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!

so i am sure you have all heard about the bombings in amman by now. i suppose that first i should say that i and all my fellow volunteers are well and safe. as are all the jordanians i know. i dont quite know how to react or what to say. the attack doesnt seem to have made a very big impact on my village. i am pretty far south of amman (280k actually) and there was a death in the village that same day, so maybe those have something to do with it.
my own experience of it goes a bit like this: i was dancing around my room, out of boredom i suppose and i got a silly idea in my head. i went to text it to someone (text messaging is a sort of lifeline between us here), but i texted it to the wrong person. i got a phone call from said person. he said he had been in the midst of a flurry of texts and that mine had seemed out of place, and oh by the way andi havent you heard about the bombs? off went the tunes, on came the bbc. they werent saying much so i got some idea of what was going on from al arabiya. then came the waiting and the wondering. what happens now? do we have to leave? if we evacuate, what do i take with me? if i go, do i want to take another assignment in another country? a tense night with no new information, and no attention span for anything but the news. thursday was a holiday out of respect and mourning which made a 4 day weekend because it coinsided with the late king husseins birthday holiday on sunday. as i sat alone in my apartment i started to think that i dont want to leave. i have just gotten started. i knew leaving was a possibility but i hated to think of it.
i will say this, it was unsettling to see footage on the news of a table that i know i sat at in the hyatt. dont worry, i dont stay at luxury hotels when i travel, but i was reading a paper. anyway, i knew it was the same table. but this time there were 2 unfinished drinks on it, the chairs were ruined and there was a puddle of blood on the floor next to it. it wasnt in the oh god it could have been me sense, but more that i sat at that table and now something really bad happened to someone else who was sitting there. it just made it feel real and close to home. maybe it sounds dramatic, but those are the thoughts that run through your head at 1 am when you are alone and waiting for someone to tell you what the hell is going on.
all said, i dont think i am in danger here. i feel that my community likes and respects me (at least enough to send their daughters to me every day). and the peace corps is all over security. really. if they thought i was in danger i would be sent home yesterday. the reaction in jordan has been strongly anti terrorist. those i have talked to are really concerned about the impact this will have on western views of islam. and i just want to say. this isnt islam. there is nothing in the koran that says you should slap on a bomb and blow up a (jordanian, and islamic) wedding. and i am afraid of the potential reaction to this . maybe it isnt even a blip on the american radar screen. i cant tell because i am here. anyway. thanks to all who emailed and called. it made me feel better. you are all in my thoughts. and i appologize for typos, i think my hands have frostbite now...

i think my hairline is receding. youknow, i think this is really great because all this time i was wishing i could see how the male volunteers have it here. and now i can! i mean, it isnt the increased sense of freedom or anything that comes with it, but i would say baldness is usually reserved for the guys right? and beggars cant be choosers. but in all seriousness i dont think it is drastic enough to be a problem yet. just chalk it up to hard water and acid shampoo. and someone whose hair has been various shades of platinum blond and pink cant really complain too much about damaged hair right?
so, like i said, ramadan has come and gone as has eid. i ended up going to aqaba for a couple days. i had some trouble getting there, even though i am one of the closest volunteers to it. the problem is that on the day of eid, public transportation because kind of nonexistant. others had an even harder time than i did. but my counterpart snagged me a ride on the only bus going that way, which ended up being a male only bus. so i just stared out the window. but sometimes being a girl has its privilages, like being able to pass through a military check point with nary a glance your way. anyway, aqaba is basically a beach resort. it is hard to believe you are in jordan. it is a sea surrounded by mountains. i dont know what i was thinking when i packed, but i think it went something like this: " hmm, i am going to the beach... i guess it might be cool if i showed up wearing a beanie, gloves, long sleeves and wool! and i wont even think of packing a swim suit. cool!" great process andi... so suffice it to say the beach was much hotter than my now freezing little mountain town. good thing the volunteers who have been here for a year already knew what was up and i could bum some clothes from them. speaking of other volunteers... initially i almost didnt even go because i didnt really know them and i was nervous. but now i couldnt be happier that i went. there are some really cool people here, and you can have really great conversations and just kind of hang out. (especially when you consider the convrsations i am having here: 5 minute conversations in arabic because that is about as long as anyone wants to listen to you butcer their language, or flurries of text messaging that would take all of 2 minutes to actually say in english). but in the states my friends and i had pretty good ideas about where we all were coming from and what we all thought of the world in general. not so much here. if i thought all the other volunteers would all be like me i was way off. but lets just say i havent been willing to put in the "let's talk till 5 am" routine in some time. so yes, i am into the other volunters as well, and they terrify me less now. and they showed the newbies an awesome time. i spent a good deal of beach time there, which i havent done in years. also, we went out on a glass bottom boat. it was great. we spent all day out there cruising the red sea. from the red sea you can see egypt, jordan, and our neigbors to the west, whose resort town looks absurdly developed in luxury western-style hotels. we went snorkeling and swimming and at some point our driver hopped on another boat and got us some freshly caught tuna. he gutted it, cut it and seasoned it all on the boat. then we docked about 15 k. north of the saudi border (or so i was told) and barbequed the fish and some chicken on the beach. it was really really good, as i am sure you can imagine. all day in a boat on the sea. it rocked. i might even say it was the highlight of the trip. the great thing about aqaba is that there are other foreigners there and you can, to some extend let your hair down, so to speak. you blend in with the other tourists and stick out far less. not that i would want to live there, as that wouldnt be much of a peace corpsesque experience, but it makes a great trip. so now here i am back in my village, somewhat reafreshed and getting into the swing of things. i was inundated by about 30 girls in my center while i was there alone yesterday, and there has been considerable interest shown in my exercise classes starting back up, so i guess that is in the works for next week as well. and exercise will rock when it is freezing ass cold outside. better than summer is all i am sayin...