So much has happened since my last post. The reason I haven't been able to write is because the computer lab we use at the University of Jordan was closed for finals and everytime I went to the Internet Cafe I ended up talking to the people who work there instead.
On Monday, Anwar, the guy who owns the internet cafe took us shoping in a part of town called Jebal Hussien. It's funny because there are tons of shops right next to each other practically selling the exact same stuff. The younger men here all dress like Germans...tight wrinkled and shreaded jeans, and tight shirts. By the time I come home I'll have a very unique wardrobe of euro-trash looking clothes. I actually kind of like the style though. After that we ate at a little hole in the wall shwarma place. This place it turns out is very famous because the king eats there all the time. After that, Anwar took us to the fanciest Starbucks I've ever seen. We sat there and talked for almost three hours. This concept of just sitting around and talking for hours is defenetly not and American thing. I'm starting to get used to it though. There are all sorts of games you can play to get the conversation going. For example, you ask the question, "imagine you all of the sudden woke up and found yourself in a room without doors or windows. How would you feel?" Then everyone would go around and say what they feel about this. After that, the person who asked the question says, "the way you feel in this situation is the way you feel about death". There are tons of these.
On tuesday, we went to a restaurant in the old part of Amman called "Matam Hashim". This restuarant consists of a dirty allyway with plastic chairs and tables set up in wierd places, and you walk past the guys making the food to get in. They have three things on the menu Humus, Falafal, and Fool (an Arabic style of refried beans). This was probably the best food I've had yet in Jordan. The Falafal was huge, almost the size of an orange and made with some kind of curry. When we went to pay, they only charged us 1JD ($1.40) a person for a meal that would have cost you maybe $6 a person back in the U.S. After dinner we walked into a bootleg DVD shop next store to look around. We were stunned to find a bootleg copy of "Mobsters and Mormons" there...in fact there were even multiple copies. While we were downtown, I got a call from one of my old roomates from the Arabic house who is also in Jordan with the same program telling me that she and the other Arabic House people were going to a wedding party for Sarah, the Jordanian girl who lived in the Arabic house. I had to decline because I was to far away and wouldn't have made it. Apparently this party was for family only, but Sarah had called her that night and invited us. Remember this little bit of information becuase it will play an importnat part on the events of Thurdsday evening.
On Wednesday we went to go see the new Indiana Jones movie with Anwar, his nephew Muntaser, and the Iraqi girl who works at the Internet Cafe Zeyna because it was her birthday. The movie was a total cinematic catastrophe, one of the worst I have seen in some time. But it was enjoyable because it was so horrible. After the movie we went to Starbucks again and spent another three hours playing these "how you feel when..." games.
So on Thursday, Sarah, the Jordanian girl who lived at the Arabic house at BYU was getting married. She is Greek Orthodox, so we went to the ceremnoy at a huge Greek Orthodox church here in Amman. The ceremnoy was really interesting as there was a whole ritual of chanting and reading scriptures before they said "I do". The place was packed too. We heard that hundereds of people were going to be there so we got there early and got seats towards the front. This turned out to be a bad idea for me though because I was blocking the view due to my height for people behind us during the parts of the ceremnoy where everyone would stand up. Afer the cermenoy there was a huge reciveing line outside the church. It was interesting to walk through it because all the people besdies Sarah and her parents didn't know what to do when I came by. Most of them just smiled at me. After this we got in a couple of Taxis and went to the Royal Hotel. This is where the sketchy stuff started. According to one of the girls in our group, we had been invited to a reception afterwards at the Royal Hotel, the nicest hotel in Jordan. When we showed up, there was nobody there, so we wlaked around for an hour and than went and sat in the ballroom. When we arrived, we were welcomed by the family but there was still hardly anyone there. There were tables set up and a dance floor. We sat down and pretty much ate all of the orderves. Still, not too many people. Around 10 o'clock a beduien band started playing outside in the hall and everyone got up and walked outside clapping to the music. People started coming out of nowhere. The place was packed. They all gathered around the elevators and sang and danced for thirty minutes until the bride and groom came down in the elevator. It took another 30 minutes for them to walk from the elevator to the ballroom (about a 20 foot distance) as everyone kept dancing and singing around them. We stuck out a lot. I kept getting some wierd stares and thought it was just because we looked different. We went back into the ballroom and watched a slideshow. At this point, the head waitor came to our table and started saying stuff about how there weren't enough chairs for the family. Apparently we had gone to the wrong party as it was for family only. The other party that we thought was for family only was the one we were supposed to go to. Talk about Awkward. Fortunatly, the bride and groom were still outside and were about to walk in so everyone was at the doors waiting, so hardly anyone saw us walk out the side door. We're still unsure what happened, but the girl insists we were invited. I felt really bad because we ate a lot of food before we were asked to leave.
Yesterday, I went to King Hussein's car museum. It turns out that king Hussein was an avid speed racing driver. That afternoon I moved in with my host family. They're fantastic. I already feel at home there and have felt much better since leaving the depressing hotel. The Dad is a translator, the mom is a stay at home mom but also an artist, the oldest son is a banker, the next son is a music student, and youngest is a girl in 9th grade. They're Muslim, but the mom and sister don't wear the headscarve except during prayer. I think I'm going to enjoy the next three months there. The family's relatives are also hosting students from our program so it will work out well.
As of yesterday, I've been on this program for a month. The time seems like it has gone by pretty quikly, but it seems like forever ago that I left Utah.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Random thoughts about my experience so far...
1) Here in Jordan, gas isn't pummped to houses like it is in America. So everday a guy drives around in a truck selling gas. To let the people know he is their neighborhood he plays a song out of a loudspeaker that sounds something like a sad Russian folk song about how the winter has been rough. It's kind of like a sad ice-cream truck.
2) Where we are currently living the call to prayer is really loud. Really really really loud. And whats more, the mosques around us don't start the call to prayer at the same time, so for about a period of twenty minutes the call to prayer will play about five different times...very loudly. Normally I don't mind this as it is really beautiful, but it wakes me up every single morning around 4:30...and will keep me up because different mosques will start the call up to twenty minutes after the first one.
3) In one of my classes, the teacher at the end of the week gets up in front of the class and announces to the class what everyone's grade for that week is. This is illegal in the United States.
4) I have developed an addiction to the "Snake Xenia" game that came on my Jordanian cell phone. It is the game where you start off as a short snake, but you eat little dots and get bigger. The point of the game is to keep going without running into yourself. At first I thought it was just a nice way to relax, but now I have a craving for it all the time. I'm trying to go cold turkey off of it right now.
5) I feel really bad for the people that work at our hotel. There is a restaurant downstairs that is staffed everynight, but I don't think they have had a customer for over a week. They just sit around in their uniforms until closing time.
6) One of my Arabic teachers is name Ala' ad-deen (the ' denotes a glottal stop). This is the correct Arabic form of "Aladin"...as in the disney movie.
7) They have a TV station over here called "MBC Action" that plays non-stop American action movies. It is really popular, but I'm pretty sure that 6/7 of the American public have never heard of any of these films because they are the ones that never made it to theatres. They're are all pretty ridiculous.
8) Amman is a really interesting city because it is caught between developing into a new important international financial city kind of like Dubai, but it is still lacking some important infrastructure. For example, the part of town we are currently living in is the financial district which has all sorts of new tall buildings and banks going up everywhere. There is also hardly any sidewalk (and what little side walk there is, there are huge holes a few feet deep), empty fields with grazing sheep, and places where sewege is spewing out on to the streets.
9) There is rampant patriotism everywhere. Every room you walk into has a picture of the current king (King Abdullah), or a picture of the current king with the old king (his late father King Hussein) in somekind of father-son bonding position with their arms around each other smiling.
10) There are metal detectors at all the hotels, malls, and tourist attractions. But nobody ever searches me or anything because I look european. I just walk through, it beeps and the guy dosen't even do anything. One time a guy asked to look in side my backpack, and as he did, a big hunk of ash from his ciggarete fell inside.
2) Where we are currently living the call to prayer is really loud. Really really really loud. And whats more, the mosques around us don't start the call to prayer at the same time, so for about a period of twenty minutes the call to prayer will play about five different times...very loudly. Normally I don't mind this as it is really beautiful, but it wakes me up every single morning around 4:30...and will keep me up because different mosques will start the call up to twenty minutes after the first one.
3) In one of my classes, the teacher at the end of the week gets up in front of the class and announces to the class what everyone's grade for that week is. This is illegal in the United States.
4) I have developed an addiction to the "Snake Xenia" game that came on my Jordanian cell phone. It is the game where you start off as a short snake, but you eat little dots and get bigger. The point of the game is to keep going without running into yourself. At first I thought it was just a nice way to relax, but now I have a craving for it all the time. I'm trying to go cold turkey off of it right now.
5) I feel really bad for the people that work at our hotel. There is a restaurant downstairs that is staffed everynight, but I don't think they have had a customer for over a week. They just sit around in their uniforms until closing time.
6) One of my Arabic teachers is name Ala' ad-deen (the ' denotes a glottal stop). This is the correct Arabic form of "Aladin"...as in the disney movie.
7) They have a TV station over here called "MBC Action" that plays non-stop American action movies. It is really popular, but I'm pretty sure that 6/7 of the American public have never heard of any of these films because they are the ones that never made it to theatres. They're are all pretty ridiculous.
8) Amman is a really interesting city because it is caught between developing into a new important international financial city kind of like Dubai, but it is still lacking some important infrastructure. For example, the part of town we are currently living in is the financial district which has all sorts of new tall buildings and banks going up everywhere. There is also hardly any sidewalk (and what little side walk there is, there are huge holes a few feet deep), empty fields with grazing sheep, and places where sewege is spewing out on to the streets.
9) There is rampant patriotism everywhere. Every room you walk into has a picture of the current king (King Abdullah), or a picture of the current king with the old king (his late father King Hussein) in somekind of father-son bonding position with their arms around each other smiling.
10) There are metal detectors at all the hotels, malls, and tourist attractions. But nobody ever searches me or anything because I look european. I just walk through, it beeps and the guy dosen't even do anything. One time a guy asked to look in side my backpack, and as he did, a big hunk of ash from his ciggarete fell inside.
Friday, May 16, 2008
"...you mean those rich guys in Salt Lake City?"
The last few days have been very interesting...as usual. Since my last update I have been trying to get by with my grueling classes. For some reason I always get really tired when I show up at the University at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The classes are intense as the teachers don't really speak much English so it is Arabic only. When we don't know a word, they can only describe the words meaning using other Arabic words. It's actually really great. I have spoken more Arabic in the last three weeks than I did in the 4 semesters of Arabic at BYU. I think I'm starting to make some major improvments.
So as I mentioned a few posts ago, me and a few other people have become good friends with the guy who owns an internet cafe we go to a lot, as well as the girl who gets drinks for the customers there. The girl invited us to visit her university yesterday morning where she studies English literature. Now the university is called "Amman University", so therefore we thought it would be in Amman. But no, it was actually on the outskirts of a town next Amman called Salt. The reason I say this is to make an interesting point about how clost everything is to each other. When I looked at a map of Jordan last night, are fifeteen minute drive from Amman to the outskirts of Salt had brought us halfway between Amman and Israel. No joke this drive was probably like driving from BYU to UVSC. No joke. Anyways getting back to the point, this university is the most expensive university in Jordan and is therefore kind of seen as an upper class institution. I felt a major difference between this place and the University of Jordan as it was more western and liberal. We went with this girl who is actually Iraqi, but lived in Libya most of her life, to her classes. In the first class, a group of students gave a presentation on the westernization and liberalization of the youth in Jordan. It was really interesting to see first hand how Jordanian youth are really conflicted about how to join the west, but still stick to their culture and Islamic principles. The second class we went to was an English conversation class, so the teacher brushed aside what she had prepared to talk about that day and had us talk with the students in English.
On the way home from school, I saw one of the sadest things I saw on this trip since the homless boy sleeping on the street in Cairo. It actually wouldn't be that big of a deal for most people, but this really bummed me out. A tiny little kitten was walking on the sidewalk and these two boys picked it up and carried it across the street. As I walked by I saw the mother cat looking around for the kitten. It broke my heart and really bummed me out for the rest of the day because that cat will never be able to understand what happened. Sorry for the mellow-drama.
Last night we had a meeting with the lady who is setting up our homestays. It is officical, I will be living with a Jordanian family. She talked for about two hours on all of the cultural do's and dont's of living with a Jordanian family. It looks like I'm going to have a rather intereting living exxperience for the next three months. Relationships between family members are very different than they are in America. It looks like I will be expected to sit around with the family for hours on end because that is just what people do. Also, spending time by yourself is considered wierd, so they told us that we will hardly have any privacy for the next few months. We will find out who we are living with on Sunday, and then move in next Saturday.
After the meeting, a bunch of us went to a place called food city which is kind of like a fancy food court. I started talking with a delivery man for one of the restaurants called "Shwarma Wok", a place that specializes in oriental flavored Shwarma (like teriyaki, or masala...very interesting). Anyways, he was totally suprissed I spoke Arabic, and pretty soon I was talking with about five other guys who work at this place. One of them was a security guard who I think was shriking his duties to talk with me. It somehow came up that I don't drink tea or coffe, something that really shocks people here. The security guard said to that, "are you a Mormon or something?" I was shocked, I asked where he heard of Mormons and he said, "of course I know the mormons. You mean those rich guys in Salt Lake City?" It turned out that this guy had actually lived in California for 14 years and worked as a trucker. In fact his wife and kids still live there, but he was deported. He knew all the places in Utah as he traveled all over the place as a truker. It started to get kind of creepy though when the same guy started taking pictures with his phone of the American girls sitting next to me that are in the group. "I will show this to my brother, whe looks like Brittany Spears", he said. I didn't really know what to do. I thought about standing up to him and telling him that they didn't want their pictures taken, but I'm to nice and was worried that I would severly offend them.
Today, the owner of our favorite Internet cafe invited us to his dinner for Mensef. Mensef, as I wrote before, is a traditional Jordanian dish consisting of rice, meat, and a yogurt sauce. At his house we ate it the traditional way...with the right hand only. When I say the right hand, I meant that we actually picked up the food in our hand and rolled it up in to little balls. The yogurt sauce was hot and kind of burned my hand...but it was a really interesting experience. We met the entire family (extended family: his mother, sisters, nieces, nepphews...everyone) and sat around talking for about 5 hours, a typical Jordanian house visit. This really got me excited for the homestays.
So as I mentioned a few posts ago, me and a few other people have become good friends with the guy who owns an internet cafe we go to a lot, as well as the girl who gets drinks for the customers there. The girl invited us to visit her university yesterday morning where she studies English literature. Now the university is called "Amman University", so therefore we thought it would be in Amman. But no, it was actually on the outskirts of a town next Amman called Salt. The reason I say this is to make an interesting point about how clost everything is to each other. When I looked at a map of Jordan last night, are fifeteen minute drive from Amman to the outskirts of Salt had brought us halfway between Amman and Israel. No joke this drive was probably like driving from BYU to UVSC. No joke. Anyways getting back to the point, this university is the most expensive university in Jordan and is therefore kind of seen as an upper class institution. I felt a major difference between this place and the University of Jordan as it was more western and liberal. We went with this girl who is actually Iraqi, but lived in Libya most of her life, to her classes. In the first class, a group of students gave a presentation on the westernization and liberalization of the youth in Jordan. It was really interesting to see first hand how Jordanian youth are really conflicted about how to join the west, but still stick to their culture and Islamic principles. The second class we went to was an English conversation class, so the teacher brushed aside what she had prepared to talk about that day and had us talk with the students in English.
On the way home from school, I saw one of the sadest things I saw on this trip since the homless boy sleeping on the street in Cairo. It actually wouldn't be that big of a deal for most people, but this really bummed me out. A tiny little kitten was walking on the sidewalk and these two boys picked it up and carried it across the street. As I walked by I saw the mother cat looking around for the kitten. It broke my heart and really bummed me out for the rest of the day because that cat will never be able to understand what happened. Sorry for the mellow-drama.
Last night we had a meeting with the lady who is setting up our homestays. It is officical, I will be living with a Jordanian family. She talked for about two hours on all of the cultural do's and dont's of living with a Jordanian family. It looks like I'm going to have a rather intereting living exxperience for the next three months. Relationships between family members are very different than they are in America. It looks like I will be expected to sit around with the family for hours on end because that is just what people do. Also, spending time by yourself is considered wierd, so they told us that we will hardly have any privacy for the next few months. We will find out who we are living with on Sunday, and then move in next Saturday.
After the meeting, a bunch of us went to a place called food city which is kind of like a fancy food court. I started talking with a delivery man for one of the restaurants called "Shwarma Wok", a place that specializes in oriental flavored Shwarma (like teriyaki, or masala...very interesting). Anyways, he was totally suprissed I spoke Arabic, and pretty soon I was talking with about five other guys who work at this place. One of them was a security guard who I think was shriking his duties to talk with me. It somehow came up that I don't drink tea or coffe, something that really shocks people here. The security guard said to that, "are you a Mormon or something?" I was shocked, I asked where he heard of Mormons and he said, "of course I know the mormons. You mean those rich guys in Salt Lake City?" It turned out that this guy had actually lived in California for 14 years and worked as a trucker. In fact his wife and kids still live there, but he was deported. He knew all the places in Utah as he traveled all over the place as a truker. It started to get kind of creepy though when the same guy started taking pictures with his phone of the American girls sitting next to me that are in the group. "I will show this to my brother, whe looks like Brittany Spears", he said. I didn't really know what to do. I thought about standing up to him and telling him that they didn't want their pictures taken, but I'm to nice and was worried that I would severly offend them.
Today, the owner of our favorite Internet cafe invited us to his dinner for Mensef. Mensef, as I wrote before, is a traditional Jordanian dish consisting of rice, meat, and a yogurt sauce. At his house we ate it the traditional way...with the right hand only. When I say the right hand, I meant that we actually picked up the food in our hand and rolled it up in to little balls. The yogurt sauce was hot and kind of burned my hand...but it was a really interesting experience. We met the entire family (extended family: his mother, sisters, nieces, nepphews...everyone) and sat around talking for about 5 hours, a typical Jordanian house visit. This really got me excited for the homestays.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Bruce Al-Abbady
Lots of crazy stuff has been going on over here. First of all, we started our classes on Sunday. My teachers are nice, but they come from a different school of thought concerning class behavior. In America it is usually just fine to lean over and whisper to the person sitting next to you as long as it is not so loud that it is disturbing what is being said. Here, if you're not even looking at the person talking, you are disturbing the class. The tests we took to place us in our respective classes were no help whatsoever because everyone bombed.
My favorite thing about Jordan is how hospitable people are here. I have already recived three dinner invitations for this weekend. Everywhere we go people want to sit down and talk with you. It can also get a little frustrating when it is late at night and you just want to go home. For example, right after writting my last entry, me and the other three people I was with at the internet cafe couldn't leave because the owner and his friend insisted that we stay and talk to them for an hour and a half. It also feels like I keep having the same conversation with people over and over again. First we will talk about where we are from...then the people we are talking to will be suprised that we speak Arabic, so we have to talk about that for awhile...then we either go to talking about politics or Islam...and if the conversation has continued to this point it can go anywhere. Thankfully we met a guy at a Falafal shop acrossed the street from the Univserity who has kind of tunred into a really good person to talk to because we can't get Falafal there without talking to him for an hour. Plus, he dosen't speak any English.
Yesterday was quite an experience. After my class got out, I went with some guys to this place in the University that is known for its Shabab (Arab guys from the age of 14-25 sitting around in big groups making fun of eachother.) This was because we are suppossed to get 2 hours of speaking in each day, and visiting the shabab is a really good way to do it. When the three of us showed up, the area was relativly quite...within a few minutes the Shabab were swarming us. They employed the "divide an conquer" tactic by splitting the three of us up. First they tried to teach me Debak, a traditional Jordanian dance. It was really hard because I couldn't understand anything these guys were saying. I was introduced to about twenty different shabab, and it turned out that they were all from the same tribe in Northern Jordan, the Abbady Tribe. I noticed that everyone would intorduce themselves as (insert Arab first name here)Al-Abbady. So if someone's name was Muhammad and he was from the tribe of Al-Abbady, is name would therefore be Muhammad Al-Abbady. So, I was still trying to figure this out and asked one of the guys, "So if I was an Abbady too, my name would be Bruce Al-Abbady, right?". At this, there was an uproar form the fifteen shabab that were still around. Guys came over and shook my hand and couldn't stop laughing. Everytime for the next hour and a half that one of there Abbady friends would walk by, they would tell me to introduce myslef with my new name to which the new person would come up to me and give me one of those really hard handshakes that meant I was his new best friend. We had the hardest time trying to leave. We we finally broke away from the main group, we got followed by someother guys from the same group who were determined to make sure we got out of the University safely.
My favorite thing about Jordan is how hospitable people are here. I have already recived three dinner invitations for this weekend. Everywhere we go people want to sit down and talk with you. It can also get a little frustrating when it is late at night and you just want to go home. For example, right after writting my last entry, me and the other three people I was with at the internet cafe couldn't leave because the owner and his friend insisted that we stay and talk to them for an hour and a half. It also feels like I keep having the same conversation with people over and over again. First we will talk about where we are from...then the people we are talking to will be suprised that we speak Arabic, so we have to talk about that for awhile...then we either go to talking about politics or Islam...and if the conversation has continued to this point it can go anywhere. Thankfully we met a guy at a Falafal shop acrossed the street from the Univserity who has kind of tunred into a really good person to talk to because we can't get Falafal there without talking to him for an hour. Plus, he dosen't speak any English.
Yesterday was quite an experience. After my class got out, I went with some guys to this place in the University that is known for its Shabab (Arab guys from the age of 14-25 sitting around in big groups making fun of eachother.) This was because we are suppossed to get 2 hours of speaking in each day, and visiting the shabab is a really good way to do it. When the three of us showed up, the area was relativly quite...within a few minutes the Shabab were swarming us. They employed the "divide an conquer" tactic by splitting the three of us up. First they tried to teach me Debak, a traditional Jordanian dance. It was really hard because I couldn't understand anything these guys were saying. I was introduced to about twenty different shabab, and it turned out that they were all from the same tribe in Northern Jordan, the Abbady Tribe. I noticed that everyone would intorduce themselves as (insert Arab first name here)Al-Abbady. So if someone's name was Muhammad and he was from the tribe of Al-Abbady, is name would therefore be Muhammad Al-Abbady. So, I was still trying to figure this out and asked one of the guys, "So if I was an Abbady too, my name would be Bruce Al-Abbady, right?". At this, there was an uproar form the fifteen shabab that were still around. Guys came over and shook my hand and couldn't stop laughing. Everytime for the next hour and a half that one of there Abbady friends would walk by, they would tell me to introduce myslef with my new name to which the new person would come up to me and give me one of those really hard handshakes that meant I was his new best friend. We had the hardest time trying to leave. We we finally broke away from the main group, we got followed by someother guys from the same group who were determined to make sure we got out of the University safely.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Madaba
Today was our first free day in Jordan. Me and six other people decided to go to a town called Madaba where Mt. Nebo, a couple of ancient churches, and some hot springs are located. We had no idea when we left the hotel this morning how we were going to get there except that we might be able to catch some kind of bus from the university to Madaba. After arriving at the university we walked around and asked some people if they knew the way. Finally we ran into two students who were from Madaba and waiting for the bus there. They showed us the way.
It was great because I got about an hours worth of speaking practice on the bus ride. The guys knew English but were willing to work with us if we helped them out a little bit with English. The guy I was sitting with told me that there is a town in Jordan called Tafeeli that everyone makes fun of. He told me one of the jokes about these people that went something like: "A man from Tafeeli goes into a store and wants to buy a TV. He puts his hand down on the item he he wants to buy and says 'I want to buy this TV'. The store owner says 'I can never sell anything to a person from Tafeeli. The next day, the same man from the town goes back to the store after he has changed his appearance and went back and put his hand on the same thing which he wnated to buy...to which he is again told that the owner will never sell anything to someone from Tafeeli. This happens mulitple other times and the man is puzzled how the store owner knows he is from Tafeeli. So he goes and asks, "how do you know I'm from Tafeeli. The owner replies, "Because you keep puting your hand on the microwave when you say you want to buy a TV." After just typing it, I realize that it isn't as funny as when I first heard here, but it's still kind of interesting. He wanted to here an American joke, but jokes like "Why did the Chicken cross the road" and "Two cupcakes sitting in an oven" didn't make much sense to him.
(I found this blog entry about the Tafeeli joke thing: http://www.black-iris.com/2006/10/10/the-bittersweetness-of-a-tafeeli-joke/)
In Madaba, these same students took us to a couple of ancient churches in downtown Madaba. Madaba is known for these churches and the maps on the floor of one of them. It is also mentioned in the Bible apparently. What was really interesting was that these students who were showing us around got us discounts on the entrance fees because they had family conections with the people taking tickets. We would show up at a church and the students would talk with the guy at the door for a couple of minutes and shake his hand multiple times until he brought down the price. After that, we hired a microbus to drive us up to Mt. Nebo. Mt. Nebo is the palce where Moses is beleived to die. I kept trying to explain to our new friends that we have a place in Utah called Mt. Nebo, but they kept saying "yes but this is Mt. Nebo. This is in Jordan." After Mt. Nebo we went to a restaurnat for Mensef, a traditional Beduin dish consisting of Lamb, rice, and a yogurt sauce. It was fantastic. The university students who helped us get to Madaba turned into really good friends by the end of the day. Unfortunatley we had missed all the busses back to Amman and there was no time for the hot springs, so we had to hire a microbus to get back. We flaged one down which was covered in a Jordanain flag and various propoganda like pictures of King Abdullah on the windows. It turned out that the driver was somehow related to one of our new friends, so we got a huge discount on the fare. Everyone here is somehow related to everyone else. Its hilarious. It's interesting because people who live in the towns and villages can tell where each other are from by the way they speak because each area has its own tribal dialect.
Jordan is such a fresh breath of air after Egypt. We are no longer considered rich tourists, but rather facinating curiosities. Except at the airport, not one person has asked me for 'bashiish' (tips). In fact several people in my group have been given free taxi rides and given all sorts of discounts just for being foreign. I feel kind of bad about that since we are much better off finacnially than the people here, but there is a strongs sense of hospitality that people feel here towards foriegners. Very interesting.
It was great because I got about an hours worth of speaking practice on the bus ride. The guys knew English but were willing to work with us if we helped them out a little bit with English. The guy I was sitting with told me that there is a town in Jordan called Tafeeli that everyone makes fun of. He told me one of the jokes about these people that went something like: "A man from Tafeeli goes into a store and wants to buy a TV. He puts his hand down on the item he he wants to buy and says 'I want to buy this TV'. The store owner says 'I can never sell anything to a person from Tafeeli. The next day, the same man from the town goes back to the store after he has changed his appearance and went back and put his hand on the same thing which he wnated to buy...to which he is again told that the owner will never sell anything to someone from Tafeeli. This happens mulitple other times and the man is puzzled how the store owner knows he is from Tafeeli. So he goes and asks, "how do you know I'm from Tafeeli. The owner replies, "Because you keep puting your hand on the microwave when you say you want to buy a TV." After just typing it, I realize that it isn't as funny as when I first heard here, but it's still kind of interesting. He wanted to here an American joke, but jokes like "Why did the Chicken cross the road" and "Two cupcakes sitting in an oven" didn't make much sense to him.
(I found this blog entry about the Tafeeli joke thing: http://www.black-iris.com/2006/10/10/the-bittersweetness-of-a-tafeeli-joke/)
In Madaba, these same students took us to a couple of ancient churches in downtown Madaba. Madaba is known for these churches and the maps on the floor of one of them. It is also mentioned in the Bible apparently. What was really interesting was that these students who were showing us around got us discounts on the entrance fees because they had family conections with the people taking tickets. We would show up at a church and the students would talk with the guy at the door for a couple of minutes and shake his hand multiple times until he brought down the price. After that, we hired a microbus to drive us up to Mt. Nebo. Mt. Nebo is the palce where Moses is beleived to die. I kept trying to explain to our new friends that we have a place in Utah called Mt. Nebo, but they kept saying "yes but this is Mt. Nebo. This is in Jordan." After Mt. Nebo we went to a restaurnat for Mensef, a traditional Beduin dish consisting of Lamb, rice, and a yogurt sauce. It was fantastic. The university students who helped us get to Madaba turned into really good friends by the end of the day. Unfortunatley we had missed all the busses back to Amman and there was no time for the hot springs, so we had to hire a microbus to get back. We flaged one down which was covered in a Jordanain flag and various propoganda like pictures of King Abdullah on the windows. It turned out that the driver was somehow related to one of our new friends, so we got a huge discount on the fare. Everyone here is somehow related to everyone else. Its hilarious. It's interesting because people who live in the towns and villages can tell where each other are from by the way they speak because each area has its own tribal dialect.
Jordan is such a fresh breath of air after Egypt. We are no longer considered rich tourists, but rather facinating curiosities. Except at the airport, not one person has asked me for 'bashiish' (tips). In fact several people in my group have been given free taxi rides and given all sorts of discounts just for being foreign. I feel kind of bad about that since we are much better off finacnially than the people here, but there is a strongs sense of hospitality that people feel here towards foriegners. Very interesting.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Trans-Jordan
I am just concluding my fifth day in Jordan. The situation is like this...we are currently living in a weird hotel run by really nice people until March 23 when we will be placed with host families (maybe). As far as Arabic classes go, we took a ridiculous placement test (which I doubt will be very helpful in placing any of us since we had never seen 60% of the vocabulary before), and will start classes on Sunday. (Friday here is like Sunday in the U.S.; therefore Sunday is like Monday.) The program is really disorganized, but it isn't the leaders' fault, that is just how stuff works here.
We are supposed to do two hours of Arabic speaking everyday, but this has been difficult as 1)they taught us Egyptian Arabic at BYU and 2)Jordanians would much rather speak English with you if they can instead of Arabic. This last point is due to the fact that we can hardly understand what they say, and therefore they don't want to put up with having to say stuff over and over again when they could just get it over with in English. It's kind of funny because when people hear us speak Egyptian Arabic, they either laugh or say that it's cute.
The first day here, I went to the university and saw all the old places I used to spend my time at. It was pretty surreal because it was like I hadn't left.
The second day, Me and some other people went exploring around our area and the University. I went to my old favorite restaurant "AlBal" which is across the street from the university. It was just the same except all the big screen TVs had disappeared and my favorite item on the menu had been taken off. At the restaurant, it was somebody's birthday, and to celebrate they brought out a cake with fireworks shooting out six feet into the air from. They then lit sparklers and danced around. Everything smelled like sulfur for the rest of dining experience. We were supposed to go out and make friends at the University and get a lot of speaking time in, but I had no luck with that. It's weird for both you and the other person to just walk up to random strangers and try to start a conversation without a specific point, so I decided to try starting these conversations by asking where certain things were. This didn't work. That night we went to an internet cafe, and on the way out, the owner gave each of us a special "gift", a special micro-chip that you are supposed to put on your cell phone to keep the radio waves from giving you cancer. We then were hailed down by some guys to eat shwarma with them at a sidewalk cafe. It was a perfect opportunity because they hardly knew any English. It was also kind of sketchy because one of the guys kept trying to hit on a girl that was with us, and insisting that she stay in Jordan and marry him.
The third day we took an advanced reading test and had the rest of the day free. Nothing very interesting happened that night except I had a really interesting conversation with the owner of the restaurant at our hotel. He claimed that America is the most dangerous country in the world, and that President Bush will crushed by the hand of God. He also tried to get me to go to the Mosque with him so that I could become a Muslim. He was also racist towards African-Americans and used derogatory terms to describe them, something that really surprised me.
On the fourth day, we took the ridiculous test mentioned above. After that, I went shopping at this really ghetto mall in North Amman. That night, we and some other people went to a free concert at the roman ampitheatre downtown. Right before the concert started it started to rain, something that hardly ever happens here. The concert was supposed to celebrate the founding of the European Union, but the music was Arab with disco and funk beats placed in here and there. It was awesome.
The fifth day (today), I accidentally got left behind at the hotel because I was off in the corner playing that little snake game on my cell phone. I could have taken a taxi by myself to church, but we are strictly forbidden from going anywhere by ourselves. Tonight I had an interview with the branch president as a get to know you kind of thing. When I showed up, a whole bunch of other BYU students were camped out in the tunnel because they had an interview also, or because the church gets free Wi-Fi. The vast majority were there for the second reason. Because I was there, I had to stay for a fireside/lecture in which the Elders Qourm president gave a detailed over view of battles in the Book of Mormon. It was crazy. He drew up detailed maps of the Nephite-Lamanite wars and talked at great detail about it for two hours.
That is my last week in detail.
We are supposed to do two hours of Arabic speaking everyday, but this has been difficult as 1)they taught us Egyptian Arabic at BYU and 2)Jordanians would much rather speak English with you if they can instead of Arabic. This last point is due to the fact that we can hardly understand what they say, and therefore they don't want to put up with having to say stuff over and over again when they could just get it over with in English. It's kind of funny because when people hear us speak Egyptian Arabic, they either laugh or say that it's cute.
The first day here, I went to the university and saw all the old places I used to spend my time at. It was pretty surreal because it was like I hadn't left.
The second day, Me and some other people went exploring around our area and the University. I went to my old favorite restaurant "AlBal" which is across the street from the university. It was just the same except all the big screen TVs had disappeared and my favorite item on the menu had been taken off. At the restaurant, it was somebody's birthday, and to celebrate they brought out a cake with fireworks shooting out six feet into the air from. They then lit sparklers and danced around. Everything smelled like sulfur for the rest of dining experience. We were supposed to go out and make friends at the University and get a lot of speaking time in, but I had no luck with that. It's weird for both you and the other person to just walk up to random strangers and try to start a conversation without a specific point, so I decided to try starting these conversations by asking where certain things were. This didn't work. That night we went to an internet cafe, and on the way out, the owner gave each of us a special "gift", a special micro-chip that you are supposed to put on your cell phone to keep the radio waves from giving you cancer. We then were hailed down by some guys to eat shwarma with them at a sidewalk cafe. It was a perfect opportunity because they hardly knew any English. It was also kind of sketchy because one of the guys kept trying to hit on a girl that was with us, and insisting that she stay in Jordan and marry him.
The third day we took an advanced reading test and had the rest of the day free. Nothing very interesting happened that night except I had a really interesting conversation with the owner of the restaurant at our hotel. He claimed that America is the most dangerous country in the world, and that President Bush will crushed by the hand of God. He also tried to get me to go to the Mosque with him so that I could become a Muslim. He was also racist towards African-Americans and used derogatory terms to describe them, something that really surprised me.
On the fourth day, we took the ridiculous test mentioned above. After that, I went shopping at this really ghetto mall in North Amman. That night, we and some other people went to a free concert at the roman ampitheatre downtown. Right before the concert started it started to rain, something that hardly ever happens here. The concert was supposed to celebrate the founding of the European Union, but the music was Arab with disco and funk beats placed in here and there. It was awesome.
The fifth day (today), I accidentally got left behind at the hotel because I was off in the corner playing that little snake game on my cell phone. I could have taken a taxi by myself to church, but we are strictly forbidden from going anywhere by ourselves. Tonight I had an interview with the branch president as a get to know you kind of thing. When I showed up, a whole bunch of other BYU students were camped out in the tunnel because they had an interview also, or because the church gets free Wi-Fi. The vast majority were there for the second reason. Because I was there, I had to stay for a fireside/lecture in which the Elders Qourm president gave a detailed over view of battles in the Book of Mormon. It was crazy. He drew up detailed maps of the Nephite-Lamanite wars and talked at great detail about it for two hours.
That is my last week in detail.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Ahsan Nas
I'm in Jordan now, but my last couple of days in Egypt were rather eventful. On Saturday, fourteen of us went to Alexandria. The night before the trip (when I wrote the last post) I was not feeling too good about Egypt. I was thinking Egypt in general was a horrible place that I would only return to if it was someday necessary. My trip to Alexandria changed my mind though. The train ride there was rather interesting as it was a cultural experience. We sat in second class among the real egyptian people, not tourists. We had to make sure that the people running the train didn't know we were American or they would have insisted that we sat in 1st class instead...this was according to a guy who is one of our teachers that lived in Egypt for a year. When we got to Alexandria, we walked to the beach and took a microbus to the place where the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the acient seven wonders of the world, used to stand...all thats left of it though is a couple stones in the doorway now. After that we went to a restaurant where we had the best food in Egypt. We hardly spent much time in Alexandria as we had to run back to the train station after that. Throughout my whole three hour experience in the city, I noticed that it was very different from Cairo. The people were happier, the weather was nicer, there wasn't rampant poverty everywhere, nobody followed us asking for money, and the microbus drivers charged us reasonable fares instead of ripping us off. One thing in particualr that I noticed was that I saw a lot of families and couples together, something I never saw in Cairo. It seems to me that the people in Cairo are trying to just get by with their difficult lives, while the people in Alexandria are more laid back. This could be because Alexandria is on the coast of the Mediteranean Sea, and most places on the medeteranian are like that...more relaxed. I think that when I go back to Egypt, I'll spend my time there. The experience reminded me of a song by the late Egyptian/Italian/French pop star Dalida's song called "Ahsan Nas" in which Dalida sings about the different places in Egypt and how the people in Alexandria are "Ahsan Nas" or in English, the best people.
That night we went to Al-Azhar park which is located on the mountain above Cairo. As we watched the sun go down, the call to prayer began, being blarred from hundereds of mosques around the city. It was amazing. When we got back, me and six other people went to go see a movie staring the an Egyptain actor who was in several videos on the DVDs that came with our Arabic textbooks back in America. The film was entirly in Egyptain Arabic and without subtitles, so we had to figure out what was going on during the whole two hours by the 1% we could understand. The movie was pretty bad, but I enjoyed all two hours. What I loved about it was that every conceivable thing you could put in a movie was in it. There was comdey, drama, romance, action, gang violence, drug use, terrorism, something that may have either been a lesbian love scene or some really wierd cultural thing, and some really bad green screen effects. It was hilarious.
The next day, some of us went to a place in Cairo that is called the Citadel. Our professor told us that it was his least favorite place in all of Cairo and therefore not worth the visit. I found it to be one of the most interesting places I visited in Cairo. The building is a giant fortress complete with the largest Mosque in Egypt which was built on the mountain overlooking Cairo. At the citadel, we visited the Egyptyian National Military Museum. Outside of the museum was a display of some of the tanks used in the Israeli-Arab conflicts including some captured from the Israelis. It was funny because the Israeli weapons were obviously much better than the soviet made Egyptian tanks. Outside of the Museum was a plauque which stated that the Museum was funded in part by North Korean leader Kim il-Sung as a gesture of friednship between North Korea and Egypt. After the Citadel, everyone in our group wanted to visit a place called the City of the Dead and after that a place called Khan al-Khalily. I had had a bad experience a few days previous at Khan al-Khalily and wanted to stay far away from it (tourist trap). One of our guides had told us that the City of the Dead was the most dangerous part of town, but some of the people in my group still wanted to go. When they talked to the taxi drivers were waiting for tourists outside the Citadel entrance like vultures, they said that it was safe and a good experience to "go see the poor people in their poverty". When we said that we just wanted them to drive us there and not out of the City of the Dead, they said that they couldn't do that because it was dangerous and the police cite them for leaving foreigners there. The whole thing sounded too sketchy to me and two other people, so we decided to go to the al-azhar gardens because they hadn't been there the night before. When we tried to take a taxi, I told the driver in Arabic where we wanted to go and he replied to me in English, "Sir, you speak very good Arabic. For you, I will give you special price...40 Pounds ($8)." 40 pounds is about four times as much as a normal tourist would pay for a taxi so we started to walk away. He then came up to us saying, "okay, 35 pounds then. Let's go." We kept walking away and the guy started yelling at us really loudly. Once we got down the road aways from the Citadel, we flaged another taxi for 10 pounds.
The next morning we flew to Jordan. At the airport we had an unfortunate experiance. In Egypt, everyone had picked up the word "bashiish" which means tip because people were always asking for Bashiish in Egypt. At the ariport, the guy loading our bags on the bus asked us for bashiish, and we told him that our professor had the bashiish. This didn't stop him from bothering us though. He boarded the bus while the professors and driver were still outside and came by demanding money from everyone. Him and the other baggae guys had stoped loading the bags on the bus until they got bashiish. Eventaully everything worked out, but it was kind of a bad thing for everyone who hadn't been to Jordan yet because it gave the impression that Jordan was going to be just like Egypt. This soon changed. It was amazing to watch everyones' expressions as we drove into Amman because it was nothing like the caotic world of Cairo. There wasn't trash anywhere, no rampant poverty, the police weren't sitting around doing nothing, and the weather was nice.
Right now I'm trying to get into the lanuage learning frame of mind. I've had some difficulties over the last couple days talking to people, but we've only been here for a few days. I'm sure things will start to pick up.
That night we went to Al-Azhar park which is located on the mountain above Cairo. As we watched the sun go down, the call to prayer began, being blarred from hundereds of mosques around the city. It was amazing. When we got back, me and six other people went to go see a movie staring the an Egyptain actor who was in several videos on the DVDs that came with our Arabic textbooks back in America. The film was entirly in Egyptain Arabic and without subtitles, so we had to figure out what was going on during the whole two hours by the 1% we could understand. The movie was pretty bad, but I enjoyed all two hours. What I loved about it was that every conceivable thing you could put in a movie was in it. There was comdey, drama, romance, action, gang violence, drug use, terrorism, something that may have either been a lesbian love scene or some really wierd cultural thing, and some really bad green screen effects. It was hilarious.
The next day, some of us went to a place in Cairo that is called the Citadel. Our professor told us that it was his least favorite place in all of Cairo and therefore not worth the visit. I found it to be one of the most interesting places I visited in Cairo. The building is a giant fortress complete with the largest Mosque in Egypt which was built on the mountain overlooking Cairo. At the citadel, we visited the Egyptyian National Military Museum. Outside of the museum was a display of some of the tanks used in the Israeli-Arab conflicts including some captured from the Israelis. It was funny because the Israeli weapons were obviously much better than the soviet made Egyptian tanks. Outside of the Museum was a plauque which stated that the Museum was funded in part by North Korean leader Kim il-Sung as a gesture of friednship between North Korea and Egypt. After the Citadel, everyone in our group wanted to visit a place called the City of the Dead and after that a place called Khan al-Khalily. I had had a bad experience a few days previous at Khan al-Khalily and wanted to stay far away from it (tourist trap). One of our guides had told us that the City of the Dead was the most dangerous part of town, but some of the people in my group still wanted to go. When they talked to the taxi drivers were waiting for tourists outside the Citadel entrance like vultures, they said that it was safe and a good experience to "go see the poor people in their poverty". When we said that we just wanted them to drive us there and not out of the City of the Dead, they said that they couldn't do that because it was dangerous and the police cite them for leaving foreigners there. The whole thing sounded too sketchy to me and two other people, so we decided to go to the al-azhar gardens because they hadn't been there the night before. When we tried to take a taxi, I told the driver in Arabic where we wanted to go and he replied to me in English, "Sir, you speak very good Arabic. For you, I will give you special price...40 Pounds ($8)." 40 pounds is about four times as much as a normal tourist would pay for a taxi so we started to walk away. He then came up to us saying, "okay, 35 pounds then. Let's go." We kept walking away and the guy started yelling at us really loudly. Once we got down the road aways from the Citadel, we flaged another taxi for 10 pounds.
The next morning we flew to Jordan. At the airport we had an unfortunate experiance. In Egypt, everyone had picked up the word "bashiish" which means tip because people were always asking for Bashiish in Egypt. At the ariport, the guy loading our bags on the bus asked us for bashiish, and we told him that our professor had the bashiish. This didn't stop him from bothering us though. He boarded the bus while the professors and driver were still outside and came by demanding money from everyone. Him and the other baggae guys had stoped loading the bags on the bus until they got bashiish. Eventaully everything worked out, but it was kind of a bad thing for everyone who hadn't been to Jordan yet because it gave the impression that Jordan was going to be just like Egypt. This soon changed. It was amazing to watch everyones' expressions as we drove into Amman because it was nothing like the caotic world of Cairo. There wasn't trash anywhere, no rampant poverty, the police weren't sitting around doing nothing, and the weather was nice.
Right now I'm trying to get into the lanuage learning frame of mind. I've had some difficulties over the last couple days talking to people, but we've only been here for a few days. I'm sure things will start to pick up.
Friday, May 02, 2008
"Please Sir, how may I take your money?"
Things here in Egypt are getting wierder all the time. This might be my least favorite place I've ever been, EVER! I thought Bangkok was a sad and gloomy place, but it seems like Club Med in comparison to Cairo. I can't get to Jordan soon enough. A lot of people in my group feel the same way, but we've been told that it is just severe culture shock since Egypt is more third world than places like Jordan. The director of our program says that he never wanted anything to do with it after his first time, but now he now thinks it is the best place in the world. I'm hopping that this will eventually be my feeling too. There is just so much rampant poverty everywhere and to make things worst, us foreigners are expected to give people money all the time for the most ridiculous things and to brib them as well. I have never felt so awkward as a tourist, ecepecially when you are walking around among people who have so very little when you have so much in comparison. The other day I saw a little kid covered in dirt sleeping on a piece of card board box only a block or two away from a KFC. I've also seen dead animals just lying on the streets with flies sawarming around.
My food problems have come back. In fact, almost everyone in the group is sufering from the same ailments. The problem is that the food we have eaten is the food that the normal Egyptians eat or tourist food that was prepared days before and kept warm by those little flame warmers, a perfect breeding ground for bacteria unfriednly to foreign stomachs. I have now decided to only eat from American restaurants until we leave Egypt, its the only way.
We took the night train to Luxur two nights ago and it was quite an experience. Luxor was cool, but unbelivably hot. Luxor is the sight of several of the most famous ancient egyptian sights besides the Pyramids. It was pretty amazing to visit the Valley of the Kings, the Funnerary Temple of Queen Hatchepsut, and Karnak. On our way back to the train station last night, we passed a McDonalds about three blocks away. Because we had about 40 minutes before the train left, most uf us went there for dinner because the food on the train was dangerous (even though we were in 1st class), and I knew that it would be something that I could keep down. Unfortunatly we had to get our food to go so that we could be at the train station if it happened to show up early. Walking back to the train station with a McDonalds sack and soft drink cup may have been one of the most awkward experiences of my recent life. There I was, an American in a foreign country walking with McDonalds past a bunch of poor egyptians who desperatly needed my business to get by financially. I was the person that I hate. Some kids started following us asking for money and lifting their hand to their mouth like they were hungry. It ripped my heart out, but I couldn't do anything because I had spent my last of the Egyptain money I had brought to Luxor on McDonalds but there I was walking with American fast food that was too expensive for most Egyptians to buy. I had to act like a jerk so that people would give up trying to sell me stuff I had no use for.
Tourism is the most important form of revenue for people here and so I have felt very unconfortable here having to ignore all the annoying street vendors and Shop owners who try to lure you in to their shops by trying to seem nice. Just on our way to the internet cafe today, a guy pretended to bump into us and then act friednly towards us and even make fun of egyptains who lure people into their perfume or pupyrus shops. After a few minutes of talking to him, it turned out he wanted to sell us perfume. Also, this is a terrible place to learn Arabic because people only want to speak English to you.
My food problems have come back. In fact, almost everyone in the group is sufering from the same ailments. The problem is that the food we have eaten is the food that the normal Egyptians eat or tourist food that was prepared days before and kept warm by those little flame warmers, a perfect breeding ground for bacteria unfriednly to foreign stomachs. I have now decided to only eat from American restaurants until we leave Egypt, its the only way.
We took the night train to Luxur two nights ago and it was quite an experience. Luxor was cool, but unbelivably hot. Luxor is the sight of several of the most famous ancient egyptian sights besides the Pyramids. It was pretty amazing to visit the Valley of the Kings, the Funnerary Temple of Queen Hatchepsut, and Karnak. On our way back to the train station last night, we passed a McDonalds about three blocks away. Because we had about 40 minutes before the train left, most uf us went there for dinner because the food on the train was dangerous (even though we were in 1st class), and I knew that it would be something that I could keep down. Unfortunatly we had to get our food to go so that we could be at the train station if it happened to show up early. Walking back to the train station with a McDonalds sack and soft drink cup may have been one of the most awkward experiences of my recent life. There I was, an American in a foreign country walking with McDonalds past a bunch of poor egyptians who desperatly needed my business to get by financially. I was the person that I hate. Some kids started following us asking for money and lifting their hand to their mouth like they were hungry. It ripped my heart out, but I couldn't do anything because I had spent my last of the Egyptain money I had brought to Luxor on McDonalds but there I was walking with American fast food that was too expensive for most Egyptians to buy. I had to act like a jerk so that people would give up trying to sell me stuff I had no use for.
Tourism is the most important form of revenue for people here and so I have felt very unconfortable here having to ignore all the annoying street vendors and Shop owners who try to lure you in to their shops by trying to seem nice. Just on our way to the internet cafe today, a guy pretended to bump into us and then act friednly towards us and even make fun of egyptains who lure people into their perfume or pupyrus shops. After a few minutes of talking to him, it turned out he wanted to sell us perfume. Also, this is a terrible place to learn Arabic because people only want to speak English to you.
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