First

I found my old typed letters that I sent to a professor during my stay in Jordan. Here is my first...

September 2005

The first sight when you walk into the SIT – Study Abroad office is this awesome Turkish rug in muted earth tones. It is not Islamic, with the classic tower pointing towards Mecca, but rather a tribal design, and made of durable cotton. The first few days it was mentioned in passing as a thing of beauty and something that every student would enjoy returning home with in December. As the days passed a white tag began to slowly emerge from beneath the carpet, and eventually the name, “Pier One Imports” was visible for all to see.

That “Turkish” rug reminds me a great deal of this place. On the outside something might look oriental, but eventually the tag appears and shows it is a Western representation of the real thing. Of course the opposite is true as well; something can very well appear Western and be an Eastern imitation. In saying, nothing is as it appears. Nothing is especially what an American can imagine that has never been outside of the Western world. In thinking about this I think that perhaps the Middle East is the most poorly represented area of our time. If you search you can find, maybe not easily, but you can find information that examines the real state of a nation from a citizen’s perspective on just about anywhere in the world; books, movies, etc can be found on any subject, except for when it comes to the Middle East. Excuse me, I forgot – Terrorism and Palestine, no, let me correct myself Israel produce countless works, very often from people who have never stepped foot in the Middle East or read the entire Koran – Once again, like the rug, appearing to be real, but in fact an imitation.

So after all of that I bet you are wondering what does exist in the Middle East? A world of beauty, mystique, virtue, religion, passion…Should I go on? Or should I stop and give you time to challenge your perceptions? Honestly, when I arrived here I didn’t know what to expect. I had spent the entire summer reading the Jordan Times (www.jordantimes.com), but what did it tell me besides what the government was up to and how the educated people who wrote for the paper felt about it? Usually, the statements of critique towards the government were based on foreign policy (sound familiar) and the government spending too much time worrying about what the rest of the world thinks, and not the common Jordanian. Basically, I stepped unknowingly into a world that was totally different than anything I’ve ever socially known.

Let me tell you about today, which is pretty normal in my run of days: I woke up at 6am, hurriedly dressed and went downstairs for Turkish coffee and cake with my host parents and little sister. I made lunch to take with me to class and then I was out the door by 7am with Baba (dad) and Merna, my little sis. At 7.15 I am dropped off at the Abdoun exit and from there I take a taxi to my school, and I have to speak to the taxi driver completely in Arabic, because he (it is always a he) 90% of the time doesn’t speak English. I didn’t know Arabic before 3 weeks ago, so some days are better than others, and some days I can’t remember anything to say. I am at my school by 7.30 and then I wait for Jumanna, one of my Arabic teachers, to arrive and unlock the door because I am always the first person there. Jumanna and I talk until class begins at 8.30 when we have Arabic until noon. After lunch there is a lecture by a prominent Jordanian and then we are free for the rest of the day. Today I took a taxi from school to the little stores around my house in Khalda and bought a few school supplies before I went home. When I get home there will be another “real” lunch waiting for me, and then I am free to either take a nap (which almost every Jordanian does in the afternoon) or study. The evenings are studying, coffee time, dinner, tea time, and more studying. Sometimes I go out to the internet café and other times the mall, Swofeah to shop, or the park, but my family gets upset when I am home late, so I tend to come home as early as possible.

My family is Greek Orthodox Christian and fairly strict with me, as they accept me as one of their daughters and I have basically the same rules as they do.

I’ve been lucky and not gotten sick *knock on wood* since I’ve been here, but other people have gotten stomach viruses or similar illnesses and had to go to the hospital. The biggest worry here is dehydration, because you can do next to nothing and still dehydrate and you never even knew it was happening. Example of the dryness here is with road kill, back home it disintegrates pretty fast because of all the humidity that is in the air, but here things tend to mummify instead…There is a dead cat on the edge of the road by my house that has looked exactly the same since the moment I have arrived 3 weeks ago. It is that hot and dry. My biggest health issue has been the mosquitoes. I am apparently having an allergic reaction to them and swelling into these huge hives from the bites. They are small to the point that they are nearly invisible, but they leave welts that are killer.