Racism and Handstands

I wrote this like a week ago, but finally have the internet to post it:

So last night we had an interesting cab driver. He was from Palestine and said that all Israelis and their children should be killed. He wasn’t even actually from Palestine it turned out. His parents were from there. We also had a guy without a cab try to charge us 5 dinar to drive us home. That’s almost 5 times as much as a taxi from that area would cost. We laughed at him and walked away. 

We also had some guy come up and talk to us who apparently lived in Arizona for 17 years and then got deported because he "did something bad." When I told him I was from Missouri he told me about when he drove through St. Louis and stopped to get gas, but then saw a bunch of black people and was too afraid to get out of the car. He got back on the freeway and ran out of gas. I thought it was pretty ironic since so many people in the States are racist towards Arabs and here this Arab is scared of people with darker skin than him. Ugh, people.

Young boys in the streets here will cat call us (literally because they make hissing noises that people use for cats to come closer) and yell things and stuff. But every once and a while they try to impress us instead of yell at us. My favorite example of this is when we were wandering around the Amman Citadel and a boy who was probably around 14 wordlessly did a handstand right in front of us and walked away. I would have given him my phone number.

I had a google hangout with my parents today, so that was exciting. They made me jealous of all the Panera bread they had at their house for our church. Dad went fishing and caught one, so his life is significantly more exciting than mine. I’m not even being sarcastic right now. We’ve been getting bored since we still haven’t started work.

Our facilitator, Chatt, is starting to form dreads in her hair, which I’m excited about. I’m really jealous, but I don’t think they would work in my hair. Chatt could pull them off so well. They’re already looking pretty good. She’s nervous about it, but I assured her that since she still has to go to grad school before she begins her career, she’ll be fine. Especially because she is planning on going to grad school in Italy. What a Bad A.

We had a meeting with Sarah at the ministry yesterday, so hopefully we’ll be starting our jobs soon. My job switched back to the original plan of the battered women’s shelter instead of the juvenile shelter. Apparently it’s really fantastic and they won some award for helping so many women. That means the security should also be really good, so that's good.