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.