Today was the first day of our internship and I must say I was a bit nervous about what to expect because I really had no idea. Until last week I had thought I would be working in an office, with all of the expectations of an office job. Now, however, I will be working directly with the community doing who knows what, with I don’t know whom. Well, today I got to finally find out exactly what the next three months are going to hold for me and I am EXTREMELY excited.
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| Some of my fellow interns from L to R: Austin, Ben, Annie, Me and Katie |
This morning we met with her Excellency the Minister of Social Development to start off our internships. She is an amazing woman who is very new to her job because of the reorganization of the cabinet early this year. We got to saw a little bit about what the ministry does before we were sent out to the four corners of the earth to do our work and find our people. Our director with the ministry, Rasha, asked the director of transportation for the Ministry, Nasser, to show myself and two other students the community centers where we would be working. On the drive there we decided that another student and I would go to the less-developed of the two programs, to provide more help and understand better what it was we need to do to help them. We were under the impression that we would be working with a community center in Jordan, but we were wrong. As we drove and continued to cross hills and drive through valleys we quickly left Amman behind and entered the area we would later learn is called “
الاميرعراق” (Iraq il-Ameer). Iraq refers to an area that has many valleys while il-Ameer means the prince. It is an extremely rural area full of farmers and Bedouins. The drive there was beautiful as we got to see amazing terraces, caves, and valley gardens as well as see the countryside of Jordan for the first time.
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| Two sweet Bedouin (العزادي) men who were either just chilling at the ruins or were actually the keepers... |
Upon arrival at the community center we met Ali the director or mudiir of the community center. He showed us the building and we quickly saw there is a lot of work to be done. The center is in disarray because the old director left in a hurry not to long ago and they are currently under construction that means that the first phase of our work will be manual labor (and we all know how much I love service!). It is a small community center where we will get to do a lot and help the farmers be more sustainable and the children learn and grow more. Both myself and the other intern, Aussie, are looking forward to opportunity immensely. Typical to Arab hospitality they offered us soda and then informed us they would like to feed us lunch that we could not refuse. That was, however, before we learned that there were Roman Ruins nearby that we could explore. We all jumped in cars and headed down to the ruins that were awesome. I am amazed that I will be working so close to them, in the beautiful quite country doing labor that I loved. Truly I am being blessed so much.
I look forward to showing you the progress we make at the community center and the adventures we have out in the countryside where it’s quite and absolutely beautiful. This summer is surely going to be amazing!
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| The ruins in all their glory! |
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