A little bit on Culture

So this is actual an excerpt from an email that I sent my fiance' but still I feel like it accurately conveys my feeling.

I feel like sometimes, even though I am here
in Jordan, that I am living a pretty normal life. Alright, every day
is actually a really cool experience but I have grown used to it. It
is going to be really weird to come back to the US just because it
will probably be reverse culture shock with everyone going so quickly,
speaking so much English, and being able to understand all that I say as well! Also, to have everyone understand my culture will be another
interesting thing. Today a new man showed up at work who will be
apparently teaching english to the kids after we leave, he majored in
English Translation in college and I must say that his English is
quite......... simple. Haha, what's more is that he doesn't really
understand out culture at all. Today, we barely met him, and he
admitted to us that the main reason he wanted to be friends was so
that we could get him to the United States to get his Masters Degree
in 6 months haha. He also then said that he wanted my phone number to
talk to him in English, my email so that when I go home he can email
me, and my facebook so we could chat in English. He sat in my classes
and second guessed my teaching style, which was a little annoying, and
then invited himself to our house so that he could see what we do.
All of those things are ridiculously forward in America but here it's
all normal. However, I too know how to work the system. In Jordan,
no one wants to say 'No' it is considered sort of a dishonor. So
instead, Jordanians will simply talk around the subject and not give
you a straight answer. That is exactly what I did with this
gentleman, he asked me when he come to see our house and I simply said
Mumkin and Inshallah which means 'maybe' and 'If God wills it'.
Basically I didn't give a straight answer because that would be
extremely rude so it all worked out. The culture here is definitely
something interesting to adjust to and just like all cultures there
are things that I like and don't like but that doesn't make it right
or wrong. I think that is something that each one of us needs to
learn, especially us westerners who travel and see societies that we
think are backward and illogical. By looking at their society and
trying to see the good in it and where they come from, we are able to
gain a new outlook on the work and expand our horizons. Really,
there's no such thing as a 'bad' or 'wrong' culture right? One isn't
better than the other, they are all just different!

Last week in the Internship....

Some of my amazing and awesomely cute little girls from my class on our walk down the hill to the bus.

My classroom, it ate much by American standards but it's adequate

Well, last week seemed like the official beginning of our internship because we finally began teaching English.  Last week we were told we would teach between 15 and 30 kids and were a little afraid but willing to go through and do what was necessary.  When we arrived at the Marqez in the morning we found that the number had blossomed to well over a hundred and our classrooms were just not large enough to take care of all of the children.  I taught a class of between 40 and 60 girls in a tiny room where there were so many of them that I couldn't even fit in the door.  Fatimah and Ali soon decided that we wouldn't be able to make this work and so decided to split up based on gender and age-group.  We will be teaching boys on Sunday and Tuesday.  Each one of us will have two classes a day and then on Monday and Wednesday we will teach the girls again in two seperate classes each for a total of eight classes total.  Every day we teach the class, more students show up and by the end of the week we were at probably 150 students or more with some classes exceeding 20 students even now!  Now that you know about the semantics, let me tell you about the actual teaching because it's insane.
  The boys are pretty terrifying.  I really do not look forward to teaching them because they never pay attention, yell your name out randomly and never do what you ask.  What is more, as a whole they know much less English than the girls do.  My first day of class our boss brought a broom stick into my room and told me to hit any of the kids that didn't pay attention with it.  Austin and I have found a much less, abrasive  approach and now simply kick out any kids who are exceedingly loud and disruptive.  Today we actually kicked out brothers, he kicked out the older one from his class and I the younger from mine.  Well, the older brother didn't leave and kept coming into my class and goading on the kids.  I kept telling him to leave and he wouldn't so I tried to simply ignore him which of course didn't work.  Then, the next time I saw him I told him every way I could think of in English that I wanted him to leave at which he called me "dumb-ass" in Arabic and then spit at me.  I took one step towards him, I don't feel like letting little kids talk like that to me, and he ran away and I didn't see him or his brother again.  Finally, I got so sick of them not doing anything that I simply let them go about 40 minutes early after I saw that Austin had done the same thing.

One of two giant spiders I slaughtered today
in class.  I think this spider can get as large as 6
inches across but we are having trouble
identifying it from the mass of guts on the floor

  The girls... let me just take a breathe of fresh air thinking about how awesome they are in comparison.  We teach girls that range in ages from 4 to 17 split into four classes.  I get to teach the two older classes and they are so well behaved.  When I ask them to talk with each other in English to practice what we just learned they love to do it and do quite well at it.  What's  more, they beg me for homework (even the little ones) and love it when I check their homework and they do well.  I think part of it might be that I look a lot like the famous Turkish actor Mohanned who is apparently very attractive in this culture, and if I smile at any of the older girls they immediately hide their face and forget what they were saying.  As a whole, however, they do a great job at practicing and learning what I try to teach them and from my experience so far it is no wonder that the women go to college in at a much larger rate than the men do if this segment of society is indicative of the rest.  I love teaching the girls, and I think we might start making little videos of them speaking in English so I can let you see them.  They are awesome and I honestly look forward to teaching them tomorrow.
  Besides the teaching English, we will hopefully be doing the survey for the Iraq Al-Ameer area every Thursday although I doubt it will actually get off the ground.  It is extremely likely that everyone will be very busy and then when Ramadan comes in August and Austin leaves, they'll probably just drop it for awhile.  I do hope it actually happens, however, because I think it would really help the Marqez know what they must do to help the people in this area.  Also, we have been progressing on the 3 million dollar proposal to the worldbank.  The work on it is progressing, although slowly because translation is a lengthy process.  At the end of July we will travel to the Angwhar area, which consists of all the regions along the border with Israel, and will set up workshops for them on project management as well as conduct secondary surveys to help us understand the other work we are proposing to do in those regions.  It also is going well and adds a bit of professionalism to our internship here.

The "Sanitary Amenities" this toilet as a diameter
of about 3 to 4 inches and is probably 11 inches tall
I imagine watching me try to use this would probably
be one of the funniest things an Arab could see

  Things are going well, and for the first time in two months I actually feel like I'm making some sort of small difference.  Actually, as I write this blog post, Austin is in the other room with our boss who wants him to write down all the words to a song sung by Celine Dion.  They do love her here!

Progress on the Internship!

Well, this week we have made remarkable progress in our internship.  We had hoped to be teaching English this week as well as beginning the survey but have received the assurances and created a schedule whereby these will both begin next week.  So every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday Austin and I will go to the marqez in Iraq Al-Ameer where we will teaching two separate courses on English, one for beginners and one for more advanced or older students (I have also decided that I will go to the handicraft village pretty much every day after work in Iraq Al-Ameer to weave and make ceramics).  Austin will be teaching the boys and I will get to teach the girls.  Hopefully it won't be too hard but I have never proven too able to teach or hold the attention of children for very long so we will see how well we can do.  It will definitely be an adventure.

  On Mondays and Wednesdays we will report to the Mudireea in Wadi Il-Seer where we will begin work on a comprehensive survey in the Iraq Al-Ameer area.  The survey will have a demographic aspect and also focus on needs, and solutions for the community and what programs the Ministry of Social Development can implement in order to help the people of Iraq Al-Ameer.  It should be a pretty fun survey, although I believe it will take quite awhile to get the answers we need from individuals in the community mainly because I'm sure that every family we talk to will take a minimum of an hour since we will be drinking tea and offered lunch at every home.  It should be fun and will hopefully improve my arabic comprehension and conversation skills.  Over all I am excited for the progress we are making and excited, if a little nervous, for what this internship will entail next week.  Below I have included some pictures to add a little flare and show you a little of what we have done at the center.  I hope you enjoy!

This is the room where I will be teaching English to between 10 and 20 girls age 5-15:

Before

After

These are the kids that we met on Monday.
It should be pretty interesting!

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!

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 

Jordanian Bureaucracy ( رتابة الاردن )

ُToday started with high hopes and trepidation, and ended in frustration and a lot of laughter. Such is the life of a westerner visiting Jordan.

Today was supposed to be the first day of my internship and the start of our manual labor out in Iraq Il-Ameer. We were told that we should meet our director, Ali, at the eighth circle at 9:00 AM and he would take care of the rest. So we get to the circle at right about 9:00 AM and Ali tells us that he will be there in a half our to pick us up. At a little after 10:00 AM we are honked at and picked up by someone that we faintly recognized from the Center and took the half-hour drive to hopefully begin our work.

Upon arriving at the center we had the obligatory sit and chat time for about 45 minutes to an hour. They asked us what we wanted to drink and we told them water, so they brought out black tea instead. After another hour of sitting and talking they asked us why we didn't drink the tea which led to a very interesting broken conversation about how Muslims don't drink Alcohol and we do not drink tea, coffee, or alcohol (among other things). We explained it twice in the center within Iraq il-Ameer and would later explain it to another person in another office. It was quite interesting and also funny to hear every time we explained that it was 'haram' or religiously forbidden we would immediately be asked, "Why?" It was quite an interesting conversation to say the least.

After sitting in the office Ali finally led us into the building where we thought we would begin work on renovating the site itself. Well, like most of our hopes in JOrdan this is not to be. Ali explained to us that the center was being worked on and painted and should be finished in 4 days (insha allah=hopefully) but that since this was Jordan to expect 2 weeks. He told us that we weren't supposed to work in the paint and dirt and that we could call him and come back in two weeks! Finally, after a lot of conversation we told him we wanted to work in the dirt and that we would come back and clean up the playground so the kids had somewhere to play during the day that was shaded and safe. So he said we could come back on Wednesday as long as we brought a pair of clothes to change into (Jordanians would never think to travel in or on public transportation in grubby clothes they had done manual labor in). After some more broken english conversation we said goodbye and Ali directed us into his car for what we thought would be our ride home for the day. LIttle did we know our day was only half over.

Ali asked us to ride with him and on the way he helped me to lear Arabic while I helped him to learn English. We soon arrived at the Regional Office for the Department of Social Development where we were introduced to the Assistant-Director who was an amazingly nice man. We once again had to explain our issue with coffee but had a wonderful talk with him, mainly in Fusha or formal Arabic which was much easier to understand. He also spoke slowly and clearly which made comprehension a clearer task. The interesting part of it all is that about 15 minutes into our visit Ali, our director, left us for about 45 minutes to who knows where while we talked with his boss. It was pretty awkward and a very typical cultural experience from what I know of Jordan. After finally being called down to pick us up from the Assistant-Director's Office, Ali dropped us off for a while in the directors office who was a marvelous lady. It was extremely awkward to be there but once we got her talking about herself she really lightened up and we had a great time speaking with her although we could see Ali just down the hall sitting on a couch doing nothing. Culturally, for them, that is alright and expected but for Westerners it seems terribly wasteful and inefficient. Although it was awkward and extremely long it was a wonderful lesson in the Arabic language and the "red tape" or bureaucracy of Jordanian (which is extremely frustrating for Westerners). Our visit to the regional manager's office ended with 10 minutes of flurried speaking and the decision that Ali had waited around for two-to-three hours for, finally being made against him. What an exhausting process, it's no wonder that the Arab people aren't extremely active in their governments they are worse to deal with than our own and Jordan is probably one of the best! Anyway, although it was extremely frustrating and we don't really know what we are going to be doing tomorrow for work except exploring and translating English, it was an awesome cultural experience and helped me to see just how important relationships and hospitality are to the Arab people as well as some of the issues that may come when one is attempting to deal with Arab businesses or governments, definitely an experience that will pay great dividends in the future.

That isn't rain you see, it's either dust or pollution... nasty

Also, today we had horrible weather in Jordan, it was either a dust storm (which I am hoping it was) or the smog was so bad that it cut of visibility and made it look as if it was raining like in the picture below. Hopefully the first of the two because it already was nasty just thinking of it as dust and trash. Anyway, life is good here and tomorrow I'll try to be productive and probably watch a movie or something with our neighbors in the evening. Anyway, I'll continue to keep you updating and if you wanna know more, as always just email me or facebook me or something... it's always great to hear from my loved ones in America!

The Internship Begins

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.

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.

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!

The ruins in all their glory!

Fun Jordanian Fact: it seems that every person in Jordan knows at least one phrase in English, "Welcome to Jordan!"

اليوم الاول "The First Day"

A sign that caught my attention in the Amman Airport

Today was awesome, long, and tiring.  Last night I arrived in Jordan along with two other interns for the program that I randomly met in the Frankfurt airport.  We got into Jordan about 2:00 PM and then spent an hour going through customs and getting our Visas.  After that we were picked up by Annie and one of her neighbos, an Iraqi named Omar.  They picked us up in an old Toyota van and drove us through the semi-deserted streets of Amman blaring Arabic music and driving like maniacs while we talked about the program and I looked out the window and saw amazing mosques and other buildings.  We got into the apartment and I decided I would take a shower before going to bed.  I went into the bathroom and found out, unfortunately, that our apartment has no warm water! This is horrible for someone who loves warm showers as much as I do so I quickly soaped up and then gently splashed the water on myself as I tried to not to scream from shock.  As I got out of the shower I had to dry myself off with my used t-shirt because I had negated to buy a replacement towel in America before arriving.  As I prepared to slip into bed I heard the call to prayer for the first time at almost exactly 4:00 AM.  It was beautiful and something that I was very much looking forward to.

  In the morning we all woke up and dressed in our best to go and meet our internship director for the first time at 9:30 AM. Her name is Rasha and through talking to her I decided that I would spend my internship with the Jordanian Ministry of Social Development not in the office like I originally thought but out in the community where I can improve my Arabic and hopefully make some more friends.  After we left the ministry we went down town where I saw my first Roman ruins just sitting there in the middle of the city.  I also got wonder in and out of little shops selling everything you can imagine and have my first taste of authentic swarma which filled me up and cost me less than 70 cents. It was amazing.  I also found the second foulest bathroom I have ever been in and had to pay to use it!  This sure it isn’t America.  However, everywhere we went I was enthralled by the Arabic signs and the Arabic people.  I know I am going to love this summer.

  After meeting up with our facilitator we returned to our apartment where we spoke Omar the Iraqi for a good 2 hours.  He taught us a lot of Jordanian and helped us learn concepts and work on pronunciation.  At BYU we learn Fusha or formal Arabic, as wall as Egyptian or Amaaya Arabic, neither of which is spoken here.  So, everytime we would ask him a question with words from Amaaya he would say, “No.  That is Egyptian, it is False!”  It was a great conversation we had with him and it really helped me to appreciate Arabic and the learning I will get to do while her.  Finally after unpacking I and two other interns went exploring for a bit and went to the grocery store which was an interesting experience in and of itself.  I did run into a really nice grocer who taught me some new words and said my Arabic was good which by definition means it is horrible but it still felt good. 

Wisit Il-Balad: Downtown Amman

  Overall, I love Amman already and I haven’t even been here for 24 hours let alone a day where I’m not dead tired the whole time.  The people are amazingly nice and willing to help, the language is beautiful, prices are cheap for the most part and I am going to have many wonderful adventures.  Also, I think at the end of all of these I am going to include a fun fact about Jordan.

Fun Fact 1:  Jordanian Driving is a mixture of a little bit of crazy, a dash of danger, and a whole lot of Horn.                

A Little Background

I figure I should start off by introducing myself to anyone who's going to read this.  My name is Skye, and I am currently an International Relations Major at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.  I have an emphasis in Middle Eastern Studies and am currently enrolled in beginning Arabic.  This summer I have the wonderful opportunity to travel to Jordan and work as an intern for the Jordanian Ministry of Social Development.  I will be in Jordan for the entire summer and am really excited for this amazing opportunity.  Currently I am finishing up classes at BYU and will be traveling to Jordan in early May.  Until then, I'll update you on the preparations!