Romping around Roman Ruins and other previous adventures worthy of mention...

UPDATE: Just wanted to add some pics to this previously WORDY entry...Coop president and beekeeping supervisor having a looksy at one of the hives

(from left to right Ogab Al-Shurafat: Project Site Supervisor, Khalaf Al-Massaed: Beekeeping Supervisor, A'eada Kassab Al-Shurafat: Cooperative President, Dr. Mustafa Al-Shudeifat: My ISP advisor, Myself: American Female Researcher... so out of place)

Nighttime Citadel Exploration

Evening view from my new roof of the Citadel (on the left side of the hill in the distance)

boy oh boy did I have a wonderful past two days or what!

I have to apologize yet again for the infrequent blog posts but it is just plain tough to keep this thing updated.

I am thoroughly exhausted and so I'll try to keep this entry short but I thought that the past few days are above and beyond worthy of mention (as my blog title points out).

#1 Finished my Independent Study Project (ISP) yesterday! It was due at 8pm. I finished the final touches around 7:20 pm after about an hour of frustration with interspersed bouts of hysterical laughter over creating the Table of Contents page... that is when you know you have been sitting in a library writing for too long.

Just to fill those in who do not know I chose to write my ISP somewhat in the form of a case study for a cooperative in the Northern Badia of Jordan called Anaqeed Al-Khair. Research for the paper consisted of as much background reading about the cooperative as possible, but most of the information I obtained was through interviews that I conducted while staying in the small village where the cooperative is located for a few days. Overall my ISP ended up being a study of the projects that the cooperative has executed in the past and is working on in the present... It is actually quite the amazing little organization. Some of the projects that are most successful presently are 1. Honey (they have 50 hives of honeybees that are placed on the Jordan-Syria border for a few months out of the year where vegetation is thickest since it is a no-go zone for humans and their animals... mainly herds of sheep and goats. A lot of nutritional honey from this project is produced and sold. Yum yum yum. 2. Sun-dried Tomato Project 3. Brick Project that has a really great revolving loan system (a certain number of loans are given out at a time with some of the cooperative's money, and then once those loans are paid back the next group of people who have applied get funds) that supplies people from villages throughout the area with the funds to purchase bricks and other construction materials.

The bottom-line for why I studied this is that first off I am interested in small-scale approaches to sustainable development, secondly it is a really interesting model of success in an area where previous development/attempts at generating income for the overall poor region of Jordan have failed miserably, and lastly it could be used as a model for other cooperatives or small scale development organizations to follow in other regions suffering from the same problems, and insha'allah help to solve those problems!

Enough about the ISP.

#2 After turning in the paper last night a lot of my friends and I decided to go out and celebrate. Part of these celebration plans took an unexpected turn as we found ourselves gazing at a view of the Citadel (ancient ruins on the top of one of Amman's many hills that are lit up at night), and almost immediately hailing a taxi requesting a ride to the Citadel... why not.

The taxi ride was great. We danced in the backseat shaking our hands in the area singing "shuggah, shuggah, shuggah," a common dance move for traditional Bedouins have their own celebration, as a popular Jordanian song about the King blasted from the taxi's speakers. Our driver was unbelievably impressed with these dance moves.

After the momentarily disappointing realization that the Citadel was closed to visitors at night we recovered quickly and decided to visit anyways. . . are rules like this in Jordan really that important? After slipping through a break in the fence we found a nice spot to perch, gaze at the ruins and at the city surrounding us like a lit-up blanket spread over many hills.

Five minutes later a security guard approached us. Uh oh, time to leave we thought... maybe? My friend Vanessa decided to attempt to sweetly discourage (using her Arabic skills) the guard from making us leave. "But the view is so beautiful... maybe just a little longer we can sit?" Surprisingly the guard told us he'd ask his boss. After a short discussion with his boss nearby they decided we could stay a little longer if the guard accompanied us around the area. And so our private tour of the area followed. I'll just say that this is not the sort of experience that you can plan in advance. It was a wonderful night to say the least.

#3 After sleeping in and making a tasty breakfast at Vanessa's house we headed to our appointment at the Turkish Hammam as a little reward for finishing the lengthy forty page paper the evening before. For only 25JD you get an afternoon of steaming, jacuzzi, being scrubbed and massaged while drinking fresh pomegranate juice in a traditional style bathhouse.

Yep, I am a pretty happy lady right about now.