My thoughts are that if I tell you the stuff that's about to come on my blog, I'll actually do it (let alone remember what that stuff should be!!)
Thanksgiving weekend; big Thursday night dinner, Friday excursion to the desert castles then to Harry Potter at night, can't remember what happened that Saturday...
Uninteresting week, full of the same old, same old. Worked on my big research paper.
Had a nice night out at Rainbow street on Wednesday, spent Thursday night in dealing with my cold with a hot water bottle and tea, went out on Friday night to see a movie with my friend Phil after spending the day studying at Starbucks (Yes, Starbucks.), and Saturday I stayed in again; family came over for the St. Barbara celebrations (which isn't a big holiday here, just a nice excuse to make a signature dessert--which was gross, by the way!!--and to see people). Sunday was an awesome Hannukah/"Every Jew food we could make" dinner.
So details to follow...unless that summary will suffice???? Hah, comments welcome, of course.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Eid al-Adha in Turkey and Cyprus!
Ohhhhh goodness. I'm trying to muster up the motivation to write this post, but there is so much to say! Our vacation was so incredible, I wish you I could share it with you in movie form or something. But I guess my mundane words will have to suffice, so please bear with me!
I ended up staying overnight at Alyssa's apartment so that the morning taxi to the airport would be a piece of cake. That evening we went out with Noor, Hayder, and Senan since they were dying to see us and didn't want to have to wait another 10 days before we got back to Amman. We just walked around "Walk-a-lot" Street (Wakalat), had a hookah, and got some schwarma.
The next morning, Chris, Alyssa, and I met up at our waiting moumayaz taxi to get to the airport; it was so awesome seeing so many CIEE folk on their way to Beirut, Cairo, some places in Europe... At our gate there were probably 8 others going to Istanbul.
Okay, because this is taking so long for me to get to, I'm going to abandon this post and just list the basic activities that we did, towns we went to, etc, and not put in too much detail. That way, you'll have something to ask me about in person! :-P
Istanbul: Stayed there for three nights in the Istanbul Sydney Hostel (don't ask me why there's the reference to Australia, I forgot to ask them!), which was right behind the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. We dashed there from the airport via metro and tram, and the first night Alyssa and I went to the Turkish Baths while Chris was busy with a phone interview--during our vacation, can you believe Delloit?? Next day was a bunch of bazaar scouting and walking through the streets: we had a reservation with a place to do a Turkish cooking class, but not enough people signed up, so it was canceled. Ended up being okay because we definitely took every minute that day checking out the beautiful souks and artwork around us. That night we went to Taksim square for dinner (avoiding big gatherings of police!! *reference to the news from a few weeks ago...) and checked out the nightlife. The following day we did the tourist thing: went to the Tokapi Palace and its Harem, then to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.
We hopped the tram to the old city wall, and it was slightly creepy: there was no one around except for a few random lone dudes, so after some photos we hightailed it home in time for dinner at a cute nearby restaurant. Let me tell you that the Turks definitely have mastered the hookah way better than the Arabs!
We had an early morning to catch the ferry across the Marmara to Bursa, which cut out some major bus hours around the bay. Took the bus to Troy, which was slightly disappointing (in fact, "anticlimactic" was our word of that day!!):
Loooong bus ride to Goreme in Cappadocia that night, and stayed that a Backpacker's hostel that was actually built into the funky rocks that are characteristic of the area. The following day, we went to Derinkuyu to one of the ancient underground cities, previously used by Christians to hide from the armies of Islam and Rome. The tunnels were small and cramped, but the stone was so soft, and the cities so intricate (some of the tunnels were miles long, and connected neighboring cities).
We came back to Goreme to have lunch, and then went to hike through the Rose Canyon, among the fairy chimneys, where you could see rooms and tunnels built into the rock. We wanted to do a balloon ride, but it was extremely expensive per person. After that we went back to the hostel to chill for a bit before we went to our "Turkish Night", set up through the hostel, which included a ride to and from the restaurant, a whirling dervish show, folk dances, a bonfire, a belly dancer, a full meal, and unlimited alcohol. Needless to say it was a fun time! Headed back to the hostel for a quick sleep before an early morning bus to Alanya, where we had planned to catch the ferry to Kyrenia in Cyprus. We encountered some problems though with scheduling, so we had to make our way along the coast to Tasucu instead. The three additional folks in our group took a plane from Antalya because their flight back to Amman was a day before ours so they had to really rush to get to Cyprus, but we took a bus to Tasucu and spent the evening in a cute little hostel, where our balcony looked over the 20ft to the water :)
The next morning we took a leisurely breakfast and hopped the ferry to Kyrenia. We arrived around 2pm, and had time to go visit the town's old fort, splurge on a nice fish dinner around the port, and sit around a very lovely hookah before catching a taxi which would take us across the border into Larnaca in Greek Cyprus. The taxi only took about an hour and a half or so, and crossing the border was fine and easy. We got into Larnaca, had an obligatory cup of tea with the owner of the hotel, and then went to peruse the shops and restaurants along the beachfront. We settled at a cafe to have a drink, and then went back to the hotel to rearrange our bags for the flight the next day (we got so many souvenirs--correction, it was mostly Alyssa's!!--that was needed another suitcase, and had to make sure the fragile ceramics would make it through the traveling alright!
Next morning we went to the beach, just for a half hour or so to put our feet in the Mediterranean, and then found a breakfast where the first thing we asked for was BACON.
Went to the airport and caught our flight no problem; it was funny how, when going through security, the official looking at my passport asked "You were in the occupied territories?" (referring to Turkish Cyprus). But besides than and a few comments from the taxi driver, we didn't hear much about the tension there.
We went straight from the airport to Alyssa's apartment to rearrange our bags once again to reclaim our things, but not before staging a photo in front of the building looking depressed and exhausted after the trip (depressed at having to return to boring old Amman!!). If this Internet was not being stupid, I'd post it!!
Overall it was a great trip, but not without its glitches. From what we heard, everyone had their fair share of travel frustrations; that's just what happens when a) we're young students that people like to take advantage of, b) there's plenty of language barriers, c) the intention of going and "winging" it only works to a certain degree before it starts hindering!!
Sorry about the very rushed and not very detailed account; it's now two weeks after our return, so I really just wanted to get SOMETHING up. Hope to share pictures with those of you I'll see back home in three weeks!!
I ended up staying overnight at Alyssa's apartment so that the morning taxi to the airport would be a piece of cake. That evening we went out with Noor, Hayder, and Senan since they were dying to see us and didn't want to have to wait another 10 days before we got back to Amman. We just walked around "Walk-a-lot" Street (Wakalat), had a hookah, and got some schwarma.
The next morning, Chris, Alyssa, and I met up at our waiting moumayaz taxi to get to the airport; it was so awesome seeing so many CIEE folk on their way to Beirut, Cairo, some places in Europe... At our gate there were probably 8 others going to Istanbul.
Okay, because this is taking so long for me to get to, I'm going to abandon this post and just list the basic activities that we did, towns we went to, etc, and not put in too much detail. That way, you'll have something to ask me about in person! :-P
Istanbul: Stayed there for three nights in the Istanbul Sydney Hostel (don't ask me why there's the reference to Australia, I forgot to ask them!), which was right behind the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. We dashed there from the airport via metro and tram, and the first night Alyssa and I went to the Turkish Baths while Chris was busy with a phone interview--during our vacation, can you believe Delloit?? Next day was a bunch of bazaar scouting and walking through the streets: we had a reservation with a place to do a Turkish cooking class, but not enough people signed up, so it was canceled. Ended up being okay because we definitely took every minute that day checking out the beautiful souks and artwork around us. That night we went to Taksim square for dinner (avoiding big gatherings of police!! *reference to the news from a few weeks ago...) and checked out the nightlife. The following day we did the tourist thing: went to the Tokapi Palace and its Harem, then to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.
We had an early morning to catch the ferry across the Marmara to Bursa, which cut out some major bus hours around the bay. Took the bus to Troy, which was slightly disappointing (in fact, "anticlimactic" was our word of that day!!):
From Troy we headed 5 hours to Izmir, which I believe is the third largest city in Turkey. It's all modern since it had been destroyed by Greeks at some point in history, so we didn't plan to see much of the city beyond what we saw that night we lodged there.
The next morning we set out for Ephesus, which is supposed to be some of the most complete remnants of a Roman town on the Mediterranean. It was a lot of fun--FULL of tourists--and they even had a silly little show every ten minutes with a "Caesar" and "Cleopatra", a bit of dancing and a very well-choreographed gladiator fight (I'm pretty sure Cleopatra never got anywhere close to Turkey, but what do I know?). Took a lot of fun photos among the ruins there.
From there we went to Pamukkale, which is a site of a large mountain of calcium from the natural hot springs there. We had a nice lunch and then trekked around this hill:
We came back to Goreme to have lunch, and then went to hike through the Rose Canyon, among the fairy chimneys, where you could see rooms and tunnels built into the rock. We wanted to do a balloon ride, but it was extremely expensive per person. After that we went back to the hostel to chill for a bit before we went to our "Turkish Night", set up through the hostel, which included a ride to and from the restaurant, a whirling dervish show, folk dances, a bonfire, a belly dancer, a full meal, and unlimited alcohol. Needless to say it was a fun time! Headed back to the hostel for a quick sleep before an early morning bus to Alanya, where we had planned to catch the ferry to Kyrenia in Cyprus. We encountered some problems though with scheduling, so we had to make our way along the coast to Tasucu instead. The three additional folks in our group took a plane from Antalya because their flight back to Amman was a day before ours so they had to really rush to get to Cyprus, but we took a bus to Tasucu and spent the evening in a cute little hostel, where our balcony looked over the 20ft to the water :)
The next morning we took a leisurely breakfast and hopped the ferry to Kyrenia. We arrived around 2pm, and had time to go visit the town's old fort, splurge on a nice fish dinner around the port, and sit around a very lovely hookah before catching a taxi which would take us across the border into Larnaca in Greek Cyprus. The taxi only took about an hour and a half or so, and crossing the border was fine and easy. We got into Larnaca, had an obligatory cup of tea with the owner of the hotel, and then went to peruse the shops and restaurants along the beachfront. We settled at a cafe to have a drink, and then went back to the hotel to rearrange our bags for the flight the next day (we got so many souvenirs--correction, it was mostly Alyssa's!!--that was needed another suitcase, and had to make sure the fragile ceramics would make it through the traveling alright!
Next morning we went to the beach, just for a half hour or so to put our feet in the Mediterranean, and then found a breakfast where the first thing we asked for was BACON.
Went to the airport and caught our flight no problem; it was funny how, when going through security, the official looking at my passport asked "You were in the occupied territories?" (referring to Turkish Cyprus). But besides than and a few comments from the taxi driver, we didn't hear much about the tension there.
We went straight from the airport to Alyssa's apartment to rearrange our bags once again to reclaim our things, but not before staging a photo in front of the building looking depressed and exhausted after the trip (depressed at having to return to boring old Amman!!). If this Internet was not being stupid, I'd post it!!
Overall it was a great trip, but not without its glitches. From what we heard, everyone had their fair share of travel frustrations; that's just what happens when a) we're young students that people like to take advantage of, b) there's plenty of language barriers, c) the intention of going and "winging" it only works to a certain degree before it starts hindering!!
Sorry about the very rushed and not very detailed account; it's now two weeks after our return, so I really just wanted to get SOMETHING up. Hope to share pictures with those of you I'll see back home in three weeks!!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Leaving for Eid!
This might be a record...11 days since my last post? And it will be another while before I post again: leaving tomorrow morning for our Eid Al-Adha break until November 20th, and I'm sure the long lists of what we end up doing in Turkey and Cyprus will daunt me to the point of putting off that post for at least another week or so!! Don't worry, I'm planning on taking notes every day of what we do (let alone how much i spend...), so I'll be sure to remember what happened when I finally get around to writing about it to you!
Nothing of extreme interest happened in the last 11 days, besides midterms last week (By the way, A on Fusha, A on Amiyya, and A- on Alternative Perspectives - don't you just hate it when all the teacher notes is some check marks on ever paragraph but points magically go missing for no apparent reason?). There were also elections this past week for the parliament; apparently there's just one seat for a Christian representative, and grandpa Alber's second cousin was running. He didn't win, but Rita and Eddie were pleased about the guy who did. It was very exciting...we had no school on Tuesday, as it was declared a national holiday to encourage voter turn-out, and we all received emails from both CIEE and the Embassy about potential demonstrations and protests, and were discouraged from going out. Apparently someone died down in Aqaba due to some tribal tensions once the results were announced! Much more exciting atmosphere here than in the States, it seems!! I went out that night, with my blondish hair covered in a scarf out of paranoia, and went to Alyssa's apartment where we made a rather delicious Mexican meal with fried bananas and ice cream for dessert.
The Saturday before all this was our CIEE day trip to Ajlun. It was...nice. We went first to the Ajlun Nature reserve, which actually was a surprising amount of green. We had breakfast at the visitor center and then took an hour long hike around the hill; had some good views, and made me sort of nostalgic for South Africa: walking in single file through trees, having the species pointed out to us, looking off the hill at the amazing views, and having our leader shout at us to walk more quietly so as not to scare away the wildlife (aka birds and some lizards...).
After this lovely jaunt through the greenery, we headed off to Ajlun Castle; once again, you could probably get more information by looking it up on Wikipedia.
(insert adorable picture here as soon as this Internet allows me to...)
After explore the castle for an excessive amount of time, we went to another reserve where "the King's private herd of deer" was protected...? This was a legitimate large enclosure for deer (unsure of the real name) that are becoming rare in the area. They like the jabal-tops because of the cooler atmosphere. So we went there, with the exclusive access from our Challenger Team chaperones--it's not open to the public--and got to feel the little guys some rather wobbly cucumbers. Good times were had by all. After this we headed to the same restaurant in Gerash that we ate at for that trip a few weekends ago, and then headed home.
So that is pretty much all of note that happened this week. It occurred to me that I haven't really been talking about cultural things as much as I should; all the funny little instances that happen to me at odd times (such as the little old taxi driver the other night who was trying to speak to me in very broken English and Arabic, then noticed a car ahead of him that was driving rather crazily and gestured toward it with a rather well-pronounced "F***!"; or like the bus that passed me as I was waiting for a taxi, where all the men were hanging out the window and shouted a chorus of heavily accented "Hello"s and "I love you"s at me). It is my goal in the final weeks that I'm here, after my return from Eid break, to keep my little notebook on me at all times and mark down such awesome occurrences that I would rather remember years from now when I read this again. At the end of my blogs I'll be sure to share them with you :)
Anyway, at this point, I'm to finish packing at head to Alyssa's where I'm staying the night before she, Chris, and I head off to the airport in the morn'. Our plan is 3 days in Istanbul, 3 days traveling through the country on our way to the southern coast, hitting up Troy and Cappadocia on the way, and then ferrying over to Cyprus for 2 nights. Yes, it sounds rushed, and it will be a whirlwind of sightseeing and blurry views from bus windows, but, just like when I travel anywhere else, I much prefer the ability to just be in a new country and breath in the atmosphere, and just be there. It wasn't our intention from the get-go to spend the full week in Istanbul and see everything there is to see there...we just want to get the general taste of Turkey (hehe, right before Thanksgiving, eh??). Other folks are spending Eid in Egypt, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Dubai...But we figured that, hey, we're studying Arabic, we WILL get back to this region and see those places at some point. We banked more on going somewhere a little out of the way that's a little more unlikely to see us again (though insha'allah it will!!).
I hope y'all have a great week and I'll get back to you in a few days!
Nothing of extreme interest happened in the last 11 days, besides midterms last week (By the way, A on Fusha, A on Amiyya, and A- on Alternative Perspectives - don't you just hate it when all the teacher notes is some check marks on ever paragraph but points magically go missing for no apparent reason?). There were also elections this past week for the parliament; apparently there's just one seat for a Christian representative, and grandpa Alber's second cousin was running. He didn't win, but Rita and Eddie were pleased about the guy who did. It was very exciting...we had no school on Tuesday, as it was declared a national holiday to encourage voter turn-out, and we all received emails from both CIEE and the Embassy about potential demonstrations and protests, and were discouraged from going out. Apparently someone died down in Aqaba due to some tribal tensions once the results were announced! Much more exciting atmosphere here than in the States, it seems!! I went out that night, with my blondish hair covered in a scarf out of paranoia, and went to Alyssa's apartment where we made a rather delicious Mexican meal with fried bananas and ice cream for dessert.
The Saturday before all this was our CIEE day trip to Ajlun. It was...nice. We went first to the Ajlun Nature reserve, which actually was a surprising amount of green. We had breakfast at the visitor center and then took an hour long hike around the hill; had some good views, and made me sort of nostalgic for South Africa: walking in single file through trees, having the species pointed out to us, looking off the hill at the amazing views, and having our leader shout at us to walk more quietly so as not to scare away the wildlife (aka birds and some lizards...).
After this lovely jaunt through the greenery, we headed off to Ajlun Castle; once again, you could probably get more information by looking it up on Wikipedia.
(insert adorable picture here as soon as this Internet allows me to...)
After explore the castle for an excessive amount of time, we went to another reserve where "the King's private herd of deer" was protected...? This was a legitimate large enclosure for deer (unsure of the real name) that are becoming rare in the area. They like the jabal-tops because of the cooler atmosphere. So we went there, with the exclusive access from our Challenger Team chaperones--it's not open to the public--and got to feel the little guys some rather wobbly cucumbers. Good times were had by all. After this we headed to the same restaurant in Gerash that we ate at for that trip a few weekends ago, and then headed home.
So that is pretty much all of note that happened this week. It occurred to me that I haven't really been talking about cultural things as much as I should; all the funny little instances that happen to me at odd times (such as the little old taxi driver the other night who was trying to speak to me in very broken English and Arabic, then noticed a car ahead of him that was driving rather crazily and gestured toward it with a rather well-pronounced "F***!"; or like the bus that passed me as I was waiting for a taxi, where all the men were hanging out the window and shouted a chorus of heavily accented "Hello"s and "I love you"s at me). It is my goal in the final weeks that I'm here, after my return from Eid break, to keep my little notebook on me at all times and mark down such awesome occurrences that I would rather remember years from now when I read this again. At the end of my blogs I'll be sure to share them with you :)
Anyway, at this point, I'm to finish packing at head to Alyssa's where I'm staying the night before she, Chris, and I head off to the airport in the morn'. Our plan is 3 days in Istanbul, 3 days traveling through the country on our way to the southern coast, hitting up Troy and Cappadocia on the way, and then ferrying over to Cyprus for 2 nights. Yes, it sounds rushed, and it will be a whirlwind of sightseeing and blurry views from bus windows, but, just like when I travel anywhere else, I much prefer the ability to just be in a new country and breath in the atmosphere, and just be there. It wasn't our intention from the get-go to spend the full week in Istanbul and see everything there is to see there...we just want to get the general taste of Turkey (hehe, right before Thanksgiving, eh??). Other folks are spending Eid in Egypt, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Dubai...But we figured that, hey, we're studying Arabic, we WILL get back to this region and see those places at some point. We banked more on going somewhere a little out of the way that's a little more unlikely to see us again (though insha'allah it will!!).
I hope y'all have a great week and I'll get back to you in a few days!
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Ketchup
Alright, finally sitting down to this gigantic task of catching up on the last...2 weeks? I'll focus on weekends since that's what most of the more interesting things happen. Sunday-Thursday is typically just school, and my either spending the evening in the house or going to the grocery story, meeting folks at a hookah lounge, etc. Classes are going well, feeling fully comfortable in Advanced One Arabic and have completely caught up through the chapters I had to skip. Not sure if i mentioned this before, but i'm in the same class as the other two girls from IU, Jamie and Ella, both of whom have had the equivalent of 2 years of Arabic, whereas I've had one. If I may gloat a little, i think I have a bit of a knack for this Arrrr-bick thing!
In amiyya class we've been going over different social contexts and the vocabulary involved. In "Alternative Perspectives of the Middle East", we've been reading some essays, as well as watching the movie Salt of this Sea, and just having discussions about our reactions to these different views on aspects of life in the Middle East. And Intro to Islam, having a grand ol' time listening to our Sheikh professor ramble on about God Amighty and talk about how he hates music because it creates unrealistic fantasies, which he says is sinful.
Anywho...last last weekend, spent Thursday night chilling with my girlfriends; we ended up going to a dance club at a hotel to let off some steam from the week, and met some interesting characters!! The next morning I ventured out to Rainbow Street to check out the Souk Jara, a Friday craft and knick-knack market. Found a couple cute things, but it was very small, and I hope sometime to go to the Souk Juma'a (Friday Souk), which is a big flea market (that sounds nasty, but it's a lot of new things too, at extremely low prices). That afternoon, I hit up the gym, and then spent the evening in working, or pretending to work, on some homework. Saturday morning I woke up and went to Makkah Mall to meet with my peer tutor, Farah. She's super sweet, and tries hard to communicate in Araglish (hehe get it?). We wandered around and ended up in a donut shop where she treated me to some scrumptious treats ("ahlan wa sahlan! please please!"). We discussed some of the grammar questions I had, and then we just chatted about cultural stuff for a while.
Can't remember what I did that night, blast! Perhaps the soiree at Jafra?
Week goes by, mish mushkila (no problem)...Thursday night we were supposed to go with Noor to a club thingy at the same hotel as the previous weekend, but that fell through. Luckily, I was invited to go to an engagement party with this girl we'd met at Jafra, Rania (no,not the Queen!!), who is some distant cousin-thingy of Noor's. She'd lived in the states for a while, so her English was spot on. Anyway, the engagement party was for her best friend's engagement. It was so elaborate!! It was basically like a giant prom: dj, lights everywhere, hotel ballroom tables set up with centerpieces and crazy placesettings...I suppose a better analogy would be a high-class Bar Mitzvah, but let's avoid the Hebrew this semester!! This was a Muslim family, although all the dancing was mixed-gender; no alcohol though. All of the women looked absolutely amazing--lots were wearing bedazzled hijabs. So Ali, Julie, and I arrive, and stand awkwardly just inside the door, having just met our friend one time (and we expected she'd be dolled up way beyond our recognition), and we didn't know the bride or groom. After looking for a few moments, Mama approaches, looking absolutely magestic for a large older woman, and just starts welcoming us in, herding us to a table...We're trying to shout "Na'arif Rania! We know Rania", but not like it mattered, which definitely got us girls planning on heading to a random hotel sometime, asking for the engagement/wedding party, saying we know "rasha" and get welcomed in to dance! Not sure that will come to pass though.
Anywho, we ended up dancing and having a good time. Found Rania, but didn't want to take her away from her friend too much so we just hung back and observed. I was sitting next to three girls in hijabs who weren't dancing, so i asked (shouted) why they weren't dancing; their reply was that they couldn't because their fathers and brothers were there. That was kind of interesting, reminded me of my dad not being able to attend his former school's (where he taught) dance recitals because seeing the girls dance would be totally unorthodox.
Good time overall, definitely a cultural experience, and I'm super glad I went. Next day I went to get pancakes with Alyssa, Chris, and Danielle...there was also a marathon/10k around the city, which I totally would have participated in with other friends but apparently I didn't register in time, so carbed out instead :)
After breakfast we headed downtown with the intention of visiting the Citadel, or the ruins of a Roman temple on one of the highest hills in the city, looking over downtown. It took us a while though; we got distracted by the shops and the fruit smoothie stalls...and thennnn we headed up to the Citadel. It was interesting, and there were some nice views of the city. To be perfectly honest though, I'm kind of over Roman ruins!!
Stayed in that night since I had to get up early on Saturday for our program day trip to Northern Jordan. CIEE offers three day trips, apart from the weekend excursion to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba, of which we get to choose two. This was the first one; I'd also signed up for the trip to Ajloun to see the desert castles, and opted out of Biblical Jordan (which would have gone to Madaba, which I've already visited, Mount Nebo, where the church on top is supposedly closed, and the baptism site). We started out around 9am and drove two hours to Um Quais which is a hill chock full of, guess what!, Roman Ruins! It was fun, a lot of us just kind of chilled in the Amphitheater and enjoyed the views. I also got a bit of henna on my hand, done by two girls our age who came along with us. After this, we hit the road for Gerash, where we stopped at this massive site of ruins, which was actually super interesting because it was practically a whole city. There was a giant forum surrouned by an arcade of collumns, which fed into a long avenue flanked on either side by [what Rita said was] one thousand columns. There was also the steps of Artemis (leading to a temple), and a few more interesting facades.
After this we did a hurried browse through the tourist shops (will probably come back for an afternoon of less hurried browsing, as by this point we're only like 45 minutes outside Amman), and then we were taken to a restaurant for a rather extensive meal, and then headed home.
This last week has been pretty smooth; on Wednesday we went to Chris' apartment (no girls allowed in boys' apartments, shhhh!!) to make dinner. Ended up making cheeseburgers with sauteed peppers/zucchini/beans with sweet potato fries. Dessert was an apple crisp; good times were had by all! This weekend was spent studying for the midterms I have this coming week, except for a lovely little dinner out at a Chinese joint--which I'd been craving so hardcore!! Was definitely a nice choice. Everyone was doing things for halloween this year, but i'd kind of grown content with the knowledge that I was just missing it this year, and I'll celebrate it next year with a vengeance! Wish me luck on my midterms on Monday and Tuesday!
In amiyya class we've been going over different social contexts and the vocabulary involved. In "Alternative Perspectives of the Middle East", we've been reading some essays, as well as watching the movie Salt of this Sea, and just having discussions about our reactions to these different views on aspects of life in the Middle East. And Intro to Islam, having a grand ol' time listening to our Sheikh professor ramble on about God Amighty and talk about how he hates music because it creates unrealistic fantasies, which he says is sinful.
Anywho...last last weekend, spent Thursday night chilling with my girlfriends; we ended up going to a dance club at a hotel to let off some steam from the week, and met some interesting characters!! The next morning I ventured out to Rainbow Street to check out the Souk Jara, a Friday craft and knick-knack market. Found a couple cute things, but it was very small, and I hope sometime to go to the Souk Juma'a (Friday Souk), which is a big flea market (that sounds nasty, but it's a lot of new things too, at extremely low prices). That afternoon, I hit up the gym, and then spent the evening in working, or pretending to work, on some homework. Saturday morning I woke up and went to Makkah Mall to meet with my peer tutor, Farah. She's super sweet, and tries hard to communicate in Araglish (hehe get it?). We wandered around and ended up in a donut shop where she treated me to some scrumptious treats ("ahlan wa sahlan! please please!"). We discussed some of the grammar questions I had, and then we just chatted about cultural stuff for a while.
Can't remember what I did that night, blast! Perhaps the soiree at Jafra?
Week goes by, mish mushkila (no problem)...Thursday night we were supposed to go with Noor to a club thingy at the same hotel as the previous weekend, but that fell through. Luckily, I was invited to go to an engagement party with this girl we'd met at Jafra, Rania (no,not the Queen!!), who is some distant cousin-thingy of Noor's. She'd lived in the states for a while, so her English was spot on. Anyway, the engagement party was for her best friend's engagement. It was so elaborate!! It was basically like a giant prom: dj, lights everywhere, hotel ballroom tables set up with centerpieces and crazy placesettings...I suppose a better analogy would be a high-class Bar Mitzvah, but let's avoid the Hebrew this semester!! This was a Muslim family, although all the dancing was mixed-gender; no alcohol though. All of the women looked absolutely amazing--lots were wearing bedazzled hijabs. So Ali, Julie, and I arrive, and stand awkwardly just inside the door, having just met our friend one time (and we expected she'd be dolled up way beyond our recognition), and we didn't know the bride or groom. After looking for a few moments, Mama approaches, looking absolutely magestic for a large older woman, and just starts welcoming us in, herding us to a table...We're trying to shout "Na'arif Rania! We know Rania", but not like it mattered, which definitely got us girls planning on heading to a random hotel sometime, asking for the engagement/wedding party, saying we know "rasha" and get welcomed in to dance! Not sure that will come to pass though.
Anywho, we ended up dancing and having a good time. Found Rania, but didn't want to take her away from her friend too much so we just hung back and observed. I was sitting next to three girls in hijabs who weren't dancing, so i asked (shouted) why they weren't dancing; their reply was that they couldn't because their fathers and brothers were there. That was kind of interesting, reminded me of my dad not being able to attend his former school's (where he taught) dance recitals because seeing the girls dance would be totally unorthodox.
After breakfast we headed downtown with the intention of visiting the Citadel, or the ruins of a Roman temple on one of the highest hills in the city, looking over downtown. It took us a while though; we got distracted by the shops and the fruit smoothie stalls...and thennnn we headed up to the Citadel. It was interesting, and there were some nice views of the city. To be perfectly honest though, I'm kind of over Roman ruins!!
This last week has been pretty smooth; on Wednesday we went to Chris' apartment (no girls allowed in boys' apartments, shhhh!!) to make dinner. Ended up making cheeseburgers with sauteed peppers/zucchini/beans with sweet potato fries. Dessert was an apple crisp; good times were had by all! This weekend was spent studying for the midterms I have this coming week, except for a lovely little dinner out at a Chinese joint--which I'd been craving so hardcore!! Was definitely a nice choice. Everyone was doing things for halloween this year, but i'd kind of grown content with the knowledge that I was just missing it this year, and I'll celebrate it next year with a vengeance! Wish me luck on my midterms on Monday and Tuesday!
Monday, October 18, 2010
Weekend in Beirut
Yes, I know that I'm skipping over a week at school...but as you well know, I'm far, far behind, and would rather get to the juicy details of Beirut, Lebanon and skip over the blah blah details of the school week.
So Thursday, after school and work, we all met by the main gate of the university to catch the service taxi to the airport. By "we all" I mean Alyssa, Chris, Pam, and me. There were about ten others who went to Beirut last weekend, and we definitely ended up meeting to go out together, but the four of us traveled together and shared the hotel room.
Alyssa and Chris (Alyssa's on the left, Chris, obviously, the only guy..) are also the folks I'm traveling to Turkey/Cyprus with over our fall break, which takes place mid-November during the Muslim holiday of Eid-Al-Adha.
Anyhow, we headed to the airport and caught our flight to Beirut; extremely uneventful, only about a 45-minute flight. Immigration was no problem, fun to have another Middle-Eastern stamp in my passport... Caught the taxi sent by the hotel and rode through the city. It's a raaaahther nice place, cleaner than Amman for the most part, a little more put-together. Not as much Arabic on the signage, probably because of the greater amounts of tourism, and the French language from their influence in the past. It was fun to speak French during the weekend :)
The hotel was nice; though we've come to figure out that the Arab version of a double bed is more like a twin and a half, so we had to get cozy to squeeze four of us into a room! After a wash-up, we headed out to meet the other Americans, most of whom had taken a morning flight (and skipped class!!) and had been exploring the city all day. We met them on Jummeizah Street, which was described to us as the Bourbon Street of Beirut. Not quite as hoppin', but we definitely explored the bars and restaurants up and down the street. It was also a nice vacation from the dress code of Jordan: perhaps because of its more European air, we could wear pretty much anything we wanted, and in most cases we still looked more conservative than some of the locals we encountered!!
The next day was rainy and gross, but of course we ventured out anyway! First stop was to the American University of Beirut, so we could do a little comparison of the universities. This one was definitely much nicer than ours; first, their buildings looked right out over the Mediterranean. I mean, really, c'mon! We don't even get a river! Also, there's not so much of a water problem, so their campus consisted of pretty little pathways surrounded by trees and shrubbery. That, plus the lack of strict dress code, made AUB seem just like home, or more so, at least. We ended up having to buy umbrellas; and made a mad dash down the street to eat at Kebab-ji, a noted Lebanese restaurant, for lunch.
After that, we headed downtown to see if we could check out the Al-Omari mosque, which looked beautiful from the outside, and which we'd seen all lit up during our explorations of the previous evening. They didn't allow us in, because we aren't Muslim, but we got some good photos from the open doorway; absolutely beautiful building. We explored downtown some more, passing by the ruins of a Roman bath, and made our way towards one of the two remaining synagogues in Beirut. It was weird asking for directions, we were afraid to ask the armed policemen for the place directly!
We went back to the hotel and checked out the pool situation. They were closed for icky weather, but it looked pretty darn nice...several pools on a giant deck over the Mediterranean, with a few bars n such. Shame it was so cool and rainy out!!
After dressing up a bit we went out to a mall to meet a friend of Alyssa's who had studied with her in Egypt, like, five summers ago (Alyssa's in her mid-twenties and married). We met him and a friend at a restaurant in the mall that was Italian and Japanese food. I'm sure you can guess which one I went for!!
After that, the friend dropped us off at the hotel, where we prepared further for our night out, and then hailed a taxi to go to a club called iBar, downtown. Our fellow Americans had procured a reservation, and it ended up being super fun; I'm definitely a fan of the dance scene. Alyssa and I left around 1am (party animals, I know), which ended up being a good thing because there was some drama when the rest of the Americans tried leaving and the club threw a ridiculous tab at them and forbade them from leaving until it was paid....I dunno, kind of fit with the general concern of being ripped off fairly often because we look like tourists (taxi drivers claiming to not have change, etc etc). We've learned ways of dealing with it, like insisting that we know the taxi route is always 1.50JD, you can NOT tell me it's 15...things like that.
Saturday morning we woke up, packed our bags and checked out of the hotel before getting onto a bus headed for Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns about an hour north of Beirut, along the coast. It's chock full of Roman ruins and interesting little curio shops. Alyssa, Chris, Pam, and I explored the ruins and took an inordinate number of photos, doing the typical tourist thing. Definitely picked up a fez/tarboush, couldn't resist!
It was absolutely beautiful there; we went to a fish restaurant, right off a dock, whose owner was a bit of a tourist attraction himself in the old days, and lots of famous stars came to eat at this place. We definitely decided to splurge on a nice fish lunch, and it was SO worth it!
Hopped on a bus back to Beirut and watched the sun set over the Mediterranean the whole way. Back at the hotel we went onto the pool deck again to get splashed by the rather violent sea waves crashing on the rocks, then got our taxi to the airport. We met up with Ali and Julie at the airport and flew quickly back to Amman.
Overall a super fun, super expensive, weekend! I'd definitely recommend checking out Beirut, or Lebanon in general, if you're ever in this part of the world; It's absolutely beautiful, and a much more European kind of Middle East, which is both fun to see and makes me glad that I"m in a more "traditional" place like Jordan.
So Thursday, after school and work, we all met by the main gate of the university to catch the service taxi to the airport. By "we all" I mean Alyssa, Chris, Pam, and me. There were about ten others who went to Beirut last weekend, and we definitely ended up meeting to go out together, but the four of us traveled together and shared the hotel room.
Anyhow, we headed to the airport and caught our flight to Beirut; extremely uneventful, only about a 45-minute flight. Immigration was no problem, fun to have another Middle-Eastern stamp in my passport... Caught the taxi sent by the hotel and rode through the city. It's a raaaahther nice place, cleaner than Amman for the most part, a little more put-together. Not as much Arabic on the signage, probably because of the greater amounts of tourism, and the French language from their influence in the past. It was fun to speak French during the weekend :)
The hotel was nice; though we've come to figure out that the Arab version of a double bed is more like a twin and a half, so we had to get cozy to squeeze four of us into a room! After a wash-up, we headed out to meet the other Americans, most of whom had taken a morning flight (and skipped class!!) and had been exploring the city all day. We met them on Jummeizah Street, which was described to us as the Bourbon Street of Beirut. Not quite as hoppin', but we definitely explored the bars and restaurants up and down the street. It was also a nice vacation from the dress code of Jordan: perhaps because of its more European air, we could wear pretty much anything we wanted, and in most cases we still looked more conservative than some of the locals we encountered!!
The next day was rainy and gross, but of course we ventured out anyway! First stop was to the American University of Beirut, so we could do a little comparison of the universities. This one was definitely much nicer than ours; first, their buildings looked right out over the Mediterranean. I mean, really, c'mon! We don't even get a river! Also, there's not so much of a water problem, so their campus consisted of pretty little pathways surrounded by trees and shrubbery. That, plus the lack of strict dress code, made AUB seem just like home, or more so, at least. We ended up having to buy umbrellas; and made a mad dash down the street to eat at Kebab-ji, a noted Lebanese restaurant, for lunch.
After that, we headed downtown to see if we could check out the Al-Omari mosque, which looked beautiful from the outside, and which we'd seen all lit up during our explorations of the previous evening. They didn't allow us in, because we aren't Muslim, but we got some good photos from the open doorway; absolutely beautiful building. We explored downtown some more, passing by the ruins of a Roman bath, and made our way towards one of the two remaining synagogues in Beirut. It was weird asking for directions, we were afraid to ask the armed policemen for the place directly!
We went back to the hotel and checked out the pool situation. They were closed for icky weather, but it looked pretty darn nice...several pools on a giant deck over the Mediterranean, with a few bars n such. Shame it was so cool and rainy out!!
After dressing up a bit we went out to a mall to meet a friend of Alyssa's who had studied with her in Egypt, like, five summers ago (Alyssa's in her mid-twenties and married). We met him and a friend at a restaurant in the mall that was Italian and Japanese food. I'm sure you can guess which one I went for!!
After that, the friend dropped us off at the hotel, where we prepared further for our night out, and then hailed a taxi to go to a club called iBar, downtown. Our fellow Americans had procured a reservation, and it ended up being super fun; I'm definitely a fan of the dance scene. Alyssa and I left around 1am (party animals, I know), which ended up being a good thing because there was some drama when the rest of the Americans tried leaving and the club threw a ridiculous tab at them and forbade them from leaving until it was paid....I dunno, kind of fit with the general concern of being ripped off fairly often because we look like tourists (taxi drivers claiming to not have change, etc etc). We've learned ways of dealing with it, like insisting that we know the taxi route is always 1.50JD, you can NOT tell me it's 15...things like that.
Saturday morning we woke up, packed our bags and checked out of the hotel before getting onto a bus headed for Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns about an hour north of Beirut, along the coast. It's chock full of Roman ruins and interesting little curio shops. Alyssa, Chris, Pam, and I explored the ruins and took an inordinate number of photos, doing the typical tourist thing. Definitely picked up a fez/tarboush, couldn't resist!
It was absolutely beautiful there; we went to a fish restaurant, right off a dock, whose owner was a bit of a tourist attraction himself in the old days, and lots of famous stars came to eat at this place. We definitely decided to splurge on a nice fish lunch, and it was SO worth it!
Hopped on a bus back to Beirut and watched the sun set over the Mediterranean the whole way. Back at the hotel we went onto the pool deck again to get splashed by the rather violent sea waves crashing on the rocks, then got our taxi to the airport. We met up with Ali and Julie at the airport and flew quickly back to Amman.
Overall a super fun, super expensive, weekend! I'd definitely recommend checking out Beirut, or Lebanon in general, if you're ever in this part of the world; It's absolutely beautiful, and a much more European kind of Middle East, which is both fun to see and makes me glad that I"m in a more "traditional" place like Jordan.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Weekend Excursion to Southern Jordan
Okay, I know this is almost two weeks ago, so I will try to give as much detail as possible but please bear in mind that I'm a terrible blogger and have lots more to catch up on, especially from this past weekend in Beirut!
So Thursday morning all the students met at the University main gates and were loaded into buses. The trip was about three hours or so, and midroute we stopped at a very touristy craft/souvenir shop. Made it the rest of the way to the Wadi Rum Visitor Center; Wadi Rum, just to clarify, is a desert valley thingy, with mountainous sandstone and granite boulders (probs just easier to look it up on Wikipedia for a better illustration). At the visitor center, we ate lunch and then watched a little NatGeo-esque film about the region.
After a little rest, playing Frisbee in the courtyard and stocking up on kafiyyahs for the trek, we all went out to the camel herd and boarded! It was such a crazy feeling to sit on top of this huge animal, not to mention the saddle was super uncomfortable. But it was awesome! We set out, led by the handlers walking in front of us...ours was from Sudan, and he invited Ali and me to come back there with him when the season ended :P
We rode for about three hours, stopping two or three times to go climb the rock hills and take photos of the absolutely magnificent landscape.
Ended on a dune to watch the sun set over the desert, then we all made our way down the hill to our first camp. Wasn't a true Bedouin camp, but it was loads of fun. Ali, Julie, and I got a tent together, and there was an awesome dinner with a big bonfire in the middle of the encampment that we ended up dancing around with the musicians. In our evening downtime..we ventured out of the camp into the desert, just far enough that the lights weren't in our faces and we could lay back and enjoy the absolutely fantastic views of the sky and count the shooting stars.
The next morning we had b-fast and then split into groups of six to pack into 4x4s to drive through the desert towards Aqaba. It was cool, not as fun as the camels though, just windy and sandy; I made the mistake of putting on chapstick beforehand and my lips were super sandy after 5 minutes! Our driver was a little nuts, and liked to try to race the other jeeps, but good times all around.
The 4x4s dropped us off at the main road where our buses were waiting to take us the final 10 minutes into the city of Aqaba. It's a nice little port town, looked rather high-end, and we had a snazzy little lunch before going to our yachts (yes, yachts) to go out onto the Red Sea to snorkel. I must be blunt, it's times like these, when we get to strip down to our bathing suits, that are very welcome vacations from the modest of Jordanian dress codes!!
After our evening play on the water, loaded back into buses to head to another camp close to Petra. Some people stayed out in the middle of the encampment to sleep under the stars; I'd already claimed a tent though with some other girl and thought I'd be happy to have the privacy and better sleep. The days were jam-packed with activities, and the final day at Petra would be the longest of all!
Woke up early to get to Petra; the program offered two routes: either take the bus to the Visitor's Center and then hike through the site, or take the "intense" backdoor hike, in which you end up at the far end of the site and would see everything in reverse when headed back to the visitor's center. I took the easy way out, knowing myself, I thought I'd rather not push it, not in that heat.
Let me tell you, there was nothing easy about the easy hike. Granted, it was all level land, no slinking around tight rock ledges or anything like the other one, but boy oh boy...soooo much walking. From the visitor's center, it took about 20 minutes walking through a canyon, through sand, to get to the Treasury, which is typically the main image of Petra, that facade carved into the rock face (again, check out Wikipedia to see everything I saw...still unable to post pictures here, unsure why!!)
From there, more walking, exiting the canyon into the tomb area..lots more smaller facades lining the cliffs. It was a little creepy looking into the doorways!! Passed by the amphitheater, and moved more into the residential area. The homes weren't build into the rocks, and therefore there was nothing really recognizable because of all of the erosion and earthquakes; just a large area of rubble. Up on the hill there was the tent I'd been keeping an eye out for...That was the Petra Chapel, excavated by ACOR, the folks I'm working with, and they had the display of the amazing mosaic floors open to the passing tourists. It was cool to see a completed project by them; and I also saw from afar the Temple of the Winged Lions, a project already completed but poorly so, and I'll be helping with the new organization of the data, making it available to scholars online, etc.
We all had lunch at the one restaurant on the site, and afterwards a few of us decided to brave the heat and climb the 800 stairs (and by stairs i mean terribly eroded, very steep slope that might once have been suitable stairs) to the Monastery. Along the way, the Bedouin people--who are no longer allowed to sleep in Petra but can work there during the day--had stalls set up with jewelry and drinks, and were encouraging us along the way, shouting "Just 10 more minutes! You're halfway there I promise!!" Some were even leading donkeys up that you could pay to ride.
All was well, and we made it, huffing and puffing, rather moist on the forehead... The Monastery looked very much like the Treasury; a similar facade carved into a wall of rock, so we turned our attention to a sign on top of a boulder that said "The Highest View". Yet more climbing (buns of steel, yes?), and made it to this lookout point that seemed to be the highest point in the entire area, and we had some fantastic views of the canyons and surrounding desert. Some guys had a tent up there with souvenirs, and they served tea to us; we asked if they camp out up there, and they bragged about sometimes staying up there overnight! I don't blame them...I wouldn't want that climb every day, no matter how rewarding the view from the office!! All the way back down, it was fun commiserating with the people going up, encouraging them in French, English, and a bit of broken Spanish and German to continue the last 10 minutes, 20 minutes..the view was so worth it. To give you an idea of the distance of our "easy" hike: From the High View, climbing down the mountain, stopping just a hot minute to purchase a necklace or two from the Bedouins, going back through the residential areas, the tomb area, back to the Treasury, and through the canyon to the Visitor's Center, it took us about 1.5 hours of rather hurried walking!! (Had to meet by 3:30 to catch the bus)
Needless to say, everyone passed out in the bus on the way home. Didn't get home til about 9pm, and then had to do my MSA homework!! Took the best shower of my life, and rested up for Sunday's class.
So Thursday morning all the students met at the University main gates and were loaded into buses. The trip was about three hours or so, and midroute we stopped at a very touristy craft/souvenir shop. Made it the rest of the way to the Wadi Rum Visitor Center; Wadi Rum, just to clarify, is a desert valley thingy, with mountainous sandstone and granite boulders (probs just easier to look it up on Wikipedia for a better illustration). At the visitor center, we ate lunch and then watched a little NatGeo-esque film about the region.
After a little rest, playing Frisbee in the courtyard and stocking up on kafiyyahs for the trek, we all went out to the camel herd and boarded! It was such a crazy feeling to sit on top of this huge animal, not to mention the saddle was super uncomfortable. But it was awesome! We set out, led by the handlers walking in front of us...ours was from Sudan, and he invited Ali and me to come back there with him when the season ended :P
We rode for about three hours, stopping two or three times to go climb the rock hills and take photos of the absolutely magnificent landscape.
Ended on a dune to watch the sun set over the desert, then we all made our way down the hill to our first camp. Wasn't a true Bedouin camp, but it was loads of fun. Ali, Julie, and I got a tent together, and there was an awesome dinner with a big bonfire in the middle of the encampment that we ended up dancing around with the musicians. In our evening downtime..we ventured out of the camp into the desert, just far enough that the lights weren't in our faces and we could lay back and enjoy the absolutely fantastic views of the sky and count the shooting stars.
The next morning we had b-fast and then split into groups of six to pack into 4x4s to drive through the desert towards Aqaba. It was cool, not as fun as the camels though, just windy and sandy; I made the mistake of putting on chapstick beforehand and my lips were super sandy after 5 minutes! Our driver was a little nuts, and liked to try to race the other jeeps, but good times all around.
The 4x4s dropped us off at the main road where our buses were waiting to take us the final 10 minutes into the city of Aqaba. It's a nice little port town, looked rather high-end, and we had a snazzy little lunch before going to our yachts (yes, yachts) to go out onto the Red Sea to snorkel. I must be blunt, it's times like these, when we get to strip down to our bathing suits, that are very welcome vacations from the modest of Jordanian dress codes!!
After our evening play on the water, loaded back into buses to head to another camp close to Petra. Some people stayed out in the middle of the encampment to sleep under the stars; I'd already claimed a tent though with some other girl and thought I'd be happy to have the privacy and better sleep. The days were jam-packed with activities, and the final day at Petra would be the longest of all!
Woke up early to get to Petra; the program offered two routes: either take the bus to the Visitor's Center and then hike through the site, or take the "intense" backdoor hike, in which you end up at the far end of the site and would see everything in reverse when headed back to the visitor's center. I took the easy way out, knowing myself, I thought I'd rather not push it, not in that heat.
Let me tell you, there was nothing easy about the easy hike. Granted, it was all level land, no slinking around tight rock ledges or anything like the other one, but boy oh boy...soooo much walking. From the visitor's center, it took about 20 minutes walking through a canyon, through sand, to get to the Treasury, which is typically the main image of Petra, that facade carved into the rock face (again, check out Wikipedia to see everything I saw...still unable to post pictures here, unsure why!!)
From there, more walking, exiting the canyon into the tomb area..lots more smaller facades lining the cliffs. It was a little creepy looking into the doorways!! Passed by the amphitheater, and moved more into the residential area. The homes weren't build into the rocks, and therefore there was nothing really recognizable because of all of the erosion and earthquakes; just a large area of rubble. Up on the hill there was the tent I'd been keeping an eye out for...That was the Petra Chapel, excavated by ACOR, the folks I'm working with, and they had the display of the amazing mosaic floors open to the passing tourists. It was cool to see a completed project by them; and I also saw from afar the Temple of the Winged Lions, a project already completed but poorly so, and I'll be helping with the new organization of the data, making it available to scholars online, etc.
We all had lunch at the one restaurant on the site, and afterwards a few of us decided to brave the heat and climb the 800 stairs (and by stairs i mean terribly eroded, very steep slope that might once have been suitable stairs) to the Monastery. Along the way, the Bedouin people--who are no longer allowed to sleep in Petra but can work there during the day--had stalls set up with jewelry and drinks, and were encouraging us along the way, shouting "Just 10 more minutes! You're halfway there I promise!!" Some were even leading donkeys up that you could pay to ride.
All was well, and we made it, huffing and puffing, rather moist on the forehead... The Monastery looked very much like the Treasury; a similar facade carved into a wall of rock, so we turned our attention to a sign on top of a boulder that said "The Highest View". Yet more climbing (buns of steel, yes?), and made it to this lookout point that seemed to be the highest point in the entire area, and we had some fantastic views of the canyons and surrounding desert. Some guys had a tent up there with souvenirs, and they served tea to us; we asked if they camp out up there, and they bragged about sometimes staying up there overnight! I don't blame them...I wouldn't want that climb every day, no matter how rewarding the view from the office!! All the way back down, it was fun commiserating with the people going up, encouraging them in French, English, and a bit of broken Spanish and German to continue the last 10 minutes, 20 minutes..the view was so worth it. To give you an idea of the distance of our "easy" hike: From the High View, climbing down the mountain, stopping just a hot minute to purchase a necklace or two from the Bedouins, going back through the residential areas, the tomb area, back to the Treasury, and through the canyon to the Visitor's Center, it took us about 1.5 hours of rather hurried walking!! (Had to meet by 3:30 to catch the bus)
Needless to say, everyone passed out in the bus on the way home. Didn't get home til about 9pm, and then had to do my MSA homework!! Took the best shower of my life, and rested up for Sunday's class.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Week two
Ok definitely going to breeze by this week, since I want to get to the awesomeness that was this past weekend.
Last Saturday was spent in a day of activities with our peer tutors, students from the University of Jordan who are willing to meet with us to discuss culture, homework help, extra language lessons, etc, as well as getting help from us with English.
It took place at a YWCA (yeah...) camp about 30 minutes outside Amman, and it definitely felt like we were back at camp; we weren't warned of what we were going to do, so a lot of us chicks were in our cute clothes to meet our tutors, etc. It was literally about 4 hours of ice breaker activities, and, granted, it was fun commiserating with the other CIEE students and the Jordanians. I collected a few phone numbers of nice girls and a guy or two who were paired with friends of mine in the program, but, wouldn't you know it: my peer tutor didn't even show up. A whole day of breaking ice, for nothing! No, no, it was fun, but for those of you reading this in order to check out the workings of CIEE, this was a small example of their slight disorganization. Some CIEE students weren't even on the attendance list for this event, let alone did they have names of tutors to match up with. There seems to have been a few of these little annoyances and all the students moan, "oh, CIEE's at it again."
Class all week, fine, fine, well and good. For another example of lack of organization: I requested to change my Amiyya professor because he wasn't nearly as engaging or exciting as the other teachers I'd been with during the first week of class distribution. The day before the class was to take place, I asked the woman in charge of class switches if I would get my revised schedule today. She said after their meeting was out, at 4ish, they'd have the schedules in our mailboxes. I was to go to work and wasn't planning on coming back to the office, and she replied "Don't worry, we send out emails so you'll know." Ok, so I left, and by 10pm that night when I hadn't gotten an email, I sent her one, asking whether I'm to be at the old class at 8am or the new one at 9:30...I'd reeeeally like to know. No answer. I decided I'd be at school early enough to know for either class, and just camp out on campus with homework if I was early. By 8am the office still was not open, even though a class was to take place there at 8, and when someone finally did unlock the door, there was nothing in my mailbox. So i booked it to my class, late, of course. Only found out afterwards that I'd in fact been changed, and would have to wait until the following Monday to actually attend it. So there's another example of the disorganization, but, I mean, I wouldn't sweat those things; I'm just a personality who really likes order and knowing where I'm supposed to be, and receiving answers to vital questions like whether or not I get to sleep in for an extra 1.5hours!! :)
Thursday was my first real day of work at ACOR, and since I'd written a lovely diary entry about it (I need to keep one in order to get internship credit towards my Anthropology major), I'll just post it here :D
First real day of internship; Sunday, no one was really around to show me what to do, so I browsed through the library and checked out the ACOR publications on the Petra Papyri, etc. Allison, the director of ACOR had also given me a book on Petra, written by her friend Jane Taylor; she said they typically give the unpaid interns a gift of appreciation at the end of their stints at ACOR, but since the CIEE students are going to see Petra, she decided to jump the gun and hand me this book. I’m looking forward to being the group expert on the history of Petra! She also gave me the tourist pamphlets with maps of the site, and Allison highlighted where the excavations were at the Churches (mostly of Petra Chapel, and also the Blue Chapel and the Ridge Chapel), which weren’t even illustrated on the beaten tourist path.
So the first day: During lunch (which is provided for the scholars-in-residence, and includes me as a sort of payment), I spoke to a young woman from Brown University working on her dissertation on Byzantine glasswork, and is in Jordan to check out the sites and use the ACOR library for research. It seems she’s been everywhere and done so many digs; very interesting to talk to, and I’m sure I’ll pick her brain over lunch during the two months she’s around.
After the meal, I went with Tali E. G. (will get full name next time) to sort through some pottery shards. Tali is a specialist in “later” pottery, so she showed me how to fill out forms, noting the locus/trench, date excavated, how many shards, the type of shard (rim, base, handle, etc.), the function (jar, bowl, etc.), material (forgot the correct title for this; things such as fine ware, coarse ware, painted, etc.), the general time period and then a more specific time period (early Roman, Roman/Byzantine, etc.). It was interesting to watch her work: she’d empty out the bag and separate the later shards and left the older, handmade pottery bits for the other woman working on them, and then seem to merely count them, flip them over, and convey all of the aforementioned information, it was crazy! I told her that when she has more free time, I’d love for her to explain her thought process. That project didn’t last too long; some mix-up about being concerned that she’s already noted those shards and the woman she’s working with was disorganized, yadda yadda.
Next we went to the archival project: small room, of which one wall is completely full of binders, boxes, and notebooks. All of that was from a thirty year excavation of the Temple of the Winged Lions at Petra by [Name], but apparently his research was so poorly done, and out of 8,000-some artifacts uncovered, only 78 were used to illustrate this guy’s thesis. Apparently scholars have been waiting ages for a more comprehensive presentation of the excavation, so Chris Tuttle, along with Tali and a few others, are working on digitizing all of the documents and photographs from the excavation and sharing them with the world, and creating a more illustrative publication. They also plan to go into the site and stabilize it and make it more accessible to tourists; they say this will be a seven-year project. Also, many methods have changed so they can now date the site and the artifacts found within it. Chris explained the frustration of many younger archaeologists that published works only highlighted the findings that suited the author; he was very gung-ho about making everything accessible to everyone researching the topic. I’ll have to understand a bit more about his visions of future archaeological excavation practices. He said he would teach me how to use computer illustration programs so that I might make digital drawings of some of the shard sketches, etc.
I finally asked him what the possibility was of seeing the Petra excavation site, and he said that was definitely a possibility since he liked getting us “kids” (this guy’s like 30 years old…) out of the grunt-work dungeons and into the actual cake.
This day made me so excited to continue working at ACOR and getting more involved with these projects and learning more of the details of each; I was particularly intrigued by the fact that my name would eventually appear in publications as having helped out Will definitely have to start taking a notebook with me though to be sure I catch names and terms!!
(end of diary)
Also this week, finally met up with my real peer tutor, who was not the one listed at the Peer Tutor event day. We met up at a cafe just off campus; she seems really sweet, rather innocent (she could have passed for 15), and asked lots of questions. Her English is so-so, which is in a way good because I'll be forced to communicate in Arabic, however if I'm having her help me with homework, might be nice to have explanations of grammar functions in English. We'll just have to see! I think our plan is to meet every Sunday afternoon, since ACOR decided they'd rather have me 12:30-4 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and not have me come on Sunday.
Izzy's 21st birthday party was last week, too, and we all went out to eat at Cantina Hookah Bar. They started playing Happy Birthday over the loudspeaker, and all the people in the restaurant turned to stare at us, it was awesome! Noor and Senan had bought a big cake and brought it for the restaurant staff to present to Izzy during the music, very American style.
Finally, Wednesday night, we checked out the bar scene on Rainbow Street; about 10 of us met up at La Callet bar, and after chilling for a while we explored Gerard's Ice Cream on the corner, and I totally at some nutella ice cream...ohhhhmigosh I can tell that's going to be so dangerous!!
Thursday morning we left for our weekend trip to the Golden Triangle (Wadi Rum, Petra, and Aqaba), so that'll be the next post! Absolutely amazing trip, I hope you'll read about it!!
Last Saturday was spent in a day of activities with our peer tutors, students from the University of Jordan who are willing to meet with us to discuss culture, homework help, extra language lessons, etc, as well as getting help from us with English.
It took place at a YWCA (yeah...) camp about 30 minutes outside Amman, and it definitely felt like we were back at camp; we weren't warned of what we were going to do, so a lot of us chicks were in our cute clothes to meet our tutors, etc. It was literally about 4 hours of ice breaker activities, and, granted, it was fun commiserating with the other CIEE students and the Jordanians. I collected a few phone numbers of nice girls and a guy or two who were paired with friends of mine in the program, but, wouldn't you know it: my peer tutor didn't even show up. A whole day of breaking ice, for nothing! No, no, it was fun, but for those of you reading this in order to check out the workings of CIEE, this was a small example of their slight disorganization. Some CIEE students weren't even on the attendance list for this event, let alone did they have names of tutors to match up with. There seems to have been a few of these little annoyances and all the students moan, "oh, CIEE's at it again."
Class all week, fine, fine, well and good. For another example of lack of organization: I requested to change my Amiyya professor because he wasn't nearly as engaging or exciting as the other teachers I'd been with during the first week of class distribution. The day before the class was to take place, I asked the woman in charge of class switches if I would get my revised schedule today. She said after their meeting was out, at 4ish, they'd have the schedules in our mailboxes. I was to go to work and wasn't planning on coming back to the office, and she replied "Don't worry, we send out emails so you'll know." Ok, so I left, and by 10pm that night when I hadn't gotten an email, I sent her one, asking whether I'm to be at the old class at 8am or the new one at 9:30...I'd reeeeally like to know. No answer. I decided I'd be at school early enough to know for either class, and just camp out on campus with homework if I was early. By 8am the office still was not open, even though a class was to take place there at 8, and when someone finally did unlock the door, there was nothing in my mailbox. So i booked it to my class, late, of course. Only found out afterwards that I'd in fact been changed, and would have to wait until the following Monday to actually attend it. So there's another example of the disorganization, but, I mean, I wouldn't sweat those things; I'm just a personality who really likes order and knowing where I'm supposed to be, and receiving answers to vital questions like whether or not I get to sleep in for an extra 1.5hours!! :)
Thursday was my first real day of work at ACOR, and since I'd written a lovely diary entry about it (I need to keep one in order to get internship credit towards my Anthropology major), I'll just post it here :D
First real day of internship; Sunday, no one was really around to show me what to do, so I browsed through the library and checked out the ACOR publications on the Petra Papyri, etc. Allison, the director of ACOR had also given me a book on Petra, written by her friend Jane Taylor; she said they typically give the unpaid interns a gift of appreciation at the end of their stints at ACOR, but since the CIEE students are going to see Petra, she decided to jump the gun and hand me this book. I’m looking forward to being the group expert on the history of Petra! She also gave me the tourist pamphlets with maps of the site, and Allison highlighted where the excavations were at the Churches (mostly of Petra Chapel, and also the Blue Chapel and the Ridge Chapel), which weren’t even illustrated on the beaten tourist path.
So the first day: During lunch (which is provided for the scholars-in-residence, and includes me as a sort of payment), I spoke to a young woman from Brown University working on her dissertation on Byzantine glasswork, and is in Jordan to check out the sites and use the ACOR library for research. It seems she’s been everywhere and done so many digs; very interesting to talk to, and I’m sure I’ll pick her brain over lunch during the two months she’s around.
After the meal, I went with Tali E. G. (will get full name next time) to sort through some pottery shards. Tali is a specialist in “later” pottery, so she showed me how to fill out forms, noting the locus/trench, date excavated, how many shards, the type of shard (rim, base, handle, etc.), the function (jar, bowl, etc.), material (forgot the correct title for this; things such as fine ware, coarse ware, painted, etc.), the general time period and then a more specific time period (early Roman, Roman/Byzantine, etc.). It was interesting to watch her work: she’d empty out the bag and separate the later shards and left the older, handmade pottery bits for the other woman working on them, and then seem to merely count them, flip them over, and convey all of the aforementioned information, it was crazy! I told her that when she has more free time, I’d love for her to explain her thought process. That project didn’t last too long; some mix-up about being concerned that she’s already noted those shards and the woman she’s working with was disorganized, yadda yadda.
Next we went to the archival project: small room, of which one wall is completely full of binders, boxes, and notebooks. All of that was from a thirty year excavation of the Temple of the Winged Lions at Petra by [Name], but apparently his research was so poorly done, and out of 8,000-some artifacts uncovered, only 78 were used to illustrate this guy’s thesis. Apparently scholars have been waiting ages for a more comprehensive presentation of the excavation, so Chris Tuttle, along with Tali and a few others, are working on digitizing all of the documents and photographs from the excavation and sharing them with the world, and creating a more illustrative publication. They also plan to go into the site and stabilize it and make it more accessible to tourists; they say this will be a seven-year project. Also, many methods have changed so they can now date the site and the artifacts found within it. Chris explained the frustration of many younger archaeologists that published works only highlighted the findings that suited the author; he was very gung-ho about making everything accessible to everyone researching the topic. I’ll have to understand a bit more about his visions of future archaeological excavation practices. He said he would teach me how to use computer illustration programs so that I might make digital drawings of some of the shard sketches, etc.
I finally asked him what the possibility was of seeing the Petra excavation site, and he said that was definitely a possibility since he liked getting us “kids” (this guy’s like 30 years old…) out of the grunt-work dungeons and into the actual cake.
This day made me so excited to continue working at ACOR and getting more involved with these projects and learning more of the details of each; I was particularly intrigued by the fact that my name would eventually appear in publications as having helped out Will definitely have to start taking a notebook with me though to be sure I catch names and terms!!
(end of diary)
Also this week, finally met up with my real peer tutor, who was not the one listed at the Peer Tutor event day. We met up at a cafe just off campus; she seems really sweet, rather innocent (she could have passed for 15), and asked lots of questions. Her English is so-so, which is in a way good because I'll be forced to communicate in Arabic, however if I'm having her help me with homework, might be nice to have explanations of grammar functions in English. We'll just have to see! I think our plan is to meet every Sunday afternoon, since ACOR decided they'd rather have me 12:30-4 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and not have me come on Sunday.
Izzy's 21st birthday party was last week, too, and we all went out to eat at Cantina Hookah Bar. They started playing Happy Birthday over the loudspeaker, and all the people in the restaurant turned to stare at us, it was awesome! Noor and Senan had bought a big cake and brought it for the restaurant staff to present to Izzy during the music, very American style.
Finally, Wednesday night, we checked out the bar scene on Rainbow Street; about 10 of us met up at La Callet bar, and after chilling for a while we explored Gerard's Ice Cream on the corner, and I totally at some nutella ice cream...ohhhhmigosh I can tell that's going to be so dangerous!!
Thursday morning we left for our weekend trip to the Golden Triangle (Wadi Rum, Petra, and Aqaba), so that'll be the next post! Absolutely amazing trip, I hope you'll read about it!!
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