Photos

Hello everyone, so I thought I would give you some pictures related to my last blog...partly because I think you'll throw up a little in your mouth at the first two and secondly because on my last day in Jordan I finally found my camera cord to upload pictures and wanted to use it.



So this is obvious a sidewise picture and its of Laurens neck and all those spots are the places where the vampire bed bug sucked her blood.

This picture didn't turn out that great, in real life there is a greater difference in color between the bites and her skin...as in they are a lot reder. Gross huh? There are like 50.

So this is a picture of Muhammad...the guy who loves me a little...but who I found out last night is cheating on me haha. He is in the middle, my friend Arturo is on the right (and although he looks Arab he is actually not), and a guy named Abu Ramin is on the left.

I am sleepless in Amman

So all 5 of you who read this should be extremely grateful to certain “friends” of mine for keeping me awake because now I have the “time” to actually write on my blog. Or actually write on a word document that will be transferred to my blog. I knew I should have turned on the air conditioner before I went to sleep 3 hours ago, but we have been having electricity problems and our electricity goes out multiple times a day and so I decided to use as little electricity as possible. But then I just woke up all sweaty, got up to turn on the AC, laid back down, looked at my phone and saw the time, and knew that they were coming. As hard as I tried I could not go back to sleep, because my “friends” were coming out to play. These “friends” I speak of are numbered in the dozens or hundreds…I don’t know exactly, but they only come out to play an hour before dawn (i.e. right now) and they do not know about personal boundaries. Every morning me and Lauren (they are really good “friends” with her) wake up with dozens of hickeys and we realize that they went a little farther up our legs, around our face, maybe spent too much time on our neck area, which considering where we are is totally inappropriate and against the rules. I call my “friends” our little vampires and they are bed bugs that live in our furniture and they are permanent houseguests. Permanent. The only way to kill them is to get rid of your furniture. There is nothing that I can do to stop them from crawling all over my sleeping body at 4 in the morning drinking my blood and so as the ultimate testament that I am not ‘high maintenance’ is the fact that I’ve lived like this for months and I have not freaked out. (except I might right now because I just ‘popped’ one that is inside of my pants on my thigh….I choose that descriptive word because when you kill them they are full of blood and so the blood squirts everywhere and they literally pop….i’m kinda grossed out right now because I didn’t think that thing I felt on my leg was real…cause I’ve been imagining bugs on me for the last 20 minutes…now I have a squished bug body mixed with bug guts and my blood inside my pants. A normal person would take them off, but I don’t think that I can stomach that right now. Ohmigosh I just killed another on my left thigh…I think I’m going to cry or hurl or both).

For my personal mental sanity I’m going to move on.

So a couple of days ago I had my first DTR in the Middle East. DTR is Provo talk for “Define the Relationship”. Let me just explain how amazing and non-awkward it was. His name is Muhammad (which if it had to be someone then the chances were likely that that would be his name…judging by the fact that 60 percent of all guys are named Muhammad). I met him a week and a half ago because he is helping me gather research for my capstone…which is on Iraqi prostitution…because he happened to have a phone number for a girl who works in this industry. He didn’t tell me, he told my friend Arturo who then told me and then I met him. It was meant to be. So this guy is pretty good looking – and for the first time in this paragraph I’m not being sarcastic. But he kinda reminds me of a drug dealer – hes not – but he has this shady/sad/emo look about him. So he meets me and he decides that he loves me a little. Which is flattering, but unfortunately I do not feel the same way. So for the past week and a half he has wanted to tell me and finally decides that 2 days ago was the perfect time. So we meet (and I know what is coming) at noon in front of this huge clock tower on campus and I decide to make this conversation so much more awkward by bringing up his “friend” (not vampire bug, but his hired friend) and I ask if I can meet her, that I need to interview her for my capstone. I was also thinking that this would deter him from telling me that he loves me a little, but it doesn’t. So this is our conversation (minus the stuff in the parentheses which is just my after-the-fact commentary). Oh and it was also in Arabic and English and so communication was just amazingly clear haha.
Him: I like you
Me: Why?
Him: Because you are beautiful and very nice (yeah I know that this part is unnecessary but the vain part of me just wanted to throw that in…especially because my friend Ibrahim told me last night that I was “not attractive”)
Me: Thank you, I think that you are very beautiful too (I didn’t know a masculine word like handsome in Arabic)
Him: I would like to have a relationship with you (now I’m just going to assume now like I did then that this relationship was different from the relationships that he has had with other girls)
Me: I would like that also (okay not really, but I find it awkward to disagree with people), but there is a big problem because you are Muslim and I am Christian
Him: There is no problem
Me: ummmm ummmm Well you see ummm I am not allowed to date/marry (those words were interchangeable in this conversation) a person that is not a member of my religion
Him: Yes you can, you are American, you are free (At this point I wished we were A) a little more oppressed in our society or B) we didn’t let everyone else know that we could do anything we wanted)
Me: Well yes, that is true, but in my religion we are not free. (Not true, but at you can see honesty is not real high up there on my personal qualities) I can only date another Christian.
Him: Yes you can, My Muslim uncle married a Mormon girl in Texas (didn’t see that curve ball coming)
Me: Yeah but my family would be very mad at me if I did
Him: I will go to America and speak with your father (he is moving to the States next summer for school)
Me: ummmm well ummmm you see I really like you and umm I wish I could date/marry you and this makes me really sad but…..
This conversation then continued much the same, and after awhile I think that he got the idea….kinda. So I thought that this conversation was rather amusing, but in all honesty I like hanging out with this guy – as friends – and he is someone that I would even want to be friends with in the States. So I’m not trying to make fun of him, he is one of my favorite people here, I’m just making fun of this incredibly awkward/random conversation that I had.

Ummm I’m too tired and too lazy to write a conclusion paragraph, so…

Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed begs bite.

Parties. Zufafs and Aied Melads.

A week and a half ago I went with about 15 people from my group to the cities Irbid and Husin to attend some activities there. There is a small branch of our church in Husin and the members there host us when we come. About 10 of the same people go every week and then the rest of us just take turns going. So 2 weeks ago it was my turn. I get there (to the church first) and my confidence takes a steep and sudden drop into nothingness. Its all in Arabic and I have this small problem where I don't really understand arabic...at all. Its like if me and you were in the same room with arabic speakers we would both understand the same amount...nothing. Which would be okay, but every single other person (talking about non-Arabs) understood and were chatting back and forth and i'm like "I have been in all the same classes, done the same amount of work as all these people why the hell don't I understand?!" So I did what any logical and mature person would do. I started to cry. Now this is kinda embarressing, but seeing how the World Wide Web (aka internet) is a safe and private place to bare your true feelings I thought I would not hold back these said feelings. Plus I feel significantly separated from the situation now. Lucky for you all haha. Plus learning a second language is so hard that its inaccurate to just write about the good times...the encounters with prostitutes, sunbathing at the Dead Sea, exploring ruins of desert castles. I do actually work here. 17 credits of Arabic. And to be honest some days I would rather peel my skin off with a potato peeler rather than go to class and TRY to speak arabic. Well I think you get the picture...So... my eyes are filling up with salty water that could or could not be mistaken for tears, but I don't want to start actually crying because that would be humiliating so i'm holding back and finally we get to leave. But we are not actually going home yet, we are staying the night at strangers houses...which is exactly what I want to do....stay at some random persons house that does not speak english and i'm expecting to speak arabic...screams Ackwardness. But you will be relieved to know that it wasn't that bad...I guess at that point things couldn't have gotten worse...sorry I know that you would have enjoyed reading this so much more if I had horror stories to tell you, but personally I am happy that the following will avoid a sad tale of a girl who has no more skin.

So we are at this house and they are so very nice and they fed us Hamburgers and french fries! It was amazing! After awhile I got used to talking to them, and one of the girls spoke a little english and so it was helpful to have her around. Oh i remember something embarressing that happened....haha this is really quite horrid....I was talking to the Father and his son-in-law and granddaughter (who is like 1 or 2) were also in the room with me and Lauren. So we are chit chatting and he is telling me about his granddaughter and her name etc and I remembered that the day before I had been taught the word for how to say that a baby is cute so I dig my little notebook out of my purse and i'm frantically trying to find this word and I find it and I say it and he looks at me blankly and then Lauren leans over and says "he is now talking about his son-in-law". Great. Story of my life.

So laters that night we go to this wedding party (in arabic its called a Zufaf) that we were not invited to, but in Arab culture you can just pretty much show up to any party, any house, uninvited and they are so thrilled that you are there. We saw the outside party when we were driving to the peoples house and the music is so loud you can hear it for probably a good 4 or 5 blocks and we were so intrigued that our family walked us over so that we could attend. Arab weddings last for 3 days and so this wasn't the day that the bride and groom got married, but the day before. And in Muslim parties the men and women are separated and so we went over to where the women were sitting and we watched the men. The guys were in this huge area with lights hung over and they were doing this arabic dance where they all hold hands in a circle or semi-circle and do this dance...that I have been taught but haven't quite gotten the hold of it. It was quite entertaining. So I'm talking to these Arab women and I won't go over the whole conversation, but I wanted to be sure that I do mention this: They wanted to know what I would tell people about the Middle East/Jordan when I return home. Good or bad? They wanted to be sure that I told everybody that the people here are good, that they do not hate Americans, nor do they understand why westerners hate them, that there is beauty in their culture and in Islam and so much good in these countries. And I can second them, I have found so much more good here than I have found bad. I have not encountered any hatred directed at me because i'm an American, people have been so friendly, much more so than would be expected in the U.S. I think that we could learn a lot from their culture and them from ours...except that I think that we should keep english...that english should be the only language...in the world.

A series of random unrelated incidents involving prostitutes and broken noes

Its 9:30pm and me and Lauren hear a "tweeting" sound (much like a bird) and if you were a stranger (or us for the first week living here) you could mistake it for a dying bird that happened to land right outside our door, but no its our doorbell. Here in the Middle East a "ding dong" sound just does not cut it, they prefer dying animal noises. Matt and Mustafa are at our door...well rather by the street 20 feet from our door, because that is the location of our doorbell, and they want us to walk down the street with them to get dinner. So we go. Now our street is locally known as The place to go if you want to pick up a Lady of the Night (or if you are unfamiliar with slang associated with the "worlds oldest profession" I am talking about prostitutes). So I live on a street of ill repute and across the street, a little to the right, under this nice pleasent olive tree is where the madam sits and makes 'appointments', but at night the ladies come out in the flesh and so if you are walking around outside and see girls in burkas (the black dresses and head scarves that cover the entire face) you can be sure that they are prostitutes. So back to my story...we are walking down the street and across the street we see this women (complete with a burka) that is talking to this man in an orange constuction truck and he is waving here away and so were were like 'oh he is saying no to her services', so we went to the little restraunt, got some burrittos (think of Mexican burrittos and they are not that), went to the grocery store and then about an hour later we are walking back down are street and we see the same orange construction truck but this time we see this women leaving his orange vehicle! She is in there and he bends down and kisses here and she decends and he starts driving away, and this is what he sees: the four of us, standing in a line, staring at him with our mouths open and then we proceeded to have a staring contest with him as he drove away. Now as soon as he drove away a car that had also seen this transaction pulls to screeching halt in front of the girl and the car behind him runs into him. I thought it was funny.

Second prostitution story: So as some of you know, and many of you do not the U.S. beat Egypt 3-0 in a soccer game, but the previous game was a complete miracle for Egypt because they had beat Italy and it was a huge deal out here. So everybody was like "how in the world did the U.S. beat Italy"...well the next day we read in the papers that sometime between the two games the Egyptian soccer team was somewhere in Africa and $250,000 was stolen from their hotel room and they blamed the hotel workers, but cameras showed that they had a bunch of prostitutes in their rooms and they stole the money. Karma. And stupid, do they not know how many dieseases there are in eastern/central/pretty much the whole continent of Africa especially with prostitutes!

About a week ago the field in front of our house caught on fire (don't worry the olive tree that gives shade to the Madam is still standing) and I was outside with no shoes on watching the spectacle and wanted to go across the street to take a picture so I decided to go back into our house to grab some shoes. I havent mentioned before that our apartment faces the street and so there is the street, then the sidewalk, then about 4 steps, and then 20 feet of narrow patio before you get to our front door which is a sliding glass door with a rod iron door in front of it. So I run down the sidewalk, I run up the stairs, and I run down the walkway and I see that the gate is open and that the sliding door is open and I go to run into the house and then BAM I slam right into the sliding door which much to my surprise was NOT OPEN. I did not break the door (surprisingly). But it hurt and I got a bloody noes and I was crying for about 15 minutes and I either bruised my noes pretty badly or broke it a little because it still hurts. A lot. I want sympathy, but I don't get any, people think its funny. I don't.

These pictures are out of order and random...but before you complain that there is no rhyme or reason to them just think for a second how long it took me to get these blasted things up! This picture was taken from the building where I have my classes and its a picture of the University of Jordan where I am learning for the summer.

Me. On a Pyramid. Chillin.

This is me and my roommate Lauren. We are standing on a Pyramid. For realsies. We are about 4 blocks up and each block comes above my elbow...as you can see...they are huge.

All around Egypt are these "Tourist Police" and they just take naps in these shacks and sit on their camels all day long....sounds like the life to me. This fine officer of the law is at the Pyramids. And you can kinda see the drastic change in landscape, the land behind him is the Nile River valley and then about couple miles out it abruptly changes into sandy desert.

This house is in Ciaro and I took this picture because I wanted to show how a lot of buildings look. This building is a school for young children and most institutions are walled such as this one.

Here is a Pyramid and you can kinda see the hole on the bottom of the picture where people go inside into the tomb.

Remember my post about Marada and the "girls with hair" well this is Marada, taken while we were lost.

So all he wanted for his Father's Day gift was pictures on my blog, so...

Dad, Happy Fathers Day, Love Angie

Madaba...and girls with hair.

A few days ago some friends that I had made awhile back when we first got to Jordan invited me and two other girls (Nettie and Rebecca) to their homes in Maraba...the following is what I experienced:

Yesterday was a Jordanian national holiday celebrating the anniversery when King Abdullah took the thrown and so we had the day off! Very exciting. So we decide to go to Maraba, which is about an hour long bus ride away and see our friend JuJu (can't pronounce her actual name) and so we leave at about 9ish and take a taxi to the bus station where we find a bus that we think is going to the Maraba (being in a foreign country takes a lot of guessing work) so we get on and and call our friend and then she talks with the bus driver and then we talk to her and we are still a little confused, but the overall consensus is that we are going to stay on this bus. So we chill on this bus for about an hour and a half - as with the U.S. the bus system is the slowest way to travel - and just for your information the buses are not airconditioned and they are 70 years old and way crappy, but with red velvet curtains haha. So JuJu had told the bus driver to make sure we get off at the right stop, but obviously our welfare was of no concern to him...as shown by the fact that he let us get off the bus too early. We make this stop in Madaba (which is a small dusty town in the middle of the desert) and this guy starts talking to me through the window telling me that we need to get off now...so what do I do when a random guy off the street tells me to get off the bus? I get off. So we pay and decend and then it turns out that this guy wants to know if we need his services...I guess he drives a 'serviice taxi' (a taxi that goes between cities). great. now we three white girls (well I look Arab, but my other friends are very caucasian looking) are in the middle of this city and we have no idea where to go and so we start walking and asking for directions and walking and getting stared at and walking some more and there is nothing to see but dusty roads and dirty houses, but no worries at this point I am still optimistic...i've been in worse situations than this before. So we finally find a taxi and we call our friend and they give directions to the cab driver and he drives us to this road and stops by this man and gives us a "okay get out" look and so we pay him (and he charges us three times more than an arab...that is difinitly getting old) and get out. Now here is this random guy and he is motioning for us to go down this small alley way and i'm like "okay this either is going to lead us to our friend or we are gonna get kiddnapped"....lucky for me it was the former. So we go down and walk through this small gate and then there is this girl...now this is embarressing to say but I really couldn't tell who it was...I mean it looked like my friend, but she wasn't wearing a hijab (the scarf that arab/muslim girls wear around their heads) and up to this point I had never seen one of my friends without a hijab on and girls look very different with hair! It turns out it was a sister. So we meet the family and there is lots of kissing (like 10 kisses per cheek) and we sit in this room off the courtyard and then there is a moment of silence when me and my friends look at each other and think "crap. now we have to start talking in arabic". And thats what we did. For 6 straight hours. It was the most intense thing I have ever done. One of the sisters and one of the brothers spoke a few words in english, but it was 99.9% arabic. We sat in this room for a couple of hours....you know, just chit chatting....but then we were moved into another room that was actually apart of the house and this room was rad. We had to remove our shoes and there were couches lining the walls and they were on the floor - bedouin style - totally perfect for lounging around. So we sit in there for awhile and chit chat some more and then they served us lunch! The guys left and it was just us girls and the sisters and we sat on the floor and ate stuffed grape leaves (they were the most delicious thing ever) chicken and bangin pita bread (can't even compare to the crap they sell in the U.S.) and yogurt and this salad stuff and mango juice. It was amazing! So afters we all were sitting down again and it was about 100 degrees in the room (and I was in all black) and I was full and so tired from speaking arabic and so they were like "you look tired" and they brought me a blanket and pillow...which i had to drap over me...it was not the highlight of the day. The last hour was kind of painful...we had totally exhausted our arabic vocabulary and had killer headaches. Eventully we got to leave...they wanted us to spend the night, but luckily we have to have visited the family more than once before we get to spend the night. The culture here is very hospitable and they are so nice...but its different because in American culture you would not spend that much time visiting a person and so it felt very forceful, but overall it was a very good experience.

I will not assassinate myself I will not assassinate myself I will not I will not I will not.

So last night I had a small, but intense nervous breakdown on the phone with my Mom...lucky her.  Here are a few quotes that came from my mouth.

I want to DIE.

I want to kill myself.

I want to slit my wrists.

I want to hang myself from the shower curtain.  oh wait.  we don't have one.

Jesus hates me.

I could go on and on, but knowing that my mother will read this I don't want her to have to re-live that entire conversation.  Oh and I don't want to think about it either...its like a snowball effect when I get going.  

Anyways...the point is that being here is hard.  And emotionally exhausting.  And soul crushing. And to be perfectly honest I hate it.  Well I have a love/hate relationship with it.  I basically love being here whenever I don't have to speak arabic.  I hate arabic.  I answered my friends house phone today and the person at the other end of the line spoke to me in arabic and so i hung up on him.  Okay this is not going in the direction that I wanted it to go to....so here is the point.  I love the people, culture, and pretty much everything.  I like it here.  MOM I am not going to kill myself.