Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday after class I went with Abu Fares to the Maim Hot Springs near the Dead Sea. Again, in order to get there you had to wind down a mountain into a beautiful desert valley. I'll post some pictures that I took on the drive and I hope that they do the valley justice. The hot spring itself is pretty incredible. Basically it is a waterfall where the water is the temperature of a jacuzzi and it collects in a little pool below that acts like a hot tub. Under the waterfall is a little cave that, because of the really hot water falling from the top and sides, acts like a sauna. The only problem is that it smells pretty strongly of sulfur. As the water collects on the ground it is so hot that it is steaming and it burns your feet if you accidentally step in it. I had never seen water that was naturally so hot and it was pretty amazing. I asked a bunch of people why the water was so hot but nobody could give me an answer so I'm planning on looking it up online because I'm still curious.
Wednesday I found that the original class had been split into two classes and that I had been placed in the higher of the two which was a nice confidence booster. I was sitting next to a guy named Hashem who had been in my class the entire time but I had not gotten to know up until now. He was having a conversation in Arabic with the teacher and it seemed as though he could speak fluently. There are a bunch of people in my class who can speak colloquial Arabic fluently but never learned how to read or write as they grew up in America. I asked him if he fell into this category and he told me that he actually can read and write perfectly too but has been pretending that he can't in order to get into the easiest class and not have to work. Now, each day he asks me whether he should read perfectly or purposely mess it up and he has done both and I find it pretty hilarious to watch. It's basically the equivalent of an adult taking a 1st grade class and I just think it's so funny to watch him pull it off.
After class I took a taxi across town to get shawarma at a little stand called Shawarma Riim which I had heard was one of the best places in town. The taxi ride was both entertaining and scary. Basically, Jordanians drive like complete maniacs. There are no lines to denote the lanes in the road and so basically the road consists of 3 roughly delineated "lanes" filled with screaming, honking Jordanians who merge from "lane" to "lane" with no turn signal. Instead, many drivers just split the middle of the road and communicate their intentions only by honking until they get their way (often times the honking lasts about 10 seconds) and yelling at the cars around them if they don't cooperate. Also, Amman consists of 7 circles that are relatively unmonitored and are not controlled by any traffic lights so since they are inherently dangerous, they create the perfect storm for accidents. Also, the philosophy behind driving in the city but especially on the highway is that the car in the left lane will drive as fast as it wants and you are supposed to just get out of the way if it is going to rear end you. Surprisingly this system works and time after time cars have gotten out of our way as we speed in the left lane.
Of all of the unlicensed maniacs on the road, taxi drivers are by far the worst. They have less than zero regard for any rules of the road and take no shame in just laying on the horn and swearing at regular drivers. There are plenty of accidents in Amman which the taxi driver I had on Wednesday and others have attributed to "women" (whatever that means) but I can more accurately attribute to the guy driving perpendicular to oncoming traffic twice, driving on a curb to swerve around oncoming traffic, and twice crossing the equivalent of three lanes of traffic without a signal or honking. Aside from the ridiculously illegal and dangerous driving it was pretty cool to carry out a conversation with him in Arabic about where he is from and how he likes the country. Like 70% of the country, the driver was from Palestine and I always find it very interesting to talk to Palestinians.
The taxi ride back to the hotel was equally crazy but in a different way. This time the driver was carrying a handgun shoved into a space under the wheel of the car. I knew that I wasn't in any real danger but it was still really uncomfortable. I tried to take a picture of it with my phone from the backseat while the guy was singing along to some Arabic song with his eyes closed. It's pretty unclear but if you look closely I promise it's there.
I got back to the hotel and I decided that I wanted to see if I could find pictures of the king or stickers of the crown that so many people have on their cars. Along with the pictures, the stickers of the crown are used to show support for the king and I thought that it would be cool to bring a couple home with me. I was told by someone at the front desk that I could find them in a bookstore so I walked down the hill to look around. I went to three separate bookstores who all said that they didn't carry anything of the sort and didn't know where I could find them. I was walking home when I saw a sticker of the crown on a car in front of a KFC and, in a last-ditch effort, I decided to ask a group of KFC delivery drivers (yes, those exist here) where I could find the sticker. After about 5 minutes of the group working together to piece together english sentences that directed me towards the stickers, one of the drivers told me to come with him and he would show me where to go.  I walked with him because I assumed that we were walking a block or two to a store, but I soon realized that he wanted me to get inside of his car and he was planning on driving me to the store. At first I was pretty nervous because it's something that I wouldn't think of doing in America, but for some reason I decided to get into the guy's car. The car was something like 20 years old and for some reason it had no seat belts. Also as we started up the hill to the shop, I found that the car had just enough power to make it up the hill which served to make me even more uneasy than I already was about driving in a strange KFC driver's jalopy to an unknown part of town. We got to the shop and both the driver and the shopkeeper were really welcoming and helpful and I was able to find exactly what I had been looking for. It's definitely important to remain cautious and aware of your surroundings especially in foreign country, but being there made me see that in Jordan there is a sense of hospitality that all Jordanians carry and it allows you to accept offers from strangers that you would normally see as creepy, suspicious, dangerous, or sketchy in America. Having said that, I am still pretty nervous about offers from strangers. When we got back to the hotel, I decided to give the KFC driver a few JD to thank him for his trouble as well as keeping me safe and not kidnapping me or anything.

Dead Sea

Sunday and Monday I wasn't feeling well so I decided to rest at the hotel rather than go to class. I think it was because of the Bedouin food but I'm not sure. Monday afternoon I was feeling a little better so I decided to go to the Dead Sea with the driver from the hotel. Turns out the guy's name is Abu Fares not Samir. We first stopped in Madaba which is a city south of Amman. There we stopped in an Orthodox Church with beautiful murals and paintings. I had never been in one before so it was definitely a cool thing to see. In order to get to the Dead Sea in Jordan you have to wind your way down 400m below sea level by going through mountain passes and different valleys. We passed tons of bedouin tents and herds of sheep. I always find it weird to see the aspects of Jordan that you would typically find in Third World countries. It seems like the country is in a transitional stage in terms of being totally developed. You look around and you see Mercedes-Benz's, skyscrapers and 5 star hotels, and then you realize that it's still not safe to drink the tap water even in the city and that once you are 20 minutes outside of Amman there are still people living in tents who migrate looking for water to drink and suddenly the only bathrooms you can find are these weird holes in the ground. It is actually pretty hard to describe the differences. I wanted to talk about the poverty you find and the unemployment but to be perfectly honest if you go to certain parts of Los Angeles you will find the same thing. I've heard that if you really want to appreciate where you come from you should go somewhere else and I've found that that's definitely true. Though we've gotten past problems of having potable tap water, we still have some of the issues of poverty and unemployment and maybe they are some of the results of development rather than problems that development can fix. Either way, I was just struck by some of the poverty that I've seen here and I think it's pretty awful that I have sort have ignored that issue back home until coming here.

The drive also allowed me to get to know Abu Fares better. We talked about how he was in the army and also an engineer who used to live in Saudi Arabia. He talked about how good his life was back there and about how much he loved being an engineer. Though he never said a negative word about his  life here in Jordan, I could tell by his face that he is upset about not being able to do what he loves and that he's not completely happy with his position now. He is really knowledgable and knows a lot about how things work and it made me sad to think that all of that knowledge is going to waste. I think that it's a problem that we have back home in America too and I could really identify with what he was feeling.

As you get closer to Israel you start to see checkpoints set up by the Jordanian army. The checkpoints consist of 3 armed military personnel and an armored vehicle with a mounted machine gun on top that is being held by another soldier. It was one of the first signs of real conflict or hostility that I had seen between Israel and Jordan and it was a little bit stirring. I hadn't mentioned to anyone that I was Jewish until it came up on the Wadi Rum trip. The news was met with surprise as people wondered what the hell I was doing in this country, if I was scared, or if I had been hurt because of it. It also came with a bunch of misconceptions about Jews and Judaism and it made me think that people view Jews with the same ignorance and prejudice in some parts of the world that we sometimes see Muslims with. It's not really something that I think about living in a community surrounded by liberal, like minded Jews, but it was pretty interesting to think about. People here really only refer to Israel as Palestine and the Palestinians that I have talked to generally say something along the lines of loving America and having nothing but contempt for Israel which is understandable given their experience back home. I think it's also interesting that they see the two as separate entities with distinct goals.

Abu Fares also said that the soldiers were looking for "Iraqis". When I asked him why and what he meant he gave me the vague answer that Iraqis tend to cause problems with the locals and he definitely showed some distaste towards them. I tried to ask for something more specific or substantive but I didn't get much of an answer. I know that the influx of Iraqi refugees has been tough on Jordan and I really wish that I could have found out exactly what he meant.

The Dead Sea is pretty amazing. For those who don't know, it is more than twice as salty as a normal body of saltwater and the high salt content allows you to float on the top whether you want to or not. They tell you that you should swim on your back and that if any water gets into your eyes or mouth you are to immediately wash it. Also, the saltwater hurts really badly when it reaches any open cuts and I definitely found out about some that I didn't know I had. It's truly amazing to just float on top of the water and even though I tried to sink down, the water kept pushing me back up. I'm really excited to go again on the Israeli side. The last thing that I did before leaving was rub the mud of the Dead Sea on my back where I had a really bad sunburn. The mud is supposed to have really good healing properties and maybe it was the perfect example of the Placebo Effect but my back definitely felt better afterwords. I tried to take some pictures of the Dead Sea but each time I've driven by there has been a haze over it that makes for bad pictures. I am about to go meet an American writer at a library downtown and then when I get back I plan on updating the rest of the blog.

Aqaba

Hey everyone sorry that I've been lazy with the posts I'm hoping to be updated with everything by the end of tonight. Friday night the group slept at a hotel in Aqaba, a resort town on the Red Sea which I think is like the Jordanian version of Eilat. They told us that the hotel was a "5 stars hotel" which I assumed meant 5 Jordanian Stars, putting it somewhere on the level of a Motel 6. I was totally wrong. The hotel was amazing. The rooms were very nice and it had two pools and even a private beach. We spent most of Saturday at Aqaba before we got back to Amman late Saturday night. It was my first time in the Red Sea and I was immediately struck by the fact that there are jellyfish everywhere. Luckily, they were non-stinging jellyfish but that didn't stop me from getting really tense every time I swam near them. The other amazing thing about Aqaba is that you are actually at the crossroads of 3 countries. From the beach at our hotel I could see Eilat and Egypt, and if I were to have driven/sailed south a little while I would've been able to see Saudi Arabia. At around noon I went on a snorkeling trip with some people from my group. It was amazing to look down and see beautiful coral reefs filled with color and bustling with fish, and then look up and be surrounded by mountains and desert and hear the call to prayer ringing in the background. I hadn't been snorkeling since I was a little kid and I really enjoyed it. The water was warm and clear and both the fish and reefs were beautiful. My favorite part was swimming into a school of fish that would swim in a big circle around you. However, I decided to stop snorkeling after I found myself in a minefield of jellyfish which really freaked me out. Even though I was pretty sure that they would not sting me, I didn't want to test my luck and I felt pretty uncomfortable being there nonetheless. In order to escape the minefield I had to effectively play Cube Runner with jellyfish and by the time I was out of the minefield I was ready to hang up my snorkel for the day. I spent the rest of my time there jumping off of a small pier into the Sea which was really fun especially when I would jump into the school of fish and then find myself surrounded by a rotating circle of fish. All in all I would say that Aqaba was a nice break from Amman and a great compliment to Wadi Rum which was the other half of the trip.

Pictures of the Palestinian Boy from Jerash

The bottom picture shows the aftermath of the interaction between the older and younger boys. The little boy in the red shirt was just hit by the boy in the blue and is now picking up his chewing gum that fell on the ground.

Wadi Rum

On Friday morning I took a trip with other Arabic students to Wadi Rum and Aqaba. I had been waking up really early every morning so I didn't set myself an alarm to wake myself up because I figured that I would have plenty of time to get to the bus by 8:30 when it was scheduled to leave. I woke up at 8:25 and luckily I had packed my bag the night before so I grabbed it and sprinted all the way to the university where the bus was leaving from. Luckily they were planning on waiting until 8:50 and I got there with plenty of time to spare. The bus ride was about 3 hours but I enjoyed it because it allowed me to meet new people and get to know the people in my class better. I'm usually hesitant to talk to people that I don't know and to make friends but I'm certainly getting more comfortable with it as the trip goes on. We finally arrived in Wadi Rum and we were allowed 2 free hours until our scheduled jeep tour of the desert. The desert there is beautiful and some of my classmates and I decided to climb up the mountain behind our camp so that we could hang out up there and get a better view. We hung out on the mountain for about a half hour at which point we saw some Bedouins bringing their camels for us to ride and we got down the mountain as fast as we could to ride them. Riding the camel was amazing and I thought that I was going to fall as the camel was getting up because it makes you almost perpendicular to the ground. Luckily I was able to stay on the camel the whole time and I had an awesome time. After the camel ride it was time for our "jeep" tour of the desert. Naturally, I expected that we would be taken around inside of jeeps however what the Bedouins had in mind was a little different. Instead, we sat on makeshift benches in the backs of pickup trucks as the Bedouins zoomed around the desert racing each other ad driving up and down sand dunes that felt like roller coaster drops. The desert landscape was beautiful and it was filled with a distinct red sand and there were spectacular mountains on either side of us. Side note: for those of you who have seen Lawrence of Arabia or who started to watch it but were discouraged from finishing it for various reasons, the movie was actually filmed in large part in Wadi Rum and it really is as spectacular as it appears on screen. We were dropped off next to a small mountain and we concluded our tour by climbing on top of it to watch the sunset as we sat on a cliff. It was one of the best sunsets I have ever seen and it was truly incredible to watch the sun drop below the crest of the mountains as the desert was filled
with color. To finish off our trip at Wadi Rum, we ate a delicious traditional Jordanian meal prepared for us by the Bedouins. It was really nice to talk to people in my group and learn new things about Jordanians and, in particular, Jordanians and politics. I learned that for the most part, Palestinians do not like the king because his father was not very good to them. Additionally city folk tend to not like the king as much as Jordanians living out in the country do. However, most importantly, I was given the tip by many of my classmates not to talk about the king to Jordanians as it usually does not end well as it is a very sensitive subject and often makes people tense and uncomfortable. Jordanians will talk about the politics of the region as long as they are external issues, but once you start to ask about domestic issues the situation changes. Additionally, I was told that Jordan has a very large secret service that is very effective though it is nothing like the KGB or anything of that sort and their intelligence work does not result in things like that. You may be wondering how these guys had any real or credible information about the government SECRET service and I'm not sure that they did but I though it was an interesting proposition so I wanted to share it.

Jerash

A lot has happened since I last posted. Two days ago after class I went with the driver at the hotel to Jerash which is a site of Roman ruins north of Amman. The driver's name is Samir and he has become my guide as we go around Jordan together. The drive to Jerash allowed me to see more of Jordan and the countryside (if you can call it
that) had some really breathtaking views. I saw beautiful mountains and valleys and some greenery which was a nice change from Amman which consists of similar looking tan buildings throughout the city. Outside of Amman we passed a city that was created for Palestinian refugees which was interesting and sad to see. Many Jordanians are actually not natives of Jordan and a large part of the population is made up of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees. As we drove to Jerash pictures of the king still lined the road but as we entered poorer areas the pictures changed from shots of the king by himself to the king hugging a poor, elderly Jordanian woman. Unprompted, Samir mentioned that it is easy for the king to take pictures like this, to hug these old, poor women. When I asked him to clarify, he said what I thought he meant: that it is much easier for the King to take these pictures and present an image of caring for the downtrodden, but the fact remains that poverty and unemployment are major issues in Jordan and Samir feels as though the King's concern for these people is mostly feigned.
When we arrived in Jerash I was immediately struck by the ruins but my attention shifted as soon as I met a group of young boys who were trying to sell me chewing gum. The boys in this first group were 8-10 years old and they spoke English so we talked for a little bit. I gave them some money but I didn't take their gum because I wasn't going to chew it and I figured that they could just sell it to someone else and make more money. When they boys heard that I spoke English they started to say "Viva America! Viva America! George Bush!" which I thought was pretty amusing. One of the boys took to me and we started to walk through Jerash as he started to sell me more chewing gum and flutes that he had made as well as ask for more money. I gave him a Jordanian Dinar as well as a Dollar and we started to talk more about where he was from. Having just passed through a city made of Palestinian refugees and aware of the large Palestinian population in Jordan, I asked the boy if he was Palestinian. He said that he was and when I asked him why he left he made his hand into a gun and said "boom boom at night, boom boom". This hit me pretty hard. As a Jew I am constantly fed the idea that Palestinians are evil and the enemy. The image of this little, friendly, English speaking 8 year old kid who is selling chewing gum to feed his family and had to leave his home to get Way from gunshots whizzing by his house at night shatters that idea in every way. We walked together for another 10 minutes or so just making small talk until he decided to go back to his friends. A few minutes after he left I turned back around and saw that a group of older boys had come over to the younger boys and were kicking and punching them. It turns out that there is a network of boys who work inside of Jerash and many are brothers and cousins. After hearing the boy's story and befriending him in a way, I had a stake in the affair and I decided to ask the boys why they had been beating up on the younger boys and their reply was "it's just business". I decided to end my inquiry there and I let them take me on a tour of the site that we were standing next to even though I knew that they would ask for money in exchange for the tour. I decided that the money meant so much more to them than it does to me so I gave them what they asked for. I continued to see the sites which were pretty remarkable but to be honest I was too focused on the people I just met to be paying complete attention to the ruins. I walked up to the Roman theater there where I met a Jordanian boy named Ali and we made small talk. He looked my age and I asked him if he went to university and he said that he did but that he dropped out after two years because there was no point in going. When I asked him what he meant he told me that where he lives there is no future after college, that regardless of if he went to a university he would be working the same jobs and these jobs do not require a college education. He said that in the US "there is business after college, you have a future with business but in Jordan you do not have that future". Instead he said that they have very high unemployment where he is and poverty. On my way out of the site I saw a woman sitting down and I decided to practice my Arabic by greeting her with "asalaamu alaikum" which means hello (literally it means peace be upon you but it's a common greeting). The woman invited me to sit down next to her and she started to talk to me in English. She told me that she was a Palestinian and that she moved to New Orleans when she was very young and had now moved back to Jordan with her sons. She was kind, welcoming, friendly, and even partly American. Once again, she was everything that the traditional image of Palestinians I am fed is not. Meeting and talking to Palestinians really made me reevaluate the image that I had of them and I am sure that being in Israel will provide me with similar experiences.
On my way out of the site I said goodbye to my little friend who had been hanging out at the entrance and walked to the restaurant next door to get some lunch with my driver and his friend who had already been sitting at a table outside. I had a traditional middle eastern meal and his friend told me some Arabic dirty jokes which were pretty funny. On the way back the driver took out his phone and showed me that he had changed his background to a picture of the king even though I had not asked him to see his phone or asked him anything about the king. I think that this was similar to what happened a couple of days earlier when he told me that he supported what was going on in Egypt and Syria and later showed support of the Jordanian king by telling me that they have no problems in Jordan. It's important to know that what happens here is not some 1984 situation or even what's going on in Thailand, but I find these short moments very interesting.
Side note: I'm pretty sure that I have pictures of the kids on my computer but I don't have access to it at the moment to when I get back to the hotel in Amman I will try to post them.

Observations Continued

There are pictures of the king everywhere and I realized that this is the first monarchy that I have been to and one of the only that I can think of where the king has legitimate power. Maybe I'm just not thinking hard enough. In the car I asked the driver why there were so many pictures of the king everywhere and he made a point of saying that everyone loves the kind and that they put up the pictures by choice and that there is no law that requires it. I asked him about the uprisings in Egypt and Syria and he said that he supports both of them. However, when I asked him why he supported the uprisings he became tense and would not say. He added that there are no problems here in Jordan, that the king gives them everything that they need so why would they want anything else. When I asked about demonstrations in Jordan he was again hesitant to speak about them and added that there are some demonstrations about price increases and about the economy but never against the king directly. In Jordan it is illegal to speak out against the king and I suspected that this law was the reason for his hesitation to talk about why he supported the overthrowing of leaders in the Arab countries as admitting that he supported the overthrowing of these authority figures would imply that he would support similar endeavors here in Jordan.
Also, yesterday I was watching CNN in my hotel room and they were showing a shot of the final leaderboard from the U.S. Open. This showed the flags representing the nationalities of each golfer and I found it very interesting (and fairly disconcerting) that the American flag was blurred each of the 4 times it was displayed on TV while none of the other flags shown were blurred even though they were from other Western countries.

Some Cultural Observations

Jordanians are generally very nice and helpful but on the east side (which is the old city) of Amman they are more conservative and they give you dirty looks if you wear shorts which apparently you are not supposed to wear. Additionally you can't sit down next to women on a bus as it is prohibited. Most women I have seen cover their heads but there are plenty of women who do not. Additionally, set women wear burkas and I think that these women are Saudis. There many Saudis here especially at the university and you can distinguish them by their clothing. Also most Jordanians are actually Palestinian and not Hashemites which makes sense considering that there are plenty of Palestinian refugees and Jordan borders Israel/Palestine.
I visited the King Abdullah Mosque today which was the first that I have ever been inside and
it was a really cool experience. Right next to the mosque is a giant church which is intended to give the message that Jordanian Muslims and Christians are living here together as brothers. I was given a tour of the mosque by a very nice man who is from Romania and spoke English very well. We talked about his pilgrimage to Mecca and about an American writer who he often talks to at a local library. I then visited a Palestinian market underneath the mosque.

Some Pictures from Today

Lost in Translation

Day 2

Today was much better than yesterday which was spent registering for the Arabic class that I am taking. The process should have taken about 30 minutes but it took about 3 hours because hardly anyone in the registration office spoke English and it was very inefficient so I ended up waiting in many long lines and being sent around the building looking for English speakers who could help me. Today I had my first day of class which went really well. I met some people from my class who are from Switzerland, New Orleans, and even a guy who lived in Encino (which was pretty cool considering that of all the places in the world someone could like he lived in my town) and they invited me to get lunch with them at the university cafeteria. I got some shawarma which was the first middle eastern food I've eaten since I got here. It was pretty nice to make some friends here and it definitely made my day. After returning to the hotel I went to see more of the city with the hotel driver and we saw downtown, the citadel, and the roman theater. Both the citadel and the roman theater were very cool and they were the first Ran ruins I have seen in person and it was pretty awesome to stand in the same place that Romans and Umayyads stood. Now I am back at the hotel and I can hear the call to prayer from my room which is pretty cool sounding even though I have no idea what they are saying.

Day 1

It's 5:40 am here in Jordan and the suns already been out for a half hour. This is the view of Amman from my hotel room. Today should be a pretty cool day I'm planning on going to Jerash and seeing downtown Amman as well as registering for my Arabic class. I didn't get any sleep here tonight but I'm feeling pretty excited and energized. Also I'm watching the nba finals online which is pretty cool.

Some Pictures from Frankfurt