Reasons my roommate is awesome

1) She speaks to me in Arabic. She is incredibly patient with my feeble attempts to express myself. She takes time to teaches me new words and make sure I understand what she is saying.
2) She is a great cook! Today she made me a traditional Jordanian meal of chicken and rice and vegetables that literally translates as Upside-down. She is constantly knocking on my door with some home-cooked dinner or breakfast that never fails to be delicious. 
3) She takes care of me when I am sick. On Wednesday she gave me fresh squeezed orange juice in bed because I wasn't feeling well. She always has some sort of Arabic remedy for everything that she makes sure I eat or drink.
4) We share everything. Our food and cooking supplies are communal, which is much less stressful and has really worked out. 
5) She is a good friend. Today she announced that "Friday is for family, and we are family" so we sat down and enjoying a traditional Jordanian lunch today and just talked about life and Jordan. Next week, we are going to Abdoun together and I might get to meet her family!

In short, getting to know my roommate has been a great part of horrible week. 

This is my flatmate, Sahira. She is a Jordanian journalist. We share a kitchen and bathroom and common space but have our own rooms.

مقلوبة

Happy!

I am so happy in my new building. I made a bunch of new friends today and really feel immersed in the language. There was a birthday party here for the little two-year-old girl who lives in our building--lots of dancing and cake and laughing...I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, absorbing how Jordanians celebrate life and enjoy each other's company. Everyone was very welcoming and the owner of the building takes teaching me Arabic and the language pledge very seriously, which is key to getting everyone to speak Arabic with me. The girls here are very nice and eager to meet me. After some persuasion, they speak pretty much just Arabic with me and it is so so helpful. In just one day, I can feel how much my language has improved. I think I am going to really like it here. I am finally having the experience I was hoping for!

Long overdue update

I have midterms this week but I promised that I would give some long overdue updates to what's going on in my life so this is my form of procrastination of choice at the moment. That and cooking (read as trying my darndest to make all the healthy ingredients I bought as unhealthy as possible). 

The truth is that a lot has happened that I wasn't entirely comfortable with writing about until we figured everything out. It's been about a month since we figured out that the apartment we were living in was a functioning brothel. We found out in stages: after a huge fight between prostitutes in the parking lot adjacent to the building that the coffee shop we lived next too attracted so many wealthy foreign (i.e. from the Gulf States) because that's where they pick up their clients. Then that the prostitutes actually live in our building and enter discreetly after curfew through a secret entrance in the back of the cafe. Then that the owner of our building knew...then that she is actually the sister-in-law of the owner of the cafe.

Once we knew all the clues were obvious and fell into place, like the red lights and moulin rogue windmill that adorns the coffee shops or the elevator buttons to secret floors. Likewise, most of the harassment happens on the corner by our building and we learned that standing there with your hair uncovered in immodest clothes by Middle Eastern standards is going to get you propositioned to. (I think Alexa holds the record, four times.) I credit my escaping propositions to my average to below-average looks and the fact that I wear men's pants most of the time. The more beautiful girls of the program have not been so lucky and two were groped.
It was very clear that we needed to move as soon as possible, but of course it wasn't that simple. There are no dorms in the university itself, but plenty of dorm buildings in the surrounding areas. Most were full since the school year has already started and all have a curfew of 10:00 or maybe even earlier. Fortunately, the owner of the boy's building sped up his construction and furnishings of a new apartment building and all of girls were able to move in there this week. The apartments are very luxurious and obviously above Middlebury's budget. The big bonus for everyone was that there is no curfew in the new apartments and men will probably be able to come and hang out in a shared apartment there, like we can in their building. 

However, I chose not to move into the new apartments with everyone else. There was an opportunity for a few of us to live in a dorm building with other Jordanian girls and possibly an Arab roommate and I felt that this way much more important to me that greater freedoms to stay out at night. I was the only girl to take up this opportunity so currently the only American living in a building full of Arab girls, which is hard but I think it is good challenge for me to meet more Arabs and speak a lot of Arabic. Though I am in an apartment by myself right now, I am very excited because my Syrian roommate is moving in on November 1. The fact that we were not roomed with Jordanians or native Arabic speakers was my biggest disappointment from this program, so I am ecstatic that the bad situation of living in a brothel turned into a wonderful opportunity to immerse myself even further in the language and the culture. 

عادي عادي

Things that are normal in Jordan:

-Having between 7 and 13 siblings

-Not being in the same school as the opposite sex until university

-Having more than one cell phone

-Living with your family until marriage

-Green oranges

-5 warm fresh baked pitas for 7 cents

-Trucks that drive around playing music like ice cream trucks only instead of ice cream tanks of gas for your stove

-Beautiful girls' names that mean things like "Sunrise" "Smile" "Unattainable Desire" "Lots of rain"

-The same four boys names: Mohammed, Omar, Mahmud, Ahmed 

-Cup of freshly squeezed mango juice for $1.30

-Hearing recitations of the Qur'an in shops

-Running across busy highways

-Men's shoes that turn up at the end (can't help thinking about elf shoes)

-Smoking

-Men sitting in the front seat with the taxi driver

-Dust and sand and palm trees

-Guys holding hands

-Asking a foreigner his/her religion and if they are married right away

Things that are not normal in Jordan:

-Wearing shorts

-Dogs

-Going for a run

-Vegetarians

-Grapefruits :(

-Crosswalks

-Automatic washing machines and dryers

-Water pressure

-Rain (it is stranger than I thought it would be....just always knowing it will be sunny out)

-Casual friendships between young men and women

-Dating before you get engaged

Another Marriage Proposal

Just came back from the mosque in a second vain attempt to figure out when the class for foreigners to study the Qur'an is happening. Regardless, I had a very interesting conversation with a woman there that I really want to transcribe for further analysis/amusement. (Words in Italics were said in Arabic)

Nadia: Peace be unto you.

Me: And also with you.

Nadia: Do you speak Arabic?

Me: Yes.

Nadia: What's up?

Me: I am looking for the class for foreigners to read the Qur'an.

Nadia: Are you married?

Me: No.

Nadia: Where are you from? 

Me: America.

Nadia: Is your whole family Muslim or just you?

Me: I am not Muslim. This (my hijab and long skirt-thanks Dr. Jan!) is for respect. I am Christian.

Nadia: God willing you will become Muslim.

Me: God willing. 

Nadia: Come let's talk to the secretary. 

We go into another room, and the secretary there tells me that there is a class at three tomorrow. Nadia explains to all the other women who I am, that I am not Muslim, but she thinks I will become one because God led me here to study Islam. They start excitedly talking about how I must have good morals because of how I am dressed.

Woman: I can see you have good morals. You have very high good (points to her chest trying to figure out the right word.)

Me: Thank you.

The woman all talk excitedly again and laugh. Nadia steers me out of the room and switches to English.

Nadia: We all have sons, we are fighting over you. I have only one son. I am from Iraq. He is handsome and very tall. He has a master's degree in computer, you know IT. He work for news, name of channel. He want marry. He is not very much into Islam. He only want wife that respects him. There is only one problem, problem in Arabic but not for you. He is...he had wife but he divorced her. She is gone. He has one son but she took him anyway and he never saw him. He is very clean. He never touch a woman but his wife. He is very clean. I teach at the University, his father teach at the University, we live a good life. We are from Iraq but we left because of troubles. We are sunna and we do not want Iran and Shi'a. My son has very good morals. He was born in 1984. His son is two.

Me: (nodding and smiling nicely) Oh, cute! But I am only twenty. 

Nadia: So he is older. He is handsome, very tall, he plays....he has a good body. You will think about it. I give you three weeks. Do you want my phone number?

Me: No, thank you. Maybe I will see you here, God willing.

Nadia: You must think about it. I like you. I want you. What do you do here?

Me: I study Arabic, MSA and colloquial here. I study Islam--religion--in America. 

Nadia: You must be married when you about Islam back in America. Being married holds a woman back from bad things. You talk to men like brothers when you are married. My son talked to other woman like a brother when he was married and his wife didn't like that and left. He is very clean. 

Me: I understand. 

Nadia: All this diseases and bad behavior, but my son is very clean.You must guard yourself from men. Keep yourself. It is no problem for a Muslim man to marry non-Muslim. But a woman must be Muslim for her sons to believe.

Me: I understand.

Nadia: I like you. You tell me your answer.

Me: Thank you, goodbye. 

I learned today that my young female professor has 9 brothers and sisters. Her mother married at 15 and had her first son at 17...by the time she was my age she already had three children...gives new meaning to the phrase "Early and often"...

الصور

الساعة في بنايتنا.

عندي محاضرة دراسة القرآن في هذا المسجد. ناقشت الاسلام  مع شيخ  في المسجد هناك ايضا.

ذهبنا الى مدرسة لبنات فليسطينة. ذكٌرت بالهند لان الطالبات كانت متجامسات لتعريف علينا. 

Minor stuff

It's the weekend!

Sorry I haven't been posting. I decided that writing long blog posts in English might not be good for my Arabic and writing blog posts in Arabic would take a very very long time. However, at the request of my mother I have decided to do half and half English and Arabic posts. For my Arabic posts, I would recommend copy and pasting into Google Translate...it's not perfect, so I'll probably sound like more of an idiot than usual. 

This feels sort of vain but I got a haircut on Tuesday and was pretty happy that it was only 5 JD (about $7) but probably would have cost $40 in the US. Still, this is the first haircut I have actually had to paid for in about 6 years...the last three times I just got it loped off for free for Locks of Love. This is what it looks like. 

I also had seven hours of homework from one class on Tuesday, which was difficult and torturous, and then got to class to find out that it wasn't necessary for us to translate all those paragraphs. Also that most people just didn't finish it (a bunch of people went out to the bar because it was someone's birthday and shots are only 1 JD on Tuesday nights). I haven't been doing very well in that class, but we have a test every week so I am hoping I'll have more opportunities to bring my grade up. 

I am pretty happy with my classes right now. I was relieved to drop Media Arabic and picked up a new class they started on Women in Jordan by a professor whose speciality is women in Jordanian law. We will be studying the history of the feminist movement in Jordan and the Arab world, and I am very excited because we will be talking a lot about gender roles in Islam as well. I have a presentation for that class on Tuesday on how the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) affected Jordanian law. 

I was feeling homesick today so I decided to clean my apartment. Once again I am very grateful to have had parents who made me clean as a kid. I actually like it now...

I also basically got proposed to by the guy at the supermarket today. I was kind of hoping that I would only get one marriage proposal in my life, but oh well. Also a guy at lunch tried to ask me out. These are very strange experiences for me...but I guess nice ego boosters :P

Supermarket guy: Where are you from?

Me: America.

Supermarket guy: You speak Arabic very well. (not true and I didn't really talk very much Arabic with him) I want to travel to America. Are you married? (points to my ring)

Me: No. 

Supermarket guy: I want to an American wife.

Me: (pretending not to understand) Where is your wife from in America? 

Supermarket guy: No, I am not married. I want to marry an American girl. You are very pretty.

Me: ....Thanks. 

I will post pictures and the story of our Aqaba/Wadi Rum trip soon. 

Call to Prayer

This is the view from the balcony in my room. If you listen closely you can hear part of the afternoon call to prayer. 

الى المسجد!

السوق

الصور

Living in Jordan

Fun Fact: Because of the dire scarcity of water in the region, water is delivered once a week daily in Jordan and stored in tanks. For this reason it is very possible to simply run out of water until your next delivery date and for tap water to be undrinkable because of the bacteria that can sometimes accumulate in the tanks.

Amman is a very modern city. I felt guilty at first because I had been preparing myself for a very rural and non-Western experience, but then I reminded myself that my fellow study abroad friends in Europe are enjoying such amenities and that they don't make this any less of any "authentic" Middle-Eastern experience. After all, this is how much of the people in the Middle East live; half of the population of Jordan lives in the city of Amman. That said, our dorm is extremely nice and I do feel like we are learning more about the upper class way of life because of that, so my experience won't be entirely the average Jordanian's.

Regardless, there are still differences. Although I don't like to dwell on comparisons between the US and here and instead consider it a wholly new experience, I thought people might be interested.

Things about my living conditions I'm still getting used to:

-Not having clean hair. Our shower has very, very little water pressure so showering isn't very effective. I find that cupping my hands and gathering water to splash my body is the best way. Then I wash my hair in the sink. My roommate showers next door--apparently they have a better shower...I might start doing that.

-Not being able to drink the tap water. I haven't tried it yet but all the Americans I have talked to admit to getting sick from it. I still can't bring myself to buy water so I just bring my water bottle to our classes and fill up from the filtered water fountain there.

-No toilet paper in public restrooms. We have one of those European washers things in our bathroom

that I had to use before we bought toilet paper. I have since learned to carry a roll around with me.

-The call to prayer. At around 5 am the mosque next door performs the morning call to prayer. It is hauntingly beautiful and doesn't both me, but I do love hearing it at other points in the day a bit more.

-Using the elevator. For some reason our dorm mothers constantly urge us to use the elevator rather than the stairs, even though we live on the second (really the third) floor. They also tell us just to give the doorman/guard money to fetch us things to buy rather than walking the local shops within a 500 meter radius around our dorm. We think that might be because the Arab girls who live in this dorm are used to servants.

-Smoking. Although juice and coffee is not allowed in the academic building smoking is. Also the girls who live in our dorm smoke hashish a lot and try and get us to when we hang out. I usually point in my chest and say "asthma" as an excuse.

Attached are pictures of my dorm room. We also have a very small balcony that I hypothesize is for smoking.

Perhaps I will post later about cultural differences.

On another note, for all of those who I freaked out about the harassment with:

The harassment from guys here is not bad at all and nothing like Egypt. I have gotten comments and honks and one bus driver stuck his tongue out at him and grinned in a suggestive way, but other than that, not much and nothing that I can't simply ignore. I even heard one guy say to another guy that was leering at me "Haram alayk!" which means "Shame on you!". It is by no means a daily burden but rather a rare and unintrusive occurence. All of us overestimated the conservativeness of the clothes we wore, although as I learned this summer, just because you can get away with it and the locals wear it, doesn't mean it's culturally sensitive. 

Cell Phone

If you want my cell phone number (incoming calls are free even if they are international it will just cost you buttloads!) email me and I'll send it to you and we can talk tomorrow. I haven't figured out the country code thing though.

Music Party!

Arabic Fun fact: the literal translation for concert in Arabic is Music Party (or Music Celebration). 

When you can't speak the same language as people, you start to notice the connections people make that transcend language. Our cab driver to the concert we went to tonight knew "Can you speak Arabic?" and that's about it, but he played English music on his radio and we all sang along to the part that went "lalalalala". Music is amazing that way...this was my first real concert outside of college ones and I loved the way the energy flowed through complete strangers regardless of whether the words were Arabic, English or Arabizi. On the other hand, it's very scary when you don't know the  language or the area well enough to tell the cab driver how to go home.

We got a lot of important information today about classes and such, the best news being that we have Thursday, Friday and Saturday off! We don't know exactly when our classes are until we take the placement exam (on Wednesday apparently). Wednesday is also when the language pledge starts so if you want to skype me in English tomorrow would be the time to do it (shoot me an email).

We also have a very strict curfew. When I say strict I mean if we are not home by 11:00pm we have to sleep outside or find somewhere to stay. All the girls kept getting invited to this underground after party after the concert but we had to get back or we'd get locked out. Which was probably for the best, but it might have been really fun.

I promise I will post pictures of my apartment soon.

Arriving in Jordan

I made it to Jordan alive today after two really long flights. Luckily I met another family on the same flights as I, a Jordanian mother and her two daughters going back to Amman. She knew some English and was incredibly patient with me in trying to understand my shaky Modern Standard Arabic. It was just nice to have a friendly travel buddy. I met up with two other Middlebury students in Paris and all of us continued on to Amman. I ended up sitting with another girl from our program from Tufts who is very sweet and just as excited and anxious as me.

First thing I noticed when I stepped out of the airport was how different it smelled. And the dust. The three of us spilt a cab to our apartments, and I am very grateful we did because the colloquial Arabic spoken by the cab driver is way over my head. After I was shown my room and went down and met some Jordanian students who are studying at the German University here. They are very hospitable and eager to show us all around and help us settle in. They introduced our landlady to us as their mother and kept saying that we are all family here. Fareh and Mjdd (I apologize for the total guess on spelling) made me a turkey and cheese sandwich and tea and really wanted me to try their hashish. They're taking us to the mall tomorrow to buy phones and towels and food. I am more nervous than I was about the pledge now because our new friends really want to talk with us in English and  because my Arabic is so rusty (and my Amiyya non-existent!). We have a placement exam tomorrow and our first day of orientation. We all feel silly here because the girls dress however they want...they are also totally living the high life: you can call down to the desk and send money in the elevator and the guard for our building will go out and buy the stuff you ask for (even though all the shops we could ever need are really close by!). Our apartments are like hotel rooms! I'll have to get used to using the toilet without toilet paper, cooking on a  sketchy portable burner and buying water though. More tomorrow, my roommate and I really should be getting to bed!