A Jordanian Experience

On my flight from Frankfurt to Amman, the guy sitting next to me and I talked for most of the flight. He was telling me about himself and what to expect in Jordan. He’s getting his PhD in Chicago, but was going to visit his family for two weeks and invited me and my friends to eat with them. So yesterday Mahmoud and his dad picked up me and two of the other girls from the internship, Shanelle and Ashley, around 6. (I was surprised how easily they found it since it took some other guys 45 minutes last time, although they were Americans, so…)

His house was in a part of town we had never been to, so that was cool. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we thought that his family would all speak English, or at least his siblings if his parents didn’t. We were wrong. It was a whole family affair and only Mahmoud and one of his brothers spoke English and a few of the others spoke English as well as we spoke Arabic, so not very well.  (Shanelle, Ashley, and I are the people in the group who speak the least Arabic, which is why we were free and not at the lecture the others were at. My roommates, Chatt and Emily were originally supposed to go with me.) But Ashley stepped up her game and was speaking Arabic pretty well. They loved her! 

Things we knew beforehand: it takes a long time to leave and Arab’s home because they keep talking to you, they are very gracious hosts, they will feed you more than you can handle.

I expected that we would sit around for a long time after we ate, but really we sat around for a few hours before they even started cooking (and some of the men were going out and buying ingredients and stuff throughout  this time) and then it was another hour or so before we ate the main meal. It was sooooo good. Mahmoud and his dad grilled steak and lamb in some kind of sauce and spices. And with it we had grilled vegetables and some kind of really flat bread (not flat bread, just bread that was flat, like paper thin.) And the most delicious pita I have ever encountered. As soon as my plate started emptying, one of the sisters would pile more food on my plate. I was actually pretty okay with that because I wanted to eat a lot because it was so delicious and I would have looked like a fatty in the States. She seemed to be done piling stuff on my plate when I felt about done, but then she recalled these pastry things with spinach in them that her mom had made and started piling them on my plate. Then I started eating really slowly so she couldn’t put more on. When she seemed to finally give up on me, I was pretty stuffed. We were wondering when we should leave because it was 11 something, an hour past our curfew, though Chatt knew where we were, so it was fine. Because it was so late, Emily texted me and said “Haha. You guys got Arabed!”

Then we were informed that the men had gone to get dessert. Smash told me I had to be the one to say that we had to leave at some point because one of the girls had texted her that Jordanians keep being hosts until you leave. But I’m pretty sure they were planning on having dessert the whole time and we couldn’t leave when they had gone to buy it for us. So they brought dessert, two dessert items that we had told them we really like in Jordan (kunafah and this other stuff that is like cheesy baklava, which sounds gross, but is delicious) and this other things that looked like a birds nest, but had a somewhat similar taste to the other two. It was a lot to handle after we had stuffed ourselves on the main meal, but I made it! Then the sister put two more things on my plate even though I said no. I could only take one more bite. Then they started talking about watermelon and asked if we like it. We are true Americans, so we said of course!

Kunafa, a Jordanian dessert

Then someone who had been in the kitchen brought out a watermelon and started cutting it. Then Smash freaked out at me and was like “we need to leave at some point!” Since there was panic in her voice, I told Mahmoud that we should probably leave soon. He said after the watermelon. Someone brought a plate of watermelon to our table then we realized that the large plate was just for Ashley, so we pretended to be confused and all started eating off it, hoping we wouldn’t each get one since we were so full. It was to no avail. Thankfully I ended up with the plate that they had both eaten off of because I was in the middle. Muahaha. Though it was amazing watermelon, I couldn’t handle it. No one has ever done a marathon this hard. Ashley said maybe people who have actually run marathons, but I don’t believe her.

I thought I could always put more food in my belly, but I couldn’t finish the watermelon. I have never felt more stuffed. It was like two Thanksgivings combined. I can’t believe I’m still alive. Actually, it was only twelve hours ago, and I can’t believe that I’m hungry right now; I thought I would never eat again.

I can’t wait to do it again.

*On a side note, Emily just told Chatt that she is a broken person because she has never seen Lion King.*

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.

First post in Amman

The other day we went to the Amman citadel, which was really cool. I've also gone downtown. We tried to go to a lecture by this famous woman who writes about women's rights in the middle east (Shereen El Feki), but we didn't know until 5 minutes beforehand and then we couldn't find it because stuff here isn't marked very well.  There are a surprising number of things that remind me of Romania like some stores, the amount of harassment foreign girls get, similar buildings and sidewalks, etc. I've mostly been exploring the neighborhood the past few days. 

We can't flush the toilet paper, so we have to put it in a little trashcan by the toilet and we can't use much water because we have a limited amount each week. Once it's gone, it's gone. So we also can't shower a ton. The food here is delicious. I mostly eat pita bread and hummus, which are two of my favorite things, so that's fine with me. Church is interesting. It's on Fridays, which I LOVE. The Arabic branch is really small. We also went to sacrament in the English ward. This little girl in the ward already loves me and even though I was sharing a hymnbook with my friend, she had me share her tiny pocket one so I could barely see the words. And  she made me play a weird game of tic tac toe, there were way too many squares. It was like a 4 by 4 or something.

My roommates are awesome!  I have had very interesting discussions with girls in the group the past couple nights. Also, everyone has fantastic movie and tv taste. Emily and Alex have both watched The IT Crowd! My apartment consists of me, Emily, and Chat. The other girls apartment is Alex, Smash, Stephanie, and Shanel. The boys are Logan, Paul, and Marc. (And Matt, but he lives in a different apartment because he's married and therefore has a wife and baby with him.)

Boys cat call a lot at us, but none have touched us yet, though we had some follow us for a bit, so that's great. We have to have the boys walk us home at night now because there are so many shabaab. We don't want an skanky image, so we're not allowed to have boys in our apartment at all, so we usually meet at their apartment or make them wait outside.

We start work on Monday or something and we're meeting with the Minister sometime on Sunday or Monday. Or maybe one of her inferiors we shall see. I'm excited, but nervous because I speak the least Arabic in the group and the little Arabic I learned was Egyptian, which is a lot more different from Jordanian than I thought it would be.

Amman, I dont have my computer with me, so I might have stolen this from Shanelle's FB