About a week ago most of the students went downtown after school to buy traditional Arab clothes for the Badia. We were joined by two of the SIT volunteers, Basheer and Muhannad, and Dema the homestay co-ordinator, and her friend Ramy. I don’t really like traveling in a really large group, and this outing definitely constituted the conspicuous variety I strive to avoid. We met at the Hussein Mosque and a group of about 15-20 of us waited around 10 minutes for the rest of the group to arrive. We had to awkwardly move out of the way when a tanker truck carrying water had to pull up to the mosque. The whole event was pretty funny though, because I saw a Jordanian youth lurking near the groups as if he were one of our Arab friends on the trip. I noticed his friends were trying to discretely take a picture on their phone of him standing near the large group of foreigners.
We then split off by gender, which thankfully made our group into about 10. Muhannad and Basheer brought us to a shop and orchestrated the bargaining. We were set up with the whole outfit for a bargain price of 30JD. The quality seems pretty good too. Afterwards we browsed around for a bit and then made our way to a coffee shop where we were all supposed to meet. Naturally the girls took forever (they weren’t helped by the fact that there were around 18 of them probably) so the men meanwhile smoked hookah and chilled.
Blurry Shot of the Royal Film Commission
My host mom had been in the hospital for a few days. She apparently slipped a disk and was having serious back issues and trouble standing up. Fortunately she came home the other day and seems to be improving pretty quickly.
I had one of my first going out experiences in Amman last weekend. On thursday we travelled as a group to the Royal Film Commission, which is basically in charge of helping movie production within Jordan. There we saw a private screening of a new Jordanian film Transit Cities. The film won at the Dubai film festival, and has not been seen by any audience outside of festivals... so we were the first screening to non-critics. The director was present too to talk about the film and answer any questions. It was a pretty good movie and definitely a unique opportunity.
After the film a group of us went to a place called Books@cafe which is near a neighborhood off a popular destination, Rainbow Street. It’s a pretty neat place and I had some fish & chips and beer which was a nice reminder of home. The fish was probably better than the fish at Commons, but it was definitely not competition for New England seafood. I had a couple of Amstels (5JD a pop) and shared some hookah, then joined a group that was headed to a Chinese restaurant. The restaurant was pretty legit, and I had a screwdriver with some grenadine they called it a “Jamaican” and an appetizer. From there we tried to go to a bar on Rainbow street called La Calle but the place was at capacity, so instead we opted for a place called Murphy’s. We stayed there for a bit and then when the group was headed back to Jeff’s, one of the students, friend’s place I decided to head for home. It was fun to get out, but it was a pretty expensive night, and one I doubt I’ll be repeating too often.
After I got home that night I got a call from Tim, another student... only when I said hello I heard indiscernible arabic. Right away I knew that he had left his phone in a cab. The guy from the cab company could speak a little bit of english so I tried to explain where I lived, but I could tell it wasn’t getting through. They agreed to meet me at an intersection nearby, so I was about to head out the door when my host dad came to my room. I told him what was going on and he drove me to the intersection. We called the phone back after a few minutes and he spoke to the driver in arabic and found out that he was waiting at a circle, not at the intersection nearby. I paid the cabby for the fare he had racked up, and got the phone back. It was really fortunate that my host dad came home in time, otherwise I would’ve been quite literally lost in translation.
There was another interesting taxi story too. I carpooled back home with a couple other students. After we dropped the last one off the driver, who seemed like a nice old guy, was like “you’ll have to pay me 5 because there were 3 orders.” Which I quickly shot down saying “I’ll pay what the meter says like every other time.” That issue seemed resolved, but then he stopped about 2 minutes from my neighborhood to pick up some random dude. The guy said hi, but as soon as I was in walking distance and just before the meter hit 4 JD, I bailed to make sure I got a whole JD in change.
Last Saturday we went to the old capital of Jordan, Salt. Basheer organized the trip for us, since he’s from Salt. We went to a coffee shop first, with great arabic coffee, and then went to an archaeological museum. We walked through town afterwards to a park where a bunch of old men were playing mankala, or “seven stones”. It reminded me of chess games in New York. There were a group of photojournalists there who were more eager to take pictures than the American tourists. Muhannad explained to us that they were trying to document the traditional culture for history, in hopes that such traditions won’t die out with that generation.
Sarah just had to ruin my picture of the smiling kids.
We also visited the shrine of Saint George. The church was built at his request, and then an addition was added. People often go there to ask for miracles to be fulfilled.
Salt was a great city, much less metropolitan than Amman, and had a nice calm pace about it. We visited another museum, specifically about Salt and Jordan’s history afterwards, and then made our way by bus to a handicrafts shop. The shop is apparently like a state-sponsored co-op for poor women, who make handmade items like tea trays, soap, bags and dresses, and then sell them to help support themselves. The co-op is apparently pretty big with the Queen, and it seemed like a great place. I bought a tea tray with a desert scene and a camel on it for my mom. After the shop we went to watch the sunset from a ridge where, had it been clearer, we would have been able to see into Palestine.
The weekly demonstrations have continued on friday. A couple of kids were downtown shopping last friday when a large demonstration occurred. They snapped a couple of photos, and then hightailed it. Apparently a fight broke out at the event, and it made international news.
I’m pretty much decided on my ISP topic. I talked to one of our guest lecturers after his talk and ran my idea by him. He seems like a secular reformer, so we’ll be like minded. He was interested in advising me and gave me his email. He’s currently in Egypt interviewing people who were in Tahrir Square and members of the military. Seems like a pretty good match.
I just came down with a case of food poisoning yesterday. I came down with a fever, headache and fatigue. I went with Ahmad, an administrative assistant, to see Dema’s father who’s a doctor. He prescribed me Cipro and a pain killer. I’m already feeling a lot better today, though I’m still making frequent trips to the restroom. I was worried because on thursday we’re heading to our Badia homestays. I’ll be feeling better by then for sure, but I just hope my stomach has settled down. That homestay is going to be very intense, so I don’t need anything else complicating it. Some of my dinner spilt on my keyboard, and I thought my macbook was finished. It’s working off and on, and hopefully it just needs to dry out. I had written a paper while at home today, and was just thankful to be able to email it to myself. Here’s hoping it lasts the rest of the trip... fortunately I won’t be needing it in the desert.
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