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!!