s it for today.
-cheers