damn! i suppose it has been a while eh? well, lets see... what has happened that might be of interest. well, we had a -2c morning here (about 28 deg f) according to my counterpart. a lot of royalty in the region have died this month: the king of dubai, the king of kuwait, and the son of the prince of bahrain. not too big a reaction in my community. only noticable difference for me was that all my english speaking dubai stations got taken over by the koran for a week. i watched the dubai funeral at my center. king abdulla was right up front at the burial. but in a sea of white dish dashes (those long robes that men wear)he was wearing a suit. im not sure if there is any significance, but he certainly stood out. he did, however have the requisite red and white schmag (head scarf for men). during the prayer over the late king's body, a cell phone went off in the crowd. nokia ring. how innappropriate. i couldnt help thinking of the daily show bit about cell phones: (sung to the tune of the nokia ring) "youre annoying stupid douchebag, turn your phone off now" i think it applies.
the other big news i am sure you are all aware of is the ariel sharon situation. i was expecting a big reaction but so far there hasnt been one. i did hear one woman say "god willing... god is generous." im not really sure how to interperet that one though.
there was a big holiday recently that i may have previously mentioned. it is an islamic holiday called eide al adha (eve of the sacrifice). it basically commemorates abraham (i think that was the one...). if you will recall, god asked him to sacrifice his son. and abraham, like any good father and servant of god was happy to comply. he even told satan to bugger off after said prince of darkness tried to convince him otherwise. well, so touched was god that he sent a sheep to be sacrificed in lieu of abrahams son. praise be. so, during eide al adha, every family should kill a sheep. in the spirit of islam, a good portion of all that mean is given away to the poor, which i actually think is great. mmmm..... meat. so, i celebrated by going to petra (so as to avoid actually seeing the carnage). i was not entirely successful though. a friend in a neighboring village showed me video fo the camel that was sacrificed in his village. so, your standard sacrifice goes something like this: 3 or 4 men wrestle the sheep or goat to the ground, slit its throat and pull the head back so it will bleed out quickly (i hear the spray goes 8 or so feet!). so, a camel takes 10 men. and you cant really wrestle a camel. they puncture the windpipe at the base of the neck, wait till the camel gets weak and do the whole neck slitting thing. and all the while the camel is making a heartbreaking, grunty, help-me sort of rumbly noise. it actually made me cry to watch it on video. really gruesome and sad. but the animals who are eaten here have good lives up to that point, which is more than i can say for animals in the states. kind of more like wild game... and this camel yielded over 200 kilos of meat. for those of you who dont know your metric stuff, that is roughly 440 lbs. and all of it was given away. my friend made what he described as a not very tasty curry with his. i skipped the meat fest and had an icecream fest at the movenpick instead. so that was my eide al adha.
the other big news in my life is that i am catsitting for a friend who is visiting the states. this cat is, well, insane. his favorite 2 games are: pull andis drawers out and scatter the contents, and attack andi while she is asleep. with climbing up the curtains coming in a close third. last night he knocked down and broke my satellite receiver. he had a little time out in the bathroom while i cursed and taped it back together. i hold out very little hope for my beloved house plant. and that, my friends, is all the news thats fit to print (can you imagine the junk that isnt?). and with that i am off to sweat to the arabic tunes...

happy new year y'all!! i spent new years eve in nearby wadi musa. treated myself to ice cream at the movenpick. chocolate chocolate chip. i know... sounds like a ragin new years right? the interesting thing about my night is how tight security was. the movenpick is a luxury hotel right next door to petra, and is in the tourist part of town. the street was blocked by the police about a block up so that cars could not get to the hotels. then after we walked to the hotel we had to go through a sort of check point where we told the police why we were there and where we were from. then we had to have our bags searched and go through a metal detector. i think the extra security was there to protect the new years eve party that they were having. i peeked in on the party before leaving and it looked to me like a crown of 50+ year old britons bumpin it to hip hop. pity i had to miss it. and my rockin party consisted of ice cream and burning cds. again, excitement off the charts. the cab ride home also brought tons of police cars out patroling. high security night. and no ball drop. but far and away better than new year's last year.
i suppose the only other news is what i did for christmas. i went to amman 2 days before christmas. my friend and i left at about six am. when we got on the bus, to our surprise, it was full of foreigners. i think only two or three jordanians were riding with us. my friend thought she would be all sly and tell me in arabic about how she thought the guy sitting in front of us was cute. she assumed they didn't speak arabic because they were british and quite obviously travelling. then, not more than five minutes later, he turned to a jordanian and started speaking arabic. and quite frankly it was better than ours. at least the embarrassment wasnt mine. we helped them get to where they needed in the city by bus rather than paying a ton for a cab (and to give you and idea of what a lot is in a city cab here is - 3 or more jd. how on earth am i gonna pay for cabs at home?) then we went our separate ways. i met up with a couple volunteers that i hadnt seen since swearing in and we went cafe hopping and sort of caught up with each other. my big news to give was that a man from my village has been kidnapped in iraq. he was working there. he has two wives and thirteen kids here in town, and one wife and son in iraq. the kidnappers demanded the release of the woman who was the unsuccessful bomber in amman. beyond that, i dont have any news about him. the western media hasnt been covering it.
christmas eve, i went to the peace corps christmas party at the country director's house. my first real taste of christmas here. complete with small children singing christmas carols. a six year old american irl told me boys are stupid and she hates them. i told her that she was going to love jordan. and my christmas present? a flu shot! how exciting. i have always wanted one of those. christmas day was mostly spent on various busses. with a stop at safeway. did i mention there are safeways in the big cities here? kind of like a temporary step into america. very surreal. i almost died the first time i saw one. and leaving my friends was sad. it is always so exciting to see people, and then to leave is kind of a let down. especially when you have to ride for hours through the desert on a bus to do it. but looking forward to the next one kind of keeps you going.
the weather is still dry. and since jordan has no water to speak of, all the farmers around me are starting to get really anxious. they havent had this dry a winter since the seventies, apparently.
and now, i feel that i am out of things to say. so since i spend a lot of my free time making lists of various things, i will give you a taste of the craziness:
Things i miss:
- the daily show
- daily showers
- driving
- spicy food

things i dont miss:
- hangovers
- people who support bush

and with that, ive gotta split. hope something interesting pops up soon so i can let you all know about it. here's to the big jordanian guy next to me belting out my heart will go on (the song from titanic, they freakin love it here!) hope your new year's rocked.