In general, I would say that I have mellowed out considerably since coming to Jordan. But every once in a while i just have one of those incredibly impatient days. And it may go a little something like this:
At the beginning of our story i find out that i have a package waiting for me. Yay! Good stuff. So i go to my normally lifeless center and find it teeming with girls because school is out. When i finally shoo them all away from the sewing machine (for fear that they will sew themselves together into one big clump) i mention that i need to go to the post office. My boss says great! Have a good time. But my coworker who lives in the town where i am going says there are no busses for another hour. So i sit and stare into space for a good productive hour and leave with my coworker. It is during the crawl to the “bus stop” or rather the “preferred spot in the middle of the road, which is different for everyone,” that i find out that there was indeed another bus, she just didn’t like the driver. So now i am later than i would ideally like to be, as it is quickly approaching noon and i said i would be at the p.o. in the morning. No problem, i have time. But then my coworker asks me to lunch. I start sweating bullets (but i was probably already sweating because i am in the desert). I don’t know how i will get myself out of this one. Because i dislike going to lunch when i still have to go to work in the afternoon. It just makes me nervous. So I explain to her that I cannot because I have to go to work again. And she assures me that I will be back on time, which I know to be as impossible as meeting JFK next week in Petra. It just wont happen. She scoffs and says that only not good people make me late to work. She promises. And with really no other option I reluctantly accept. You see, lunch is still a lot of work sometimes, especially when you are not in the mood. And all I really wanted to do was get my package, go to some second hand stores and go home. Lunch is good. Better than I thought. but then it comes, as it always does when I am visiting. Just sleep here! everyone wants me to spend the night at their house. I explain in every way that I have work, and I have a bed, and I don’t want to spend the next 20 hours at their house, much as I may love them. And so they agree to get me to the bus station. And because I shouldn’t walk or take a taxi alone this involves waking up their brother so he can escort me. And of course he has to shake off the sleep with some tea or coffee or something else that would obviously have to take some time to prepare. But I finally made it to the bus station. Climb on the bus with less than an hour left to get to work. And then we sit. The bus will generally sit and wait to fill up. However, this time we sat and waited for much longer than necessary. It is at that point, where you are crammed on a hot sweaty bus with fifteen minutes left to get to work (and the trip takes half an hour) and people are just cramming in the aisle, and the bus has been full for at least half an hour that you start to feel as though you may start laughing or crying and never stop. It is the worst kind of frustration. And of course this would be when you get the three most important phone calls you have had in quite some time. Months maybe. And you cant even take them because you are on a bus that was made for 20 people, and there are at least 30 other people on that bus with you. And all this is made even better when you make it to work half an hour late and find no girls. Making all my trouble ultimately worthwhile…
So, that was my adventure last week. my package had peanut butter and jello and ramen and mac and cheese. The customs men laughed. And my coworker suggested that maybe my dad just didn’t know how fat I really was and thought I had gotten skinny. Yup. Good times. Neat fun. but I don’t care because now I have jello.
I think I have been in Jordan too long consecutively. I don’t think I ever went this long in the states without some kind of vacation. To another state at least. And I think I am getting a little stir crazy. Amman isn’t really doing it for me right now. So, I am planning a vacation to celebrate the end of the summer! Maybe Beirut. Not sure yet. Something fairly close to Jordan. And if anyone wants to come meet me somewhere near here, just drop a line. People ask me why I don’t go visit the states. I guess the short answer is that I spent 23 years there and really know what it looks like and that I want to see other things while I am here.
Anyway. That is the news I guess. mostly mellow, with occasional frustration and a high probability of impending burnout. Ha. Kind of like a weather report.

So I guess the question on everyone’s mind is how Jordanians are reacting to Zarqawi’s death. I mean, as you may or may not know, he was Jordanian himself. I suppose that the answer to that is, there are lots of ways that Jordanians are reacting. Meaning, Jordan isn’t a place where everyone is of one mind about iraq and the war and the insurgency, let alone the US’s role in it. I will tell you the three main opinions I have heard. One: Zarqawi was a bad man and it is good he is out of the picture. There have been rallies to celebrate this. And of course within this camp of thought there are people who would have rather seen him arrested and tried. But come now, let’s not get nitpicky…
Two: he isn’t dead, the CIA has him. Just like they have Bin Laden.
Three: Zarqawi was a good man fighting western oppression. His death should not go unmourned. In other words… a martyr.
And the commonality between all of these opinions is that it doesn’t really matter a whole lot that he is gone. Al Qaida (which by the way means base, or foundation in Arabic. Fun fact) will just find someone else to take his place. And after that one is gone will come another. They see it all as sort of an exercise in futility.
As I think I mentioned previously there is a volunteer in Zarqawi’s hometown. I haven’t yet spoken to him about it, but I would be really interested to hear how people in his village are talking about this and see if there is any difference.
It’s a crazy time of year here for me. If y’all think back to a year ago and what I was doing (if you can remember that far back). I was caught up in a flurry of going away parties, and everything I did was my last. Last movie, last dinner at such and such, last fill in the blank here… and I was packing. Narrowing life down to just two bags. I was saying all my goodbyes. So that means, that for a whole new group of people they are now wondering what it will mean to be living in Jordan for 2 years. They are leaving apartments, cars, friends and loved ones. They are wondering who is going to take them to the airport, and who is going to meet them when they land. We are going to have a bunch of new people to add to our somewhat limited and ever shrinking pool of friends here come july. And our good friends who have the good fortune of finishing service will be gone by September. So, it will be a whole new dynamic. That, and summer is here with its crazy amount of activities at work. So I don’t expect to have much time to stop and take a breath until august.

Well, the Queen Rania interview on Oprah just came to Jordan (for those of you who don’t know, she is the queen of Jordan). All I can say is wow. Sorry for all of those of you who saw that and thought that I was living in a place that is almost just like America. I have a couple of things to say. First of all, there were three women who were featured as “a day in the life of a Jordanian woman”. Couldn’t be farther from my own reality here. I mean, first of all, all three of them were working mothers, living in amman, and speaking fluent English. Not your typical Jordanian woman. I mean, one of the families even ordered dominoes delivery once a week. Amman is a totally different world from most of the rest of Jordan. Amman and aqaba are the only two places you can find fast food. That said, there are tons of places in those two cities: dominoes, kfc, burger king, popeyes, mcdonalds, cinnabon, starbucks, pizza hut… but don’t think that that is normal Jordanian life.
A day in the life of a typical woman in my village goes more like this: wake up to feed the family and send them off, tidy the house and cook a huge lunch, clean up after lunch, rest for a bit (sort of like a siesta, but not quite), maybe go out and visit in the evening with the rest of her family, cook a light dinner and clean up after it. This has tons of tea, coffee and tv interspersed in it, and of course prayer. And often times at night she hangs out in the house alone while her husband visits his friends. A vast oversimplification on my part. But I just feel that the oprah show really missed it when they described “average Jordanian life”. I would say that most women in jordan don’t have significant jobs outside the house, don’t go to the giant supermarket and worry about what American cereal to buy for the kids, don’t get in a big SUV to drive themselves around, and don’t let their daughters wear low cut shirts and backless dresses. Village life is much more conservative than that. The Christians here don’t cover their heads, and they will dress less conservatively. But that is about it.
As for the scarf issue. I want to be very careful about how I say this. Yes, it is a choice. Unlike Saudi it is not dictated by law that a woman must wear a veil. But I have found that there are two extremes in discussing this issue. There are those that say that the scarf is absolutely a choice by the women who wear them. And there are those who say that the scarf represents oppression and is forced upon women. Neither are exactly true. For some women the veil is a choice. For others it is a choice in name only. I mean, I don’t exactly believe that I am the only uncovered girl in my village because every single other woman wants to wear the veil. There are great social, cultural and familial pressures on a lot of girls to wear it. I do know women who used to go without and decided to cover later in life, and yes in those cases it was a personal choice that had to do with faith. However, those cases are mostly in amman. I was speaking to a woman in my village about living in a small town here. and we weren’t specifically talking about headscarfs, but she said that living in a small town is hard because everybody always knows everything that you do. It does apply to the veil. If you are the gossip of the town if you choose not to cover that is a lot of pressure. You are less likely to marry into a good family and less accepted in the village. Talk here can have big consequences.
The veil is a difficult issue to really explain. For example, 50 years ago, the majority of arab women did not cover. Or if not a majority a great deal more than now. So why the change? I don’t necessarily think that it is a sign of an increasingly conservative society so much as a response to increasing cultural influence from the west. The veil is a sign of Islamic culture, and I personally think that the increase in women covering is a rejection of western imperialism and globalization and a sort of clinging to their own culture. But the question then becomes, who is making that decision? It isn’t necessarily always the woman, but in rural villages often the pressure comes from families and patriarchs. The pressure may not even be blatantly stated. How can I put this in a familiar context? Well, I don’t know if I really can. But let me think on it. As a matter of fact, I think this whole blog deserved a little more attention than I have put into it and I am disappointed in what I did come up with. But it is hard for me to write about it in the context of living it. It has become the status quo for me lately. I think that it will be easier for me to tell you all about such things once I have a chance to step out of the local culture here.
So I will step away from that for a bit. It was all sort of a reaction to how disappointed I was by the queens interview and the portrayal of Jordan. It just wasn’t my reality.
Last week something crazy happened. My counterpart and her husband got in a car wreck. However, it wasn’t your run of the mill wreck. Apparently it was set up. They were driving back from a nearby village at night. There was a blockade of rocks set up across the road and they saw it too late and ran into it. And suddenly, there was a large group of men. According to the story, they were thieves and intended to rob them. And they most likely would have had another car not shown up at that moment. I personally hadn’t heard anything like this before. It is kind of the buzz of the town right now. Apparently very out of the ordinary.
So, that is all I have for this week I guess. Maybe next time I will try to spice it up a little.

The other day I was sitting at work and we were watching a morning show. I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on around me. I have developed an amazing ability to tune out everything that is happening. I get to the point where I don’t even hear what people are saying. And every once in a while I check back in to nod or agree. Although I don’t think I developed that skill only here. I can think of some instances at home where that was the case as well. but, that isn’t what I was going to tell you guys. There was a chef on this morning show. Chef Ramzi. He was making turkey sandwiches. Listen carefully. It is a complicated recipe. Two pieces of sliced white bread with a more than generous application of mayonnaise. One piece of turkey. More mayonnaise. Swiss cheese. And top it off with your second slice of white bread. Then, and this is the tricky part, cut off the crust. Seriously it took him at least fifteen minutes to make this delicacy. I think I could have a cooking show here.
In other news, my counterpart wants to have an Arabic dancing class at the center. I think it is mostly to teach me how. Honestly, I don’t know how, but everyone here can belly dance. Except me. They can shimmy every part of their bodies. And two different parts at once. Their hips and their shoulders can be doing totally different things at the same time and somehow look totally coordinated. I know that I will never ever be able to move like that. But inevitably at every female function I attend they ask me to dance. And by female function I actually mean any time there is music playing and men aren’t around. This means that even my exercise class isn’t exempt. And it isn’t uncommon for one girl to dance and everybody else to watch. So, when it is my turn to dance they all stop and watch me. And when other girls dance, they tend to dance at me. They look me straight in the eyes and wont look away and start shimmying. I usually end up at a loss for words, or any other reaction. I am not exactly sure what I should do when they dance for me. Do I look them in the eyes? Do I look away? Do I say something? So I sit and worry about just how interested my face looks and if I am blushing or what. I don’t know if you have had the experience of being expressly danced for, but it is actually kinda unsettling. Especially when you have no idea what should be done in just such a circumstance and people are watching you watch. But I think they think that if they have my full attention I may somehow learn it passively. Also, the women here love to make me ululate. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is when the women make that high pitched noise with their tongues. Like la la la la la loooo!! Apparently I am ok at it, especially for a foreigner. On field trips they usually want me to do it first thing in the morning. But as a general rule, 7 am is too early for me to start screaming. So, when ten rolls around they all look at me rather conspiratorily and say “andi…. Do you know what time it is? Its TEN!!!” that is my cue. I guess ten am is the perfect time for wailing to start, and what better way to kick it off than with me? But since I spend so much of my time here silent, my throat takes a while to warm up, so the first few generally sound all cracked like a pubescent boy. I can assure you it is really an attractive noise. But as I may have already said, summer is wedding season, so I can be assured to be doing it on a weekly basis now. Good practice.
Speaking of weddings, that is my big news for the week. I went to my friends wedding here (you know, the volunteer who married a Jordanian girl?). it was great! By far the best wedding I have attended in Jordan (I know I said that in my last blog about a different wedding, but this one was truly the best. Maybe part of it had to do with knowing the couple?). It was held in a church in amman. But first, there was something called a jaha. The male volunteers attended. It is the tradition in which the man and his family go to ask for permission to marry the bride (although, by the time the jaha rolls around, this is pretty much decided on. But it is all part of the tradition). From what I hear the jaha was awesome. And the us embassador showed up on the groom’s behalf to vouch for him. Then came the church ceremony. It was a roman catholic ceremony (although the service was held in Arabic and a little English – no latin). The groom’s family had come from the states to attend – parents, siblings, even grandparents. Having just flown in from the states the day before the wedding, they were understandably fatigued. So much so that the grooms brother passed out during the wedding. But he stepped out and caught a breath of fresh air, and everything continued fine. Then we had a couple hours after the ceremony for a break. We used it to prepare for the reception. The reception was held at the Sheraton hotel. In amman you can generally wear anything to a wedding reception (some went sleeveless, some had short dresses). The reception was full of dancing and the groom had specifically said that if you came, you had to dance, so the dance floor was always full. there was no toasting and no speeches. But it was a great night. The reception went till after one am. The best part about it was that both the bride and groom looked so happy and calm. There was no stress about them at all. Usually the brides here look very serious and somewhat terrified. But both of them were just glowing and obviously very happy and excited. I think that is what specifically made the wedding so great. And we all left very happy for the newlyweds. Two days later was the village party. Because the groom had spent two years living in a small village, he wanted to celebrate the wedding there as well. this village is about five miles from my own. So, a bunch of volunteers came all the way down from the north for it. We all wore our Jordanian clothes. The men wore thobes (the long white robes that you are used to seeing) and schmags (the red and white checked head coverings). The women wore habayas (the long black womens robes) or women’s thobes (long black embroidered dresses) but none of us covered our hair. Even the groom’s family wore Jordanian clothing. We all looked pretty good, I think. And the bride wore a woman’s thobe with white and yellow embroidery. She was from amman, and I heard that this is the first time she had bought a thobe or worn one. And it was the first time she had been to an event like this in a village as well. amman is like a whole different world from the villages here. the village wedding was a standard village wedding, except in the sense that it was coed. That was pretty amazing. But the women sat and watched while the men danced and sang. So, the village wedding was a whole bunch of sitting. But still it was better than your average village wedding. At least there were Americans that I could talk to about something other than how pretty the wedding was. Also, there was a couple from texas there. I didn’t talk to the husband at all, but I talked a bit to the wife. She was born in Denver and had moved to Nashville. But now she and her husband live in Jordan eight months of the year. She was a fascinating woman. So it was pretty interesting to get to meet her and hear her story as well. I don’t exactly know what her connection was that she was in the village for the wedding. In the village weddings go pretty late, one or two am. But I opted to go home around midnight. Now the bride and groom are off to their honeymoon and then it is back to the states for grad school.
So that was my week. Hope that you all are well.