Snow!

Amman is in the middle east, and the middle east is all hot desert right? WRONG! haha. We had snow today, and school is cancelled tomorrow  =)  Here's an email we just received from CIEE's Resident Director:

"In anticipation of a snow fouda tomorrow (fouda means chaos). We  are cancelling all Thursday classes AT THE UNIVERSITY OF JORDAN.  DPS students will have an AM cancellation if the situation warrants.

Participants in the Saturday Community Service should AWAIT further notice on the status of that event. Dead2Red will proceed as planned UNLESS organizers cancel the event due to sandstorms. Snow in Amman will not impact the Dead Sea area (300 meters means a lot)

Allison Hodgkins, PhD

Resident Director

CIEE Study Center

#1 Rifa' Al-Ansari St.  Khalifeh Center Suite 505

Amman, 11942, Jordan

Tel:  +962-6-533-1258

Fax: +962-6-5341271

AHodgkins@ciee.org

www.ciee.org

 "

Stories

One of the best parts of learning a new language is watching the kids videos that are used to teach the basics.  Yes, Sesame Street dubbed in Arabic is VERY funny.  In class today we watched this video that must be from the 80's teaching personal pronouns.  It's pretty funny/ridiculous/cheesy/bad.  The guy at 55 seconds is my favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23G1Jz5gPIg 

Later today in the same class period we were talking about a candy in Jordan.  It's a round marshmallow covered in chocolate and it's called "black man's head".  To make things even worse There's a picture of a cartoon black face on the front of it.  I couldn't believe it when I first saw it.  Anyway, we ended up on a tangent talking about whether or not the candy was racist if you're not in America...pretty ridiculous tangent to get on, but my feisty friend Emma who wants to be a lawyer tried to knock some sense into our classmate saying "it doesn't matter where you are, it is inherently racist! it's ridiculous, you're eating a black man's head! not ok"  I don't think our Arabic teacher realized we were off on this tangent until that moment when she regained control of the class by saying "it's not racist, it's delicious."  I could barely contain myself.

Today in the taxi ride home we were chatting with the taxi driver about how he has a college degree in business finance but has been driving a taxi for 5 years because there are no jobs in Jordan.  He said there are jobs in america and he wants to come over, can we invite him? (don't be freaked out this is a normal question to get) we dodged the answer by taking 2 minutes to try to convey that we want to know what "recession" is in arabic.  it turns out that Recession is "azma iktisadiyya".  Azma is the word used for traffic and iktisad is economics.  So economic recession in Arabic is literally "traffic jam of the economy".  I wonder if there's a connection between unemployment, or gdp, or economic growth, with how crazy people in that country drive! haha, that'd be fun to measure. 

My grandma's house has a big empty lot next to it and yesterday I looked outside my window (which faces the lot) and saw a herd of goats grazing! I couldn't believe my eyes, we are in the MIDDLE OF AMMAN and there's a shepherd taking his goats out to lunch! Adi. Here are some pictures: 

Singing in Arabic

Last night my grandma helped me read a paragraph in arabic, and when my grandma helps, she won't allow you to do anything less than 200% haha. So she would read a word, then I would read a word with an exact arabic accent, then she would read the sentence, then I would read the sentence, then we'd translate it, then I'd read it again, etc. etc.  So cool.  The vowels in Arabic are either short or long, the short ones are assumed, but when you're learning they put the accent marks in so you know what sound to make, and the long ones are actual letters.  So my name in arabic is actually just YZN with an A accent over the Y and Z to connect it into Yazan.  It's kinda like reading a piece of music since you're constantly changing the sounds you're making and you know the consonants but think of the short accents as sharps or flats...kinda.  Also the language just has so much flow to it!  Anyway, after we were done my grandma said "this reminds me of helping your father and uncle learn arabic, except back then I was 30, now I'm almost 80!"

Homosexuality in Amman

I just sent this in a message to my good friend Alex in Boulder, think you'll all enjoy!

"Today we just had a guy come in and talk to us about Homosexuality in Jordan. He is the senior editor or senior business person of Jordan's first gay magazine: http://mykali.weebly.com/about-mykali.html He said that a couple of his friends and him back in High School decided that they would make a magazine about their lives and coming out as gay and this would kind of be the way that they would come out to their parents and families and society etc. well the magazine was leaked before they wanted to let it out (don't remember how) and their parents basically found out that they were gay because of the news. This guy who talked to us was on the cover of the first edition of the magazine and every time the news talked about anything gay his cover picture was front and center. This was the first time in Jordan that general society acknowledged that there were homosexual people living "among them", and this was just 2007. I asked him what would he like the future to be for the gay community in Amman, and he said that he just wants them to stop being so promiscuous haha. He said that in Amman, people need the marriage certificate to feel that they are truly committed to someone for life, and once they get that certificate they'll fight harder to keep that marriage going. But since the gay community can't get married, they just sleep around and dump each other and stab each other in the back left and right  He said he really doesn't care if the government allows them to get married, he just wants more commitment. Also he said that the religious community hasn't said anything, so opposite of america! he thinks it's because the religious community already has mainstream the media backing their negative feelings."

Country A funds a coup against Country B's new government--class discussion

Today in my Jordan and the Arab Israeli Conflict class our professor invited a bunch of his University of Jordan business students into our class so we could all have a discussion and share viewpoints.  We were split into a bunch of groups of about 6 or 7, mixed Jordanian students and American CIEE-ers.  The scenario we were given was as follows:

Country A doesn't like the new government of Country B that recently overthrew the previous dictator of Country B.  Country A and B do not share a border.  Country A funds guerrilla groups to overthrow the new government of Country B and these guerrilla groups are based out of Country A's military bases located in Country C--which neighbors Country B.  Most of the attacks on Country B are on their civilian population--schools, roads, large retailers, etc.  NOT the military and their bases.

"What did Country A lose with the new government that they had with the old government?" was one of the more interesting follow up questions we asked.

One of the questions we were given to discuss was "Is there terrorism occurring here? if so who are the terrorists"

We all agreed that Country A is committing an act of terrorism--if not an act of terrorism at least heavily heavily aiding an act of terrorism and if punishment occurs should be punished at the same extent as guerrilla soldiers.  We also talked about Country C and whether or not letting the guerrilla groups set up HQ in their nation was also committing an act of terrorism.  It's obviously aiding, but so is funding, why is funding so much more obvious than housing as a link to aiding the terrorism? Probably because the terrorism was initiated by the funding.  To leave this hypothetical example for a little bit: What about foreign aid, which does not usually go towards anything as specifically negative as "initiating terrorism"? Ha! Here's the point I wanna make.

One of the Jordanian girls in my group said:
"Foreign aid is all about the intention: if there is good intention behind the foreign aid then it should be given, and if the aided country uses that aid to commit an act of terrorism then the country that gave the foreign aid shouldn't be held responsible. However the foreign aid is given with the intention of initiating terrorism, then the country that gave the aid should be held responsible."

I love it! What a cop out! How easy is it for aid to actually be given with bad intentions, then if the PR spin-doctors don't do a good enough job politicians can just say "well we had the best intentions, we weren't supposed to know that Saddam Hussein was a mad man when we gave him WMD's"  Then along comes our judicial system to try to figure out if we did in fact know Saddam was a mad man, and then endless appeals...blah blah blah...lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians make money..

Is the intention behind the assistance (primarily financial assistance) of a third party to do their own business too far removed to be objectively judged as being with good or bad intentions?  I'm thinking campaign finance.  Is there a parallel here? foreign aid and campaign finance?

But when we're talking foreign aid we're not talking who can buy more TV ads, or who you'll take out to expensive dinners should you  be elected. We're talking feeding starving babies, or starting wars, or big things! But campaign finance ultimately decides the leader of all these big things! oh what a can of worms.  Money. love it. hate it. it's here to stay.

What can be done?  What can I do about it/do I even want to do anything about it? What is it exactly? We'll we'll just have to wait and see on those. My Arabic homework isn't going to do itself!

Traffic Jam?

What you are seeing next to this Mosque is not a traffic Jam. These are the parked cars of everyone who is going to Friday prayer at this Mosque.  Double and triple parked on the highway! (Airport Road for those of you who know Amman)  As the Jordanians say: "adi".  To pronounce this word correctly you need to make the throaty A sound.  Stick your tongue out and say Ahhh, just like at the doctor.  Now pull your tongue back in but keep your vocal chords goin. Yes, that is a letter in the arabic alphabet called "Ain", it looks like a backwards 3.  The word "adi" more or less means  "normal" and is frequently used when something ridiculous happens and you gotta just brush it off.  If see that the tomatoes that are being put into your falafel sandwich are a bit too old for comfort, it's "Adi".  Or if you happen to be driving down the freeway and see cars double and triple parked past the shoulder and into right lane, it's no big deal, it's "Adi".

The holy day in Islam is Friday, so our weekend here in Jordan is Friday Saturday, not Sat Sun.  Here's a picture from Google images of a Friday prayer in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul:

When was the last time you saw that many men agree on one thing!? Islam truly is the beating heart of the Arab world...why it's also commonly referred to as the Islamic world.  Separation of church and state here is a very blurry line.  But at least it's known as being so.  In the US we claim separation of church and state yet have in god we trust on our money and Santorum surging forward in Republican primaries because of his Christian-ness.  (Really Colorado?? Santorum?? Since when did what goes on in a woman's uterus become your business, republicans, don't you want smaller government?) I guess "democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried"--Winston Churchill.

The call to prayer is announced from the top of the minarets five times a day to remind Muslim people to stop for 5 minutes, and say hey to God.  Sometimes the 4AM call to prayer works it's way into my dream and I wake up a little disoriented haha.  Although I am not necessarily a huge fan of spending so much of your life reciting words that you had no say in the creation of and that were written in a very different time and place, I still think that taking 5 minutes 5 times a day to stop and just read your favorite poem, or close your eyes, or go for a short walk, might not be a bad thing for everyone to do.  But that wouldn't be efficient..well neither would spending half an hour on Facebook haha.

BTW: Facebook, holy cow the info they have on all of us, no wonder they're IPO will likely be higher value than Boeing right now! Retail corporations will be lining up to get all of our life stories from our new "Timelines". They'll know everything we are willing to share back to birth! I just read an awesome article on habits, and more specifically shopping habits.  This author goes onto show how Target now predicts when you are pregnant and starts sending you ads for maternity stuff so you'll start shopping there during your pregnancy, once you have your baby and they'll win you as a life long customer.  One father stormed into a target and demanded to talk with the manager about why they were sending his high school daughter maternity ads.  Well it turns out she WAS pregnant and Target analyzed her shopping habits and knew before her own dad! Here's the article if you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

Libyan Rebels

Today some friends and I were riding the bus to go to a cafe downtown and the guy next to me started chatting with me.

"What's your name?"
"Ahmad-you?"
"Yazan-Where are you from"
"Libya-and you?"
"I'm from America, wait you're from Libya??"
"Yeah I'm here for medical treatment after the revolution--I had a bullet wound in my stomach, I was climbing up a building and a Gaddafi sniper hit me right here"

Him and his friends/cousins were some of the Libyan revolutionaries who were shooting Gaddafi troops, stealing their guns, fixing them to the back of their trucks and shooting back.  Unbelievable--except it WAS believable, he was just another dude on the bus, right there next to me.  He was showing me videos on his phone of battle.  Just him and his buddies leaning out from behind concrete walls shooting back at Gaddafi's mercenary soldiers--all in jeans and t-shirts.  I don't think I've ever felt more tongue tied with my Arabic, I couldn't even think of what to say in English!  He had a video of Gaddafi's dead body less than an hour after he was killed by rebels...that took a while for me to emotionally swallow. I almost forgot to swap numbers with him before we got off the bus.

Ahmad told me "I am learning English, and my eyes are opening to the world.  I can read the internet, I can talk with everybody, I have to learn more of your language" (I'm paraphrasing, it was much more broken than that and included many more hand gestures).  I am so lucky to have lived the life I have lived so far, and to speak English, and to be educated, and to have this opportunity.  Everyday I am reminded.

There are about 20,000 Libyans in Amman right now getting medical treatment since the hospitals in Libya are pretty useless right about now (go figure...)  All of their expenses are being paid for by the Libyan government--which surprised me at first (Libyan government?), I haven't looked into where the money is coming from, but good thing it's there! but every clear blue sky has it's dark cloud too; A lot of Jordanians have been complaining that there's no room in the hospitals for themselves. Some hospitals have started refusing treatment to Libyans for this reason.  My grandma was telling me that a some of the Libyans are using the hospitals just to rest and not for serious medical treatment. Nothing in this world is perfect.

Another note: Whitney Houston rest in peace, how sad that we have lost one of the best voices ever to sing. What an impact her music has left behind. How great that she's being remembered fondly by the front pages of newspapers.  Unfortunately front pages are only so big--24 people were killed in Syria that same day. 

Some Things

There's a few things that I can't quite make a whole story about, but still wanna share with you all!

Here's a funny picture from a place near campus that makes heart shaped Falafel--unfortunately they're not very good by Jordanian standards:

On the way to Wadi Rum last weekend, we stopped by a bakery just outside of Amman and picked up some breakfast goods.  The guy heated the sabanekh, manaeesh, and other bread stuff in a microwave before he gave it to us, pretty gross.  But to make matters even worse everything was on a styrofoam tray, in the microwave! As soon as Nick got back to the car he said "Dude, he just put the styrofoam in the microwave" I hope to never hear that again.  Pretty gross, but as the Jordanians say--Adii.   Adii literally means "normal" and is usually used to just brush off whatever and move on.
Any foreign girl in Amman: "My taxi driver this morning said he has a brother who I could marry--Adii"

Today on the bus to downtown I was chatting with some friends in English and a man turned around and told us "How lucky you all are to speak english without any mistakes, I wish I could too".  As embarrassing as it is that most Americans can't speak another language, we should never forget how lucky we are that most of us really don't have to.

Wadi Rum 1

Never have I been in a car that hit a speed bump so fast that my seat belt has taken over gravity to keep me in my place.  But on the drive from Amman to Wadi Rum it's inevitable.  The highway there has speed bumps every dozen kilometers or so.  Yes, speed bumps on the highway.  There are either road turtles, or little holes where the road turtles used to be, about 30 meters before the bump to warn you.  Sometimes there were signs right at the bumps.  Sometimes we had to honk at stray goats or dogs, let's just say it's not a drive for zoning out and taking in the scenery...which is breathtaking.  About an hour out of Amman we started the leg of our drive along Dead Sea, and just as we reached the southern tip of the lowest point on earth, the sun rose.  And good thing it did, about an hour later the landscape out to our right dropped away and the sandstone mountains of southern Jordan grew out of the desert.

Aboud, Hakim, Nick and I rolled into the village of Rum around 10 and immediately reminded by the "Lawrence of Arabia Supermarket" how deeply rooted this place is in history. I bet Lawrence and Indiana Jones are the two men who've done the most for Jordanian Tourism.  Would half the people know about Wadi Rum and Petra if it weren't for them haha. Even deeper rooted in history were the Nabatean ruins that we walked past on the approach:

The East Face of Jabal Rum:

Nick passing the Nabatean ruins on the approach.  The edge of Rum is in the background:

We climbed the first 4 pitches of The Inshallah Factor without a hitch. Great day out climbing desert sandstone with friends and in a spectacular setting.  The belays were on ledges in between some detached pillars and the proper wall.  Great video coming up stay tuned!

Rappelling back down the route was pretty straightforward until we retrieved the ropes from the last pitch where they got stuck. Twice.  The sun was setting so we decided to leave the rope and come back for the rope in the morning.  Good thing we were already on the ground, it would have been quite the epic!

View from the top of the 4th pitch:

Good shot of the village of Rum and Jabal Um Ishrin.

Once we got back to the ground Hakim and Nick drove to drop Nick off with the CIEE group that was going to Petra the next day and Aboud and I met up with the rest of the group we were camping with that night.  While waiting for Hakim to come back we visited our friend Suleman--a local bedouin guide who insisted we all come in for some sugar with water and tea.

Once Hakim came back we all drove out to the desert where Hakim and Aboud spotted a couple of their friends who were camping in a cave nearby one of the sport crags in Wadi Rum.  We had just found our camping spot for the night! We scrambled up a shallow slope to the cave where our friends were camping, and within a half an hour the group of 6 or so of us had our tents pitched, and pasta boiling on the fire.  Of course we didn't have to wait for the pasta to finish though! Anis and Vanessa offered us some pita bread, cheese, and whiskey as soon as we arrived, and it wasn't too long before some hummus came out, which I was more than happy filling up on =)

Picture of our campsite, and the view from our campsite:

concert? nooo...teapot? yes =)

Last night we were told that a local Amman orchestra was performing some arabic music at the Al-Hussein Cultural Center near downtown.  I hopped in a cab to meet up with friends at the Al Hussein Cultural Center...and the adventure began.  I didn't know exactly where the center was, I'd recognize it when I saw it, but I didn't exactly know how to get there....and neither did the cab driver.  Regardless, I hopped in the cab and told him to go to downtown, where we'd ask for directions.  The cab driver didn't speak english, so it was perfect to practice my arabic on the drive down. The driver was 21 years old and had only been driving taxis for 5 weeks! pretty crazy to have someone my age be my cab driver.  We reached the Roman Theater downtown and started asking random people on the sidewalk how to get to the Al Hussein Cultural Center, after some mis-communications and wrong turns we arrived and he dropped me off around 7:40.  The concert was supposed to start at 7:30 and the announcement we read told us to arrive no later than 7.  No bigggie, I walked into the center, asked/hand signaled the metal detector technicians "where's the concert?" and they pointed me to the stairs.  I had already talked with a friend of mine who was there and she said to shoot her a text when I got to the bottom of the stairs.  Perfect.  I get to the bottom of the stairs and hear music! great! I grab the big wooden door which I thought was the entrance to the back of the hall and walk right onto stage by mistake. Just kidding =) but the door was locked! I shook it a bit, it didn't budge.  As I was trying to contact my friend who was inside, another guy comes frantically running down the stairs and asks me if the doors are locked.  I say yes, so he proceeds to shake the doors with all his might as if to hope that nobody inside is hearing the rattle and that the doors will magically swing open.  Go figure they didn't.  He shakes his hand for me to follow him and we run up a small staircase and he shakes another door with the same force, it doesn't budge.  He looks back and me and let's me know the doors are locked.  Luckily my friend who I was supposed to meet there calls

"Hey Yazan, so the concert actually happened last night, tonight the orchestra is just rehearsing. We were misinformed haha. We all just had to hop in a cab and are on our way home cause on our way out some guys started harassing us and wouldn't let up, sorry!"

I got the whole harassing story this morning.  So a couple classmates of mine (girls and guys) were leaving the cultural center and walking down a somewhat dark street to get back to downtown proper when a group of 12 year old boys started asking them for money, kicking/punching them, etc. etc. etc.  A local walking down the street actually hailed a cab for my friends and they hopped in, evading the mugging-by-12-year-old scenario they were about to experience.  They were truly pleased with how quickly other locals on the sidewalk started yelling at these 12 year olds, and that a cab was hailed for them by a total stranger.

I decided that getting back in a cab and going home would make for a pretty lame blog post, so I point my feet downtown and start to walk down the 1/4 mile doomy gloomy stretch of road that will take me to "wast al balad" (downtown).  but before I make the trek, I need a goal...Teapot it is! You can buy these cheap aluminum tea pots on the side of the road, they're perfect and I don't have one.  I put my key in between my fingers in case I needed to throw a punch or two, hike up my pants tighten my shoes, and walk with authority.  It really wasn't that bad, there were actually manned guard shacks the whole way since the Al-Hussein Cultural Center is an enormous campus that stretches all the way to downtown.  As I reached a major intersection of downtown I saw a little metal shimmer on a cheap card table across the street. My teapot! I quickly run across the street, and buy the teapot as the store was closing.  The guy seemed confused/amused as to why I was so eager to make the purchase.  I couldn't have been happier.  I continued walking downtown seeing what else I could find, with my new teapot in hand as a signal to any shady creatures of the night, "Don't mess with this guy, he's got a teapot and isn't' afraid to use it".  It was awesome walking downtown as the stores were closing on a weeknight, I feel like I saw a true glimpse of "life".  Not a touristy front, or a bunch of super eager stores trying to make a sale.  As I was walking through the late night fruit market, I even considered not taking my phone out to snap some pictures, but luckily I did.  Here they are--wish I had a better camera:

Downtown Amman Scavenger Hunt

Hello! day before yesterday I met my peer tutor for colloquial Arabic.  CIEE teams us up with local JU students (who don't speak the best english) so we can have an in with local students, practice our conversational arabic, and hopefully become friends.  My Peer Tutor's first name is Nimr, last name Abu Rumman--literally translated to Tiger, Father of Pomegranates.  Of course it's silly to think of it this way, his name is not unusual, it's just funny to note.

We met up Saturday morning at the CIEE offices and sat through a short presentation about the expectations for this peer tutor program.  Fortunately for me, this is not a language exchange, we are expected to speak Arabic the whole time.  Once we were done hearing about blah blah blah, we headed out of the building to catch a cab with our list of scavenger hunt items. One of the first things Nimr told me was "now the most important thing for today, is that we don't finish this list, this list is not our map to a good time"--I knew we would get along.  It turns out he's the president of the business school's student government, super outgoing, knows everybody, and friendly as ever.  Nimr was good friends with a peer tutor of one of my friends so the four of us stuck together to not complete the scavenget hunt.  We ended up spending time in downtown Amman and some of the surrounding neighborhoods, here are some pictures:

Want some fresh Chicken, Turkey, Rabbits, Turtles? Where are the Animal rights activists...are the conditions american animals are in any better? who knows, they're not right on the sidewalk! 

Our amateur arabic orchestra.

Want a blazer? It was silent back here, just a couple blocks from the main road through some alleys.

This little guy is selling Ka'ek bi Ageweh.  Bread filled with Dates...delicious.  We weren't hungry (since we'd already been munching throughout the shops of downtown) but with our peer tutors never passed up the opportunity to feed us.

Two good pictures of downtown Amman

This five year old in a town square quickly became my best friend.

Paris Circle

On the taxi ride back to the restaurant where we "finished our scavenger hunt" we saw this car with a virginia licence plate in front of us. Our cab driver was an Jordanian who spent 13 years in Chicago, got married and has a little girl.  Unfortunately he never extended his vacation visa and immigration deported him back to Jordan. who knows what his whole story is, but he was using phrases like "boom shakalaka" "fo sheezy" and "what's up my main man".  He definitely threw us for a loop.

Climbing at Sami's Cliff near Ajloun

Yesterday was a highlight.  Nick, my uncle, and I met up with some local climbers and their friends and drove about an hour north of Amman into the forest.  After a slow start to our morning, we drove out of Amman, past the old roman ruins of Jerash, and through some old farming villages in the countryside before turning right down a dirt road with no name and a recognizable landmark of 3 large trees on the left. Winding through muddy and rocky jeep trails in between plots of farming land (in my grandma's Honda Accord) we encountered a small fallen rock wall which blocked the road with some limestone blocks.  We had to all roll the blocks off the road before we continued on, only to find that the road turned into a clay-filled puddle which we had to carefully navigate and not sink into.  We continued up a very steep paved section of road with short rock walls on each side to arrive at a shack and small grassy patch where we left the cars.  This was opposite the car park:

My camera is just not doing justice to the colors here.  The trees you can see here are olive trees (this is likely an olive farm. ever wondered where your extra virgin olive oil comes from?) and the flowers in the foreground are lavender. The climate here is much more mediterranean than "arabian night middle eastern". Imagine yourself on a vineyard in southern France. After all, we are just a short jaunt to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea!

We hopped over some short farm-separating limestone block walls and hiked just around the hillside for not even 10 minutes to arrive at the cliff. Some people in our group set off for a hike to Ajloun castle, and the rest of started to uncoil our ropes.  Climbing highlight of the day: flailing up a super delicate route on a sheer vertical face that was just about 10 feet from an arete off to the left. 5.12a, but felt totally do-able with some work. (Jake & Alex, you better be workin hard too for this summer!) We climbed till the sun set, at which point I was half way up a route with a pink sky above, and a rainbow poking through some scarce clouds.  I had to stop and soak it up! Here I was, a stones through away from the village where my Grandma was born, solving tricky move after tricky move to dance my way up this awesome limestone cliff that less than 50 people even know about, with a beautiful scenery behind me under a pink sunset and a rainbow.  It was as if the world was saying "yes, you're winning Yazan, keep on livin! do your thang!" Words can not describe.  As Nick, my uncle, and I walked back to the car, we rounded the hill side just as dusk was setting and we were hit with the call to prayers from a nearby village across the valley.  I say prayers, not prayer. There must've been at least 30 or 40 mosque's singing to the people all at once. So cool.

This sparked some pondering about Islam. It's impossible to be in the Middle East and not receive quite the introduction to the religion which spawns the world's most common name: Mohammad. Mosque's sing the call to prayer 5 times a day, which can be heard from most places in any city or town, reminding practicing Muslims to stop whatever they're doing and take 5 or 10 minutes to recite prayers.  I've thought multiple times about how great it would be to stop for 5 minutes 5 times a day, and just chill.  Not to recite pre-written prayers which you've had no say in the making of, but just to close your eyes, relax, and take a little breather. Aren't hip businesses now a days encouraging their employees to take some down time during the day to rejuvenate for the rest of the day? Yes, Google gives their employees free massages. Driving back through the villages, we noticed how frequently we came across mosque's.  People don't have to drive to pray in the Middle East. Nick observed that mosque's are about, or at least, as frequent as gas stations are in the US.  They pray, we burn gas.

Weekly demonstrations in Amman are started after Friday prayer in mosque's and migrate downtown.  The separation of church and state is such a blurry line in even Jordan--the most peaceful country in the region.  Ironic since Islam spread to it's modern day stomping grounds in less than a hundred years.  Why? because the Muslim Caliphs who conquered from Spain, across North Africa, and all the way to Pakistan from about 640 to the mid 700's did so because of their tolerance of local religions of their conquer-ees, and their not requiring newly conquered people conform to any new practices, except paying less taxes...  This part of the world is so homogenous today...what happened?  I can't wait to learn more about this in my classes.

Back to the adventure, we were now at the car, it was dark, all the local climbers had either already left or were camping at the cliff, and we had to navigate our way out of this farmland & dirt road maze.  We eventually wound our way back to paved roads, and spent quite a bit of time meandering through tiny villages with no English within earshot.  Despite being lost in one of the poorer parts of one of a developing country, we couldn't have felt safer.  If we popped a tire on a rock on the side of the road, we could have knocked on anyone's door and not only gotten help with our flat, but also be served tea and dinner! Where in America would you encounter such poverty and not make it a point to lock your car doors as you drove through. Keep in mind, all the nations near us make for one of the most war torn parts of the world today.  

On the way back to Amman we met up with some family in Dibbeen (the tiny nearby village my grandma grew up in) and had some dinner (and tea) as the day came to a close.  More pictures from today that I wanna share with you are on the way! including some awesome climbing ones =)

Politics politics politics

Today was the start of our elective classes.  I am taking Jordan and the Arab Israeli Conflict and an Intro to Middle Eastern Politics and Diplomacy.  I'm about to put my ECON degree on hold...kinda, and dive deep into Poli Sci and International Relations classes.  I say kinda because I'm realizing more and more that in the middle east, politics, religion, economics, and culture are much more inter-connected than in America. The post revolution governments of the arab spring are being decided over campaigns between opposing political religious partie.  The Palestinian and Israeli conflict...religion...need I say more.  Countries may have better relations with one sect of a religion in another country than the other sect of that same religion! (I also gotta say, how crazy is it that a whole country can have better relations with one sect of a religion in another country.  Don't countries have diplomatic relations with other countries?) Although Syria is on the brink of governmental collapse, the almost scarier question is which cultural group will rise to power afterwards...and how will that be decided.  Iraq's new government executed 17 people just yesterday! Just days after the UN said "Hey Iraq, you should probably lay low on the executions, it's starting to look like your new government isn't running so smoothly" ahhh my head's spinning.  Such an exciting time to be studying politics in the middle east, but for such sad reasons.

Anyhooo, my Intro to Middle Eastern Politics and Diplomacy professor is a total badass.  He has Ph.D, has taught the class a bunch of times before, said he works 5 other jobs related to Jordan's politics, one of which is being an aid to Jordan's Prime Minister. He mentioned that teaching this class is what he does to relax and have fun.  He comes straight from the Prime Minister's office to teach this class, and promptly turns off his phones "I turn off both my cell phones as soon as I walk in because I know you students want to make the most of the class time we have together.  I know the prime minister is calling me right now, but I am here to teach you guys, and I would appreciate the same respect.  They ask me why I don't answer calls sometimes, I guess I'll just have to keep making better excuses haha." Phew! Nothing on my phone must be nearly that important. He was wearing a suit and tie, shiny shoes, stands with perfect posture, and has a comb over, but throws in funny sarcastic one liners here and there, gives us just enough time to figure out he was joking, smiles from ear to ear, and moves right along.  I think I'm gonna like him.

I have a dictation test in Arabic tomorrow morning, my great aunt was just here and she helped me study for a little bit. Then she tried to guilt me into shaving; she said people will think I'm part of the Muslim Brotherhood.  I could barely hold in my laughter.