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.  

If I didn't have diseases before....

So today we had to go to the Center for Disease Control to get our blood tested in order to stay legally in Jordan. So me and 8 other people get into some taxis after class and with some hazy directions to guide us manage to get completely lost. And when I say "completely lost" I mean the taxi driver dropped us off 20 feet away from the building, but we wandered aimlessly around for a good 25 minutes before we had an "ahh ha" moment and realized that the unofficial rundown building was in fact the place we were supposed to enter. So we enter. There is no reception office, really no entry at all, we walk into a stairwell and proceed to the third floor (part of the hazy directions we had gotten before hand). It is ghetto. Now pretty much everything is ghetto here, but I was thinking that seeing how this is the "Center for Disease Control" it would be sanitary (or at least clean), some what organized, etc. And as usual I was completely wrong, think of what a crack house would look like and that is where I was at. So by some small miracle we find the lady that is assigned to us. And when I say "assigned to us" I mean somebody paid her big bucks to hold our hand through the entire process and push us to the front of the lines. So this lady pushes us up a foor and then down a floor...its all this giant big mash in my mind...probably from all the crack fumes...but in the end we get to this floor/room that is packed with people. Now i say this in the nicest most politically correct way possible but Egyptians are like the Mexicans of the Middle East. Seriously. They go all over to find work and then send money back to their families. So this place is packed with Egyptians and there are also a ton of Asians (who are also there looking for work) and we are trying to squeeze through and then somebody shouts my name and I am trying to find this person...through the masses...and I get to her desk which is covered in tubes of blood and considering the number of people I'm thinking that this is a really bad place to keep cartons of peoples blood...she tells me to sit down...and I think "this doesn't really look like the type of place I want people to stick needles in me, its dirty, those people at the window look like they are buying drugs, I'm pretty sure that if we turned off the lights roaches would come out, this is a very bad idea"...and so I did what any smart person would do when told to sit down in this type of place...I sat down. She pulls out this needle from who knows where, tells me to stick out my right arm and she stabs my arm with it. When she is finished she puts a cotton ball on my arm and starts frantically looking around for a bandaid. There is none. Others start in on the search. Finally somebody pulls out a bandaid....i'm pretty sure they only give out bandaids to the Americans...and she shoves me away...as I dumbly look around for somebody to put the bandaid on my arm...

Before I go I wanted to share with you all part of an email that I got from the U.S. Embassy regarding our stay in Jordan. It is so disturbing that it is actually kinda funny...well I laughed...but I have a wierd inappropriate sense of humor...

As summer travel season approaches, the U.S. Embassy wishes to remind Americans that credible information indicates that terrorist groups seek to continue attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East andNorth Africa. These actions may include bombings, hijackings, hostagetaking, kidnappings, and assassinations. Terrorists do not distinguish between official and civilian targets. Increased securityat official U.S. facilities has led terrorists and their sympathizers to seek softer targets such as public transportation, residential areas, and public areas where people congregate, including restaurants, hotels, clubs, and shopping areas. Terrorists may target movie theaters, liquor stores, bars, casinos, or any similar type of establishment, regardless of whether they are owned and operated by host country nationals. Due to varying degrees of security at all such locations, Americans should continue to be particularly vigilant when visiting these establishments.

So I use public transporation, live in a residential area, go to restaurants, hotels, and shopping areas regularly and I am the least vigilant person as seen by the number of times I get ripped off/taken advantage of by the locals.

So i hope that YOU sleep soundly tonight.

loves.

Sometimes I just don't understand why?

So there are tons of things that are different obviously about the Middle East, and I expected that, but there are some things that have totally shocked me and I really don't understand why it is that way.  Some of them might be repeats of things i already wrote about, but forgot that i did and didn't want to waste valuable internet time rereading my previous entries...so kindly ignore those.  

1.  People do NOT use credit cards (okay some people randomly will let you, but you have to beg for about a good five minutes or go to a really expensive European store), you have to have cash, AND you have to have exact change.  So if you want to buy something that costs 7 G.D. (G.D. is like a dollar but worth more...1.5 dollar for every 1 G.D.) you have to have 7 or maybe 10, if you hand them a 20 they won't take it because they don't have change.  Its really annoying.  I had a 50 in my wallet forever and finally had to buy a 40 G.D. painting to get rid of it! (it was really hard for me haha)

2. They use this thing called a bidet (or it might be spelled biday) and its basically a water spout that you wash your butt with after you go to the bathroom.  I was extremely wierded out by this whole concept and I was like "umm no".  So for the first week I was happily using toliet paper and then I get the following emails from Dil:

The plumber came to the building today and fixed leaks and plug ups in
a few apartments, and then we were given the good/bad news depending
on your point of view.  This building (and the huge majority of
buildings in Jordan), and in fact the whole sewer system here, was
simply not designed to handle toilet paper, and using it plugs up the
building and the system.  We now have two choices.

1. You can stick to your tree-destroying American ways and continue to
use toilet paper, but you must not put it into the toilets.  Rather,
you should get a waste basket, line it with a plastic garbage bag, and
deposit your toilet paper there.  You can change the basket (and put
the old stuff out of your door for Muhsin to take away) as often as
you like.

2. You can adapt to local custom and learn to use the bidet or the
bidet sprayer, depending on how your bathroom is equipped.

Either way, we need to make this adjustment in our culture so that we
don't have to have the plumber in the building every other day.

Think of what a great opportunity this is in what it will allow you to
tell the folks back home, and particularly what you will be abel to
tell your grandkids.  You guys are really lucky.

thanks.
dil

AND THEN:

The toilet paper instruction wasn't a joke, and it really isn't
optional.  We are plugging put the sewer system of our building faster
than they can keep it unplugged, and it is creating overflows from the
upper apartments into the little openings that the bathrooms open into
which are creating sewer leaks into the lower apartments and the
basement.  We MUST completely stop putting toilet paper into the

toilets.  Please comply. 

 

umm...okay.  So now i have to use the bidet.  Its cold, water gets everywhere, and quite frankly I find it rather disturbing.  

3. They don't have shower curtains...or rods/hooks to hang one from.  Here in the M.E. people do not use them, instead they have a drain in the middle of the floor and they use this tool called a "squigy" to push the water down the drain.  So here I am taking a shower in a freezing cold bathroom with a hand held shower head that I haven't quite gotten the hold of so that I periodically point it directly across the bathroom while trying to angle it in such a way to get all the shampoo out of my hair etc.  And then when i'm finally done I have to get this "squigy" out and make the first of many fruitless attempts to push all the water down this drain.  My point is that you should all enjoy your nice long relaxing showers where all the water goes stays in one place.

4. Boys and girls don't hang out with each other.

5. People hang out here for hours and hours and hours without doing anything.  They don't have homework or jobs (at least the people i have met and observed) they just go to a class then hang out for an hour, go to another class, hang out for 3 hours etc.  They don't carry backpacks (thats the number one sign of an american, cause we are the only ones who don't think they are hideous looking...and the only ones who obviously have to carry around books)

6.  Lined paper is a different size...its skinnier and longer...doesn't fit in american folders...wierd. 

7.  McDonalds is open till 4am, then closed til 10am and does not serve breakfast...so no pancakes.  I am really depressed over this.

8. They do not believe in providing people with toliet paper in public bathrooms...and bar soap is popular for public bathrooms also...probably doesn't bother lots of people...just the germophobes like me.

9. Men sit everywhere...women are nowhere to be seen after like 6.  They do not go out at night.  I went to a 10pm movie and me and my friend Lauren were the only girls in the theater.

10. Smoking is EVERYWHERE.  I am just waiting for the opportunity to get a picture of one of the many people that smoke right in front of the signs that say "smoking is forbidden".  They have no problem smoking in elevators, taxis with all the windows closed, everyone smokes...i've been thinking of picking it up so that i can fit in more.  

...i'm kidding Dad.

11. Traffic laws are taken as suggestions...here it is not as bad as in Egypt, but still can be quite life threatening.  For example today our cab driver took the wrong exit and so he REVERSED around a corner and said (and I quote) "I hope there are no cars coming"...yeah me too.  

12. People don't have addresses...I don't know how they get their mail...?

13. Handicaped people would not fare well here...example: sidewalks abruptly end with 2 feet dropoffs.

14. People are very touchy...but only with people of the same sex (I think i'm finally getting used to guys walking around with their arms around each other).  People kiss when they meet...but they do one kiss on one side and then two or three on the other.

15. Electrical outlets are hard to find...because there are none.

16. Phases that i hear the most in english "it is no problem", "I love you", "you are so beautiful"...at first i was like oh these people are so nice, but then i realized that thats all they know and so they just repeat these (especially the last two) over and over.

17.  Pandora.com does not work here...driving me crazy.  

ma'andish bab

Its only been a few days since I've last written, but it feels like 3 weeks. It is goodbye to the wonderfulness of vacation to the hard reality of living here and trying to study a language that the girl working at Claires said was "too difficult and that i was better off studying physics". great.

3 Days ago I boarded what could be called a boat...if you use that definition very liberally. The day we were supposed to leave Egypt and sail to Jordan was very windy and stormy and so somebody (whom i will refrain from calling names) decided that we needed to be on a bigger ship and bought us tickets for this cargo ship. It is also the ship that really really poor Egyptians use to cross into Jordan looking for working opportunities. Now i have nothing against poor people...i have found that poor people are so much nicer and friendlier than rich people. But these people were destitute and they could afford this boat and so that can give you some idea of what the living conditions were like. There was not enough seats for people and so people were sleeping on the floor in the halls and there was no food. Well I take that back you could buy chips and Mars bars at this snack counter that everytime we would go up they would raise the price 2 pounds. This ship was a Dutch ship and we decided that this is where Dutch ships go to Die. So the ride was supposed to be 4ish hours and so we all got on the boat and found some benches and after 3 hours of playing cards we are informed that the boat hasn't even left the dock! The whole "adventure" took about 12 hours and when we arrived at Aqaba we saw the luxury cruise ship, we were supposed to be on, already safely docked and it was very depressing. Oh and they were really scared that we were bringing in Swine flu and so we all had to get "checked"...they held something up to our foreheads for about 6 seconds...maybe taking our temperature...and that was the test. I'm so glad that i had the same thing held up to my forehead as the hundred unbathed people before me.

So I've been in Jordan for the past 3 days and this is my second full day in Amman. My apartment is extremely nice and close to the university. They just redid all the apartments and so our applicances and everything have never been used. We are getting internet today and so hopefully i'll be able to post some pictures. Oh and me and my roommate finally got a door! (thats what my title says..."I don't have a door". They had to move me and Lauren to the apartment facing the street...only had this sliding glass window thing...and promised us that in the next couple of days they would bring us a door. It was kinda funny. We had one of those metal sheets that you pull down in front of store fronts haha. And the owner said that the security guard would "watch our apartment"...which is kinda creepy. But alas we have a door. We don't have water though...last night our water ran out... its really annoying....I don't know when we are getting more water. but we can't use the toliet, shower, sinks...anything! Everytime you turn on your facete think of me and my unwashed hair.

I think I have culture shock...or at least i have all the symptoms that my teacher told us about. but i have found a really good remedy for it...buying things. It doesn't matter what...just the act of spending money makes me feel so much better. yesterday i bought a phone, skirt, purse, keychain, headband, 3 different kinds of deserts from a Bakery and a blanket and I felt so much better. Oh and some Fruity Pebbles and milk (which turned out to be yogurt...very water yogurt). But this is not a long lasting remedy unfortunately. Hopefully this culture shock crap does not last long or my goal of living simply and being a miminalist is not going to work.

Lion Fish have this thing called Poison.

So I read back through my last post and I realized that I'm a big complainer.  And also not very optimistic.  Well I can't change the later, but I want you all to know that at this moment I am quite content.  After traveling to the Sini we are at this little Oasis on the banks of the Red Sea in this beautiful resort.  Seriously it is stunning.  I think I have more pictures of this place than the pyramids.  I'm sitting on my own personal patio and to one side there is a garden and to the other the beach...its very nice.  But alas we are leaving in 3 hours.  Sad. Depressing. In a very 'I'm not complaining way'.  So the cool thing I did here was go snorkling in the Red Sea.  It was really cool...we didn't see anything that exciting, but just the idea that we were in the Red Sea was beautiful.  The water is extremely blue.  Its like the color of melted blue jello...or if you had dumped all the blue food coloring into this part and it had stayed.  There is no shade of gray or green just perfect blue waters.  I liked it a lot. 

My schedule for the next few days is kinda fuzzy...i'm positive that Dill has told us many times, but I have a listening problem.  I know today we are going to take a ferry across the Red Sea into Aqaba.  Aqaba is a port city in Jordan (the country that i'm staying in for the next 3 months) and we will stay the night there and then the day following that I'm taking a 10 hour bus ride to Amman, the capital of Jordan.  Lots of traveling through the desert.  But this being one of my last few hours in Egypt I have to say that overall its been wonderful, beautiful and totally unexpected.  I would love to come back here.

Moses was a trooper

Hello to all from a hard tile floor in a bungaloo on the banks of the Red Sea.  

So yesterday I was tricked into hiking up the Sini.  For those of you who don't know its this mountain that supposably is the same mountain that Moses walked up to talk to God (in a burning bush) and got the Ten Commandments.  I am positive that I'm spelling "Sini" wrong and so if you wikipedia it then I would fiddle around with the spelling first.  Anyways back to the part where I was cruelly tricked.  So my teacher, whom we call "Dill" (due to the fact that that is indeed his real name), told us we were going on this little hike and that it wasn't too bad...there was some stairs at the end that were kinda hard, but no big deal.  He mentioned something about 2.5 hours...and we were all like 'okay cool lets walk up this mountain'.  So we get to this place that could be mistaken for Mars.  In fact I would not be surprised if NASA has never sent a little Robot to Mars...they've just taken some pictures of the Sini peninsula and said it was Mars.  There is NOTHING here...just some huge mountains that are rocky and there is more sand then I have ever seen in my life and I strongly considered the chances of survival if I were ever stranded here and the answer I can up with was 8 minutes and 37 seconds before the Bedouin would kill me.  Because our tour guide, Ahmed, was quite happy to tell us all that for the Bedouin killing was "no problem".  great.  Anyways so i'm in this desolate wasteland and I go up to the Saint Katherine Monastery and see the Burning Bush (which was not burning and no I did not see God) BUT I also saw this room full of skulls and bones...belonging to all the priests who had died at the monastery since it was built in the 2nd century. creepy.  Then we went on this so called "hike".  We start off and Dill was like "this is the easy part" and we are walking and walking and its dusty and the path is covered in camel urine/poop and for every breath I take i'm pretty sure half is dust and half is camel poop that has turned into dust.  We are still walking...walking...walking...oh and then I try and walk past this group of camels, but one of the camels hates me for some reason....probably because I smelt like camel crap and slowly/fastly tries to shove me off this cliff so I duck under the rope and now i'm in between two camels and then they both move towards me...its like lets squash this stupid girl between our smelly flee infested bodies.  I got away with no flees...that I know of.  So we are still walking.  And its hard...and sandy....and there are these Bedouin peoples asking us if we want some hot chocolates or hot tea.  umm no.  So after 2 hours...it turns out this trip was 2.5 hours ONE WAY (if you had prepared for it months in advance with workouts that would also benefit a person preparing for a climb up Mt. Everest)...anyways its been 2 hours and we get to the stairs.  When I think of stairs I think of uniform height and width possibly with a railing.  There was none of the above.  These were rocks 3 feet high and made you gasping for breath with each one.  There was this nice bedouin guy at the bottom that was like "just 700 steps and you are to the top!"  I wanted to throw him off the cliff.  So we climb and climb and my legs are shaking and I can't breath and I feel dizzy and every 10 steps we have to take a break and we run out of water and I hate my life.  We finally get to the top and I swear i'm never going back down as I collapse on this rock.  It was very anti-climatic.  There was this church that was bolted shut...it was very small...belonged to the monastary down below.  And it was freezing.  We were so high up that even in the hottest area of the earth it was freezing.  I ate my Special K Bar and tried to think about the Ten Commandments...but the only one I could remember was "Thou Shalt Not Covet" and I was definitly coveting all those people that had jackets...those on the bottom...those that were sleeping...basically every person on earth that was not on this mountain.  We then came back down.  If any of you reading this ever travel to Egypt I would definitly recommend this tourist destination.

Friday is Sunday

So in the Middle East Friday is the day that they worship and the day that everyone has off and so today we went to church. They (the LDS church) has rented out a beautiful home in an area called Ma'adi and transformed it into a chapel. The area it is in is very nice, it does not feel like Ciaro at all. As I walked down the streets I felt like I should be in France, Italy, Chile...it was very green and was full of BMWs and Volvos and had a very European feel. I enjoyed church more than I thought I would, everything was very familiar and it was nice to not feel overwhelmed. I like it here, but everything is so vastly different than what I am used to that it is exhausting at times. As I look around there is nothing to remind me of home or the U.S. and it is very draining, as well as exhilerating, to be thrown into this kind of setting.

Anyways, I am leaving tomorrow (Saturday) at 4am to take a bus to the Sini (a big sandy mountain) that I will climb sometime tomorrow. If I have my history right its the mountain that Moses climbed and saw God in the burning bush...which the monastary still has...the bush i mean...which is up for debate...one that i'm gonna refrain from...might be offensive to some if I say that I highly doubt that this bush is the same one that God 'burned'. Anyways....the point I was originally going to make was that a lot of stuff has happened and so as usual I am going to bullet point the things I think are most interesting/funny/wierd.
(They are in no particular order)

- When I was in Luxor I got my eyebrows done using "weaving" (Christy had told me about it) and I just want to say that it was by far they most painful hair removal thing I have ever done. My friend Lauren was cracking up as this lady with this string removed hair in such a way that I was gripping the arms of the chair and biting my lip so as not to cry out obsenities. On the bright side she did a very good job. On the down side she removed hair from all over my face and so I am positive that any day nowI am going to wake up with a mustash. And another downfall was that for every hair that was oh so pleasently plucked out a zit formed and so now I have all these bumps all over my face. To end let me just mention that I do not hold Christy in any way responsible for this tragic event haha!

- I saw Wolvering last night. It was amazing. For those of you who don't know it is a movie that goes off the X-Men. The guy at the hotel helped me find a theater and I went with Lauren and my friend Mustafa (which is a nickname and not his real name). The seats were assigned, a guy directed you to them. People have no problem answering their phones in the middle of the show...and others have no problem yelling at them from the other side of the room to stop talking...it was overall very loud. They also have an intermission in every movie. So in the middle of a pretty intense part, the film just stops and everybody gets up and leaves for snacks. Which are very cheap...popcorn (Fiishar) is only $2 and coke is only $1.20, ticket prices were $6.

- I am really excited about all the gifts I have been getting for people. I don't know if they are things that you would want, but i've been finding these hidden stores in random parts of back alleyways and they have pretty cool stuff. Just so Peggy and Jenny know I have not seen those baby carrying blanket things and so it looks like those will not be a gift. And ya'll should be thankful you are friends with me and not with some other people on this trip who don't get people souveniors...I had to convince my friend Matt that it was absolutly not a option to not get his mother a gift. I also have been labeled the person who gets screwed over the most...I am not good at all at haggling and usually pay 5 times what other people on my group pay...but i am getting better...kinda. For example I paid 150 pounds (about 30 dollars) for 3 scarves...at least it makes for a kinda funny story.

Oh here is a funny story...So everyone here takes the buses, they are usually jammed packed like a can of sardines. Yesterday we were in a taxi and I saw these five guys trying to get on a bus that could seriously not hold another person. So they were holding onto the door frame etc and the fifth friend is trying to grap a hold of something and the bus starts moving and so his friends just grab him and hold him up. There goes this bus with a group of people, 2 people deep, hanging onto the side. This city would seriously be a lawyers dream for wrongful death cases.

Yesterday we went to this mall that was enormous. I think it was at least 10 stories. We were there for about 3ish hours and I don't think that I even saw a forth of it. I ate Pappa Johns Pizza and it was delicious. Its wierd because all the American fast food restraunts are here and EVERYTHING is in English. I think I understand a little bit more why they hate westernization so much and feel like the West (meaning the U.S. and Western Europe) is taking over their lives...if in the U.S. everything was written in another language...say Russian... I would be pissed. We don't speak Russian we are English speakers and so it should be in English. This is an Arab country and so it should be in Arabic. For the record Burger King was written in Arabic. Okay moving on....Funny story: so we (me Mustafa and Lauren) are at H&M and I'm looking at Jewelry and Lauren is trying on clothes and I look over and Mustafa had pushed some clothes aside on this table in the middle of a busy part of the story, sat down, and was reading his Arabic DICTIONARY. I almost died laughing. And he thinks I am a nerd. I don't think I'll ever go shopping with him again either. On the way out he was like "Angie I'm so proud of you, you did so well, you only bought sunglasses, not sunglasses AND a purse AND a dress". Except I needed those things and so it was a very bad shopping trip. I don't understand him. I had to wear pants underneath my skirt today because it wasn't long enough...so our shopping trip was a failure. (People here do not show skin. Its a hundred degrees outside and they wear pants and long sleeve shirts underneath everthing.

I broke my tub. I was trying to take a shower and I pulled this little stick to change it from the bath faucet to the shower faucet and it came out and water was spraying everwhere and then I tried to put it back in, but that just directed the water into my face. Looking back it is quite amusing. I wish this was how real life is though...I just sat the broken piece on the tub, showered in the other bathroom and didn't think about it, and then today magically it was fixed. If I ever become a bizillionaire I am going to live in hotels.

I have already broken my Chi hair straightener (sorry Dad you'll have to buy another one for my birthday haha)...I used my voltage converter and everything and it still broke. My curling iron was working quite well but today while I was curling my hair there was the poping sound from the outlet and it turned off and then this funny smokey smell filled my room. So that might be broken too. I don't know yet though...didn't want to think about it.

I miss texting, corn tortillas, and facebook.

Oh and the fam and friends :) haha. But for realsies, I am pretty homesick.

I have found 3 things that transend all languages. Tears, laughter, and smiling. Girls here are a lot less willing to talk to strangers/foreigners and they mostly just stare/glare at you. Girls do this thing (in every country) where they size each other up and compare. Who is prettier? Who has better clothes? We immediately build up this barrier that is created from jealousness and envy. But I have found that in most cases as soon as I catch their eye and smile at them they will smile back and their whole countance will change. I think that we are all scared of the unknown and we would rather stare at it from a distance and think of it as this unreachable thing, but in reality we are all the same and if we make the effort to just make that first step and do something as simple as smile at a stranger than suddenly we are no longer strangers, just two girls riding the same subway car.

I hope everyone is enjoying shorts and Mexican food in America.
I send Love from Ciaro.

Pictures.

Luxor

Two nights ago my group took the night train from Ciaro to Luxor (its in southern Egypt) to see the Valley of the Kings, Temples, etc. The train was....interesting. I took some pictures which hopefully will one day make it onto this site. We have heard horror stories about this train for the last two years, but it was surprisingly pleasant...or at least in comparison to the nightmare that we had envisioned. We didn't eat the food cause we didn't want to be sick, but its REALLY hard to get people to accept the answer 'no'...they harrass you consistantly. So me and my roommate Lauren told the food guy that we were "fasting"... he got all worried and in shock and was like "WHY!?" so I said we "were fasting for religious reasons". Funny cause we are the two most sacreligious people on this whole trip, but they take fasting pretty seriously so that made him leave us alone. The person in charge of our train was this old man that was missing almost all his teeth...he kinda looked like a character off of Alice and Wonderland. When he found out we were studying arabic is ran off to get his phone and call his daughter whom he put on speaker phone so that we could talk to her. Then he showed us all his pictures of his family...he was very friendly...and was super hyper.
The Valley of the Kings was amazing! All the really cool stuff that I see they won't let us take pictures of....so when I finally get my pictures up I don't think they will be impressive at all. The tombs were extremely well preserved. They are around 6,000 years old and the details are amazing. The color is all there too...well about 75% of it. They used black, blue, yellow, red...these places are extremely colorful. Its hard to get my head wrapped around what I am seeing. The coolest thing i've seen is something that I had never even heard about. Its this boat that they found in the ground outside the largest pyramid. It was for the Pharaoh so that when he was resurrected he could sail to the sun....or something like that. Anyways this boat is about 4000 years old (I think) and when they found it it was so well preserved that they could put it back together. so they have it assembled in this museum 2 feet away from the pyramid. This boat is so detailed and beautiful, its wierd but that was more impressive to me than the pyramid. ...maybe cause i've seen the pyramids so many times already in pictures and movies.
I really like Luxor, it is so beautiful and we are staying right on the Nile. And the Nile is actually pretty here. In Ciaro it is gray and full of trash. Luxor doesn't have the pollution and overwhelming amount of people that Ciaro does. Its this oasis in the middle of this ugly ugly desert. There are a ton of Europeans here...all in saggy bikinis and speedos. They are very comfortable with their bodies. I swear if I see another 300 pound bald man with orange wrinkley skin in a speedo I will dig out my eyes with a spoon myself.
I have to go soon so here are some quick bullets of other things
- I get told that I look like i'm Egyptian a lot...I wish I could say though that they think that I speak like an Egyptian haha
- I rode a bedoin camel by the pyramids...that was the most fun thing that i've done so far...love the camels.
- Learned how to play Texas Hold'em and I definitly suck at this game.
- People do not use trash cans here...the world is their trash can.
- I ate at a Pizza Hut here in Luxor and it was a sit down restraunt with a waiter and everything...pretty nice place except that the airconditioner dripped onto my pizza so i'm pretty sure i'm gonna die. Muslims can't eat pig and so the pepporoni was made from beef...it tasted pretty much the same though.
- I think i'm slowly over coming my germophobia...or at least thats what I keep telling myself.

Highlights so far...

1. We were eating at this restraunt (like the one we ate at in Mexico, run by the Mayans) and i went to the bathroom and the girl selling toliet paper was so nice. I'm guessing she was about 9, and I talked to her in arabic for awhile while I waiting and then she put flowers into my hair. When I left she kissed me and said that she loved me. It was very cute. Pretty much the highlight of my Day.

2. I just went to this grocery store and there was this little girl in a full burka (minus the face part), she was about 4 and she was with her Dad. He got for her this minature cart that was her size and let her do the shopping and he showed her how to pay. It was really cute. And very different. The Dad was in designer jeans etc and looked very modern and then his daughter was dressed extremely traditional. I'm guessing Saudi. She was a very happy little girl though, so excited to feel grown up.

3. I'm really glad that i have such modest clothing. I feel so much more comfortable. When we go to tourists places there are a bunch of Europeans and some are dressed like sluts...seriously in the U.S. they would be considered slutty. Obviously they didn't get the memo about this being a conservative country.

4. Drivers dont know how to use lanes...i'm pretty sure they try and line up the center of their car with the white line. haha Its crazy! And they don't have pedistrian crossing and so we have to cross streets that are packed with cars driving pretty fast or at least a lot of them (the traffic here is worse than NYC) and so what you have to do is walk into it and then just pray they don't hit you. Picture walking across Montono or 528 or Southern during a very heavy rush hour. Its hard to explain so i'll just make a video for you. Its nerve racking but kinda exhillerating...like riding a rollar coaster.

5. I saw Sakara (The Step Pyramid) and went into a tomb, went to the Eyption Museum and saw all King Tuts stuff. I still can't figure out how to get my pictures from the camera to the computer and so I don't know when you'll get to see them.

6. At the pyramids we saw the funniest sight...a guy with a broom. They have a sweeper in the middle of the desert. haha. We tried to get a picture but he disapeared before we dug out our cameras.

7. I like it here. Its pretty neat.