hi again! i always have a hard time starting these posts. the biggest news lately is that we have, as of now, lost two trainees. maybe it was for the best, but they will be missed. this place isnt for everyone. it is hard to find where you fit in here. especially in a homestay. i personally feel that i am not my own person right now. sort of jump when they say jump, go when they say go. when we all get to our own houses we will feel much more independent.
i guess i am going to have a tv in my new house, which means i will have access to arabic news as well as the bbc. when i came i was hoping to get away from stuff like that. but that just isnt life here. everyone (jordanians) thought i was crazy for not wanting a tv. so now the other volunteer who is leaving the site is leaving hers for me.
the houses here are interesting. they are all glass and concrete and stone. no wood to speak of. actually, i saw a stack of lumber the other day, and it looked so foreign. made me think of home. all the houses blend right into the land because there is limestone everywhere. most of the houses are made of limestone. any house that isnt beige sort of leaps out at you. the land also feels very old sometimes. like this place has been here forever, relatively untouched. there are ruins everywhere, from every stage of jordan's development as a country. there are stone fences everywhere, kind of like california's central valley. you know, the old stone corrals? apparently nothing is ever torn down. there is a cool castle near to jennifer, one of the other volunteers. i am hoping to check it out. it apparently is the oldest castle here and is full of secret passages and stuff. another of the volunteers is in ghura safi, which is right next to the dead sea. so i guess that makes her the lowest peace corps volunteer in the world. the problem is that it is really really hot there. but her site sounds really cool.
she and her counterparts are the only light skinned people living there. the black population in jordan is really discriminated against. the girls at her center were asking her why there were never black people on tv here, or even represented anywhere for that matter. so i guess she has a project, although it would be an overwhelming one. maybe i will talk more about race when i have more time.
one last note, i have my new address! i will be there as of september 15th. my address is:

Andrea Girard
P.O Box 139
Wadi Musa / Petra
71810
Jordan

i guess if the package is shoe box sized or smaller i can get it in my po box. if not it goes to a bigger post office a couple towns over. no big deal though, i think it is a 20 minute bus ride or something. and i will have a lot of time. dont get me wrong, i am not expecting you all to send packages, but if you write letters i will write back! i need the rancho's new address. i have a postcard i have been meaning to send, but i didnt have the address. but now it is too late so i will wait till the tenth. isnt that when you guys are moving?
also, matias: can i have your number? delfino was on the ipod the other day and i was going to send you a text message, but couldnt.

text messages are super cheap for me to send, so you guys may get one from time to time. ok. till next time.

hey. i dont have time for a real post. some people have said they have had problems posting comments. i think i fixed that problem, so now noone has to sign in or register or any crap like that. i think you can just make your comment. sorry!

i know i just posted, but i thought i would put this on here for those of you who may have missed it: the turkmenbashi (dictator of turkmenistan) has now banned recorded music. i think the decree is something like this: It banned sound recordings "at musical performances on state holidays, in broadcasts by Turkmen television channels, at all cultural events organised by state... in places of mass assembly and at weddings and celebrations organised by the public".
other wierd decrees by the bashi include: banned opera and ballet
forbade long hair or beards for young men
banned car radios
required video monitors in all public places
closed all hospitals, except in the capital, Ashgabat
renamed some calendar months after the president and his mother

so, i suppose any place i ended up was bound to be a bit out there. just thought it was interesting. alright. later kids...

just back from my site visit! so i went to see my future home for a couple of days. went down on saturday. i successfully navigated my way through six busses to get there. my bus was boarded twice as we got further south. i think this was because of the bombings in aqaba. dont anyone at home worry. there hasnt been any fall out in the rest of jordan, and there is no talk of sending us back home to the states. anyway. the bus ride. just outside of amman, the landscape suddenly turned to desert. i mean real desert. i even saw a couple of mini sand dunes on the side of the road. i really mean small ones, but they looked just like in pictures, all wavy from the wind. then we started climbing up into the mountains. as we descended from the peaks, there was an amazing canyon. think of the grand canyon, but with less sharp lines because it is limestone. this is the canyon where petra is. it was breathtaking really. so we drove along this canyon until petra. i should mention that in amman, a group of seven argentinian backpackers got on the bus. it was the first time that i knew what it was like to see a group of obvious travellers. also, the bus driver jacked up their price by a jd. i knew how much it really cost, so i was able to negotiate my way into the fair price. anyway. they got off in petra. ok, so on to my site eh? turns out that the view just outside my door is this amazing canyon. my town is gorgeous. i am living in a small studio apartment. it has a bathtub and a sitdown toilet! this is very exciting, as we have all been using turkish squatters. it isnt so bad, but they have a tendency to smell a bit. not much you can do about it really. apparently it is great that my place is so small because in the winter it will get really cold and i will actually be able to heat a small space. my yard is shared with my counterpart. it has grapes, a lawn, a fig tree, apricots, peaches, apples. i also have rabbits and chickens. oh, and a lawn. a real take your shoes off and walk around in it sort of lawn. my counterpart doesnt sugar her coffee or her tea, too, so it is a nice break from the sugar. i cant believe that this is how i am living. the center i am working in is really active. the girls there elect a small council of girls to plan activities. my job looks like i am really going to have to work hard to be creative with it and come up with anything new to do. when i asked my counterpart what the girls wanted from me she said exercise. basically i came across the world to do aerobics classes. i think also what i am doing could be classified as public diplomacy? not exactly the world changing work i was looking for. it is ok though, although i dont know if i am excited about how easy the work is going to be. maybe it sounds spoiled, but i was really expecting to have to tough some stuff out and be seeing really difficult stuff every day. and it isnt that i am not. i dont think i will ever get used to seeing a fully veiled woman. i mean it is just shocking to see a woman all in black. gloves and not even a space for the eyes. some of them look through a veil.
so, back to my place. i live about thirty seconds from a public park. it has flowers and grass and even a playground. unlike the other towns i have been in in jordan so far, my streets are clean. jordan has a real litter problem from what i can see. but there was no garbage on my street. i get the feeling that my town has a bit of money trickling in from the close booming tourist area. it is ok though, because the tourists dont make it up to where i am, and the people of my town dont really speak english. not learning arabic was something i was really concerned about. there is a swanky hotel in my town at the bottom of the hill. it is an old rock city that has been preserved as a hotel. i suppose that brings in a bit of money for the town. further out from me is what looks to be a significant bedouin area. lots of camel hair tents, a couple camels, and lots of herds of sheep and goats. one of the male volunteers near to me speaks a bedouin dialect. i am hoping to learn a bit more about the bedouins. apparently if you go to a bedouin tent, you can stay for forty days without question. i wont, but i am sure that i might be able to visit with some of the local bedouin community. behind my house is a mountain, kind of. i guess i can also hike up to the top of it. my town seems very safe, people are out walking around and in the garden till late at night. last night, my counterpart and i watched the sun set over the canyon. then we watched the moon come up over the mountain. the sunsets here are the most beautiful i have ever seen. really bright reds and oranges. and the pace of life here is slow enough that you can sit and watch the sunsets over coffee with friends and neighbors. speaking of coffee, my host family has decided that americans drink coffe from big mugs, so they now serve me gigantic coffee cups of turkish coffee. it is tasty, but kind of like having four espressos with sugar.
one final interesting note. the guy named andy is living in or near zarka. this is the town where the infamous zarkowi comes from. although, his name just means "from zarka". anyway, the people in the town took him around visiting. apparently he has met zarkowi's brother... maybe they are just messing with him.
and finally, inappropriate american songs of the week: korn's rendition of another brick in the wall, venga boys we like to party, and yes, kanye west. cant believe it. also, i think i might have heard united states of electronica on a french satellite radio station. ok. gots to run!

man, it has been a while since i posted. so much happens that i cant remember it when i sit down to type. a couple of weeks ago, was my first visit to amman. we went to a king hussein summer camp. most of it was just kind of hanging out, but there is a traffic safety center for kids and this day was learning how to act around cars. the car situation here is absurd. my typical ride in the car involves me and five to six others (all adults) crammed in a five person car. then you barrel down the road. there arent lines on the road and you kind of make your own rules. also, you honk nonstop. jordanians use their horns to warn that they are coming, turning, slowing down, speeding up, just to say hi, whatever. ive heard a couple that are pretty worn out. anyway, there isnt a lot of car safety here, so the camp was trying to teach the kids. we didnt really end up doing a lot. a fellow volunteer and myself ended up making a mural for them. it was a map of jordan that was filled in with the jordanian flag. there was a seatbelt around it and it said jordan first... your safety first (in arabic of course). cheeseball, yes, but it felt like the first thing i have really done here. someday, i will get around to posting some pics on here, and it will come too. oh, yeah. we were delayed getting to the camp because the kings royal army or something wanted us to go to their training center. so we went to the army camp to watch a video about how they train. it was wierd. then afterwards the volunteers sang a song to the army. basically the jist of the song is that jordans army is protecting the homeland, flag and abdulla. they laughed. im sure we sounded ridiculous. but my host family loves that i know the song and has me sing it all the time.
i had my mid training language test, and tested novice high, which is the level we need to get out of training. however, i still can't really communicate about much of anything significant. i did manage to use it to make my first successful bargain. i went out shopping, because i really needed to. clothes here wear out faster than you can imagine. anyway, i bargained three dinar off a pair of shoes. when i got back my trainer said that i had gotten a reasonable price. it was a small victory in my integration here. i can shop like a local... kind of.
i also found out where i am going to be living. my town is called taibeh. it is about 25k from petra, and an easy day trip to aqaba. i am down in the south of the country pretty much all by myself. most of the other volunteers are in the north. i felt a little sad. but my post is actually awesome. i went to a party to meet the other volunteers this weekend and met the girl that i am replacing. apparently i am the fourth peace corps worker at the center, and the last two have left early because they got married. maybe it is in the water. i wont drink it... anyway, it is on a mountain and gets incredibly cold in winter. but other volunteers will visit often because it is so close to such cool stuff. the center is the second best girls center in the country. i will be starting with exercise classes, but then ramadan hits and i will be mostly observing. i am going to do the fast and my counterpart/landlord/center director wants to take me to the mosque for the twenty seventh night, which has some significance that i dont recall right now. i will let you know later. the center sounds really well organized and my house sounds awesome. it is a small studio with fruit trees outside. i am going to visit it next weekend. when i pictured coming to the peace corps, i pictured hut living. but as another girl put it, this is more like corporate peace corps. the living standard is nicer, but there is a lot more social and emotional pressure. we will see how it pans out.
i figured out my first political cartoon the other day! it was a picture of sharon holding a bottle of oil, that was the west bank and giving a drop (gaza) out of a frying pan onto the ground. he was crying and the title said something like "does it hurt much?" but it was in arabic. pretty exciting to figure it out though.
i am out of time, but not things to say, i will think of more and write later. i got a phone though. my number is 962 0796202991. my mom said you may need to leave out the zero in front of the seven though. call whenever you want. i am ten hours ahead of cali, but will answer any time, cuz i have a wierd schedule. love you all and miss you! i will write again soon and let you know how gaza pull out looks from here.