داعش

I was going to finish writing the post about Petra, but in light of the US + coalition attacks against ISIS (or داعش as it is referred to here) I thought I would give some thoughts on the current situation and what it's like being in Jordan while this is happening.

I woke up this morning to an automated email sent out from the State Department to all US citizens currently traveling in Jordan. In light of the recent airstrikes against داعش in Syria, it warns us to remain vigilant and keep travel documents with us. "The U.S. Embassy is closely coordinating with Jordanian authorities, but at this time the Embassy has no specific information on increased potential for threats against U.S. citizens" - in essence, we want you to be worried but there is nothing specific to be worried about yet.

I have yet to legitimately fear for my safety since arriving in Jordan (minus the death-defying act of crossing the street every day). I think this is a concept difficult for a lot of people in the States to understand, given the media barrage of the barbaric and violent Middle East, but life in Amman is really quite similar to life in any major US city. And I know that can change, rather quickly, and conflicts are volatile and unpredictable, but I have no doubts that I am very safe here. My concern is not for my safety here- I have the immense privilege of being a US citizen, and therefore have no doubts at being evacuated at the slightest hint of trouble. My concern is rather for those without my immense privilege, who have no such avenues provided to them.

داعش has support here- داعش has support everywhere, even inside Western countries. It is a real, legitimate threat in this region that has impacted thousands of lives through a campaign of terror. But it is those lives that I urge you to think of, rather than my own. I know I give a window to this conflict, an avenue of concern and a closeness that otherwise would not be there. Perhaps my geoproximity can act as a bridge of empathy to those who are losing everything in this conflict. As for me, I have not been impacted, nor do I expect to be impacted in any substantial way.

The bombing campaign against داعش concerns me, not because I fear it will catalyze conflict here within Jordan, but because I fear that it is another campaign in which thousands of innocent lives- women, children, AND men, who are so often criminalized simply by gender in war reporting- will be lost unnecessarily in the name of combating terror. I fear that there is no strategy beyond war, that there is no solution to the power vacuum that it will cause, and that the US is again wandering into war without thinking of the people on the ground. The coalition gives me hope, and I am glad this is a multilateral effort. Perhaps it will temper some of the consequences.

Umm Ar-Rasas, Wadi Rum, and Petra - Day One

This weekend the entirety of the CIEE Language and Culture program went on the organized trip to Wadi Rum and Petra, myself included. It was spectacular, for the most part, although I could have done without some guy trying to buy me for ten thousand dollars in Petra. It's all part of the experience, I suppose. It was nice that he recognized my agency in selling myself, even if it was because the guy I was walking with refused to sell me and he thought, for some reason, that I would give him a different answer.

We made what could be called a pit stop in Umm Ar-Rasas, a partially excavated site containing ruins from several different ancient civilizations. It also just so happens to contain the largest preserved mosaic in Jordan, which itself just so happens to be ridiculously cool. One of the panels (because it's so large it contains multiple different panels and scenes) portrays all of the important cities of the region. There was another separate floor mosaic in the ruins of another church; to preserve it from the weather they had covered the entirety of the mosaic with sand and only had a small portion of it that could be uncovered for visitors.

In my opinion, Umm Ar-Rasas was worth stopping at only for the mosaics. It had tons of ruins as well, but my lack of imagination and creativity makes it hard for me to appreciate ruins as much as they should be appreciated. Unless they are truly magnificent (umm, the Great Temple in Petra) they hold little fascination for me, and the ruins at Umm Ar-Rasas did not quite pass my bar. That being said, I did have a great time clambering through them (to quote the guide: "Climbing through the ruins is dangerous... but you guys are young") and peeking into structures that long ago were fully erect, inhabited buildings.

The real magic of the day began when we arrived at Wadi Rum after what seemed like hours of driving in a bus that was determined to bob up and down like a small fishing boat on a rough sea. We were staying at a bedouin camp- although camp isn't really the right word for the establishment, it was more of a tent palace. Katie, Thea and I were the first people to claim a tent- only to realize that in our eagerness to settle in we had been given the tent right next to the bathrooms. It ended up not being an issue, as we slept outside under the stars instead (!!!).

 The activity of the day involved riding camels out through the desert, then switching modes of transportation with the other group of CIEE students and sitting in the back of a pickup on the return trip. The camels... were pretty cool. I do wish we had had more autonomy whilst riding- the camels were all tied together in "families" so we were pretty much just extra weight for them to pack around. My camel, who mysteriously did not have a name (I tried asking one of the bedouins, but he told us very proudly that his camels responded to names but the string of camels I was in didn't), was rather mean and tried to bite the smaller camel next to us frequently throughout the ride; I was helpless to try and stop it as I had no way of controlling my camel. That also became problematic further into the ride, when my camel became hungry and started attempting to walk through bushes in order to snatch a snack on the go. Some chaotic moments ensued, because walking through bushes is actually not that easy. Who knew?

After our trek through the desert was complete, we were deposited at a rocky crag at which we climbed to watch the sunset- which was pretty spectacular, if a bit noisy given that there were dozens of us there. We walked a short ways back to the camp through the desert, and upon arrival someone informed me that dinner was still an hour and a half away. I was pretty devastated, given that this pushed dinner back to 8:30, putting a solid 8 hours between food times. We made due with sitting in the amazing cushioned 'room' that dinner would be served in and drinking the most amazing tea I have had in my life. Seriously, I don't think I will ever find a tea that compares to this stuff. It was that good.

To distract us from our miserable empty stomachs there was live music and dancing, which I did not partake in seeing as my hunger was currently eating itself and I needed to continue downing tea in order to refrain from eating an innocent passer-by. And then finally, alhamdulillah, food was served and I got to stuff my face with wonderful food and this amazing bread that they made right in front of us. Seriously, I ate so much of that bread that they probably thought I had some weird bread obsession. After dinner was, of course, more dancing and music, but my friends had some other plans for the night.

We had until 11 to wander outside the camp, so a group of us set off into the darkness for some stargazing. We ended up climbing another rocky crag adjacent to the one we had watched the sunset on and sat at the top looking at the stars. I've seen a lot of starry night skies in my life- it comes with the territory, having astronomers as parents- but I think this one might just have been the most breathtaking. It was a bit of a bittersweet stargazing for me- something about being a speck sitting in an expansive desert looking up at an infinite universe brought out a lot of sad memories of Rush and Willie, and I felt their absence very profoundly in that moment.

Settling in for the night back at the camp included more tea (of course) and dragging our mattresses out into the open to sleep out under the stars. About half of the other students had the same idea, and we all slept out in the night chill together, neatly tucked in by blankets to keep the mosquitoes away. I didn't sleep soundly- I never do, when camping, although this wasn't really camping, but something about being so close to nature and having a starry night over me while I sleep makes me wake up throughout the night in order to appreciate it all the much more. Regardless, I was well rested in the morning- very necessary, seeing as we were going to explore Petra.

Qasr al Abd

Yesterday several of us went on an excursion out to Iraq al-Amir, which is about a twenty minute drive from Amman located in Wadi Seer. We had two taxis rented out for several hours that drove us out there and back; the drivers ended up being an uncle and his nephew. I was in the nephew's taxi, and unfortunately I never actually caught his name. He was very indulgent; at one point I had gotten excited about a donkey (so many donkeys, so little time)(but unforunately no mini donkeys. yet.) that was tied up just to the side of the road and he stopped the taxi so that I could take a picture of it.

 

It was really wonderful to get out of Amman, even if it was only a twenty minute drive out of the city. Amman is wonderful, and I love being here, but it doesn't feel reflective of life in Jordan, especially West Amman, where I'm living. Driving out into the 'countryside' gave more of a sense of the community life that I had been expecting- kids playing in the streets, groups of people standing around talking, teenagers slumped in the shade of an olive tree on their phones. Our taxi driver often slowed down and said a greeting to someone on the side of the road, or would honk his horn as a hello as we drove past.

Our destination was Qasr al Abd, which translates to Castle of the Slave. Local legend is that it was built by a slave who fell in love with the King's daughter, in an attempt to prove his worthiness, but after it was completed the King had him executed. It was built around 200 BC (so pretty dang old!) and was mostly destroyed in an earthquake in the early 1900s, but was partially restored thanks to extensive efforts. It was originally a two story palace, with a reflecting pool (or moat? opinions differ) surrounding it and expansive cultivated lands. It was a bit hard to imagine it in all of its future glory, perhaps a fault in my imaginative capacities, but it was stunning just the same. I think my favorite detail was the lions that had been chiseled into the stone on the outside. Some of them had been well preserved while others required a bit of creative interpretation, but the amount of detailing put into them was crazy (and probably crazy hard to do).

There was a lot of crazy rock climbing and bouldering around the ruins that I did not take part in due to the whole long skirt and inappropriate footwear look I had going on. I had unfortunately decided to be an adult and do my laundry the day before, forgetting that things take FOREVER to air dry, so I was quite limited in my choices of appropriate exploring outfits. It wasn't too much of a hindrance- I was able to, in my opinion, adequately scramble through the ruins, but I definitely want to go back in pants and real shoes at some point.

We ended up picnicking in the ruins, coaxed some bewildered Jordanians to take a picture of all of us, and then drove up to some caves in the hillside that the people used to live in. There was a lot of stairs involved getting up to them. A lot. It was the kind of staircase where you start off totally fine, start getting those feelings of death about halfway up, and then reach the top and have to act nonchalant and unaffected even though you want to collapse into a puddle. I'm not really a cave person, especially when they have the slimy, stuffy smell, but these were pretty big. The ceilings and sides were streaked with soot and ash from the fires from forever long ago and the middle cave had some rubble and pits that were apparently where the King used to execute people. I was a bit confused as the 'execution cave' was larger than the one where the King supposedly lived, but perhaps the grandeur of a larger cave is necessary for public executions. Who knows.

It was a long day- we probably spent around four hours out there- and upon returning back to Amman we did not go straight home to collapse into bed, much to my dismay. Instead منذر, a PSUT student that Brandon met and who had organized the trip for us, took us to a coffeehouse for shisha and shai. The place we went to, named بيت بلدي (my country house) was really nice and had a great view off the balcony in the back, but I was pretty beat and wanted to go home so I stayed for a polite amount of time and then made my excuses and left with Katie, Jeiel, and Derek. Socializing for hours on end is definitely a huge cultural phenomenon here, but I'm not quite ready for diving head first into that quite yet. I'm more of a slowly submerge and adjust kind of gal.

Cats Cats Everywhere

One of the most heartbreaking things for me so far has been seeing all of the feral cats in Jordan. There aren't really dogs here- I've heard one or two barking, but mostly it's just lots and lots of street cats. There's an empty lot across from my apartment building where the dumpsters are located that is a hotspot for kitties, so I see a lot of them going through. It's been really hard to resist the urge to adopt all of them and bring them into the apartment, but that would be rather irresponsible of me, and I'm sure my roommates wouldn't be too keen on ten new members of the family. Since I can't magically give them all homes, I decided to leave water out for them so that they have a clean source of water. I initially bought a small plastic bowl to leave water out in, but that vanished mysteriously in the night, so I'm going to start collecting large bottles and cutting off the bottoms to use as bowls. Hopefully nobody will scavenge those up.

Classes started yesterday, and I placed into Intermediate II! Initially I thought that I would (hopefully) place into Intermediate I, seeing as I've taken a year of Arabic and should be starting first semester of second year. But second semester of Intermediate here lines up better with the Arabic program back home, so it's actually really great that I placed into there. Now if only I could convince the second year professor back at UW to keep a spot open for me when I return. That would be helpful. It's not very comforting to hear "You can take the placement test when you get back, but the class is full so I doubt you'll be able to get a spot"... but it's not really an option to not continue through, so I'll just put up a huge fuss if they don't let me back in.

So far class has been wonderful- right now we're just reviewing (which is very necessary given my summer off) but Ustaadha Ibtisam talks to us pretty much exclusively in Arabic, so I'm forced to really pay attention and figure out what is being said. I haven't had my area studies classes yet- those are later this afternoon- but I expect those to both be really interesting. If not, I have another week for the add/drop period to decide. I also have my first colloquial class tomorrow, which will be crazy. Since it's not really a written language, it'll probably be difficult to take notes in that class. But golly, I will try!

City Tour

For our last day (huzzah!) of orientation activities, we took what they called an "alternative" tour around Amman- basically, the kind of tour that nobody else does. We visited the richest parts of town- and also the poorest parts, the Palestinian refugee camps. Our guide warned us not to be terribly obvious about taking pictures, if we were going to take any, and we were told to keep all the windows closed in case anybody decided to throw something.

Parading through Baqa'a (one of the camps) in a tour bus was perverse. It felt wrong. Like they were some exhibition for us to gawk at, something that needed to be enclosed and separated from the rest of the world. The plight of others should not be a tourist stop for the wealthy. But they are, and it's wrong. I've been struggling a lot with the orientation activities that set us up like this- as foreigners, Westerners, tourists, there to objectify and appropriate the local culture- and I'm glad that orientation week is over. Refugee studies, or forced migration studies, whatever you want to call it, is my focus. And there is nothing to be gained from gawking at refugees from a tour bus while the tour guide warns us about the dangers of coming to the camps. Building dialogue and relationships, connecting through our own humanity- that is what I want to do.

We also drove through the richest parts of Amman, which were decorated with expansive mansions much like the ones you'd see in my hometown. Honestly, my first impulse was to be repulsed by the excess of it all compared to the poverty we had just seen- but compared to the United States, it was nothing unusual. Perhaps even subdued in comparison.

 

We stopped at the Abu Darwish mosque, a beautiful black and white checkered on the top of Jabal Ashfiyyah. I love the intricacies of the architecture here, especially on mosques. It's very easy to get lost in a sea of limestone, as buildings are required by law to have a limestone exterior, but if you take the time to examine the detailing, every building is quite unique- the doors are especially eye catching. We finished the tour by stopping at the Citadel and then walking down to the Roman Theater before trekking through Downtown to a restaurant where we ate lunch. There's not much to say about the Citadel or the amphitheater, the pictures all speak for themselves (check out the photoblog!). Definitely a must see if you come to visit Amman.

Survival Colloquial Jordanian/3 Hour Exam of Death and Despair

Yesterday commenced with a two hour crash course on عامية (amiya), or colloquial, Arabic to help us out a bit with the whole not knowing how to speak Jordanian thing. I don't know why I was surprised, but like learning fusHa, pretty much every two minutes Ustaadh Muhammed gave us a piece of new information that was crazy overwhelming. For example: In Jordanian, the letter ق is not pronounced as such. Instead of its original sound, it is pronounced similar to an alif or a hard jim. So basically an entirely different noise, completely changing how many of the words I know are pronounced. Lovely. We moved on to learning entirely new subject pronouns (although some of them, like أنا, stay the same) and all of the new question words. There was a lot of new vocabulary, the most helpful being taxi related- although it would have been more helpful to have learned that two days ago so we could have employed words like عداد (meter) in that morning in order to get to campus.

There was then a completely useless 2 hour "intercultural reflection" in which we read some useless article, had some useless discussion, and did some useless exercises. The point of it was to try to make us more conscious of how we engaged with the community here during our program.. which was a confusing message to me, seeing as they then sent us on a ridiculous scavenger hunt that sent very conspicuous groups of students scurrying all around the neighborhood to complete the "challenges", running into shops without buying things and just generally being very overwhelmingly touristy. I was not a fan. My group humored the exercise for a while- which I'm actually thankful for, because we found a little copy and print center with this wonderful guy who was so sweet and nice despite not speaking any English. Thea and I engaged in rudimentary conversation with him- which, seeing as al-Kitaab doesn't see it fit to teach us any useful vocabulary, made it difficult- and he offered to print something, FOR FREE, for us. Honestly, the people here are so wonderful and hospitable. Like one of the girls on the program said, they should place the term Minnesota nice with Jordanian nice. Everyone (mostly) is very welcoming and friendly, and honestly, coming off of spending forever in Seattle where it's a miracle if someone says hello to you, it is quite refreshing.

 

To finish off the scavenger hunt, we decided to grab some food at this little hole-in-the-wall place down the street from the university and then find a cafe to sit in. We ended up at a shisha cafe a few doors down from the restaurant we ate at and stayed there for the last hour of the hunt before heading back to the university to round up. My team, tragically, did not win- apparently the other groups hadn't tired of running around like lost chickens and didn't give up halfway through, so they completed quite a few more tasks than we did.

The day rounded up with a horrible shopping excursion that lasted far too long and was marred by a terrible taxi driver (That's a whole 'nother post that will be happening. Dear lord.) that dumped me at home around 8. The point of the trip was to get food, so that at least happened, but I was exhausted and kind of in favor for crawling into bed and hiding from the world. Unfortunately this thing called the placement exam was tomorrow (aka today, aka the 3 hour exam of death and despair aforementioned in the title) and I thought I should study for it. Or at least freshen up on Arabic, or something. After dinner Thea and I "studied" together, which ended up to be staring blankly at my books, which then turned into just talking when Derek popped in. So instead of studying we ended up chatting until pretty late, which was fun- its really great to have a bunch of students in these apartments, it's kind of like a dorm except the housing is a million times nicer. The downside was that I had wanted to crawl into bed and hide from the world at 8, so I was definitely all hands on deck for turning in by the time it ticked past twelve. Luckily, we were all of the same mind.

So yeah. This morning was the 3 Hour Exam of Death and Despair, followed by a 10 minute Oral Proficiency Interview, and it was pretty much the worst exam I have ever encountered. I thought my Arabic finals last year were overwhelming (especially that damn second quarter one, goodness) but those were a cakewalk compared to this behemoth. It started with 5 reading passages- the first one was, joy of all joys, Maha! So it started off well. I could rattle off Maha's life story in my sleep. Things devolved quickly after that, progressing from very doable to holy shit I don't recognize any of these words. So that was exciting. The exam is meant to be a placement test for everyone from 1 semester to 3 years of Arabic, so you aren't meant to be able to answer all or even most of the questions depending on your level, but it was still super overwhelming to have a run of 15 questions that you couldn't even understand, let alone answer. Listening was no better, grammar was marginally okay, vocabulary was just a crap shoot, and the second composition- translating a letter into Arabic- was nightmare inducing. Oh, plus the whole this is a three hour exam that you actually don't even finish in three hours thing.

They gave us an hour break for lunch before our OPIs, so I grabbed lunch with a bunch of people, lamented about my current state of brain mush, and then made my way back to campus. They gave us our class schedules before the OPIs, in case we needed to switch anything around.. which I did. They had given me both of my top choices, which unfortunately were scheduled for the same days and times, and therefore impossible to concurrently take. I had signed up for them as my first and second choices, as one of them was a seminar with only 13 spots, thinking that they'd place me into whichever one had room left and then fill the next class slot with one of my other choices. Nope. So I had to make the heartbreaking decision to drop the seminar in favor of something else and I'm still not really over it yet.

I was the last of my group to do my OPI, given the schedule finagling I had to do, but it actually went really well. The blank staring was definitely kept to a minimum, the only thing I didn't really have the vocabulary to talk about was what my dad did- al-Kitaab may have had some eclectic vocabulary words but astronomer wasn't one of them- and I managed to make the professor interviewing me laugh once. In a good way. I hope.

And now I am collapsed on the couch. I've been here for an hour. I'll likely be here for at least a few more. Then maybe, just maybe, I'll think about doing something other than being slowly absorbed by couch cushions.

Shmeisani

I fully expected to stay in the hotel throughout the entire week for Orientation, but they kicked us out today and moved us into our apartments. I’m writing this now from my new living room (thanks to the new roomies who had the wifi set up already) and let me tell you, this place is a palace. Definitely nicer than a lot of student housing I’ve seen in the US. I unfortunately got the “bad” room, as I was the last to move in, but it’s still nothing to complain about size wise. There are three, yes that’s right THREE balconies attached to my apartment- one accessible from the living room, one from the kitchen, and one from another bedroom.

This morning was spent doing various Orientation activities, which involved a lot of sitting in conference rooms listening to powerpoint presentations. It also involved a whirlwind bus tour of the PSUT campus and the CIEE study center, which was not terribly helpful in showing us anything because we were “terribly behind schedule” and thus hurried between buildings rather quickly. I did get to see the library on campus, which is a fair amount smaller than beloved Suzzallo- all of the books fit in one room, and the reference section is comprised of a half-filled bookcase behind the Circulation desk, which is manned by one librarian. I’m going to miss the extraordinary resources I’m used to having at UW, but I think I will manage to become fast friends with this new library.

We shuffled around doing Orientation for the entire morning, then began moving around 4:30. My apartment building is located in the Shmeisani neighborhood in Amman, which is a 15-20 minute drive from campus. I think almost the entire building is comprised of students from my program and one other CIEE program, which is definitely nice. I’ve met just about everyone in the building already- and those of us from the LC program are going to gather outside tomorrow morning to figure out a way to get to campus. For the first week or two we will probably take taxis; hopefully after that we will figure out the buses well enough to find ones that will take us to campus. The good thing about taxis is that they will bring us all the way to the PSUT campus, which is about a 20 minute walk from the main gate of the University of Jordan. Buses will typically drop you off at the main gate, so that extra twenty minutes might be painful to budget in time-wise.

It was the first meal we were on our own for, so in typical Skye tradition it comprised of pasta. Originally I was hoping to gather all of us from the LC program together to go out to dinner, but I wasn’t quite sure which rooms the other students were in so it was rather hit-and-miss finding them. In the end Derek (shout out to my new Seattlite homie) and Jeiel (apartment across from mine) and Kai and Andrew (apartment upstairs) joined me on the dinner expedition. We weren’t quite sure where anything was but ended up finding a small row of family stores- there was a café, a small market, a pharmacy, and a dry cleaner- and ended up buying some pasta and spaghetti sauce from the market, along with some peas and green beans to round out the meal. There were definitely some strange looks garnered from our wandering through the streets- it isn’t very typical that one female will be out with four males- but other than that the trip was relatively unscathed.

I learned that Derek and I were the only ones with any prior Arabic knowledge, which became interesting and a little hilarious when the store owner attempted to ask the guys where they were from. Cue lots of helpless and bewildered looks in my direction. I swooped in with my obviously superior Arabic knowledge to save the day (not really, it was a one word answer: Amrikiyya). Each of us bought a few things, mindful that we are no longer being fed marvelous banquets, and we headed back to the apartments- promptly getting momentarily lost when we turned up the wrong street. I think I can say that we were pretty talented to get lost on such a short excursion, seeing as we only walked a few blocks away.

We had dinner, cooked by yours truly, watched some Arabic music videos of their version of MTV, which happened to be one of the two working channels on the television, and had a long and winding conversation about politics and current events and capitalism. It is really refreshing to be around like-minded people who are all focused on the same studies as I am and don’t get intimidated when heavy handed subjects or highly contentious politics are brought up.