sometimes life seems to give you a boost just when you need it most. when you feel likeyou cant spend another day of solitude with tv as your only aompanion you have a good day like i did the day before yesterday. i wont lie, i have a really hard time throwing myself into social situations, even with shared language. but sunday i had my first social visit since mid-ramadan. i ate lunch with a girl from my exercise class and her family. it was a blast! she let me help cook and i burnt the peanuts. i mean, i am not really used to frying peanuts and apparently there is about a milisecond between delightfully golden brown and "blackened", or severely blackened i should say. but everyone was gracious and said "some people like them that way" and choked them down anyway. it was a really relaxed lunch because it was just women and children. i have got to admit that the presence of men just adds a whole level of stress for me here. none of the internal monologue that says "do i roll up my sleeve like a shameless hussy or just drag my sleeve through everyones food? oh no, did my arm just show? are the soles of my feet pointed at him? oh god i just called him a girl... damned conjugation!" at least it helps keep my extended silences exciting for me. anyway, i just chased the kids and chatted. it was fun. there is something i really like about watching young girls act all sassy here. because i know that in just a few years they will "outgrow it". women are not all that spunky here, i think it is bad form. anyway, in the conversation i found out that my friend had been engaged and had broken it off because she wasnt in love with him. it really kind of shattered my perception of love and marriage here. i always thought that marriages were mostly arranged between families and that love was something that people grew into. i suppose i dont know that much because i am very hesitant to start that conversation. it has implications. like am i looking to get married here being the main one. the other is that then people become much more interested in what sort of love life i may have had in the states. i just prefer to avoid it mostly. anyway, the whole thing felt like a successful five hours of visiting.
then i came home and went to pay my rent. and again an invitation to sit and drink coffee. and we talked about everything. politics, birthdays, conceptions of jordan from afar and perceptions of america from afar, we even talked about aids. it was a really engaging conversation - in arabish. a little bit of both english and arabic. a good week.
the weather is unseasonably warm now. all of a sudden it turned into spring. the warm weather is harder, it makes me miss home more. and all the things i could be doing. everyone here is talking about global warming. i guess this is really unusual. and of course, to my great delight, the warmth means my good friends the mosquitos are back. so i chase them around for a bit before i plug in my mosquito poison thingy that will probably be very bad for me in the long run. but i just cant stand those bugs! perhaps i am lucky not to have gone to africa. i would be a malaria nightmare.
anyway, that about does it for my interest level today. maybe i will write some more later this week, assuming something really interesting happens. dont hold your breath.