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- Peace tree overlooking the holy land
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- One of the many beautiful mosaics in Jordan
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- Petra Stones
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- Petra Stones
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- Great Pyramids
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- Kitty in Petra
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- Petra Stones
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- Petra Stones
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- Desert Castle
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- Wadi Mujib
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- Ready for Ramadan in Cairo
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- Citadel, Amman
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- Petra Stones- The Siq
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- Petra Stones
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- Mamu and Jessu!
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- Petra Stones
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- Petra Stones- the “Monastery”
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- Alexandria
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- Umm Qais- looking out over Israel, Sea of Galilee, and Golon Heights
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- Jerash
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- Jerash
Its been weeks since I last updated. Many apologies. Several rounds of upheaval have stood between me and my website. In brief, I failed to write about:
• My Birthday in Egypt- turning 21 is not quite the same in a Muslim country, but I celebrated with good friends and good food (and a couple of beers)
• The end of my summer program- saying goodbye to friends and moving out of the (not so) lovely Hotel President, which had been our home for the summer
• Saying hello to my Mom and sister, who arrived in Cairo, much to my delight. Getting to show them around and experiencing the sites again with my mom, who had been many years ago, and my sister, to whom it was new, was so much fun. We ate well, had long, hot, busy days, and made it to all the major sites around Cairo, plus Alexandria, all in 6 days. I hope they had as much fun as I did.
• Saying goodbye again to Jessie and moving on with my mom to Jordan, my new home in the Middle East. We spent almost a week staying with my mom’s friend in Amman and taking day trips to sites all over the country (Jordan is very small) and we spent two days in Petra, which was spectacular. Hopefully, I will visit all of the sites again, and write more about them here. Some of them are pretty incredible (especially Petra).
• And then another goodbye, sending my mom off to London and California, and settling in in Amman, with new friends from my program.
And that brings me to where I am today- sitting on my bed in my new home, with a lovely Jordanian family in Amman. They’re an older couple- in their 60s and 70s respectively- and their seven kids are all grown up and have families of their own now. It’s a welcome change from Cairo to find myself in a clean, quiet home, in a relatively quiet, laidback city. Living with a non-English speaking family also forces me to use my Arabic, which is important. They also think that the fact that I don’t eat meat and that there is no TV in my house in California is too crazy to believe. But nonetheless, Mama makes a vegetarian dish for me every night. They just don’t understand why! Classes started in earnest yesterday, though they are foreshortened because of Ramadan. I’ll be taking Modern Standard Arabic, Colloquial Arabic, Arabic Poetry, and History and Culture of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. All in Arabic, but with students from my program only. I want to return briefly to the fact that its Ramadan now. I really had no sense of the extent to which this holy month interferes with daily life until I saw it with my own eyes. In the US we sometimes have days where everything is closed, or has shorter hours. Here, and in all Muslim countries, it’s a whole month. People can’t eat, smoke, drink anything, or have sex during daylight- which during the summer is about 4:00 AM to 7:15 PM- and so all restaurants are closed until after sunset. Not only restaurants, but every business has shorter hours during Ramadan. People just don’t work quite as effectively after 12 hours without food, I suppose. About 7:00, before the sunset and the Muezzin’s call saying it’s time to break the fast, the whole city is literally dead. No cars on the road, no people on the street… everyone is home with their families waiting to eat their Iftar. It’s quite an experience. But I do like the comfort of the routine… I come home before Iftar and watch recitations of the Quran with my family, we eat a date as soon as we hear the call “Allahu Akbar” and then we eat a delicious meal. Mama’s a very good cook- lucky me!
