So as I was saying, I'm in Jordan finally.It's been over two weeks since I left and haven't left much on this blog to to the lack of interent access. So now it's time to catch up.



I flew to washington d.c. on tuesday the 20th (and were my arms tired). The group of students I met with and am currently living with are a very diverse group. Half are muslim and manly participating so they can learn more about there heritage, and the others are like me and just want to learn Arabic. Oyur first meeting was at a Indian restaurant across the street from our hotel. I didn't know anyone except for Grechen and zaineb and Sarah whom I had met at the airport.



The next morning was a trip to National Security Agency. It was in fact very secrative. We were given directions as how to get there which included taking a train to BWI airport and getting on a shuttle. Once at BWI there was no shuttle. The person in charge, Jay Harris, called his contact who was in charge of our visit only to be told that the NSA could not confirm or deny that that person even existed. We were frustrated until a few minutes latter when the contact from the NSA called Jay back and told him that the shuttle was on the way. A few minutes latter an unmarked very plain van except for the word hubers on the side pulled up and took us to the NSA. The driver was supposed to drop us off at the visitor center but mistakenly droped us off at the actual NSA. Long story short: when we finnaly found the right place, the people waiting for us were really sorry about all of the security precautions.



Are next stop was the embassy of Jordan which on a street with all of the other embassys of the middle east. We were given a speach about the current economic situation and such. But there was this guy who was just standing around us the whole time we were there who looked like anything but Jordanian.We then visited the Palestinain center where we talked to a euiropean looking women about politics in palestine. We then walked to the mall and saw all the usuall stuff like the white house and lincoln memorial.



We visited places such as the Kato Institute (a libretarian thinktank), and freedom house. The grand finale of our visit in Washington was supposed to be our visit to the State Department. For the record I hate meetings. This meeting was with "security Jay" who was really proud of his $22,000 Passatt which he had recently bought. All of his stories were in some connected to his car. He was suppossed to talk about being "situationaly aware" in the middle east.

So that is a very breif summary of my trip to washington. More to come on the interesting stuff.
-Bruce