A World-Wide Audience!

So, it's official, I have a world wide audience!

For everyone who reads my blog, thank you!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy sharing it.  I would love to hear responses or comments about what I have written and what you liked or have thought about this blog.  The main purpose of this blog, for me, is not only to document my travels but help us learn about other people.  I feel like that is one of the most important things that I can do, help others learn about what I have been so ignorant about for so long.

  That being said, if you have any comments or questions please post them!  I would love to answer your questions and seek out answers that I don't know myself.  This blog isn't for me, I'm here and experiencing it all firsthand, it's for all of you readers.  Again, thanks for visiting my blog and making me feel like people might actually enjoy reading about my adventures in Jordan!

Syrian Sunset

   Well, I'm a little behind in multiple different ways but this past weekend I saw Syria!  Can you believe that?  I saw frikin Syria which I think is so darn cool.  Also, judging from what I saw... all of the Media is lying.  Seriously, the only explosion I saw was fireworks and there was no sign of gun fire or tanks.   Seriously, our media must be lying because my first hand extensive knowledge says they are wrong ( haha, I hope everyone knows that I am joking).

  Maybe I should explain why I was chilling close to the Syrian border, especially since people are probably freaking out right now.  Well, the director of our program, Ralph Brown, was in country and was able to get all of us students invited to a huge dinner in Northern Jordan with a very powerful family he knows quite well.  So, after church on Friday we all pile into some vans and made the long trip up to what seemed like the Middle of nowhere.  It was amazingly gorgeous and surprisingly green from all of the agriculture.  Of  course the family we were eating with had to show us all of their property and expensive possessions so we go to see a lot of camels and I even got to ride one, bare back!

Once again, I feel like the best way to describe the day is through a number of pictures so here you go!

This is dozer, the huge bull camel I got to ride bareback.
I was the first person in the group so he wasn't angry
 yet but it was actually surprising enjoyable

Dozer's disgusting mouth after he became angry a little later.
Camels are huge and have disgusting mouths.

This is the sign on the outside of the camel pen.
  Apparently a camel can kill  you quite easily.
Maybe that's what that disgusting smell was...

That is Syria in the background.  Pretty cool photo in my opinion.

This is "Sophia" the pregnant white camel in a different pen that
absolutely love to be scratched under the cheeks.
Is she smiling at my kiss?

Just a cool picture in my opinion

The Syrian Sunset...

So yeah, this was the most eventful thing I did last weekend and it was a heck-of-a-lot of fun!  Also, if you ever want to ride a camel bareback, just let me know and I can give you some pointers!

The Great Divorce (No, not by C.S. Lewis)

In Jordan I have the wonderful opportunity to speak with many different people and social classes. Mainly I talk to Men between the ages of 20 and 50 who have good English and love Americans but I've gotten to speak with many different people. One of the things that I love to do is talk to them about their views on politics, the Middle East and other things like that. I love the responses and they are very eye opening to see how general they are across the body of people I speak with. I will describe one of them here for you to see and think about yourself.

First of all, pretty much every Jordanian I talk to says they love Americans. They tell me they are the best and kindest people in the world but they hate our government. A few days ago I was talking to a man named Kholdun who made sure to tell me EVERY time he mentioned America or its politics, that he loved Americans, the only thing he hated was our government. I was deeply impressed that every time he would bring this up in a conversation, and if fact every time most people bring it up in a conversation, they make that differentiation. Something that takes an extra 10 seconds every time to say but in fact makes a huge difference. He said the same thing about the Israelis he knows and all the governments of Europe. This is where the title comes in, because Americans do not divorce these things in our minds.

How many of us, when we first think of Islam, Arab, or Middle East, immediately think of terrorism or religious fanatics? How much of our country assumes that every person in the Middle East hates the west, always has hated the west, and will continue to hate the west? Why do we think of the Middle East as a place that has been violent for 2000 years and that the people here simply can not obtain peace because they are not peaceful people? Why is it that we, as the most powerful nation in the world, do not differentiate like my simple Jordanian friends? We as Americans have become insulated by power and refuse to see the world as it really is. Even when we travel, instead of truly seeing the culture we expect America to come with us. We insulate ourselves and trust other people to tell us what is going on when we can find out for ourselves and it is damaging us greatly.

Mother Teresa said, "When we judge we leave no room for love." We as Americans need to get out of our bubble and understand the world around us otherwise we will continue to make dumb mistakes and never truly engage the people of other nations who love us and the ideals of America so very much. I hope that my experiences here in Jordan are helping me to see the loving people here, and that in some small way all those who read this back in the states will see the Jordanians for how they really are. Loving, wonderful people with huge hearts.

Note: After receiving some wonderful feed back on this blogpost I have to make one addition.  I love America and Americans.  There are many things that make our nation great and many wonderful ideals and thought processes that seem inherent in our upbringing.  I, however, do not like ignorance and feel that if we are ignorant on a subject we do not have the right to have a vocal opinion.  In order for us to truly be the leaders we should, we all should educate ourselves on important subjects and seek to hear both sides of the story and form our own conclusions.  The whole point of the blog post, is for you and me to ask ourselves how much we truly know about the Middle East.

My Internship

Well, since the reason I am here in Jordan is to perform an Internship with the Ministry of Social Development, I figured I should probably write a little about what I am doing and how the work has progressed.  Although we really only worked one day this week, I believe this has been the most productive week thus far.  I believe I have already written about our meeting with Rasha on Tuesday where we learned about the survey we were doing, it's purpose, and the additional analysis and proposals we needed to create in order to fulfill our task.  Later in the week we found out that she wants the whole thing translated by today and the analysis done by tomorrow, I gently told her that that was unreasonable but that we would have it to her as soon as possible.  Hopefully we'll (meaning me) will be able to get the translation moving along nicely so we can get this thing pumped out.
  On Wednesday we went to our first and only day of work actually at the Marqez this week and it was quite productive.  When we arrived we found that the director of the Marqez, Ali, was on vacation and the Assistant to the Secretary General was auditing the center once again.  Apparently many people at the Ministry are aware that the renovation process is taking a very long time and are trying to find the problem and fix it so that the Marqez can get to helping the people of Iraq Al-Ameer.  We got to talk to him for awhile and he set up an appointment with the Regional Manager for the next day so that we could talk to her about the center, what we can do to help, and possible solutions or programs to help the community.  That night I prepared a small report to present to her the following day, detailing what we saw as the issues in the Marqez and programs or ideas that could be implemented to help solve the issues.
  Thursday was by far my favorite day and we were able to get a lot done.  Our meeting with the Regional Manager and her Assistant went amazingly well.  They told us that we needed to find out more about the people in the area, what they needed, and how the center could help.  So, they decided that the four of us, with some people from the Marqez, would create and distribute a survey to the area to best gather the information and then Austin and I will perform an analysis on the data and we will begin implement programs to help the people in the ways they need the most.  We also discussed classes and workshops we could perform and some of our ideas of ways to help the center.  They told us that half our day was going to be spent working in the Marqez with the community while the other half would be spent on the survey. It as a great meeting and extremely productive.
  As you can see, my internship is really starting to heat up and I am extremely excited to begin all this work but sad that my leisure time is being cut back.  Oh well, I came out here to work and learn right?  That's what I'm gonna do!

Great News!

  So this actually isn't directly related to my time in Jordan but I am very excited about the news. This weekend I got the following email:

Good afternoon,

This is just a quick and very informal note to let you know your hard work has paid off - you have been awarded a Study Abroad Grant from Phi Kappa Phi, congratulations!

Please notify us as soon as possible of your acceptance of the offer of this grant (an acceptance form is attached for your use).  Please return by June 16.

If you did not send an official letter of acceptance into your study abroad program with your application, you will need to send that letter to Headquarters as soon as possible - checks will not be distributed without an official acceptance letter on file.

Stay tuned for more emails/requests/forms/directions – you name it – to complete this process…but until then – yeah you!

Maria C. Davis

National Marketing Development Manager
The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi

Web     // http://www.PhiKappaPhi.org

Phone // 800.804.9880 x35

Fax      // 225.388.4900

 This means that I have received a thousand dollar grant from a National Honor Society for my time here in Jordan and comes at a great time as I try to crunch numbers and figure out how I am going to afford this trip.  In not too long I will be featured on the following site http://www.phikappaphi.org/Web/Awards/Study_Abroad.html which I think is dang cool.  Anyway, this was simply amazing news that I just received and I am very happy so I thought I would share.  I'm also really  surprised that I got the award, there were over 440 applicants from around the country and only 25 grants!  Yay for good letters of recommendation and help on my essays.

Maybe I should write about my internship...

Well, I decided that before I posted about the amazing weekend I had and all of the cool experiences that will probably fill four separate blog entries, maybe I should write a little bit about what I am actually doing here in Amman for my internship.  I admit, the problem with me writing about my internship is two-fold.  First of all, so far we really haven't been able to do that much in our internship for a variety of reasons, secondly to put it simply I am not here for my internship.   The reason I am in Jordan is to learn about the people and their struggles, to see the stories that we can't read about in America and to understand them better has I get a better grip on the Arabic Language, the internship is simply a way to do that cheaply and with some much needed help.
  So, my internship.  My internship is to work for the Jordanian Ministry of Social Development (MoSD).  I am currently stationed in Iraq Al-Ameer with one other intern at a community center that was closed down a number of months ago for renovations.  It is our job to help the center prepare to open, to operate effectively, and to find ways to improve the options available to the community through the center.  In addition, the other intern and myself have been given separate assignments from our director to analyze and report on surveys taken around Jordan and what the MoSD can do to help them.  It is quite fun and rewarding, I always love solving problems and analyzing information.
     As far as our work in Iraq Al-Ameer is going, we have not done much.  Our work day usually consists of about two hours of light manual labor, and hour of talking with the staff at the center, and then us returning home half-way through the day.  Because I am not here for the internship, it isn't completely bad, but it is sometimes very frustrating to realize how much we are paying everyday to travel and how little we are getting done.  Also, it is unfortunate to see the resources so needed by the rural community we are working in not available because work is not being done efficiently.
   Since describing what we do is sort of boring and would take a long time, I will simply show you in pictures:

This is one of many rooms that was completely covered
in furniture, we have since sorted and cleaned everything
in this room and others as well

A particularly bad and dusty room, it's amazing how much stuff
we located in this mess!

Repainting doors and windows

Cleaning the bathroom, especially splatter from paint
and plaster

Removal of old nasty carpet

Refilling water tanks, which promptly leaked
and are now empty

The location and destruction of dangerous
wildlife within the center
(Isn't it awesome this was inside the center?  We asked our "Grandma" Bedouin lady
 that is always helping us about the scorpions and what would happen if one
of them stung us. With a huge smile on her face she told that we would die and then
 went back to work.  Pretty sweet eh?  We are now freaked out anytime something
 slithers across the ground, including wind blown trash.)

Removing bushes and trees with broken tools mended with tied on phone-cords
that bush in the background used to be huge...

So, although we aren't doing much I am enjoying it and we also get to have more time for interesting cultural experiences, which you hopefully know by now is exactly what I search for.  Like right now, I'm actually on my laptop sitting close to the "Martyr's Memorial" which is the army museum for Jordan that I got to see part of today and will see the rest of later.

  Don't worry, I'll right about this weekend soon 

Dinner with the Sheikhs

The Whole gang with a TON of food

Today was the infamous dinner with the Sheikhs and other wonderful adventures that filled the day and made it spectacular.

Outside of the Mosque

 This morning we headed back to work and because of our bus sitting for 20 minutes waiting for more passengers we didn't get there until almost 10:00 o'clock and our boss was a little bit angry.  The funny part was that the only thing they had for us to do was to rip out some carpet that literally took 15 minutes to do.  After that, we swept and organized the room and did some extra work in the bathroom cleaning off some of the grout that had been left behind.  When we asked our boss what else we could do he led us outside and talked to us for an hour about nonsense and then told me that I should take a nap which was extremely wonderful.  Finally a little before 12:00 we told them we were leaving and would return the next day.  We decided that since the day was still young we would go on some adventures and headed off on the bus to Wisit-il Balad or the old down-town where all of the cool little shops and things are.  Also, we decided we would visit one of the larger mosques in Jordan and one of the only ones that allowed non-muslims into the prayer hall itself, the King Abdullah Mosque.

The person in Orange is Austin and
that is right where I took my little cat-nap

  The King Abdullah Mosque is monstrous and very new.  It was built in honor of King Abdullah "The Martyr" (For more information go to this website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan).  Anyway, it has HUGE minarets that can be seen from most spots in the city and a ginormious blue dome.  We were really excited to go in and found the prayer hall generally empty so we walked around and took a number of pictures.  Well, after our experience with our naps last week we were both thoroughly encouraged to take naps here as well.  I ventured out to the middle of the mosque with the intention of taking a few pictures of what I thought was a very cool roof.  Next thing I know, I woke myself up with my snoring in the middle of the mosque.  Luckily there were no worshippers close by that I could have offended but we did beat a hasty retreat.  We then went to the Museum which was pretty interesting and the Charity Bazaar which was very nice and reasonably priced.  As soon as we entered the bazaar both myself and Aussie were gifted with female companions who literally followed us around the whole time and anytime we decided to look at an item they would pick it up and tell us all about it.  It was very annoying, but they did succeed in guilting both of us into purchasing something (btw, stamps here are ridiculously expensive so I hope everyone wasn't expecting a lot of letters from me).  Anyway it was quite a nice little adventure and as we were walking out we met some Americans from Oregon who talked to us for a little while because I was wearing and OSU t-shirt GO BEAVERS!

My friend the calligraphy artist

  Well, from the Mosque we walked a little ways and got some amazing Lamb Kebab in a sandwich and then proceeded to the barbers where I got my weekly shave and Austin decided to have one too.  I love those shaves, they hurt so good!  We had a suitably interesting religious conversation with Omar the owner (I mainly listened and nodded but I cold understand some of it) before leaving and heading down the street towards Wisit il-Balad.  On the way to Wisit il-Ballad we stopped in to see my calligraphy friend who was glad to see us but very busy.  We stayed for a while and had a great time talking to him about many things and giving him our opinion on his art-work, which stuff would sell best where and what colors he should use in his calligraphy/paintings.  He also did a sweet sketch where he wrote Austin's name in calligraphy which was really awesome.  I'm gonna see him a number of more times as I try to figure out what calligraphy stuff I want from him and plus he's just fun to be with and talk to.  From there we headed into Wisit il-Balad where I was able to buy a Quran that is in both English and Arabic and which I have been dying to get my hands on.  I can't wait to read it and understand a lot more about Islam and the people that are all around me.  We then jumped on a service taxi and headed home to change before going to the Sheikhs home for dinner.

Sheikh Yusef serenading us

  Dinner with the Sheikhs.... I'm not going to lie, we were a bit nervous.  The entire time we were joking about all the bad things that could happen but we took all the necessary precautions by telling people where we were going, using public transportation and having contact numbers in case of emergency.  It turns out that all of our fears were unfounded and we had yet another amazing cultural experience.  When we arrived we found that it was not only us and Sheikh Yusef but the other Sheikh from the parade, Sheikh Hussin and another Sheikh who both had traveled over 100 kilometers to meet us for dinner!  To start off we all sat around and talked for about an hour about all sorts of different subjects.  They spoke almost no English so Austin spoke a lot as did our friend and translator "Luai" who was friends with their son and our go between for the night.  They had a bunch of pictures of Sheikh Yusef up on the wall so I asked if he could explain them to me.  They were really cool and showed him with all sorts of important people like meeting the King, the Prime Minister, big time generals and him as a young soldier.  In addition to idle small talk we asked them about what it means to be a Sheikh.  Apparently Sheikh Yusef is a member of parliament and many other organizations.  He became Sheikh both by blood but also by democratic consent of his "family" or tribe over which he is the head.  It is a full time job and he apparently has quite a bit of power as there are only 24 Sheikhs in Amman.  Sheikh Hussin is from a small village called Jordan Valley and his main duty is to act as a judge.  They all said that being a sheikh was very important and surprisingly informed us that there were even female sheikhs from time to time.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Other interesting parts of our conversation were that when they found out I was engaged they told me they were going to come to my wedding!  I told them that it was really far away and would be really expensive but they said it was no problem and that they had a friend at the airport who would get them a flight for free.  How cool will it be if some Sheikhs actually come to my wedding?  After talking and taking pictures for awhile Sheikh Yusef pulled out the Arabic version of a guitar and began serenading us for the next hour.  A number of the songs were quite interesting, especially since we didn't understand anything except for when he said our names.  It was an awesome time, and he even sang a song about my fiancee missing me in America which was hilariously awesome to say the least.  After he finished singing and before we ate dinner I asked if I could sing them a song from my homeland in gratitude and I sang them the song "Shenandoah", which I think they enjoyed.

Eating it in the traditional way!

     After I sang we all sat done to an amazing platter of the Jordanian National Dish, mansef, with lamb's meat.  The traditional way to eat the mansef is to roll the rice into a ball along with the meat and the bread and eat it all in one big bite.  Apparently the bigger the ball you make the cooler you are and the Sheikhs thoroughly enjoyed watching us try to make the balls.  I actually made an instructional video for everyone to see but since my internet is so slow I don't know when I'll be able to upload it along with my pictures.  The mansef was absolutely amazing and just as wonderful as it sounds.  I was completely full by the end of the evening and had such an awesome experience it is hard for me to realize it actually happened.
  Let me just say, in case you can't tell already, that Jordanians are some of the nicest and most hospitable people that I have ever met.  They are so willing to be friends and if you show any interest in them or their lives they are more than willing to go out of there way to help you and make you comfortable.  Sometimes it can seem a bit excessive but it most definitely wonderful and once you settle into the role of guest it makes it all worth it.  I love being here and hope to continue to meet and see many wonderful people!