On a Daily Basis

Services: For those who do not know what a service is(pronounced sirvees), it is like a taxi, but is much cheaper because the driver won’t leave until the car is full. Because we are in a Muslim country, there are very specific rules that you have to follow in services in regards to where what gender sits. Basically, the rule of thumb is that a person of one gender should never be sitting in between two people of the opposite gender. Sometimes this gets complicated because people will arrive at the service at different times, so you have to reshuffle. Also, people get out and in at different places along the way, not necessarily at the service stations, so you also have to reshuffle for that. I always try to be careful about not  touching whatever man is sitting next to me (though it depends on which service station I’m at, there are generally more men than women). So I basically end up squished against the door every morning. It’s actually pretty comical looking. I’ve started asking for the front seat whenever three men get in the car, though. Really I shouldn’t have to ask, though. A decent male passenger or a decent driver will offer it if there is only one woman in the car unless it is an old man in the front seat.

Emily actually made a diagram of where you can and cannot sit in the service, I shall post it here when I get my hands on it.

So to detail my days here… Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to the orphanage for 9 to 14 year old girls and hang out with them for a while by myself. They don’t wake up til about 10:30, so I don’t have to get there early. It takes me about an hour to get there. First, I have to walk to the service station, then we drive to the Ballad (the city center), then I have to walk to the other end of the Ballad to catch another service, then we drive to the top of a hill to a neighborhood called Ashrafiya, then I walk from the service station to the orphanage while boys and young men yell things at me like “F*** you” and “Woooooow.”

Somehow I got a sunburn on my shoulders from going to and from the orphanage the other day, which was weird.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I go to the battered women’s shelter with Stefanie. We leave around 8:30 to get there at 9:30. We walk to a service station, wait til the car is full, then head to Ragadan (it’s like a huge parking lot full of services and there are people selling things all around the perimeter), then we catch a service to Dar Al Wefaq. Then we do a variety of things: we either work on mosaics, teach English, or one of us might be invited to go on check-up visits with girls who used to live in the shelter to see how they are doing. Then, after we leave, we head to Qasid (the language institute) to use the internet until class at 4:30 (actually Stefanie’s is at 5:00 because she is all smart and stuff.) My class is Jordanian amiiya and lasts 2 and a half hours. Thankfully my teacher is really awesome.