Brief Home stay in Jordan's South Badia

Tomorrow I will venture about 5-6 hours south of Amman and lunge into a five day home stay with a Bedouin family living in a small village by the name of Grain (it is an arabic word that sounds just as the English word grain is pronounced). Although I know very little about the family so far today each student was told where their home stay families live and we were given a general idea of what the family was like.

I am SO excited. Of the 23 students in my program 11 are headed to the Southern Badia. Jordan has three Badia regions which are basically rural areas where small Bedouin villages are. The other 12 students are will be staying in northern Badia villages, most being right on the Syrian border. I would have been happy with being placed in the Northern Badia as well but let me tell you why I am so thrilled about my southern Badia family!

The father of the family is a Sheikh (leader of a tribe) named Sheikh Hussein Abu Nweir. He is well-known in the area and Dr. Raed described him as one of the most wonderful people he has ever been in the presence of. He is also running for a position in the parliament for the upcoming election! I hope my facts are right on this. I know he is running for something but I'll have to add more detail after I return. The family is supposedly really large, like most families in the Badia. I'll be buying some candy and surprises for kids after school today to bring to them.

Another reason for being excited is that a lot of Southern Jordan is dramatically beautiful, dry, red, deserts that most people could never even comprehend what life in this environment is like. Can't wait can't wait can't wait!! I will hopefully have lots of pictures and things to say about the experience after I return on Monday...

Salt Pictures

The day trip to Salt was great. We basically had a walking tour of most of the city because it isn't all that large, especially in comparison to Amman. Below are some pictures that my friend Katherine took which I decided to upload because I think they better show the beauty of the area than my chaotic picture taking skills ( I was a little too excited all day and took way too many pictures way too fast and because of this ran out of battery early in the day).

They are out of order so this picture was actually the last stop of the day. It shows the sun setting over the West Bank (Palestinian territories to the west of the viewpoint we were parked at). We just pulled off the side of the road and it was a great view of the Jordan valley that separates hilly terrain to the east (where Salt and Amman are) from the hilly terrain beginning in the West Bank kilometers to the east.

Me picking Pomegranates.

Old men playing Mancala in Salt

Man selling fruit on a back road

The city of Salt.

Lemon Tree

"From blossoms released by the moonlight, from an aroma of exasperated love, steeped in fragrance, yellowness. Drifted from the lemon tree, and from the planetarium lemons descended to the earth."

Just a hilarious little poem I read on the placemat of an upscale Cafe I thought was worthy of sharing. Lemons descending to earth? Okay, that is a little weird.

Week two of real classes is now complete and so far everything is great. I am so happy I chose the SIT (School for International Training) program over the larger, more well known program in Amman through CIEE. Every week we have about three guest lecturers come and share with us knowledge about their specialty that has to do with whatever our weekly topic was. This week one of the visits was from former Jordanian prime minister, Dr. Jawad Anani! It was pretty cool to have someone who worked with King Hussein personally for ten years and got to meet a handful of other significant figures in the realm of world politics come and talk to a group of 23 Americans about his experiences both professionally and personally. Just wanted to share an example of why I have really been enjoying the school portion of my visit here so far.

My weeks here so far have consisted of A LOT of exploring in and around Amman because there is A LOT of exploring to do in such a big city. One highlight of my explorations last week was visiting the ancient Roman Amphitheater that literally is right in downtown Amman. I will definitely post pictures sometime next week.

Tomorrow a group of students and I are going on an to the city of Salt. I don't know a whole lot of specific history about Salt but I do know that it is an old, old, city. And for this reason I have heard it is very beautiful with a lot of older architecture, unlike Amman which for the most part has only recently (in the past 60 or 70 years) become a larger city. Here is a little blip about it from The Rough Guide to Jordan, my nerdy tourist book of choice.

"A regional capital under the Ottomans, the town- who name derives from the ancient Greek saltos, meaning "thick forest" - came into its own in the late nineteenth century, when merchants from Nablus arrived to expand their trading base east of the river. Into what was then a peasant village of shacks boxed between precipitous hills, the merchants brought sophisticated architects, and masons to work with the honey- coloured local limestone; buildings were put up in the ornate Nabulsi style to serve both as grand residences and as merchandise centers... Salt has seen none of the headlong modernization that has afflicted the capital (Amman): much of the Ottoman architecture in the old quarter has survived, as has peace and quiet, perfect for aimless exploration." Anyways, that was a good summary of why I am excited. Amman has so much to offer but I am still in the stage where I want to be in awe of how far I have traveled and the vast history that this area has seen. I guess my host mom is also from Salt so I will have to write about what she thinks about it after I talk with her a bit.

Another exciting trip awaiting me is my 5 day homestay in the Badia next week!! The Badia is a large area northeast-ish of Amman that is usually described as rural and traditional. It is also where many Bedouins live, although most are no longer nomadic so sadly I won't be traveling around on camels pitching the tent at a new spot every few days. Since the academic director, Dr. Raed, of the Jordan SIT program is from the Badia his personal connections have allowed students to get this unbelievably rare opportunity to have a short stay with families in more remote, traditional areas, with the Bedouin. Every student will be staying with a different family and maybe even in different villages. Most likely the families will speak little to no English and the living standards are in general much lower than the modernized city of Amman. I am mostly looking forward to it just to have some perspective on the diversity that exists within the people of Jordan's lifestyles, political view points, etc. Hopefully my explanation of the short home stay in the Badia has made sense but you will all hear much more after I return....

Now it is bedtime for me since I have an early morning expedition to Salt! MaaSalama!

In an effort to write blogs more often I am going to attempt to just write shorter blogs instead of covering whole weeks.... I have been in Amman for a little less than two weeks and already feel fairly adjusted to my "new life" here. I am settled in with my wonderful homestay family, attending interesting classes daily, and feeling as though I am getting into somewhat of a general routine which I don't mind one bit.

Last night I met a few friends on Rainbow Street for my first time. This area is great. It was my first time venturing to the neighborhood or anywhere near there for that matter because I think it is by the 2nd circle and my house is somewhere near the 7th circle. In case blog readers don't know, Amman is often explained as having seven circles around which most of the city exists. Since the creation of seven circles (just the same as traffic circles in the US but at a higher speed and intensity ha ha) the city has grown more so not all areas can be described in relation to a circle but it still gives you a general idea of distance between most places. ANYWAYS... I don't know how well I will be able to keep these blog entries short after all...

So, Rainbow Street. Very cool neighborhood. The Royal Jordanian Film Commission had a free film showing of a Tunisian movie which was our incentive to check out the neighborhood, although I only stayed for part of the film. The showing of the film was at an outside amphitheater situated in a really beautiful area. A view of the enormous Jordanian flagpole and Roman ruins were directly to the left of the movie screen along with the lit up hills of the city in all directions. I will have to go back in the day and take a picture. It was almost surreal sitting outside in the warm night air, the constant smell of Jasmine, and this amazing view. And now will be the appropriate time to mention my possible Alien sighting...

While watching the movie several planes flew low overhead as they must have been departing from the airport, there were also planes in the sky further away, and some very bright stars. BUT, at one point in the movie I noticed something that at first I assumed was another airplane when I realized it was BRIGHT ORANGE and was sort of drifting up and down in the sky until it finally started descending at a slow speed and eventually disappeared behind one of the hills. EXCUSE ME but I really cannot think of a rational explanation for what in the world this weird bright orange lit up blob in the sky was... Maybe a meteor about to crash into earth? Maybe an airplane lit up in flames falling to a fire-y crash? I think not. Most likely an alien spacecraft. I will probably never know.

Okay, I know that sounds a little weird but it was a little weird and is funny to talk about. Who knows what it was.

I think this is a good place to end the blog entry. If anyone has questions or comments PLEASE SPEAK UP! I want to hear what people are thinking of this blog so far and if I should include more about certain aspects of my time here so far... Miss and love everyone!

view from Leweibdeh neighborhood

pic above of my school, SIT, which is in a fancy residential area next to the British and Venezuelan embassies.

Well the first week is coming to an end… already. So much has happened and I have been occupied every minute of every day, so much that I haven’t had much time to keep up with the blogging. But, to start this simply, I have been having a great time. There are so many different layers of my excitement to the new things I encounter that span from driving through a new and interesting neighborhood, to getting excited about starting the Jordanian dialect classes so I can more confidently interact with taxi drivers, my host family, etc. Speaking of my host family, I met them today!

The day started early because I had to shove all of my clothes and random trinkets I had fished out of my overly stuffed bags back in the stuffed bags, shower, and eat breakfast by 8:15. After all of that we were bussed over to the SIT building (my school until December), had a health orientation which was pretty silly and explained things that anyone who is over the age of ten would probably know, and then we took our Arabic language placement exam. Classes officially start on Sunday (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday since Friday is the Muslim day that is equivalent to Sunday for Christians) so we had to take the exams in order for the teachers to separate us into classes with other students around our same level of Arabic. There are five different levels that we can test into, which is really great for only 23 students because that means there will be about 5 students per class!! Last term at UO my class only had something like 8 students and I absolutely loved having a smaller class for learning Arabic.

After the language tests we ate lunch and basically waited around for our host families to pick us up. Everyone was really nervous, including me. It felt like we were being sent off to summer camp away from all things familiar for the first time or something. I don’t know why I keep explaining it in that way but it was this strange type of anxiety that I haven’t felt since I was a lot younger ha ha. My host father arrived with another host father and took me and another student back to our homes that are relatively close to each other. Soon after they picked us up all of my anxiety disappeared because the two men were pretty funny. Both of their families are Christian, which is about a 4% minority in all of Jordan, and they don’t seem too religious. Muaad, my host father, was explaining to me that a part of the family name, Al-qsoos, is the plural of saints in Arabic when George (the other host father) loudly interrupted him to explain that Muuad hadn’t stepped inside a church since his marriage day. Side Note: A woman I met later in the evening named Tala blatantly told me that in Jordan everyone has a religion even if they are not particularly religious, it is just strange to claim that you don’t have a religion here like many people do in the US. So no matter what religion one claims to adhere to there are many varying degrees of what exactly that means, whether Christian or Muslim.

I arrived at the house to be greeted by my three host sisters who are 16 and twins that are 14! They kissed me on both cheeks and then invited me in to show me around the house. It is a small flat on the ground floor of a tall building and is situated at the end of a street with no traffic, which is amazing considering the chaotic nature of Amman. After my host mother arrived home from her job at a bank we ate a casual but huge dinner. I felt as comfortable as possible given the circumstances and was pretty glad that I got such a welcoming and warm family. Later in the evening they invited me to join them to another family member’s house where an uncle and some cousins live next door to their somehow related friend named George who was hosting the other student Nick from SIT. We sat in their living room until about midnight being fed snacks like an assortment of really salty nuts, delicious tea with fresh mint from their garden, and way too many sweets that were all similar to Baklava in their texture but had different fillings and toppings. The uncle has three daughters, one of whom was home and I had a really long and interesting conversation with that I was happy about. Tala is 24 and got a B.S. in Engineering from some small technical school in Jordan, but she also spent a year abroad in the U.S. at a huge university in Illinois. She offered to take me on multiple day trips around Jordan, including some areas in Northwestern Jordan where there is actually a pine tree forest and it is the site of some significant biblical history. I plan on taking her up on any and all of her offers. I’m pretty excited about this.

A lot of the night was spent on my part listening to the rest of the group talk furiously and often hysterically in Arabic which was fun to try to follow and at least get the gist of what the conversation was about. Occasionally Tala would try to translate some of the funny stories that were being told by Muuad, apparently he is a great story teller. At one point Suwwar, one of the twins, starting repeating some cheer about falafels and going to the Balad (downtown) and I put it together that her and the uncle were trying to convince the family to make a late night munchie trip. The Uncle accused Muuad of not being a true Jordanian if he didn’t want Falafels of all hours the day. I thought that was pretty hilarious.

I can tell my family is really close with their other family members and friends in Amman I’m positive there will be many, many more evenings like tonight.