happy belated turkey day y'all! hope everyone gorged themselves on stuffing and mashed potatoes (which are, by the way, my personal favorites of the thanksgiving scene). i had spaghetti and garlic bread (made from flatbread). i splurged and used butter to make the bread. it had been literally months since i had eaten butter, so it made thanksgiving seem just as decadent as always. and since there was a snafu at the macy's parade, i got some news of it on the bbc. practically all that was missing was a football game. thanksgiving is a really easy holiday to explain here. everyone seemed pretty down with the concept of visiting family for dinner and "saying thanks to god". much easier than christmas which translates to "the birthday" and is often mistaken to mean my birthday.
last week i had an interesting trip to the post office in a neighboring village. this is the post office i have to go to in order to pay customs. i went with another volunteer who also had packages coming in. i showed up before my friend and didnt know how to get to the post office. her directions went a bit like "look for the tank and all the army guys. that is the post office". i dont want to make it seem like the reason for the tank is a military problem, that is just where they park for the day and hang out i guess. it is just odd that the landmark for my post office is the eternal presence of a jordanian tank. now, the customs man only comes in sometimes, so trips are generally prearranged. apparently until recently it was standard to show up at the post office, get an employee and your package and hop in a cab to go see the customs man at the hospital. show him your stuff, have him tell you how much to pay and sign you off, return to the post office and pay and you are done! easy as that. instead, now you call and find out when he is going to be there. so, he was supposed to be there at 8 am for us. we showed up at 7:30 and sat drinking tea untill 9:30 when he finally showed up. and, because it only makes sense, the man who got there at 9:15 rightfully went before us. and it was ok because he only had a huge box of vitamins from the states. no prob. so he and the customs man took off to the hospital to confirm that it was indeed vitamins. and we, like good girls, went back to our tea drinking, just slightly water logged from the five prior pots of tea. i should mention that we actually took some amusement from the whole vitamin incident. the way pharmacies work here is you walk in, ask for your preferred med, sans prescription, pay and leave. so the concern over vitamins was beyond us. 10:30 rolled around and it was finally our turn. my friend was receiving all her family christmas presents. they were wrapped, but there was a customs list so we stood and shook and rattled each trying to guess and translate what each one was. good times. and she can ptertend to be surprised when she opens them. so, my boots were rather anti-climactic aside from the amazement of the customs man that anyone would pay $20 for boots in the states (which is, according to me, how much doc martins cost in america). $20 is expensive for any clothes here. and that brings me to another charming jordanian tendency i may have neglected to mention: a burning need to know just how much everything you own costs. amazing how everything i own was a "gift" so i can claim not to know. but they want a rough estimate anyway.
it has been a tough week. we lost four volunteers from my training group. one of whom i was particularly close to. but jordan isnt for everybody. and after the bombings everyone had at least a brief moment of thinking we would be sent home. and after learning that you arent there is a whole process to go through to convince yourself all over again that you want to stay and there are still things here you want to accomplish. a difficult process if you are really unhappy here. one volunteer got a going away card from his center that read rather like a very bitter valentines day card. if i remember correctly it said " so tell me, when will it be over now? how many tears will it take to prove to you?". we were highly entertained, but still cannot figure out exactly what it was that was lost in translation. or maybe they really were just that bitter. anyway, "asian" you will be missed. who is going to convince me to take out of site leave now? enjoy the island.
wow, amazing how much i can say about, well, nothing really. life here is starting to seem routine. and because of this my posts may start to drag. i cant be sure. so if there is somthing that you would like to hear about let me know and i will do what i can because i worry that my blog may become terribly uninteresting as i settle in and winter comes. and with that i am off to english lessons!