Independence Day (Part I)

The 4^th of July, is easily my favorite holiday.  Why would it be my favorite holiday you ask?  Well, I feel like it combines all the best of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  First of all, you get amazing food all day long without a ridiculous amount of preparation or clean up.  I feel like it is especially American to eat delicious, fattening food, mainly the flesh of another animal, using paper and plastic dishes so that you can easily clean up and go back to eating.  Plus, the 4^th of July is about good friends and family.  It’s about blowing stuff up, going swimming, watching parades, and watching baseball.  It has yet to be corrupted by the forces of darkness that have commercialized Christmas and other holidays and is a day to spend with those you love the most.  In addition, it’s nice and warm.  You can spend time outside, and in fact, that is usual a necessity of any true 4^th of July celebration, time spent in the outdoors cooking the before mentioned flesh of an unfortunate animal.  All of this being the same, you can see why Independence Day wasn’t really Independence Day for me.

  First of all, I didn’t realize we were teaching English today and so I stayed up late and only got about 5 hours of sleep.  Secondly, I had to go to work, which no one should have to do on Independence Day unless their work involves fireworks, food, parades, or pools.  Thirdly, I am far away from all of my family and really close friends, which sort of defeats the purpose of the celebration.  All of this being the same, although I did not have much of an Independence Day, it was still a wonderful day and I believe I should tell all of you about it whether or not you want to hear it.

  First of all, I love Arabs and I love Arab food.  For breakfast, Austin bought some fresh humus and was given free, fresh, falafel to go along with it.  On the second bus ride we take to get to work we saw a man that we have met on a number of occasions and who used to be the director of our Marqez.  We talked to him a little bit and when we got off we found out that he had paid for our bus ride.  Then I went to work and had a wonderful time teaching the girls.  They are amazing (as I have written in a previous post) and make me grateful I’m here teaching English and learning Arabic.  I am also amazed at how quickly they learn and how willing they are to do homework and study on their own.  Today we talked about the past, present and future tenses of ‘to go’ and I asked them to practice speaking without papers for class on Wednesday and they agreed!  It was awesome.  We actually got to leave early because we had a meeting in Amman and the little girls walked us back to the road.  At the road we talked to a nice man, who called a mini-bus over and had them take us back to Wadi Il-Seer where we catch the second bus.  Again, the man who road with us paid for us and then asked if we wanted to have coffee or tea with him which we politely declined.  I love how nice and hospitable the Arab people are.

            Our meeting at Noon was with the director of the Jordanian Diplomatic Society, which is a society that focus on training diplomats, studying conflict and all other sorts of cool things.  In addition, it was by far the most professional and nice building I have been in in Jordan.  It was very cool, because it was professional but retained the Arab feel.  Talking with the director was a breath of fresh air as he spoke openly and frankly about the issues facing Jordan and the Middle East as well.  

To be completed...