Kate's Adventures in the Middle East

READ MY NEW BLOG

2007-06-30T07:22:00.000+01:00

GO TO MY NEW BLOG

Seriously.

http://katesamericanlife.blogspot.com

Kate's
American
Life

New blog!

2007-06-27T09:47:00.000+01:00

So, I'm not in Jordan anymore...

This is my new blog:

http://amillionthingstobe.wordpress.com

There are still lots of photos that need to be posted on to this kateinjordan website, so I will continue to clean up the mess that is a result of lack of fast internet.

I hope you enjoy!

40 Minutes on the Phone

2007-06-20T08:34:00.001+01:00

I called Malek and talked to him for 40 minutes. I think that will probably cost a million dollars. It was worth every second, though. Bringing these two strange worlds together again. I have not been gone for long, but it feels like centuries, millenia. "With you, everything is life or death," says Trevor. Yeah well...that's...not ALWAYS totally true...

Tonight I watched about 50 trailers and previews on the apple website. I was impressed, except for the part where it got to movies about Islamic Extremists and Terrorism. Whatever, freedom of speech, "horea ta'abeer erra2ee", if people want to make movies about Islamic Extremists who strap bombs to themselves, or conspire to strap bombs to themselves, or who believe that the only point in life is to engage in Holy Jihad, go them. It's a free country. Doesn't mean I have to frequent them, but they can do whatever they want.

I just get mad when entwined in the images of terrorists are images of people praying in mosques, or flashes of pages from the Quoran. Seriously. As a Mormon, I imagine I'd feel the same kind of frustration if I were to see a trailer for a movie about the Fundamendalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with images of polygamist colonies flashing next to images of the Book of Mormon.

About two years ago, I came to the realization that the world would be so much better if everybody would just stop being stupid. "People should just stop doing stupid things. If everybody just didn't do dumb things anymore, the world would be such a better place!" The difference is that I don't think the government has the right to control people doing stupid things, like make images that diliberately distort the western world's perception of Islam, and perpetuate the image that it is a fundamentalist terrorist machine.

My Jordanian friends all said that the US government is controlled by Jews. That our media is controlled by Jews. That the Jewish influence in our society is only superceded by Israel itself. I never thought that was true, until coming home. You notice things like kosher signs on food labels, and the star of David, a lot more after being without. Hmmm.

Reading, "The Lemon Tree," was a great relief for me. It helped in so many ways. I finally felt as though there were someone who understood part of my experience, though what I lived in Jordan was in many ways very far removed from the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that was the heart of the book's story. I need to contact the man who wrote it; he did a most excellent job.

I strongly believe that the solution to the misunderstandings, the solution to violence, the solution to hate - is education, compassion, and understanding. You get education from reading. You get compassion from experience. You get understanding from exposure. All of these things, reading, experience, and exposure - the base of it all - is language.

The Arabic Language is the first step.

Richness

2007-06-15T15:58:00.000+01:00

I am in Los Altos, California, for my best friend's wedding. This is one of the wealthiest parts of the country. You know, Silicon Valley..."Do You Know The Way To San Jose doo doo doo DOO doo doo dodododooo dodo dooo..."

It's difficult for me to explain what exactly is going on inside of my head.

I bought the happy soon-to-be-wed couple a microwave. I felt really good about that present.

It's like my life in Jordan was a dream. Maybe it will become more real when I get back to Massachusetts. Maybe it's just this transitory state here. Maybe it really was a dream. Maybe Irbid and Sharia Cinema and Ayhem Abu A-Sha'ar never really existed. It just seems so impossible that I could be all the way over here buying my best friend a microwave, when two weeks ago I was taking down the laundry from where it was drying on the line outside, while my 13 year old Arabic brother stood by with Hammadeh, his friend, to be sure nothing bad happened while I was outside by myself. That I walked through five different airports in the last week (Queen Aliya, Charles de Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Bradley, Chicago Midway, San Jose...okay so six!), by myself - yet two weeks ago there was a boy who came to my house and asked for my hand in marriage...what?

Fuse blowage.

Idiot in the Airport

2007-06-13T21:53:00.000+01:00

Yeah, so I had my first encounter with general American ignorance on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It happened today in the Chicago Midway Airport. Here I am on my way to my best friend's wedding in Oakland, CA. I had a layover in Chicago. I brought with me a book called, "The Lemon Tree."

Highly recommended read, I've only gotten through about 100 pages. It's a well written non-fiction account of a Palestinian who returns to his house in al-Ramla, and meets the Jewish lady who lives there. It goes through the whole history, from the early Zionists, up through at least the six-day war, and I think it will continue even after, through the second intifada in 2000. The best part about this book is the narration is mostly objective. I feel compassion towards both of the main characters, the Jewish girl and the Arab boy, and deep sadness/anger towards both sides' leaders. The book is helping me formulate specific opinions about specific leaders. For example, I think that Ben-Gurion is one of the most wicked and corrupt men of the 20th century, right along with Mufti Mohammad Al-Hussein. Sick. The book is very real, very alive for me; filled with references to places I've been, and phrases in Arabic that I understand, and just general cultural knowledge that I have lived. I can really put myself into this book.

So, I was sitting there, "putting myself into this book", and the lady next to me started asking me about it. First of all, who talks to a stranger in an airport who is in the middle of reading a book? I mean, somewhat elementary, when a book is opened towards a person's face, usually their mind is concentrating on the words inside, no?

She asked what the book was about, because she had seen it before, and before I could tell her she started telling me about a book she had read that she thought was like it. However, from what I could tell, the book was one of those fashion-politics books that go in and out of the print every other day. You know, that one section in Barnes and Noble with books that are meant to radicalize your viewpoints, titles like, "Why Bush Is A Horrible President."

She described this book that went through American politics from the early colonists and the stamp act, to President Bush in Iraq. So basically, the only obvious similarity between our books were that they both had to do with History. She then asked me if my book was about the six-day war, "You know, it really is incredible what the Jews were able to do! An absolute miracle, in 1967. They single-handedly defeated all the Arab armies...I mean, from a Christian perspective, this has been prophesied and prophesied."

I think I was kind of staring at her. When I finally opened my mouth, I said, "Well, this book is not really about that." She interrupted, "Oh, isn't it a story of a Palestinian and a Jew? Those Palestinians..." Before she could make some other pseudo-Crusader comment, I jumped in, "The book is quite well researched, it's a non-fiction account of a Jew and a Palestinian who meet because the Jew is living in the Palestinian's old house. You know, in 1948, when the UN gave the Jews large chunks of the land of Palestine, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced out of their homes..."

Here she cut in again. "But it was prophesied from the beginning. I mean, what a miracle that the Jews were able to defeat the Arabs! And now look at all the problems we have, radical Islamic terrorists everywhere..."

I was choking my rage. She wasn't even THERE, you know?

She continued, "And Israel has given back to the Palestinians everything they wanted in 1967, and there is still so much violence and hatred. I mean, every single thing they wanted, they've just given it right back."

Here, they started boarding the plane. Fortunately, the lady was in group A and I was in group B, so I didn't risk sitting next to her for four hours. I had completely had enough of her ignorant, one-sided, radical views.

In a calm stable voice, I pronounced,"I'd really like to see your source of information on that."

She kind of floundered, I guess not expecting me to confront what she must have esteemed educated and moderate opinions. "Oh, any news station!"

I have many Arab friends from many different countries, and different political views. Radicals, nationalists, communists, lovers-of-Islamic Monarchies, libertarians, NPR-loving liberal democrats - basically every different opinion possible. Despite all their differences, there is one opinion that is shared on all planes - a general disgust/disapproval for American Media.

Which I now share.

Even if NBC Nightly News, CNN, Fox etc. weren't fashion shows with a few random clips of soldiers walking around in Iraq, even if the general American public watched news stations like BBC World that are less flashy and spend more time on more relevant stories - the sad fact is that Americans are so stupid they wouldn't be able to process the information showed to them. Even if we had a more reliable media, the majority still would believe whatever felt best according to their religion - THE MAJORITY WOULDN'T CARE.

THE MAJORITY DOESN'T CARE.

I don't understand how this woman could come up with the brilliant idea that the Israeli government is suddenly sympathetic towards Palestinians, has given them back all of the rights and territories they possessed before 1967, and is advocating a two-state solution. The EXACT opposite is true, and this is something that I know because I have seen it with my eyes, I have been there, walked there, and talked with many different people - Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian...I feel like I'm going crazy.

I shouldn't have felt such anger towards this ignorant fool in the airport. I should have felt pity, even sorrow.

It's hard to feel sorrow for a people that willingly embraces ignorance, that clings to religious extremism instead of seeking out moderation and understanding of cultures and peoples. How can the majority of the citizens of my country stand to support such fanaticism and intolerance? Such complete disregard for the value of the Palestinian people, their religious and historical ties to the land, the blood they have spilled in this conflict? Arabs are our brothers. You claim to be Christian, yet you condone the atrocious acts of violence during the six-day war? How can anyone condone the preemptive strike of 1967? The Egyptian bodies piled in the sand?

Need to sleep.

Jet Lag

2007-06-11T12:45:00.000+01:00

I woke up, looked at the clock. It said 6:30. I was like, "Oh okay, maybe This American Life will be on soon...what time does it come on?" Went upstairs and my mom was like, "Are you hungry?"

"No...haven't really been asleep that long."
"Yeah, not that long, only like 14 hours..."
"What?"
"You must have a really good bladder, you didn't get up once to go to the bathroom."
"Um, okay."
"You'll appreciate that comment more when you get older."

"What, it's morning?"
She laughed and pointed to her bathrobe.
"Yeah, Kate!"
"Um...okay...what?"

My dad waltzed in the room and started singing something. He got his lunch out of the fridge and then started saying how he thought they had plums in the middle east, which is why he bought plums, so I can feel "at home" and do I want any?

I didn't really know how to respond. I guess they'd have plums if they could afford them?

Didn't say anything, but then asked again, "Um, is it really morning or are you all just kidding?"
"No, no, it's really morning!"
Laughed.

Weird.

I Lost Weight

2007-06-10T07:23:00.000+01:00

I don't know how much weight I lost in Jordan.

I say 4 kilos (like 8 pounds), but that's more like a rough estimate not really based in facts.

When I was in Jordan last year, on Fezzah's scale (I lived with a crazy old widow, and one day she felt like getting her scale out and weighing me and my roommate Rachel) I weighed 64-65 kilos. That would make sense, because for the last four years, I have been exactly 143 pounds, not more, not less. 143 pounds is 65 kilos.

I hate talking about these things because they are sensitive in my family. This is really important, though.

When I weighed myself on Sister Dew's scale before coming home, I weighed 61-62 kilos, which is like 134 pounds. If that information is correct, I lost something like 4 kilos, or 8 pounds.

My dad said I looked good. That is code word in our house for, "You lost weight!" Weird to be hearing those words from him.

Later on, Trevor ended up calling me. It was good to be able to talk to another human being after being surrounded by aliens for the whole day. Somehow the fact that I lost 8ish pounds came up in our conversation, and he said something like, "Yeah, I noticed when I picked you up at the airport. I wasn't going to say anything, because I didn't think it was that important." Man, that made me feel so good. Because it's not important. It's not like I was fat before, and it's not like I'm skinny now, and even if I were, those things are totally superficial.

My First Entire Day Back Home

2007-06-10T05:19:00.000+01:00

So Trevor picks me up from the airport. I feel like I'm in a time machine, sitting next to him, as if nothing happened. As if we were hanging out together yesterday. Except, I feel extremely nervous. I had butterflies in my stomach, and my head felt messed up. Not really sure what exactly that was all about; Trevor doesn't usually encite awkwardness in me. That was the best way to describe how I felt, AWKWARD. "Don't feel awkward!" he said. It didn't really help me to not feel awkward.

We eventually got onto one of the big explosive issues that was bound to come up from me having spent a semester studying Arabic in the Middle East - Palestine, and Israel, and my feelings about the Arab-Israeli conflict. That was interesting. Trevor will probably be the only person in the world to hear my unfiltered steady stream of conscious emotions on that subject. It's hard for me to open my heart up to people who smash it to bits and pieces with their apathy or ignorance. At least Trevor actually has a brain, or maybe it's just me and him on some other fifth dimension that doesn't have brains and the rest of the world actually does - but whatever the case, he really gets me.

My hair feels weird. I took two showers in France before coming home, and my hair was soft then, but my hair is like...I can't keep my hands off it. It's shiny, and soft, and smooth. It feels weird.

I think that it will be worth it to continue writing on this blog about my re-entry, and culture shock experiences. So far, it's just my hair.

Trevor really made me mad today. My family has the best intentions, and couldn't be more loving, but are sadly ignorant about the Middle East. I don't tire of explaining to them what a hijab is, or what people eat for meals, but I miss talking to someone who understands. Playing power games is not my style. I tried to call Trevor what felt like a million times, but always got his answering machine, the same stupid one that I have heard over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 times...oh well.

My family prayed together. My Arabic family never prayed TOGETHER like that. It was a good feeling.

Je Rentre Aujourd'hui!

2007-06-08T06:33:00.000+01:00

So, I just woke up a few minutes ago. I had butterflies in my stomach. I don't think there can be a feeling as exciting as "GOING HOME." It was like this the first time I left 1 Rue Mathurin Meheut, four years ago, but still, something has changed. For one, I know what to expect when I return. I really appreciate my experience in Israel; I think that will allow me to have less culture shock or "American" shock when I get home. At least, that is the hope.

This adventure changed my life, and for the better. I am so glad that I went to Jordan.

And I am so glad to finally be going home!

Back in France

2007-06-06T21:58:00.000+01:00

So, we left at 9:30 pm ish last night, Malek, Jihad, and their friend Asel.

We drove to the airport.

My flight left at 1:30 am.

I got to Paris, found the place where I was supposed to take the bus, ended up having an interesting political conversation with one of the airport employees (in French) - the first person I meet in France, and he's muslim! Interesting.

Got on the bus from the airport to Montparnasse, then FINALLY found the right place to go. The problem was my stupid back. It was way too heavy.

But I got to Rennes on the TGV train I took from Montparnasse, and from Rennes I took the bus to the Basset's house.

I feel totally weird to be here. It's over, I'm coming home!!!!

My Groom

2007-06-04T21:48:00.000+01:00

In Jordanian Culture, there isn't such a thing as "dating" or "hanging out". So, what happens when two people love each other and eventually decide to get married? I discovered today, in what turned out to be the most hilarious cultural experience I have had so far.

I was not expecting to experience this while in Jordan, but apparently the neighbor's son saw me walking twice, and he liked what he saw. He went to my Arabic mom to ask for my hand.

The funniest part about this experience is that it was totally serious.

My Arabic mom told me that boys are like fish, you have to go to the fish-hawker (what the heck is that called in English?) and look at lots of them before you buy them; you don't go straight to the ocean to get them. So, she convinced me that it would be a good idea for him to come and drink some coffee with us, and talk about this subject. Of course, she had already invited him and his mother to come; his mother being one of her close friends, that I have sat with many times.

It was hilarious. He came, and I was actually really surprised because he was handsome. What!? This situation was supposed to turn out easy, but...

So then, we were all sitting there. My arabic mom, the mom of our neighbor, the mom of my groom, my arabic sister Alaa, and my groom. He got right to the point, and said that he saw me twice, I pleased him, and he wants to marry me. So what's my opinion?

Without blushing.

So, without blushing, I tried to get out of this situation without being impolite. It was super difficult because, as you know, I am from a totally different culture, and NOBODY helped me! I went into the other room because one of my arabic sisters was calling me. I begged from them words, what should I say! How can I be polite? How can I solve this problem! They didn't help me because, "It's your choice, ente horr, you're free!"

What an experience. I went back to the room and started to explain to him that I decided a long time ago that I have to marry a "Christian-Mormon". He tried to explain to me, that in his opinion, religion isn't a problem in marriage. You can marry somebody from a different religion, it's not a problem for the children, and if I want to marry him, I would be free to believe whatever I want to believe.

If I were to marry a muslim, it would not be some random stranger, but somebody whose mind and soul I match. Sigh. But mind, soul, heart - those things don't come close to faith. I had to break up with somebody I truly love because of an impossible future. Malek, ya Malek...
So then my Arabic sister called me again from inside, and I went, begged again how to get out of this situation! Again, they didn't help me.

In the end, I said, "I'll think about it," and gave him my email. I guess he and my Arabic brother are taking me to the airport tomorrow, what?!?!?!? We - well, not me, being the non-coffee drinking good mormon girl that I am - drank coffee. Then, I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know how to tell you this in a polite way, but since this is the last night with my Arabic sisters, I want to spend some time with them, and go inside with them. I don't want to be impolite..." "No, no, I will leave now, but I will see you tomorrow!"

Aughghghghghg.

I can tell you now, from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, that Arabic women are powerful. As I sat there, with this decision before me, I felt the most amazing feeling ever. THIS CHOICE WAS COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY MINE.

On a totally different note, tomorrow I am leaving! What?!?!?!??!?!

Packing Sucks

2007-06-03T21:28:00.000+01:00

I really hate packing. It makes me sad. Especially when both of your bags break and it's just depressing. I feel like throwing up. Nobody gets how horrible and wonderful this is. I wish I could just speed up time and already be home.

The weight limit! What is it? How much will I be able to carry with me? Crapppp...I have no money left, what the heck am I supposed to do?

ISRAEL

2007-06-03T11:15:00.000+01:00

So basically, I lied. I am writing this entry from Irbid, Jordan, and not from Israel. The irony of this situation is hilarious, because by far the best internet connection I have had for the past four months was in the one place where I didn't post anything.

Here is a wrap up of my adventures in Israel/the Palestinian Authority.

I could do a play-by-play of where we went and what we saw every day, but I prefer to just write a little bit about the pro's and con's and experiences that I had.

So, I didn't sleep at all the night leaving from Cairo to Tel Aviv. I don't really know why. Packing, watching arabic music videos, taking a shower, more packing, reading scriptures, staring into space - mostly the experience of enjoying the "aloneness" of my five-star hotel room and 300 thread sheets. Being alone is something that a lot of Americans take for granted. As much as I love Arab togetherness, sometimes I will admit, it makes me feel claustrophobic, which was something that I didn't realize until I had the chance to just be alone for a while in my hotel room.

All the Egyptians I met were super nice. The guys were flirtatious. I must have gotten about seven or eight unwanted phone numbers and three different people told me, "inte masreah w khaaaales!"

So, I got on the airplane, and the lady sitting next to me was really excited to talk about herself, so I did a lot of listening. Remember, this is on zero hours of sleep. Proceeded to exit the plane, face to face with a bunch of weird squiggles (Hebrew letters), and the cleanest airport probably in the world - a fountain greeted us, we walked down a spiral loop to go through passport control. It was a lady behind the desk. She looked up at me, didn't say a word. She looked through my passport, then looked at me again. Then she motioned for me to follow her. I did, she put me in a room, and then left me there.

Remember, I was with a group of about 40 other people. I was worried, too, because I was one of the last people to go through the passport control; worried people didn't know where I was. I knew exactly why they were keeping me, though I would have expected them to at least tell me why they made me wait an hour and a half. Lebanon stamp in my passport.

I will never experience the ridiculous things that '67 Palestinians, or even Arab-Israeli's deal with when they cross borders. This experience was maybe one one-trillionth of the aggravation that they experience. However, I am thankful for it because maybe it helped me to be more sympathetic and sensitive.

Other experiences with borders, when we went in and out of the Palestinian Authority to go to places like Jericho and Bethlehem. Seeing the huge difference between the flourishingly arrogant richness of Israel, to the stricken and starving poverty of the West Bank. Sickening.

So yeah...I don't really like Israel. Claire, my French mom, told me that she wouldn't want to live in a country where the government does so little to help their poor people (talking about the USA). I remember thinking how that way of thinking was somewhat simple, and maybe even ignorant. So I know that my way of thinking about Israel was probably the same way, that I definitely don't see the whole picture, and maybe my thoughts were simple. However, I distinctly felt disgusted that there could be a country so filthy rich next to a country so desperately poor (Jordan). The difference disgusted me.

I know that my experience in Jordan made me notice things in Israel that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Such as the places where Palestinians live, the places where things are written in Arabic, or where they are not - but probably what had the largest and most lasting affect on me was observing the politics behind their tourism.

There are reasons for the Israeli government to invest in serious archeology projects. These ruins are great artifacts that tell us about the history of the world and the ancestors of mankind, however the Americans I were with seemed to take a, "Look at all these Jewish ruins that belong to this glorious Jewish state." Effectively erasing 2,000 years of history. Sorry, but I find that morally repulsive.

The holocaust museum was moving and powerful. I learned a lot as I went through the many rooms full of stories, pictures, and real artifacts (for example, a pile of victim's shoes, pictures of loved ones found in pockets of the dead). But it sickened me, the end - the conclusion drawn that the solution was the creation of the state of Israel. I cannot justify the messed up way the UN accords of 1948 were drawn.

The situation is infinitely more complicated than I ever imagined. It's not Israeli's vs. Palestinians. There are so many divisions between both groups, and the political/social tensions in this place are subtle and hard to understand. I don't claim that I do, or even that it is possible for me to. However, coming to Israel definitely helped me understand the situation of the "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" better. There are Palestinians who have citizenship, and Palestinians who don't, and there are Orthodox Jews, and there are people who walk around the street in less clothing than in downtown Springfield.

Israel felt like the United States - sort of. If I wasn't marveling at the sites or chatting with Palestinians in Arabic, I was probably wrinkling my brow in disgust at either A. the ignorance of my fellow travelers (During the call to prayer, "Oh, is that the Muslims?" - "I think the Palestinians should just all get the heck out of there") or B. the overabundance of young (and female?) soldiers everywhere, or C. trying to imagine what my Arabic mom would say if she saw _____.

For example, most of the employees of the souvenir stores, the filafel places, and the hotels were Palestinian. My Arabic mom would probably go crazy seeing Palestinians making a living selling menorahs (made in China, ironically) and mezuzah's and stars-of-David. Or waiting on Jewish people day and night in the hotels.

It was interesting to me to remark how most of the Palestinians I met knew both Hebrew and Arabic, but almost none of the Jews I met knew Hebrew. I wish that there were a better label for non-Arabs, something that did more with race than with religion, but I can't say "Israeli". Palestinians that have been in Israel since 1948 have citizenship. It's so beyond my American paradigm of things...

Another "Claire" thought - I can't support a country where religion can determine citizenship. Church should not mix with state. People should be free to believe whatever they want, and it shouldn't affect their nationality. Do you realize that if I were to convert to Judaism, I could revoke my American citizenship, and request Israeli citizenship - and the government would give me an Israeli passport, and financial support to come settle the land? I have nothing to DO with that land. Yet, there are people who were born in Jerusalem, whose parents-grandparents-great grandparents-great-great-grandparents-etc. were born there, and they are issued a "Travel Document," - are denied rights of citizens, have to acquire special work permits in order to get a mediocre job - under the "citizenship" place in the travel document it is written "Jordanian." So they could go apply for Jordanian passports, even though most of these people have never even been to Jordan, and in their passport under "Citizenship" it would say, "Israeli". Meaning, effectively, these people have no citizenship. These are Palestinian-Arabs, who live in places Israel occupied after 1967, after the 6-day war. I'm starting to see the wretchedness of the situation between early settlers and Native American Indians. Occupation. WRETCHED.

Something else that was wretched was how Arabs are not able to visit these sites. They are incredible, and an integral part of their history! The history of mankind! Their own religion! Yet right now, it is impossible for Arabs to be tourists like Americans, Chinese, Indonesians, Europeans, Japanese, Brazilians...etc. Makes me a cross between sad and furious.

I learned more about Judaism and how Mormonism views Judaism in these past two weeks than I have ever learned in my life. Something important - I found myself standing up for my opinion. That hasn't always been something evident for me.

"I wonder how they're going to destroy the Dome of the Rock," said a very ignorant, well-meaning grandma on our trip one day.
"Sorry, but I really think that you should be careful with the way you word that kind of a thought. First of all, who says that the Dome of the Rock has to be destroyed for a new temple to be built? In my Old Testament class at BYU I learned that we don't know the exact spot of the temple, and it is not known whether or not the Dome of the Rock has to be destroyed. Second of all, you would never make the comment, "I wonder how they're going to destroy the Wailing Wall," and if someone from another religion were to speculate out loud, "I wonder how they're going to destroy the Salt Lake Temple," you would get offended. You and I may not believe in Islam, but we have to respect it, which includes the way we talk about their holy sites, and the Dome of the Rock is the third holiest site for Muslims. So I would really appreciate you not saying things like, "I wonder how they're going to destroy" it."

I had several extremely religious experiences. The most powerful one was ascending to the temple mount, seeing the Al-Aqsa mosque and the glorious Dome of the Rock (Komat el Sakhra). It was a sacred experience, hard to write about on an online blog. I was overcome with the knowledge, "JESUS IS THE ALL POWERFUL MESSIAH, THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD." I can't explain it.

The other experience was going to the Garden Tomb. We listened to the tour guide explain why archaeologists believe that the place we were at actually was the place Christ was crucified, and buried, and where he was resurrected. At the end, though, the tour guide said the most profound and powerful sentence, "But even if this wasn't actually where Christ was buried, it doesn't matter because we don't worship the tomb. We worship Christ, the living God."

There is so much more I could write.

When I was in Lebanon, I felt a strong sensation that I am going to return to study there. When I was in Jerusalem, I felt the same kind of feeling about me returning with my family to tour the sites. Hezekiah's tunnel, the western wall, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden - maybe next year's family vacation :)

One last thing. Coming back to Irbid, the paper-boy took me from Jerusalem to Bet She'an (Bisaan in Arabic), where I crossed the Sheikh Hussein border. (I had a blast, by the way - what a crazy experience!!!! However, it wouldn't be that fun to do it every day. Again, I can't really compare my situation to my Palestinian friends. I have this magic thing called a United States Passport, it's like a secret open-sesame code. The world is open wide to me, and I don't even deserve it.) Then I took a taxi from the border to my house.

The experience helped me to realize how close, yet how far these two worlds are. It took less than 1/2 hour for me to be back safely at Dar Hammouri. Yet, being here, I feel like Israel is a world just as far apart as Massachusetts.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city of a heart of Gold!

You know, I could spend a lifetime studying this place, and not come close to knowing everything about it. What a place. Destined to come back.

Next time...

2007-05-23T21:55:00.000+01:00

...that you read a post, I will be posting from Israel.

I don't know how I feel about that. Very mixed, to say the least.

One thing is for sure; I appreciate the respect guys have for girls in Arab culture wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than the apathy guys have for girls in American culture.

Having a hard time with culture shock, still.

Saw some cool ruins, including Sakkarta.

Luxurious Luxor

2007-05-22T12:56:00.000+01:00

This place is insane. It's like...no, it's not like anything I could really say. Miles and miles and miles of heiroglyphics carved into stones. The Avenue of the Sphynxes, the Temple of Karnak (one of the ancient wonders of the world), the Tomb of Tut-Ank-Ahman...it's insane. Everything was painted, and we can see traces of the original color - we're talking over 4,000 years ago. Insane!!!!!!!!

I still don't like Americans very much. "Oooh, I took a picture with 4 Arabs!" as if they were one of the sites we were seeing. It makes me want to vomit.

Other than that, life has been pretty good.

I Hate Americans

2007-05-18T21:58:00.000+01:00

Well, that's kind of an overstatement. I think Trevor's pretty cool, and there's this one missionary in Southern California I kind of like. Oh yeah, and there's Joe, Sarah, Dot, mom, and pop...and Cindy, and Emily, and Greg, and and and and and....

Maybe it's just these Americans? I don't know. I don't hate them specifically, in fact, sitting with almost any of them by themselves is fine. It's just the group.

It's more like, the situation in general.

What was by far the most awkward dinner conversation I have ever had started with the topic of Iraq. The idea was presented that our troops are doing a great job and Iraqis love us. I ventured to speak, thinking my time having to be in a situation where my job was to listen WA BAS (ONLY) had been served. I talked about how from the Arabs I have talked to, most of them tend to feel that Saddam was better for Iraq because at least under him there was as strong central government, not utter chaos and calamity.

I wasn't even making a statement of my own political views, just reporting what I had heard, and suddenly the table seemed to collapse in, "I think that's an over generalization," and, "Jimmy Carter this, Jimmy Carter that," and, "Saddam was responsible for the deaths of over 2 million." I didn't want a political argument, and the way it happened, I was the only one supporting my argument, which was that many to most Arabs currently prefer Saddam's iron fist to "American-born anarchy and civil war".

That argument isn't even that radical. It's an argument of who thinks what, not what is what. I still don't know what I think about this, exactly - but I know what other people told me.

Disgustingly huge houses, huge meals, no love - I can't even tell you.

Kate's excited to be here.

2007-05-17T23:56:00.000+01:00

Camel!

2007-05-17T23:50:00.000+01:00

Kate and the Pyramids

2007-05-17T23:36:00.000+01:00

Here I am in Giza.

Beggar Girl

2007-05-17T23:01:00.000+01:00

She tried to sell us a pack of 20+ postcards for less than 20 cents. I didn't buy it because I didn't have change less than 50 Egyptian Pounds, or about $8. The other Americans were almost in tears seeing the beggars here. This is not a new sight for me; there were many in Jordan.

Would you give money to them?

I'm in Egypt!

2007-05-17T00:08:00.000+01:00

When I write a book someday, this will be on the jacket sleeve somewhere. It's just such a stereotypical picture of an Arab. To us, this is picturesque. This is the Middle East.

But it's not the Middle East. Everybody doesn't look like this. This photo will help sell my book, but the reality is that this guy was so completely abnormal to my experience in Irbid, that even after having become somewhat acclimatized to this part of the world, I wanted to take a shot of him.

I am having a hard time dealing with the other Americans. They are just such idiots. They're good people, but it's frustrating how little they understand about this part of the world.

Is Saddam Hussein responsible for the death of 2 million people?

Egypt is totally completely absolutely incredibly different. It's a different world. I can't even tell you how....WEIRD this place is. More on what I did later, first I want to sleep.

Arrived in Cairo

2007-05-15T23:22:00.000+01:00

Today I went to see the Jeita Grotto and the ancient city of Byblos.

Then, the Gerber's and I hopped on a plane to Cairo, where I am now, exhausted.

I love senior couple missionaries. I love Beirut. I love the Middle East. I love traveling.

Mostly, though, I LOVE ARABIC!

Kate Loves Beirut

2007-05-14T21:38:00.000+01:00

After deciding that I will come back to complete my master's degree at the American University of Beirut, I walked down to the seaside boardwalk to just gaze at the water and think about nothing, breathe in the complete happiness I have been feeling here for the past three days.

As I sat there admiring the sea, a little old lady came and sat a few feet away. I asked her if she like the sea. She said she did, and we started talking. She was Lebanese, non-veiled sunni muslim. She has traveled to over 40 different countries.

She helped me get on the right bus to get home.

Picturesque, beautiful, and exciting. I love Beirut.

BEIRUT

2007-05-13T21:57:00.000+01:00

It's 2:14 in the morning and I am at the missionary's house in Monsoureah, Beirut, LEBANON. I just got off the phone with my mom, wishing her a happy mother's day.

Today I went to church in the Beirut branch. They have church on Sundays. I translated the meeting into French for Alexandra, the branch president's wife.

It was District Conference, so all of the missionaries were here. In fact, I have been hanging out with them quite a bit. Oh how I love senior couple missionaries.

I saw a picture of Dil Parkinson with the members he taught. I have known his son Levan for the past 2 months, sine the Youth Conference. So cool. They are Armenian.

Bro Akiki and his wife took me on a mini-tour of Beirut. We drove around and saw the methaf, les corniches (the boardwalk), American University of Beirut, a statue for martyrs in the main square near the mosque and the old roman ruins, the parliament, centre-ville, Lebanese American University in Hamraa, and Hezballah protesters in tents under a bridge of the main highway.

Lebanon has a really unique history. It is so different from Jordan. I feel like I'm on vacation. I feel like I'm on another planet. I feel like...this is PARADISE to me. I understand everybody. They speak Arabic, English, and French.

"Tboste fe lbnan?"
"NAAAM, fa'alen" - a possible conversation when I get back to Irbid.

Irbid. Millions of years away.

I LOVE LEBANON. I will write more about this later.

When I was a 16 year old exchange student in France, I promised myself that someday I would live in Paris. I decided to promise myself the same thing. Someday I will live in Beirut. It might be wise to wait until after the new US Presidential elections, though.

Luck?

2007-05-11T22:19:00.000+01:00

Why was I born in America?

What gives some people the right to be born into great families, what gives others the right to come from a high socio-economic status - how am I any better than the housemaid girl at Aunt Saba7's house?

I feel so jealous that I wasn't born a Hammouri.

It's so complicated. It's not like I would give up being a Vasicek, or having my family. But at the same time there are things about this family that are so incredibly wonderful, and fantastic, and filling, and GOOD - my heart is full of jealousy and pain and sadness and howling. Why couldn't I have been born into this wonderful society? Why am I American?

At the same time, I love my Americaness. I can't tell you how complicated all of these thoughts are in my head right now.

The people here love each other so much. I wasn't a Hammouri, but living here for three months has really taught me a lot of things about love and the things that matter. Every day I felt the love these people have for their family.

Why can't I have this love, too? My family loves each other, but sometimes it's just not as obvious as here. We aren't as close. We care about material things more than each other, and I'm not talking on a Vasicek level; in general, Americans don't seem to care very much about each other. How can I return to a place like that after having lived in a place like this? How can I build a family culture that is more Arab than American, especially if I am going to be LIVING in America? My mind is so tied up.

I just feel so completely torn. When I leave, where will my country be?

LAST DAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY

2007-05-10T18:03:00.000+01:00

I went to school today completely gorgeous. I felt like a million dollars, or a million and a half JD's, and who knows how many Syrian lira?

Took my written test at the same table that I took the placement test what feels like years ago. Except this time, I knew how to read.

True, I didn't know a very large percentage of the words, but I totally read it, and understood the general structure of things. YESSSSS!!!

Man, I dunno. Something...my personality? My silliness? I just am very very very outgoing. I don't know if it's sometimes a curse; usually I see it as something very positive in my life. Today it was, it gave me the ability to gather all of the people in the Language Center and have us take a picture together.

Omar and Hala, my teachers
Nagihan, Aisha, Jahid, Bara, Me - Level III'ers
Pina, Ali, and Saed Ahmed - Level I'ers

It was really good.

Then I said goodbye to Ayhem, and met with Malek for the last time.

Which was really painful, I'm not going to lie. All the DTR-ing (Defining The Relationship-ing) we've done this last week has really made me want to vomit. It's so unsatisfying. I just want to scream.

Later, when I got home, I listened to a tape that I recorded a few weeks ago. The part with his voice was less than a minute long, and the interview made little to no sense because I cut out my questions and then turned it back on again and again and again, but it was probably a very bad decision to listen to this tape. Just hearing his voice talk to me like that - it was so happy. These past few days, talking to him has been like talking to someone else. Today, I realized that even were I to beg for him to be back with me, it wouldn't happen because it hurt him too deeply. He's just trying to go back to living a normal life.

So I sit here and feel like I'm breaking up with everybody and everything, so totally and utterly alone. I'm dying to talk to him, but have to stay away. This is seriously the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life. I feel like a jerk, love seems really far away, and I feel like I've been stripped of all my hopes and dreams.

Of course I have other ones, but they are so unclear!!!!!!!

I just need to focus on keeping the commandments for right now. Stop looking ahead to the freaking future.

I've been relying a lot on my Arab sisters. These girls will always remain my friends, throughout my life. I love them deeply.

Tomorrow is my last Sabbath!!!

All Good Things Must End...

2007-05-09T18:58:00.000+01:00

I am missing this place even though I'm not technically gone yet.

Today was really difficult. It's so complicated, my head. Thinking about the future, thinking about the past, the things I did, the things I learned here...

I read a really useful article about breaking up recently. It made me feel a little bit better about this whole situation. I don't know how to explain this, but I feel like not only did I break up with a dear friend, but this whole country.

The worst part is that I haven't left yet. It's like going through a giant ceremony over and over and over. I've never done anything remotely compared to this before.

When I left France, I was extremely excited. The excitement and shock completely overshadowed my pains and grief over not seeing people.

This time, I fell in love with a culture, a people, a religion, a boy, a way of life - it would be so much easier to just think that, "Hey, I came here to meet these people and become one of them." But that's not true. I will marry in the temple. I will not settle for anything less.

It's almost comical, every five minutes or so, one of my arab sisters takes me in their arms and hugs me, in tears. I cried in my Arab mom's lap last night, and in Sanaa's today. Everybody is being extra-special nice these days.

It will be fun to go to Lebanon, but this parting, this saying goodbye, this breaking apart totally completely sucks.

It doesn't matter that we only have one bathroom and nine people. It's not the bathroom that makes a home, or the culture, or the language - I feel so completely overwhelmed. It's pretty much guaranteed that there will never be another person out there who will fully get this complicated emotional mess of a brain...

Things I Have Cried About Since Being Here

2007-05-07T12:16:00.000+01:00

Feeling Lonely
Not knowing how to do anything - culture shock
Hating how people always say stupid things to me in the street
People being retarded about the Internet
General missing my family
Sitting in the rain
Realizing that I have a testimony
Discouraged with the language
Breaking up with the boy I love

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Why I am in Jordan

2007-05-06T20:58:00.000+01:00

Lama Tarayra taught me how to count to five in Arabic.
Her experiences working in Israeli-Palestinian summer peace camps moved me to tears.
I decided it was worth taking Arabic.
I hated my major.
I loved Arabic.
I changed majors to Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic.
Part of the program involves doing a summer study abroad program.
I went.
My best friends at BYU were Jordanian.
I wanted to hang out with them.
Once they got to Jordan, I did.
But I didn't go with anybody else.
This was against the rules.
So I was sent home early.
And kicked out of my major.
And had to reapply to BYU.
I had previously decided to defer for the fall semester.
I kept that plan.
I worked at a Jewelry Store.
I earned a lot of money.
I used the money to buy a plane ticket to come back to Jordan.
While I was in Jordan the first time, I became friends with Adam (Nedal) Tashman.
He introduced me to Sanaa Hammouri.
Sanaa and I became close friends.
She told me to come to the University of Yarmouk.
I assumed they had a language center on campus, like the University of Jordan.
I came back by myself.
Adam (Nedal) arranged for the missionaries to pick me up and for me to spend the first few nights at his house.
Then I moved to the Hammouri's house.
Heba Hammouri helped me enroll in the Language Center.
I have been here ever since.

I want to go back home and become involved in the Arabic club at BYU, and get certified in Arabic Teaching. Beyond that, ba'arafesh.

Stop thinking about tomorrow.

Worlds Apart - Bruce Springsteen, The Rising (2002)

2007-05-06T10:44:00.000+01:00

I broke up with Malek.

WORLDS APART

I hold you in my arms, yeah that's when it starts
I seek faith in your kiss, and comfort in your heart
I taste the seed upon your lips, lay my tongue upon your scars
But when I look into your eyes, we stand worlds apart

Where the distant oceans sing, and rise to the plain
In this dry and troubled country, your beauty remains
Down from the mountain roads, where the highway rolls to dark
'Neath Allah's blessed rain, we remain worlds apart

Sometimes the trust just ain't enough
Or it's too much in times like this
Let's throw the truth away, we'll find it in this kiss
In your skin upon my skin, in the beating of our hearts
May the living let us in, before the dead tear us apart

We'll let blood build a bridge, over mountains draped in stars
I'll meet you on the ridge, between these worlds apart
We've got this moment now to live, then it's all just dust and dark
Let love give what it gives
Let's let love gives what it gives

After we die, it's not all just dust and dark, and I can't marry him. We are literally worlds apart. We've joked before about how in order to love each other completely we would have to go to the moon to do it. That's not very far from the truth.

So this was the hardest thing I have done in my life so far, but it was pretty much inevitable.

I really love him, but we are worlds apart...sorry Bruce, I have to think of my family...

I Have A Family

2007-05-06T10:06:00.000+01:00

I have a family here on earth.
They are so good to me.
I want to spend my life with them through all eternity.

Families can be together forever through Heavenly Father's plan.
I always want to be with my own family and the Lord can show me how I can.

I've been such an IDIOT. So dumb. Anyway, like Scarlett O'Hara - "I-I'll think about that tomorrow." El mohim, the main thing is, I realized something huge. I don't know how to summarize it into a phrase. "The importance of my family", "the only thing that matters in my life is my family," - something like that.

I have been taught that my whole life, but I only just learned it here, from my wonderful Arab family. I can't tell you how big of an impact they have had in my life. So there are lots of things that I can't understand about this culture, but there are so many wonderful, beautiful things. Islamic communities are chaste and righteous. Most importantly, they have one thing completely right: the importance of their family.

The ONLY thing that matters here is the family. It is the base of the society. Everything revolves around family. All of a young girl's life is focused on her marriage, and while the Western world doesn't hesitate to focus on the negative results of this hyperfocus, it fails to note some of the positive results. In general. We don't see the good parts of Islamic culture.

But I lived here, and I tried it for myself. Three months of living here, having many many many many experiences...and I have to say that Islam is correct about families. The family is the MOST important thing.

My Arab mom says that I shouldn't let anybody outside my family bother me. My friends can be idiots, people can forget about me - they can change and become enemies. She says that you can just go inside your house and close your door to the world, but not to your family. Your family matters. You should get angry when something bad happens to your sister; the people you should care about the most, pay attention to the most, and love the most should be your family.

I've been taught this my entire life, but I never learned it until now.

I feel so dumb. It's been so long since the most important thing to me has been my family. I mean, really searching inside myself. The feelings I feel with my arab sisters and my arab mom are similar to the feelings I had when I was a young girl in Naperville, Illinois. I thought that those feelings just ended once you grew up, that they were "childhood". But then, I felt the same way whenever I was around Danny's family. It's like...an end of searching. It's like - being there.

Maybe my restlessness began when my family moved to Massachusetts. I was 8. It was very difficult for us kids, especially Sarah and me. I think that this ever searching ever wandering nature has had positive affects on my life - it may be one of the reasons behind my indelible curiousity, desire to learn, my 9th grade english teacher Dr. Dowe described me as, "interested." A tenacious towards learning, knowing, seeing, feeling, living, experiencing...

However, the negative side of this quality is a lack of satisfaction, of feeling whole, and safe, and calm. These past few months, I have felt friendless and identity-less, and country-less, and many many many stages of culture shock. It occured to me last night that what my Arab mom said was totally completely true: the most important thing in my life is my family.

I love my family so much.

These people here have become like family to me. I can never be "one of them", but they are very close and dear to my heart.

I know how important it is for me to marry in the temple. I know that the most important decisions I will make in my life will involve my family. It makes me sick, the way that marriage and decisions about who you will marry have evolved in BYU mormon culture, but it is true that the most important decision of my life will be who I will marry.

My family is the only thing that will last, beyond my testimony. Muslims know this, and they value their family. They see their children as gifts from God, the most important things in their lives. They visit their cousins, and uncles, and aunts, and care about each other. They talk to each other.

I've learned a lot of things since coming here. Language related things, relationship related things, religion/faith related things, culture related thinsg, how I learn and study best related things, my feelings about my own country and patriotism related things - if all of them were to be erased from my mind except this one idea, that my family is the most important thing, I will go home a better person.

It's not news. I feel kind of silly writing about this, most everybody knows that their family is the most important thing. But it's the first time for me to really know this. There is NOTHING more important, more exciting, or more valuable than eternal life with my family.

Satan knows how important families are, which is why he directly attacks them. Anything that tries to distance me from my family - anybody, or experience, or negative thoughts, or desires, or literature- they are tools Satan uses to destroy us. It's like all of a sudden I have become aware of something that has been around me my whole life. I have to be more on my guard, cling to my family more, and turn away from the influences of the devil in my life more.

I love my family. I love you guys!

Sooq

2007-05-05T17:15:00.000+01:00

Today was the happiest day of my entire time in Jordan so far.

I woke up happy. A few months ago, the noise in the morning really used to bother me. My arabic family yells a lot. I didn't understand what they were saying before, and mostly, I didn't understand the tone of things.

This morning, their noise was actually calming. One of my favorite things about home in the states is waking up on a Saturday morning to the sound of clinking dishes downstairs. Familiar delicious smells creeping in, like bacon and eggs, and pancakes...this morning, it was a similar experience. Familiar smells, familiar noises - calming. I understood what they were saying, it didn't make me want to cry and curl up - the opposite! Amazing.

Then, I went to the sooq with Mona, my arab mom, and Mahmoud. It was the most fun shopping experience I have ever had in my life. This place, it is so beautiful. Imagine lots of people in the streets, open stores, people yelling things like, "bazalla bazalla bazalla lira wa noos lira wa noos!" - "beans beans beans, two bucks, two bucks!" Oranges in their bags hanging down from the roofs of stores, piles of dishes, and shoes - storefronts, people walking, people selling.

In order to buy or sell or eat or LIVE here, you have to speak Arabic. I can't pretend to speak fluently, but I definitely understand. I don't even think I can say I understand fluently - Arabic is so large and vast and huge. But of Irbidean Ammiya Arabic, I understand about 75% of the words, and 95% of what's going on.

I was so happy today. I can't exactly explain why. Just knowing that I am a daughter of God, and knowing that I am going to use my Arabic. I think God has been helping me recently, giving me extra measures of patience and wisdom. When bad thoughts come to my head, and I feel discouraged, I chase them out with hymns. It's not worth focusing on the bad.

I bought presents for my family today. Heaven knows how I will bring back all of this stuff in one suitcase, with the 65 kilo limit. Allah ya'alim!

I love Jordan. Jordan first.

Plans

2007-05-05T09:58:00.000+01:00

Well, so my plans have somewhat changed. I'm going to take my final exam a week early, and head off to Lebanon by plane, and then to Egypt. I decided to hook up with an LDS group to tour Egypt and Israel. That's kind of exciting.

Two days ago, I called my friends 7ana and M7ammad, friends from BYU from two years ago. I haven't talked to them for about nine months. It was the best feeling in the world to have them exclaim, "You talk like a Jordanian!" "Your accent!" "I don't know who I'm talking to!" - or just to have them respond to me in Arabic instead of English. "Selim a'alelkol," "wala hemak." It's something small, but it's important to me.

Something else that was important about that: it helped me remember that I can be involved in the Arab community back at BYU. That when I leave this place, it's not khalas to my Arabic. I'm going to go a long way with this.

However, I have come to realize something very important. Arabic is not the most important thing. Eternal life and marrying in the temple: that is the MOST important thing in my life. Everything else is secondary to this.

So before I came out here, my father gave me a priesthood blessing. In it, it said that I would experience some things that would be unendurable for others, but because of my personality, I would be able to succeed, even enjoy some of them.

That has definitely happened, in every single sector of my life here. I could name about 15 specific difficult life experiences that I've had since being here.

One thing that I've realized from my experiences is that probably my biggest flaw is lack of patience. I need to be more patient. I need to have more faith that there is a plan for me, and I need to WAIT.

Yesterday in F&T Sacrament meeting, Sama said, "I just want to shout from the rooftops that I am a daughter of God! I am a princess, because I am a daughter of the King of Kings!"

The faith of these people here is contagious, and has forever changed my life. I am not the same little girl who left Massachusetts 3 months ago. Growing up, changing, making mistakes, changing, finding out what is real, what is not, what my priorities are.

I am so grateful for my good parents and friends, both American and Arab. I don't have enough good things to say about the family I am staying with.

One of my big flaws is always looking towards the future. I decided that's not a good thing for my anxiety-prone personality. When I start worrying about the future - I mean, it's good to think ahead, but not to LIVE ahead, and that's what I tend to do often - I am going to put a hymn in my head. Instead of focusing on the endless possibilities that lie ahead of me, I am going to focus on keeping the commandments today. You know? I think that's a much better solution.

Sometimes I can be such a freaking idiot.

2007-05-03T16:01:00.000+01:00

I don't know. Sometimes I make the dumbest mistakes ever.

"You have a lot going for you, Kate. You have an outgoing personality, you are forthright with your words, and you are beautiful."

Arabic:
"You speak Ammiya better than they speak FusHa."

About me teaching foreign languages in general:
"It really helps if you have some personal charisma so I think you'd be good at it."

I make mistakes. BLEAUGH.

Random fact:
The pharmacies in Jordan only sell 2 antibiotics. That's not very good for the inhabitants of this country. They will develop an immunity and the antibiotics will be totally worthless, if it's not already like that.

Abu Nateem

2007-05-02T18:19:00.000+01:00

I go walking around haritna, our quarter of the neighborhood, with my Arabic mom and sisters. It's very refreshing. We always talk about the neighbors, and the weather, and say hello to the people we pass.

The other night, we went to Abu Nateem's store. Okay, so you can have some idea what harti is like...there are old apartment buidings, new apartment buildings, small stores called dukan, plural dakakeen, scattered randomly, some blocks with nothing but grass, and some blocks with "farms" growing. Hommous, etc.

Abu Nateem has a farm somewhere in the Irbid area, but he brings his stuff to this run down shack at one of the blocks with nothing but grass and hommous growing around it. I'm pretty sure the land around the shack is not his only "farm", but then again...you never know. The shack consists of random pieces of metal, rugs, and plywood tacked together to make a building.

"Does he LIVE there?" I asked my arabic mom, upon seeing it for the first time.
"No no no! Of course not, that's just his store."

There are people who live in tents by the side of the road here. There are people who don't even have houses. If was a real possibility that it could have been his house.

There are people in the States who live in very poor conditions, too. The difference is that I've never really been exposed to them back home.

Abu Nateem is about a thousand years old. He's a tiny man with a wrinkled, tan face and white hair. He wears the traditional Islamic dress-type thing, and a black and white hutta. He's amazing.

Fi a'anduk bazalla?
Eih?
FI...A'ANDUK...BAZALLA?
Na'am, na'am, fi a'andi batalla. Kam kilo biddik?
A'ashara, lo sama7t.
A'atara? Kam ita'a? Bateeblak bookra batalla kman!

Do you have any beans?
Wha??
DO YOU HAVE ANY BEANS?
Yeth, yeth, we have beanth. How many kiloth do you want?
Ten, please.
Ten? What time ith it? Tomorrow, I can get you thome more.

He's become a regular joke in our house, one of my dearest memories of Irbid. (His real name is Abu Naseem).

PS
Arabic may be hard, but I can succeed.

Stupid stupid stupid language

2007-05-01T18:32:00.001+01:00

Augh this language is so completely ridiculously difficult.

Follow Up on the House Servant

2007-05-01T08:11:00.000+01:00

I was too chatty with her, and my Arab family got mad.

My Arab Mom said: "She's not on the same level as you. She's here to work, and that's it."

This is something beyond cultural misunderstandings. It goes against every single thing I have ever been taught. People are people. Human beings. I can't treat her as if she were an object. I felt so bad for her that she had only been able to talk to her family once since being here, that I gave her 10 JD's, the equivalent of $15. Except it's actually worth a lot more here, you can buy a lot of stuff.

Imagine what would have happened if my Arab Mom knew THAT...

House Maid

2007-04-28T15:20:00.000+01:00

Many women come here from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines to work as servants/house maids.

Most of them come over with agencies and live with the family they work for. They get paid about an average of $50 a month. They send almost all of the money they make home to their families. Most of their contracts last at least 2 years.

My Arabic Mom says that Sri Lankans smell.

I'm writing from khalti Saba7's house, Maysoon (my Arab mom)'s older sister, Saba7. They have a servant. She speaks English. She's been here for about a week.

The way servants work is they are ignored.

She works hard, has no day off, and can call her family maybe one or two times a week. She talked to her family once since she's been here. She's the same age as me, and we live completely different lives.

I asked her how she's dealing with the culture shock. She said it's hard, and she misses her family. I asked her about her country. I know a little bit about the Philippines, my first boyfriend having been a first generation half-filipino. She was very happy to talk about how many islands there are, how far she is from Manila, and the other chit-chat subjects I have when the topic of "The Philippines" comes up in a conversation.

I really feel for her. Maybe it's because I come from a place where servants and house maids are super uncommon. I mean, if we want to compare socio-economic status, Saba7's family is probably not as affluent as my very much middle-class American family, however compared to the rest of the people here...also, just having a servant is a type of status symbol, I'm thinking.

Doctor el-Isnan

2007-04-27T18:58:00.000+01:00

No, not Niswan, ISNAN. (The difference is big - a trip to the Dentist is very different from a trip to the Gynecologist).

Sanaa's tooth has been hurting her for over 24 hours. Instead of going to the Emergency Room, I accompanied her to the Dentist's office on Jama'a street.

We had to wait for the dentist to come and open the office. He was about 24 or 25, wearing jeans and puma brand shoes.

The office itself was pretty clean, I guess. I went with her into the operating room. He gave her Novocaine. He wasn't wearing gloves. The tools he used had been sitting in a drawer, and not in little plastic sanitary bags like in the states. I'm talkin' he took the syringe out of a drawer and put it in her mouth without 1. washing his hands, 2. washing the syringe, 3. wearing gloves.

We got home and Sanaa told me her mouth really hurt, so I asked to see it, and there was just blood blood blood blood blood coming out.

I'm not sure what he did to her, but whatever it was, I am super glad it's not me.

"Is Your Girlfriend a Virgin?"

2007-04-27T11:32:00.000+01:00

Malek told me the other day that when his friends find out he's dating an American, pretty much the first thing they want to know is, "Is she a virgin?"

(speaking arabic)
"And how do you answer them!?!?!"
"I say it's none of your freaking business!!!!"
"Well, GOOD!"
"Seriously, I can't believe how stupid they are. I mean, I don't care if their girlfriends are virgins or not, I don't ever ask them! Why should they ask about you? I tell them that she's very religious, she's Mormon, and it's the same as in Islam - it's against their religion to sleep with somebody before they're married. They don't believe me, but I don't blame them. I mean, pretty much none of them have ever heard about Mormons before."

My muslim boyfriend is spreading the gospel. Funny.

You will probably ask this, especially after I just posted my very personal feelings about marriage and my future and the importance of me marrying in the temple - so Why Are You Dating A Muslim?

Here are the top ten reasons why I am dating Malak Al-Hamdan:

10. Living here for 3+ months, I've been somewhat brainwashed, and so just the act of latching on to something familiar that cares about me feels comforting and calming.
9. This experience is rich and full. I really know what it's like to be a girl in Jordanian society.
8. not to mention super FUN
7. He's a good Arabic teacher.
6. He's smart. You'd think that because neither of us is super fluent in the other's language, the conversations would be stuck on boring subjects. Not so - the language is not a barrier, it's actually more like...having to stop to explain things in depth is like adding a microscope to your conversation. It lets you see your own ideas in a new way. He's always opening my mind to new ideas and new things.
5. He is NORMAL. Like, he doesn't think Jews have tails, and he mocks the lack of political freedom that exists in this part of the world.
4. He respects me. He hasn't and would never put me in a place where I am uncomfortable.
3. He's clean. We have same moral standards.
2. He is honest.
1. I prayed about it, and felt calm and good about it.

I have been very open and honest with him about the fact that I can't marry him. I don't want to lead him on, it's real what we've got, and it's definitely been a good experience for me. I am happy that we live in a society where physical contact is a social taboo. I enjoy him as a close friend, and want to stay friends even after I leave. He's made a big impact on my life, taught me a LOT, and this has been a good, positive, fun experience.

The truth is that I need to deer bali 3la hali and stay as far from the edge of the cliff as possible. As of now, I'm about in the middle of the road. Maybe it would be smart to get closer to the side far away from the edge.

Thoughts about Marriage

2007-04-27T11:17:00.000+01:00

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am Mormon. I was born, raised, and decided of my own free will that I believe in this faith. I know that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and that he died for me. I know that, even though there are many good people on the earth with many good and righteous ideas, there is ONE complete gospel of Jesus Christ, meaning there can only be one completely true church. I know that this the gospel was restored to the earth in the latter days by the Prophet Joseph Smith. I have the full and complete gospel, and it is true.

The gospel teaches us who we are, and the plan God has for our lives here on earth. From the scriptures, I can learn what I need to do in order to return to Him someday. I need to have faith in Jesus Christ, keep the commandments which have been given to us by all of the prophets including those of our modern days, and I need to continually pray and repent.

I want to marry for love, but love is not enough. When I put my hands together, the space all the way to the left from infinity onwards is the premortal existence, and the space all the way from to the right from infinity onwards is the life after I die, but the space between them is the time here on earth. What I do in this life will determine what I will be able to do in the life to come. Marriage for love is just not good enough.

I have to be able to marry somebody who can be with me in the eternities. I have to be sealed to my husband for time and all eternity, which is an ordinance that can only take place inside the Holy Temple. I can't marry somebody just because I love them; it would be better for me to never marry anybody than to marry somebody outside the temple.

Besides that, the man who I marry will be the father of my children. I want to raise my children the way my parents raised me, knowing about Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon, and the Restored Gospel. If I were to marry outside of my faith, religion would always be a conflict in my home. It is not only something I do not desire, but something that is just completely intolerable for me. Imagine always being against the one person who is supposed to be my supporter, my protector, and my friend? It cannot be.

I don't know what the plan for me is with Arabic. I don't know why I study it, why it interests me, or how it will help me in my future life. I do know that I am not here to find a husband, especially one outside of my faith.

I have a testimony of eternal marriage. I'm not exactly sure why I felt so strongly about writing this - maybe mixed feelings about dating somebody outside my faith, maybe mostly because this feeling is new and important to me. I mean, it's one thing to always be raised with these ideas, and quite another to KNOW them for myself.

أحبيني - Kathem Issahir

2007-04-24T12:08:00.000+01:00

طيورك يا بحر تغازلها وتشرب من أيداها و أمواجك تركض فرحانة و تبوس رجليها.

و أنا مثلك يا بحر معجب جدا بيها.

يا صاحبة الجسد الخمري رمل البحر أدفا أو صدري من عمري لعمرك يا عمري أنتي تمني و بس.

فرشت رمل البحر و نامت و تغطت بالشمس و صارت مثل النار أعصابي ايمتا الحلوة تحس .

طيورك يا بحر تغازلها وتشرب من أيداها و أمواجك تركض فرحانة و تبوس رجليها.

و أنا مثلك يا بحر ميت جدا بيها.

أحبيني بلا عقد و ضيعي في خطوط يدي, أحبيني لأسبوع ,لأيام, لساعاتنا.

أحبيني بلا عقد و ضيعي في خطوط يدي.

تعالي و سقط مطرا على عطشي و صحرائي و ذوبي في فمي كالشمع و انع جني بأجزائي.

تعالي و سقط مطرا على عطشي و صحرائي و ذوبي في فمي كالشمع و انع جني بأجزائي

أحبيني بلا عقد و ضيعي في خطوط يدي.

أحبيني بطهري أو بأخطائي, أحبيني بطهري أو بأخطائي.

وغطيني أيا سقفا من الأزهار يا غابات حنائي.

أنا رجل بلا قدر فكوني لي قدري.

أحبيني بلا عقد و ضيعي في خطوط يدي.

أحبيني ولا تسألي كيف ولا تتلعثمي خجلا ولا تساقطي خوفا.

أحبيني, أحبيني, أحبيني.

كون البحر و الميناء كوني الأرض و المنفى كوني الصحو والإعصار كوني اللين و العنف.

أحبيني معذبتي و ذوبي في الهوى مثلي كما شئت.

أحبيني بعيدا عن بلاد القهر و الكبت بعيد عن مدينينا التي شبعت الموت.

أحبيني بلا عقد و ضيعي في خطوط يدي

أحبيني

This place is definitely crazy and it's not just culture shock!

2007-04-22T10:15:00.000+01:00

Every day I do something completely stupid and somebody in my arab family gets mad, or laughs. I usually resort to laughing, unless I'm really stressed out.

I am recovering from a 3 day stomach sickness. It was probably food poisoning, because it happened all-of-a-sudden, and involved two places of exit.

Malek was amazing. He got me the complete third season of 24 on DVD and delivered it to my house, so I wouldn't be completely bored out of my skull inbetween trips to the bucket and the bathroom.

However, the rental place was a little bit like car test-driving; he had to leave his ID there. Because of the riot that happened on Thursday, he would need to have his ID today, Sunday, the first day of school in the week. So he had to come back and pick up the DVD's to be able to return them. (Don't worry, I illegally copied them onto my computer with ease, they being illegal copies anyway. And mom, I will erase them when I am done watching them.)

Everybody was in the living room talking when he called to tell me he was outside. So instead of interrupting the conversation, I just walked outside and handed them to him. I was outside for literally 2 minutes when my Arab mom came running out, greeted him, he left, and she turned to me and said the equivalent of, "Why the crap didn't you tell me he arrived!??!?!"

"Sorry, I thought you were busy...it's not a big deal!"

She didn't say anything. I think the fact that I went outside by myself at night scared her. Yes, this place is definitely crazy.

The other supporting reason for my thesis "Jordan is INSANE" is the medicine they gave me at the pharmacy. I went with my Arab mom. We both explained I needed medecine for istifrigh and ishaal, vomiting and diarrhea - it was very clear to the pharmicist what I needed. When I got home and read the information that came with the equivalent of two dollar medicine, my level of nausia increased. "There's nothing WRONG with my vagina. Why the crap did she give me medicine for Vaginitis????!?!?!"

The crazy part was when we called the number on the pharmacy bag, and my Arab mom spoke with her, she defended her case, that it contained the same active ingredient as immonium, and was suitable for my problem. Moonasib. Yeah freaking right.

The craziest part was that I took it.

Muslims Can't Be Mormons

2007-04-20T12:41:00.000+01:00

This is a paraphrase of the conversation that President Dew had with his wife in the car on the way home from church:

"So it turned out that nice family that came today is Muslim. The husband met with me after church, and Fayez helped translate the story to me. Apparently, the husband had cancer, but the Virgin Mary appeared to him and told him that he would be healed from cancer, and then touched his forehead. She appeared to him several times after that. So then, he decided to become Christian. He went to the Baptist church for about six months, and I'm not exactly sure why he stopped going there, but then I went to the Catholic church. What I understood was he kept going to different Christian churches, and all of them told him that if he wanted to get baptized, he should come to the Mormon church."

Sister Dew: "Oh, so he just wants the ordinance."

"Well, either that or he was a plant*."

"It just broke my heart, but I told him that it's against the law for Muslims to become Christian in Jordan, and we respect the law. So then he asked if he could just come to church without being baptized, and I said that no, it's against the law. Then his wife asked if we could send them to another country, and I said that we don't do things like that. Fayez talked for a long time, without skirting around what I said but he was able to, I think, make things a little bit smoother."

"It just breaks your heart, doesn't it?"

"It really does. Either this was a really good actor, or he was being sincere."

I read Jacob 5 recently. It is a chapter in the Book of Mormon that is a parable for the gathering of the house of Israel. In this parable, the gardener and his servant work hard to try to make the most fruit grow. They end up taking branches of the tame tree and grafting it with the wild tree, and vice versa, and they are successful for a long time, but then all of the fruit starts to go bad. So they are trying to restore the tame branches to the tame tree, and the wild branches to the wild tree. Verses 65 and 66 really stood out to me:

65 And as they begin to grow ye shall ^aclear away the branches which bring forth bitter fruit, according to the strength of the good and the size thereof; and ye shall not clear away the bad thereof all at once, lest the roots thereof should be too strong for the graft, and the graft thereof shall perish, and I lose the trees of my vineyard.

66 For it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard; wherefore ye shall clear away the bad according as the good shall grow, that the root and the top may be equal in strength, until the good shall overcome the bad, and the bad be hewn down and cast into the fire, that they cumber not the ground of my vineyard; and thus will I sweep away the bad out of my vineyard.

Just like the gardener didn't want to graft the branches too fast, or "all at once", the gospel cannot be preached to all of the world all at once.

I believe that the Lord has a plan for the gospel to be preached in the Arab world, to the Muslims. It is not now, but the time will come. During the Youth Conference, President Doug prophesied of a day when there will not be a building big enough to fit all of the members in Jordan.

Sigh. Really tough.

Later, the Bradshaws (the other missionary couple here) called, and President Dew said:

"These Muslim people want to be baptized this afternoon, so I told them I'd meet them over at the church around 5:00. We should be there at least a half an hour earlier to be able to fill the font."

It's funny, but not very funny at the same time.

*The Jordanian Government is very suspicious of the LDS church because of its link to the United States. The Jordanian Secret Police, or moghabarat, is more than likely to send a spy to the church to see if we uphold the laws of the land about not letting Muslims convert.

On a TOTALLY different note, I had two dreams about Danny last night!

Update

2007-04-19T22:14:00.000+01:00

Apparently, there was nobody killed in today's violence at Yarmouk, and the number of people involved is more like 100 than 400.

Hibba was right; the fight had to do with a girl.

No politics involved.

Vomit and Riots

2007-04-19T13:28:00.000+01:00

I woke up this morning, put on my fake leather boots, and was on my way to catch a taxi to the University, when I suddenly turned, knelt on the ground, and vomited in the grass.

I stayed home from school.

I think it's pretty remarkable that I've been in a strange climate, eating food my stomach is not used to for almost three months, and this is the first time I've dealt with diarrhea/stomach virus. It was pretty nasty, but I feel better now.

It turns out that today there was a huge riot at Yarmouk. Ahmed said that 200 people against 200 other people, that there were more students killed at Yarmouk today than were killed at Virginia Tech two days ago (32? Arabs really like to exaggerate...seems unlikely to me), that there was blood and violence and the police came. Hibba said she thinks it was because of a girl.

I'm trying to find information about it online, but so far there isn't. I think it's still going on. I'm home, wrapped up in my soft blankets, listening to arabic music on my ipod. Later on, Malek is gonna come drop off the 3rd Season of 24, one of my favorite TV shows, with my Arabic mom.

Riots on University Campuses in the Middle East are not the ideal place for Americans to find themselves.

Buying Jeans

2007-04-18T21:09:00.000+01:00

The day before I left the United States, I went shopping with Trevor. We spent most of the time looking at where the things were made.

Here, it's almost a waste of time to look for the tag. Everything is made in China.

I don't want to buy jeans made in China. Maybe I'm racist. When you've been raised your whole life thinking that the little gold "Made-in-China" stickers equate to practically slave-labor child sweat shops and Walmart disgusting fall-apart-after-first-wash quality clothes, the racist possibility becomes more likely.

The other reason I don't like shopping for jeans here is because all of the stores are owned and run by men. You can't just browse something without talking to someone; no, you have to explain what you want, the size you want, the color you want, have his opinion...I wouldn't dream of walking by myself into the Suq, the Market, but even with my Arabic sisters I feel a little uncomfortable dealing with guys.

All of the stores here are run by men. It's extremely rare to see a female employee. I always buy my phone cards from one specific store, because I deal with the same female employee, and she's very nice to me. I don't know; maybe it's the way the men look at you here. Maybe it's just me going crazy. Maybe a little of both.

The women here don't seem to think much of it.

Dead Sea

2007-04-17T19:50:00.000+01:00

I went to the Dead Sea. It was incredible. The water has special healing properties - not just the water, but the mud. I don't really understand why, but for centuries it's helped people with all kinds of skin disorder.

It may be partly because the dead sea is at the lowest point on earth, or maybe because it's saltier than the Salt Lake, or a combination of factors, but you float.

I mean, you REALLY float.

You just lay back and voila, you're on your back, floating. No effort. In fact, when you try to go down, you can't. You can't swim. It's the weirdest thing ever.

A single drop of the water got into my eye and screamed, "F@CK F*CK F%CK F&CK F#CK!!!" Marie-Amelie pulled me out of the water, and got me my towel, thankfully. I felt like my eye was gushing blood. One tiny single drop.

I went to the Dead Sea with the group of French students from the University of Marseilles. Besides Malek, they are my best friends at the University. They leave next week, which is sad.

We stayed up talking, singing, and swimming (brrrr) until 4:30 in the morning last night.

I took a real shower.

My brain is tired from changing languages on command. It's hard to think in Arabic, French, and English at the same time. Nobody speaks English as their mother language. Mooshkila.

One of the neatest experiences for me since being here was in Ayhem's hotel room. He organized and carried out the trip. He invited us all for a drink (yes alcohol, and no I didn't drink, and no they didn't get drunk, and no, they didn't pressure me to drink, and yes I went because I felt like being sociable), so we were all hanging out there in the hotel room, and somebody said something that triggered my thoughts to the song, "You Aint Nothin' but a Hound-dog!" so I started singing...

One of Ayhem's many cousins who was with us said, "Oh, I know who that is. It's John Travolta."

"What? ARE YOU FREAKING CRAZY? That's Elvis Freaking Presley!"

"No no, I seed movie once, was with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John! I sure this song is him!"

"Okay, I know that you know a lot about my culture, and I'm not saying you're stupid, but that song is DEFINITELY by Elvis Presley."

The French kids were laughing hysterically, all (of course) taking my side.

"Okay okay okay maybe you right, but you ever see Grease?"

"Of course!" - and I erupted into, "Summer lovin', happened so faaast..."

Alex, one of the French students, started singing the guy's part, and some of the other girls did background vocals. It was like something exploded. We started singing song after song.

Eventually, the Arabs were like, "Sing something in Arabic!" I burst into a chorus of (what is probably the most annoying Arabic pop song ever) "Ya Tab Tab, wa dela'aaa..." followed by, "ba7bk, ana kateer, ya habebe dela'aa tela'alaaaaaay." The Arabs with us (Ayhem and two of his cousins) sang along, all of us in hysterics.

The French students don't speak Arabic. After we finished that, I started singing, "Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en roooose..." and EVERY single one of them sang along.

It was a big deal for me, sitting there. I was the only one in the room that understood everything going on, who could share in every single part of what was happening. I have a really special gift. I should not underestimate the power or importance of my language skills.

I made a vow to myself that I will use them in my life.

Feelings about Angelina Jolie

2007-04-14T21:31:00.000+01:00

So, the thing here is that movies cost you about 50 cents. You have to realize that they are blatantly obvious about selling you burned (a.k.a. illegal) copies - sometimes burned to two cd's when there is a dvd dearth.

I went through a stack of these illegal dvd's. Something here really creeps inside your skin, you want to eat, sleep, breath, touch, feel something, anything familiar. Hear a voice, something to comfort you, to assure you that no, you're not a complete alien, no, there are people who remember and love you (somewhere) - aflam ajnabia are tempting, filling, luscious.

I don't watch rated R movies.

I bought about 10 movies for the equivalent of $10 almost a month and a half ago. They have really fed my love for movies. Something intrinsic about Kate - she may not always have a wealth of non-vanilla-pudding words at the tip of her tongue, she may not be the best writer or photographer, she may stumble with expressing her viewpoint - but she has one. Watching movies by myself reasserts my sense of self. I have feelings, I critique, and I develop opinions by myself.

The alone factor of watching a movie is essential. It's a completely different experience to watch a movie for the first time with somebody else. You are always looking over at the other person, wondering how they will react to your reaction, your expression, your view.

When I was a sophomore at BYU, I signed up for Blockbuster's movie pass. I payed $25/month for unlimited movie rentals. As soon as I get back to the states, and settle myself in a place for more than a month or two, I will sign up for this again. It's such a great way to build self confidence, to expand your world view, and to develop your own voice - watching movies by yourself.

I hate the idea of going to the movies by myself. See, sitting in a theater, you aren't alone. Your alone-ness is emphasized by the fact that there are other people, and they aren't with you. Sitting in your room, or in front of a laptop, I am completely comfortable.

So I watched a rated-R movie with Angelina Jolie called, "GIA." It was one of the ten movies I pulled from the stack of aflam ajnabia (foreign films) over a month ago. It looked interesting, I like Angelina, and it was unknown. That's one thing - I love renting movies I know nothing about. Preferably, however, it would be nice to know the rating...

A large portion of the movie I ended up fast-forwarding, but the other part...wow. Powerful story about a drug-addict model. It was moving. Angelina Jolie may have a screwed up social life, but I really really really really really really really admire her as an actress.

I want to watch her repertoire.

Television

2007-04-13T20:34:00.000+01:00

I spend a fair amount of time watching TV here.

Syrian soap operas, al-Jazeera, and Arab Pop Music Video Clips dominate the scene, however there are a whopping four stations on our cable in English. Well, six if you count Al-Jazeera English and BBC-World, but honestly, who wants to spend the whole time watching kids with bloody faces be pulled onto stretchers hour after hour right after getting home from school, to relax? Not I.

I really would like to meet the person who decides what to put on these 4 American stations. I would give them a word or two of advice.

MBC Action is one of the stations. It is a constant stream of Action-movies, cop shows, reality TV, and shows like "Pimp my Ride". My biggest complaint is that they only show good stuff really late at night - 24 and Law and Order come on around 11 pm, while they put 80's kung-foo murder-mystery dramas set in NYC earthquakes with robot protagonists between 6-11. What??!?!

MBC 1 is about half in Arabic, half in English. It usually shows documentaries or reality TV. I guess there's not much difference, if you think about it.

MBC 2 shows a lot of made-for-TV movies, and reruns of Power Rangers. There's also a British soap opera set in a restaurant that comes on sometimes. I don't really like it at all. The best made-for-TV movie that I saw was called, "Shallow Hal." It starred Jack Black, and it actually made me cry at one point - cheesy plot, cheesy characters, stupid story, but the it's-not-what's-outside-but-what's-inside-that-counts storyline is touching. Tonight I watched a made-for-TV movie about a bunch of kids that lock their parents in the basement until they can sort out their marital problems. It was hilarious. The "inconceivable" guy from 'Princess Bride' was in it, as well as that one actress...

MBC 3 shows movies sometimes, but just like MBC Action, it only shows good ones late at night. One time I watched an episode of 24 between 'The Stepford Wives'.

MBC 4 is the preferred station right after school, because "Dr. Phil" comes on. It's fun to watch it with my Arab family. But even more fun is watching ridiculous shows like "Insider" - where they show celebrities doing wacko things, or the 1200 lb man with his 100 lb girlfriend...yeah, that definitely caused a lot of conversation. Sometimes, there are reruns of 'Friends', which I crave. I don't know why - maybe it's just the situational humor. Maybe there's something intrinsically vulgar/foul about my sense of humor; people here don't joke like people back home (and this is remembering nearly all of my friends are good Mormon kids with high moral standards!). I miss sitting with my friends, joking about making out. Maybe it's part of my American identity?

When I watch TV here, it's a very inclusive thing. I don't watch it by myself very much. We sit around, eat, talk, and do other things.

Maybe I should be grateful for the TV here being so crappy. It gives me extra chances to bond with my family.

BEST SHWARMA IN THE WORLD

2007-04-13T13:07:00.000+01:00

Reem.

It's the name of a Shwarma franchise in Amman. They opened up a new restaurant here in Irbid. It's walking distance from the University. It's near the Jude Cafe.

It's divine.

Shwarma, if you didn't know, is the most delicious fast food in all of Jordan. If you go to any city in the US, to any Arab restaurant, there will be a giant chicken rotisserie, just slowly going around, going around, cooking the chicken...

They shave off the chicken, put it in pita bread with tomatoes, onions, parsley, and the most sumtuous yoghurt-based sauce in the world.

A small shwarma sandwhich is about .40 gursh, or about $.75.

But there is a big difference between shwarma, and REEM Shwarma!!!

Feelings about Honesty

2007-04-12T10:15:00.000+01:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking in the past few days. One of the downfalls of this voyage is boredom. I have too much time to think about the future, and not enough time to focus on what I'm doing. I lack certain resources that I used to have, the most important one being friends. I have friends here, but nothing like my friends back home.

It's a strange kind of homesickness. I feel tired from all this missing. I haven't seen a large number of my male friends for literally coming up on two years. I have been away from BYU for so long, I find myself longing for it. Not necessarily all aspects of it, but certainly the clean campus, the world class facilities, and most of all, the people. I miss people.

And then, there's the friend group I had at institute back home; I miss people.

And my family! I miss having a family dinner, sitting around talking about nothing, watching movies, being calm...it has been so long. My parents have started planning a family vacation; I find myself day and night dreaming about reuniting with them on a beach somewhere in Cape Cod, remembering the purple van we named Flloyd, and the many many many family roadtrips we shared...sigh. Sick of this missing. It's boring and empty.

I'm not sure if I made the right choice, but I decided to say yes when my Syrian friend Malek asked me to be his girlfriend. We only see each other on campus, he's more respectful, kind, and interesting than 90% of the guys I've ever dated, we have similar standards and life goals, and I can learn a lot from this experience. Since dating him, my school work has improved and my feelings of loneliness have somewhat subsided.

Somewhere deep within, though, I feel dishonest. I don't want to lead him on; I want to marry in the temple, meaning, I can't marry a Muslim. Even though I made that very clear from the beginning, there is still something unsettling within. Maybe it comes from my ever-present thoughts about the future; I know that I am inevitably going to hurt him.

The worst part is that the hurtee is not the only one who feels pain, but also the hurter. I don't really want to think about these things very much.

The overwhelming feeling of this relationship is not doom and disaster, however. We sit and talk and talk and talk - amazing, considering neither of us speaks the other's language fluently! - about ideas, politics, people, books, religion, feelings, experiences, culture, langauge...it feels great to be his friend.

My other friends are my Arab sisters. I literally consider them sisters to me. I love them. I stayed up until 4:30 am talking with Sanaa the other night. When I told her I plan on coming to all of their weddings (one of the other sisters may get engaged before I leave Jordan! Her wedding would be next summer), she cried.

The other strong relationship I have here is with my Arab mom. She teaches me by example, she is kind, she works hard, and I love her. It will be hard to leave this place, but I am dying to at the same time. It's tiring, living this life. It's not my own, it's like I'm acting. I have this one chance to be a Jordanian, to live the culture, to have a boyfriend Arab-style (no real "dates", lots of SMS/phone contact, little to no physical contact), to follow the customs and traditions of this place, to freaking speak ARABIC all day long! Eat, sleep, breathe, live...is this me? Who am I anyway? And why is Arabic important to me? What will it bring me in the future? Who am I becoming? Is this Arab-Kate Kate? How can I be sure, either way?

Sigh. Heavy thoughts.

Youth Conference: Part Two

2007-04-08T16:55:00.000+01:00

So, I got home from Youth Conference yesterday. It was pretty fun. I spent the last half of it hanging out with my friend Sal7. He has a beautiful voice. I understand his Arabic.

You know what, though? That may be less of a comment about his enunciation as one about my language skills.

We went to Mount Nebo - the place where Moses was transfigured, the place where John the baptist was imprisoned, the castle where he was beheaded, and the traditional spot on the River Jordan where Christ was baptized.

The highlight for me was being able to translate the speakers' talks from English into French for two French girls who came from the Cairo Branch. The best part of this was when I bore my testimony in three languages - Arabic, French, and English, without a separate translator.

I met Brother Akiki from the branch in Lebanon. He is my hero. He used to be a photography teacher at the American University of Beirut. He went to Saudi for business one time, showed me his visa. There is no such thing as tourism in Saudi. I talked to him at great length about the future and making difficult decisions. He gave me advice which is now my mantra: "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOURSELF."

I figured out that all guys are animals, and decided to distance myself from them for the next long time.

I love my Arabic Mom. She is amazing. AMAZING. She has taught me so much. She has helped me appreciate my real mom. She is one of my life-long heroes, as well.

One of my Arabic sisters might get engaged in the next few weeks!!!!!

A'eed Sa'eed! Happy Easter!

Youth Conference, Part One

2007-04-05T20:37:00.000+01:00

Oh man.

My life here...it just gets more and more...it's like...

Okay, so I speak three languages. And the three languages I happen to speak also happen to all be useful to me here. English, French, Arabic, I speak them all every day.

But I despite my tongue, I don't have the words.

I wish there were just one plan for my life, that was extremely obvious. I wish it were obvious which path I am supposed to lead. I know that there is no ONE right thing, but I absolutely wish there were. At least I have my faith, and my priorities straight. But I'm still really...

Right now I am in Sal7's internet cafe. It is called, "The Iron Rod." There are people reunited here from Cairo, Lebanon, Amman, and Al-Husn. The largest number is from Cairo, but the largest number of Arabs is from Al-Husn. The name of the conference is, "RESTORE". I can't believe how much faith people here have.

The meeting was conducted in English and translated both into Arabic and French. There are two French girls here.

Most of the American adults work for various embassies. Their kids are extremely impessive; they know a lot more than I did when I was their age.

GO MORMONS!

Promise

2007-04-04T09:21:00.000+01:00

I've been writing about what's gone on every day the last two weeks, but haven't had time to access the internet as much as I would like.

In brief, what's gone on:

General Conference
sick here - bought strong medication for about a dinar ($1.50)
A group of French students came here, and I've been chilling with them, translating for them
As in, LOTS of experience translating
Hibba had a stalker
Then I had a stalker. More on that later.
The Humanitarian Aid project
Developing thoughts about the situation of women here compared to back home
Registered for classes back at the Y
My pants don't fit anymore. They're too big. My Arab mom is amazing. She whipped out a sewing maching that looked like it was made in the 1800's, and now they fit perfectly.
I made chicken noodle soup for the boy who has a crush on me.
I also made pizza, proving to my Arab family that I am not ignorant.

...

Speaking ARABIC. Just...speaking!!!

Hold on...

Service Project

2007-04-02T19:52:00.000+01:00

We just finished a service project here. It was really interesting. When I lived in the dorms as a freshman and then an RA, I had the chance to be involved in making the humanitarian aid kits. Today, we unloaded a gigantic truck full of boxes of them (and other stuff, like blankets and food). Humanitarian aid stuff, pretty much the only kind of missionary work that is allowed in the Middle East. You know, laws and traditions against converting to Christianity on pains of death make the whole proselytizing thing kind of hard...the "container" - the term for the truck with all the boxes in it - was unloaded in the village of Habika, which is in the poorest region in the Jordan. It was a neat experience. We had to take out all the boxes, count them carefully, and put them in piles so the various NGO's could take them. At the very end, we opened one of the boxes and gave some humanitarian aid kits to the little Jordanian kids who were helping us. Let me tell you, being on this end of it is completely different. You see how much it matters.

Whoah this week went fast

2007-03-30T11:03:00.000+01:00

This week marks the exact halfway mark for my travels abroad.

Many, many, many things have happened in the past few days. I looked at the date of my last blog post and was shocked to see it was almost a WEEK ago!! Wow.

Here's the latest with Hibba's stalker - he's in the hospital in Malt, because he loves her so much she's made him totally sick. And "Inti illi wa BAS!" has become a family joke. (you belong to ONLY ME! - one of his weird text message). He called her over fifty times the day before yesterday, but yesterday he suddenly stopped. What a creep.

I'm making some really great friends in the International club. Jihad is an Arab-Israeli (the word for that in Arabic is arab-tamanya-we-arba'aeen), Wadat is the president of the international student club, she's Algerian, not Moroccan...we speak French together. And of course, there's Malik, probably my best friend here besides my Arab sisters.

Malik taught me how to play backgammon. Writing that sentence in English...it seems juvenile. Let me tell you though, backgammon is really fun. He has a really hard time pronouncing "Massachusetts". I have a really hard time pronouncing the Arabic word for "foam" - rghwa. He quizzes me on my leaders of Middle Eastern Countries. I think he'd kick my trash in the capitals game, although probably not if it included capitals of the United States.

Malik and I talk about interesting stuff. Like his opinions on the summit that is going on right now with the Arab league, which is extremely corrupt - why Syrian Economics are screwed up, why Americans have such a negative concept of Arabs, our various states of coming in and out of culture shock (remember, even though he lives about an hour away, he's from a completely different country, and Bashar Assad is a totally different kind of leader from King Abdullah II).

My Arabic! I sometimes get frustrated, but its kind of pointless to sit around lamenting the fact that I can't speak as well as I'd like to yet. So instead, I just speak - and end up doing okay. I would say I have more than doubled my vocabulary in the past month. I sometimes go for days without speaking any English, which is fun.

Last night, we went to the airport to welcome a group of French students coming from the University of Marseilles for a cultural-exchange program with Yarmouk. I had so much fun. The French students were SO cool. I love being able to speak French.

I'm looking forward to hanging out with them more.

MAKING FRIENDS, FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

General Conference here...is gonna be interesting.

Weird Boy Problem

2007-03-27T21:37:00.000+01:00

Hibba has a stalker.

Here, you have to buy credit for your phone. Most of the time, you buy a little plastic cards with scratch-codes on them. Sometimes, to be hospitable I guess, the store employee punches in the card's code. Some guy punched in Hibba's code, and got her phone number. He called her. I guess that's one way to do it.

The first time he called her was about a week ago. Not only did he tell her that he loves her and is crazy about her and her eyes are like honey, but he also told her what she was wearing that day, and sent her half a dozen text messages with the same subject.

She told her parents. Her mom called him from her phone, pretending to have a wrong number. Her stalker sent her a message saying, "Why did you tell your mom to call me and pretend like she had the wrong number?"

Freaky, if you ask me.

That was a week ago. Today, the creep sent her over 25 texts while she was at school (in a test, even). He kept calling her, and she didn't pick up.

The way people solve social problems here is by appealing to their families, not to the police. Hibba's dad is taking care of business, now.

احترام

2007-03-26T23:13:00.000+01:00

The International Club at Al-Yarmouk University sometimes organizes trips for the students. Ayhem Abu Sha'ar is the main guy in charge of these trips. In fact, he is the only official faculty in any way responsible for International Students, which make up over a 1/4 of the student population. But I have already made my feelings on that subject somewhat clear...

The next trip for International Students was supposed to be this weekend (it has since been canceled due to bus scheduling issues), to Um Qais, the Jordan River Valley, and Ajloon. I have been to all of these places, but that was almost half a year ago. They are all worth a second look.

Unfortunately, the trip was scheduled to leave Friday morning at 8:00, meaning I would have to skip church. I told Ayhem, "Yeah, sorry...it looks like I won't be able to go with you."

"But we already put you on the list!"
"Yes but...my religion is important to me."
"You're Christian though! Why is your prayer on Friday? That's the Muslim Sabbath!"
"Yeah, well my church decided to put its prayer on Friday because there isn't work or school on that day. It's always open. You know?"
"Well, you can go pray at the Catholic church on Sunday, instead!"
"No, not really..."
"But we really want you to come with us!"

This kind of talking went on for about half an hour. Finally, I had enough. I said, "Look, if I can't go, I can't go. The end."

It was mostly a case of the-straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back. Ayhem was just joking around, not trying to purposefully disrespect my religion.

I'm totally used to living as the minority. I come from the state with the least percentage of Mormons per population; not only that, but from the non-urban area. I know all about the shock-factor my religion evokes: "You don't drink or smoke?" "Wow, you don't drink coffee or tea?" "You mean to say, you've never slept with anybody?"

It's funny. All the non-Mormon Arabs I've met think I'm an alien with two heads for not drinking coffee or tea, yet once they find out I'm a virgin it's like I've joined some secret club. EVERYBODY respects me more, and is suddenly interested in learning more about Mormonism. Usually, I try to focus on the things our religion shares in common. Today, I was told that there is only a tiny line that differentiates Mormons from Muslims. In my mind, I made a sarcastic comment about, "Yeah, there's that whole Savior-Messiah thing..."

"You mean, Mormon girls should be virgins when they get married?"
"Yeah."
"Wow! That's AWESOME!"

Later, I went back to the same person and said, "You know, my response to your question was only half-adequate. I should have said, yeah, and so should Mormon guys."
"Of course, of course!"

Off topic. Back to respect. There are several reasons why Ayhem's pressuring me to skip church to go with the school trip really pissed me off.
1. It was insistent, as if he wasn't going to change his mind until I changed mine. Ana hurra, I'm free. I can make my own decisions, thank you very much.
2. He wouldn't go ask a Muslim girl to not wear her hijab; going to church is a wajib or duty in my faith just like wearing the hijab is a wajib in Islam. He shouldn't ask me to do something that goes blatantly against my faith.
3. ESPECIALLY because he is the only person in charge of International Students! He should be understanding, welcoming, and tolerant. Right?

I went to his office and forgave him. He was really, really, really sorry for having pissed me off yesterday.

This experienced helped me bond with my Arabic family. I came home, and burst into tears. Lots of factors - homesickness, discouragement with the language, culture shock, etc. etc...those things had been in the back of my mind, but just realizing how much I am alone, and the minority, and how Ayhem disrespected me brought many of those worries to the front.

Sanaa took me in her arms and told me about how impressed she has always been with me. Multezima! She said she didn't believe that there were devout Christians before she met Nedal, and the other Mormons. She said it's very, very, very good that my religion is so important to me. I told her that my faith is the most important thing, that I could lose everything - even my family (big deal here), or my honor (even bigger), but not my faith.

My Arabic mom said that is one of the main reasons they decided to let me come live with their family, almost literally adopting me as their 5th daughter; because I am a God-fearing religious person. I felt very comforted. She also said, "Kate, don't care about people that are outside of your family. If they're outside the family - whatever, it doesn't matter. Don't care about them. Only care about things that happen to your relatives. That's what's really important." I like her philosophy.

"Sh@* on all of the people who don't respect your religion. You're better than them." said Hibba.
"You shouldn't care about people who don't have brains, right?" said my Arabic dad. "The cows and horses and sheep at the farm (the Hammouri's have a farm about 10 km away from the house) have more respect than most human beings, don't you see?"

I love the Hammouri's.

World War Three

2007-03-24T17:47:00.000+01:00

Actually, this is a little known fact, but it began in the Hammouri house, in Irbid, Jordan. The subject? Only the will to live is more powerful than this...you guessed it, love.

I don't know if I would really classify these relationships as "love". My American friend Adam certainly doesn't. "These people's idea of love is so middle school. It's superficial and fake; they don't know mature love until marriage, if even." And we weren't talking about sex. Just the ability to communicate and love each other.

However, by this definition, I probably...well, I think to myself about all the boys I've dated and not really loved, and the ones I loved but didn't date, and how subjective and un-bordered the whole subject is. I asked my friend Kit if he's ever kissed someone he didn't love, not really expecting him to ask me back. When he did, it made me think. I have no reason to look down on these girls for not having mature love relationships; most of my relationships have been that way. The number of guys I have really loved or still do love I can definitely count on one hand.

I have to remain ambiguous for the sake of my sister's honor, but I would really like to write about the female situation here in Jordan. Let's just say, all of my sisters have boy problems, and none of them would fall under the American category of "dating".

One is young and everybody is afraid that she's going to follow a bad example (although she's the sweetest girl in the whole world, in my opinion). None of us (including me) are allowed to talk about love or boys in front of her.

One has a secret boyfriend but their only interaction is through their cell phones; last week, her brother overheard her talking to him and demanded to know who she was talking with. If he had found out, her reputation could have been ruined forever. She was terrified.

One has two boys who like her; one is in a position where he can afford marriage. He finished his master's, he's 29, has a good job, but doesn't really like her, and isn't really that interested in her. The second one can't get married for at least another two years, he's very mooskeen, or...young? Shy? Little? How do you translate that idea? He loves her a lot, so much that he yelled at her for about two hours on the phone after he saw her talking to another guy while she was at work. What? But they made up, and now she has to decide who she's going to go for.

One doesn't have a boyfriend at all. From what I can tell, she wants one. She doesn't really vocalize thoughts about marriage, but I think she's worrying about it.

Then, there's me. My love problems...yeah, I came here to stay far away from them. I don't know how well I've succeeded.

Thief in the Night

2007-03-24T17:45:00.000+01:00

We watched an Amr Diab movie on TV tonight as a family, after eating fish and fries.

During the movie, a thief came to the window.

My Arab mom saw him leave our house, and go across the street to the neighbor's house.

The wind tonight was crazy. In general, there is more wind up north than down near Amman - but tonight was exceptional. Supernatural, almost. People here believe in magic. Thieves believe in a good noise cover. "They come out on nights like this!" said my Arabic mom.

Everybody was awake. It was around 1:20 am. My Arab dad got the flashlight from the bureau in his bedroom, and went outside. Mona, the 15 year old, was clinging to my arm. "I'm so scared!" "Don't be scared, it'll be okay."

Lots of neighbors had woken up, and the men were congregating in the street. Ala2 shrugged and went back to watching the movie. I couldn't hear what they were saying, so I went with her.

For a few minutes, I felt like I was in the Amr Diab movie.

Being an International Student

2007-03-24T17:44:00.000+01:00

So far, probably my favorite part about being an International Student at Yarmouk is Ayhem's office. It's the meeting point for us International Students. When I first got here, I didn't really think about how other Arab students also experience sodoma thokofia (culture shock), homesickness, and problems with Visas, transportation etc.

All of my non-church/non-Hammouri friends I met through the International Student Office. Adam - American friend from Tallahassee
Falata - Nigerian friend who lived in Saudi for many years before coming to Jordan
Malik - Syrian friend, probably my closest guy friend here besides Tamr. He's extremely smart, loves politics, and is comfortable to be around
The Moroccan grad student in charge of the Internional Student Club. We speak French together. She's majoring in International Relations.
And apart from them, there is always a host of people coming in and out of this office - the Egyptian girl who smokes (the only young Arab female that I have seen here who smokes; it's normal amongst older Arab women but not normal for a young Arab girl), the guy from the Bahrain who is always sleepy, the Jordanian-Jordanian-goh (pure) faculty members that come in this office just to say hi and drink some coffee or tea...

Right now I am typing this from Ayhem's computer. He is the only person in the entire University who has any kind of responsibility towards International Students. I think of BYU and it's just incomparable. How to describe this place...think, crappy administration, FIVE STAR WORLD CLASS hospitality.

Actually, this is a fairly accurate model of the differences between West and Middle East, in almost all sectors.

Words are Important

2007-03-18T13:14:00.000+01:00

I study words. Every day I hear hundreds of new words. Language is about words: subtle differences of meaning, connotations, power, intonation - words carry meaning. It's okay to understand the meaning of a word in generalities at first, but the actual specifics of the meaning of the word are important. Words are power.

"I don't understand why you used the word jihad in that sentence..."
"Oh! I didn't say jihad, I said jihat...you know, (english:) minimal pairs..."
[hearing a familiar linguistics term that I fully understand made me want to stand up on the table and shout for joy! But I didn't.]

Not only specificness in sounds, but in meaning. For example, today in Prof NagiH's class, we went over the difference between "bad" and "not good." We talked about euphamisms and "diplomacy" in words - as in, politically correctness. Specificness.

An obvious example is going to the bathroom. Every language has polite ways to express the need to go, and crude ways. It is important to know both so you can use them properly to get your point across. In English, you can say, "I need to go to the restroom." In Arabic, one equivalent of that is, "I need to go wash my hands." Interesting.

In Arabic, the political phrase for "American Government" is not hakooma amriki, it's idarat amriki, or "American Administration." In some contexts they are the same, but in others they have vastly different meanings: "the School Government" is usually a group of students elected by students to make decisions for students, whereas "the School Adminisitration" is usually a group of adults who are in charge of admissions, facilities, and employees of the school (etc).

I volunteered that the main difference between "government" and "administration" is the first is a word that describes something that does not change (even if there is a coup and your country goes from a Democratic government to a neo-theocratic-totalitarian-dictatorship government, it remains a government. I suppose the exception would be changing to anarchy - but even "governmentless" is a form of government, in a way. It is a description of the state of the government), while the second is something in a continual state of change.

I also ventured a guess towards the etymology of the word: the United States has the most political leverage in the world. It is powerful. When you describe an action taken by the United States, it is important to acknowledge that it is not necessarily the fact that it is a Democracy, or that we have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights etc. that makes the political decisions, but rather the people who were elected to power that are responsible for making them. "American Government" implies and connotes something altogether different from "American Administration."

"Impossible" and "unlikely"/"improbable" are worlds apart in meaning, and that difference is important to understand. You know?

Wrong Number

2007-03-17T23:50:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, I received a strange phone call during class.

It was an international phone call, but with 964 as the country code. Later, with the help of the internet, I discovered it to be the country code of IRAQ.

Just to see if my Jordanian family was up on their Arab country codes, I asked them which country they thought it was.

"Kuwait."
"No, that's not Kuwait. It's got to be Oman."
"Where's the phone book?"

(By phone book, you must realize, it was a notebook with phone numbers hand written inside, not a standard government-issued book like you would find in the States or France. Just like there is no public postal system...or phone system...democratic countries seem to take more interest in public sectors of their countries.)

"It's Iraq."

The irony of an Iraqi making a wrong number to one of the handful of Americans in Jordan makes me laugh out loud.

Omen

2007-03-15T08:01:00.000+01:00

Amiyya is colloquial Arabic. FusHa is standard formal Arabic. The latter is used mostly in writing, the former in speaking. I understand/speak much better than I read/write.

"How can I learn FusHa?"
"Kate, first you've got to want it more than anything else, from within. Do you want to learn FusHa?"
"YES. I do! I need to! Then what do I do?"
"Then you have to read. Read, read, read. Read with Hibba. Read on your own. Read as much as you can. Learn the grammar, but you have to do it in a functional way. Reading will help you better and faster than anything else."
"Okay."

Prof NagiH's name comes from the same root as the verb "to succeed." I take that as an omen.

Funny Story in the Library

2007-03-14T18:54:00.000+01:00

I don't have a University ID card, so I can't check out books from the library.

In my Children's Literature class at BYU last year, I read about this guy who was basically a vagabond fugitive child, riding trains across the country, sleeping in barns...he never attended High School, but everywhere he went he would steal a book from the library, read it, return it at the next library he came to where he would steal another one, etc. He ended up getting a PhD and teaching at an Ivy League University later. The point of the story was to illustrate the importance of literacy and reading for children.

The message I got out of the story was stealing books from a library is not morally wrong when you have intentions to return it. After all, the point of a library is to promote reading, not to enforce red-tape.

The day before yesterday, I managed to smuggle a book out of the library in my bag. The book described the female experience in the Middle East of several women from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, and Algeria. I read half the book, and went to school the next day with the book in my bag.

After about three hours of studying my brains out on the fourth floor of the library, I went to leave. I walked through the security barrier with a group of Arabs. The alarm went off as my illegal book went through the barrier, but because I was standing behind a guy, the security guard/desk attendant guy pulled him over, not me.

I turned around, found the book, contemplated ripping out the page with the scanned bar-code, decided that would be too dishonest, took the book out of my bag and put it in my purse, and non-chalantly walked back to the exit.

The alarm went off.

I told the guard that I didn't have any library books. He looked through my bag. He decided it must have been my phone, so he let me through. Everything was about to work out fine, until he handed me my purse through the barrier. The alarm went off.

I opened my purse in a way that he wouldn't see the book inside, but he found it, took it out, and asked to see my ID.

There was no way to hide the fact that I was stealing a library book.

I told him that I'm not a University student, I'm studying in the Language Center. I pretended to act pissed off, when really I could feel my knees wobbling. Caught in a blatant lie.

"Are you German?"
"American."
"Ah."
"Shoo bidduk?" I asked. "What do you WANT?"
"To see your ID."
"I don't have an ID...what do you want?"
"Any ID."

I showed him my Massachusetts driver's license. He let me go through, but kept my book.

I walked away feeling a weird combination of utter humiliation, and barely being able to contain my laughter. The whole situation was just completely and ultimately hilarious. In the movie of my life, this scene will definitely be included.

Sheep Crossing

2007-03-12T21:36:00.000+01:00

I was walking home from school today, when a bedouin shepherd and his son crossed the street with their flock. I asked, "momkin assowrak?" and they both eagerly posed for photos, volunteering to let me hold the baby lamb. The whole time, we were blocking traffic.

You have to remember that I live in the 2nd largest city in Jordan.

My Mind is BLOWING A FUSE

2007-03-11T22:58:00.000+01:00

It's hard to transition between social norms:

"Of course I would kill Sanaa if she disgraced the family honor."
- My Arabic Dad

"Ahmed says hey, he loves you." (purposefully giving a poor translation)
"Tell him I'm not into dudes."
"Homexuality is beyond the scope of his world experience."
"Increase his world view."
- Online conversation w/ Trevor

"The people who think that women aren't our equals are all retarded."
-Hibba

"Yeah! I'm engaged! I've only met her like 3 times...we're communicating online."
- Omar, the Spanish guy in my class, on becoming engaged in a traditional, conservative way to an Iraqi girl

"Are you serious? Mormons don't have sex before marriage? No way! I've never heard about that!"
- Prof NagiH

"Do you want anything from the sooq, Kate?"
"Yeah. A copy of 'The Feminine Mystique.'"
"What?"
"Nevermind."
- Conversation with my Arabic Mom

"Of course Ahmed or Mahmoud or my dad would kill me if I disgraced the family honor. And if not them - my Uncle, or another Uncle, or my cousin, or another cousin, or another cousin..."
- Ala2

[dancing with my Arabic sisters to the only American song they know: "My Humps." If they only knew what the words were!]

Comfortable Prison

2007-03-11T17:15:00.000+01:00

After going to home-study seminary at Samah's house yesterday, I called my American friend Adam.

"Hey, watcha doin?"
"Not much, just watching some really boring movie...it's kinda slow, about the CIA - I forgot the name..."
"Oh yeah - 'The Good Sheperd?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, I thought that movie was pretty slow, too. I started it, but then decided to watch something else."
"Yeah."
"Well, do you want to hang out later?"
"Sure! Actually, that would be really cool. How about at fourish at that one internet cafe?"
"Doar il naseem?"
"That's right."
"Okay."
"Cool."
[pause]
"Hey, let me just call my Arabic mom and let her know, okay? I'll call you right back."
"Sounds good."
"Okay bye."

Ring, ring, ring.
"Allo Kate!"
"Allo marHaba!"
"Weenik?"
"3nd dar Tashman...bidi asalik ishi."
"Shoo?"
"Adam bido atla3 shoya hella...irj3a b3d saa3, okay?"
"Kate, bilash batroohi."
[pause]
"What? Ley?"
"Kate, inti momkin tashoofo bookra. Bilash batrohi, tigi bsoora!"
"Bussss...lesh la??????"
"3shan inti momkin tshoofo bookra! ana masoola 3nik, inti bta3rfiho bus ana la, t3lee bsoora!"
"Okay...okay."

All of this took place while I was at the Tashman's house. Tamer was staring at me. I must have looked really pissed off, because he tried to give me a hug. Even though that would have been extremely nice, I didn't allow him to hug me. I was just plain pissed. The above conversation involved me telling my Arabic host mom what I wanted to go do, and her telling me that I didn't have permission to do it.

I called Adam back.
"Hey, yeah. I didn't get permission."
"Yeah, it's okay."
[we shared this funny sort of laugh/sigh - mutual understanding. It made me feel a little less awkward and self conscious.]
"Yeah."
"Well, we'll do something some other time, okay?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, see you."
"Bye."

I value my parents. I love them. I respect them. They are important to me. However, I have always been an independent creature. I have always explored different methods of expression through art, music, and writing - establishing my own voice, building my self-image. I left my home and country at the age of 15 to study abroad in Rennes, France. I listen to my parents, but sometimes I do not obey them. For instance - the time I took a giant canvas and made body art by using my unclothed body as a paint brush, or the time Trevor and I went to Boston at three o'clock in the morning.

Or, to be completely honest, coming to Jordan at all.

I came home and contemplated this situation.

It felt like I was in prison, even though on further introspection, it was just a major culture clash.

Me at the Tashman's house

2007-03-10T16:41:00.000+01:00

Sunset on top of the Tashman's house. In just a few minutes, the mosque behind me will explode in noise for the evening call to prayer.

Tashman Family Conversion Story

2007-03-09T22:39:00.000+01:00

Two year ago, Sayer went with his cousin Amr to church on a Friday morning in Al-Husn. He was barely eight years old at the time. Little did he know the affect that one decision would have on his entire future, and the future of his family.

Sayer liked church, and wanted to come back.

The current branch missionaries (the Hiltons) contacted Sayer's family to ask their permission for him to come to church regularly. The Tashmans were impressed when the Hiltons came to visit, and Sayer's mom said, "sure, why not let him go to church?"

The Hiltons continued to visit and befriend the Tashmans, Sayer continued to go to church, and eventually it was Christmas. The entire Tashman family went to a branch Christmas activity, and were so impressed with the kindness of the members and the feeling they had at the activity that they decided to attend church the next week.

Samira decided that the Mormon church was better than the Catholic church, and she, Sayer, her oldest son Tamer, and daughter Halla were baptized.

Tamer is 19, a senior in High School. He translated Sacrament Meeting today. He is my favorite translator because even though he sometimes makes mistakes, he tries to translate everything without skipping. Also, he uses words that I understand. Tamer is a kind, funny, intelligent, patient person, who I love.

Abu Tamer (Tamer is the oldest so his parents are "Om Tamer" and "Abu Tamer") is talking about getting baptized at the same time as the youngest son, Thair.

Tonight, I went to their house and ate mensef, the traditional Jordanian dinner. The feeling I had in their home was similar to the feeling I had in my home as a small child; peaceful, comfortable, intimate - family. I felt home, thousands and thousands of miles away from my real family/home in the States.

END NOTE:

Amr continued is continuing his missionary efforts by serving a full time mission in South Africa.

Tashman Kids

2007-03-09T22:31:00.000+01:00

I ate dinner at Tamer's house today. Here are Tamer, Halla, and Thair, Nedal's cousins, some of my favorite people in Jordan

Jerusalem Center People

2007-03-08T08:30:00.000+01:00

The BYU Jerusalem Center organized a field trip to Jordan for their students. They arrived in Amman three days ago, and today is there last day.

I suppose it had something to do with honoring their long journey, or recognizing that they too are part of the Mormon minority in the Middle East - honestly, there didn't seem to be much purpose for the Al Husn Branch youth to make an activity out of going down to meet them.

Two weeks ago, I was counting down the days until I could see the 44 Americans. I ended up laughing, talking, and enjoying myself more with the Jordanians.

The best part of the trip (by far) was the ride to and from. President Dew had hired Omran again - he had driven us to Amman a week before on the Seminary Opening-Activity trip to the Royal Car Museum. Omran is 23, skinny, and somewhat shy. He's not the worst driver in Jordan, but both times I've gotten into his bus, I've thought about how I haven't written my will yet.

His "bus" isn't really a bus, but a van with ten seats. Because the engine is weak, and with ten people crammed inside the van is nearly twice as heavy, we would average around 10 mph uphill, and 90 mph downhill.

Omran got pulled over by the Public Police three times total, which involves a guy dressed in bright reflective gear waving a big stop sign-looking thing at your car from the side of the road.

He had gotten a ticket on the Seminary Opening Activity trip, but because he had connections w/ the police, he didn't end up paying.

This time, they wanted his license, and the licenses of two other people in the car. They asked us where we were going, where we were from. I don't think they stopped us because we were going too fast, in fact, I never figured out if there was a reason at all.

The final time he was stopped, the policeman asked him if the girls in the car were "passengers" or "family."
"Family."
"The right answer tonight was 'passengers' - get going!"
We all laughed, and turned the Amr Diab back up to its rock-concert volume.

I talked to Tamr and Majdee most of the ride. It was the second or third conversation I've had in Arabic where I haven't thought about "language." He told me some stories about a loch-ness type monster in a lake in Russia. I told him about the witch grave at Camp Moses, and made up a scary story that involved me and Cindy walking there at midnight under the full moon.

The topic of conversation changed to witches, magic, and "gin". The English word for "gin" has a weak connotation - "genie" makes me think of Robin Williams, "How 'bout LADI, do you smoke, mind if I do?"

"Gin" here is a powerful word. Everyone in the bus listened to people tell stories. Chilling, exciting - magic is real here.

Jordanians are expressive when they talk. They thrive on wit, word plays, and making people laugh. Jordanian culture is about language.

The Americans were boring. Will it be like that when I get home?

Last night, instead of falling asleep listening to American music, I listened to Arabic music.

My Foot

2007-03-07T00:09:00.000+01:00

This is my foot, and those are Sanaa's sandals. Except, I wear them, Mona wears them, Ala2 wears them, and Hibba wears them. Probably Mahmoud wears them, too.

Yarmouk University's Student Center

2007-03-07T00:00:00.000+01:00

Crowded. Music blasting. Guys holding hands dancing. Everybody clapping. I think it was because of the student elections, but maybe...not.

Don't you?

2007-03-06T23:37:00.000+01:00

Murad's little brother whose name I forgot always wears this bracelet. He is one of 25ish Mormons in the Al-Husn Branch.

Bucket Shower

2007-03-06T10:04:00.000+01:00

The water heater broke, so we have no hot water in the house.

After three days without taking a shower, I needed to do something.

Hibba took a pot of water, and let it sit on the stove until it was nearly boiling. "Come, I'll show you how to do this."

The first time an Arab lead me by the hand towards the bathroom with "how-to" pedagogique intentions involved Fezzeh, Rachel Cannon and my 60+ year old host mom, pulling down her pants quite unexpectedly to show us how to use the bidet/hose-tp substitute.

Hibba's instruction was a little less graphic. She poured the pot of water into a bucket (bathrooms here all have at least three or four buckets), showed me how to take a small kettle-like bucket, mix the cold tap water in, and use it for an "olden-days" shower. She was cracking up. Mithl il arab min ZAMAAAAN!!! "Like the Arabs used to do a loooooooong time ago!"

For some reason, it was just...hilarious. I didn't feel gross, or disgusted, or shocked. The situation was funny more than anything. I'm not sure how clean I got, but at least smell better.

I LOVE this place.

Critique of Criticism

2007-03-05T09:59:00.000+01:00

...ممكن اكتب شو e باللغة العربية

:المفردات اليوم

تحرَش جنسي
مناسبة
اسلوب
خصخصة

التحرَش جنسي هو مشكلة فيالاجتماعية العربية
المستوة التي موجودة فيها هي تناسب فيي
ما احب الاسلوب الكاتب
يكبر الخصخصة فالاردن

I would like to dedicate this blog post to anybody who has ever used the word "constructive criticism".

Criticism is a judgement derived from thorough observation. Sometimes criticism has a negative meaning: "He never notices the good things in me! He's so critical! I wish he would stop criticizing me because I'm doing the best I can!" Sometimes, criticism can be useful because it can spur change. "His critique of my short story was very helpful; if I can eliminate the passive voice, maybe the storyline will flow easier!" This is what we call "constructive criticism."

I remember the first time I learned the phrase, "constructive criticism." After my 6th grade teacher explained it, she proceeded to point out mistakes that the student had made. Since then, somewhere in my brain I have this connection between, "constructive criticism," and "I did something wrong."

Unfortunately - or fortunately? - I am a perfectionist. I wear concealer to cover my blemishes. I set a high bar for myself, and try to achieve it. As a freshman in high school I made a vow to (try to) never feel ashamed of myself again. Even though I make tons and tons and tons and tons of mistakes, I do not feel ashamed when I know I am doing my best. I pour my whole soul into this Arabic language. I have been blessed with an abnormal amount of tenacity, "stick-to-it-ive-ness." I am constantly critiquing my self, and telling myself what/where/how I can do and be my idea of better.

Criticism is useful when it can lead to positive change. I am infinitely more self-aware than others may think, but I do not claim to know all of my flaws. When Prof. NagiH corrects me, an inevitable occurance in an Arabic as a Second Language class, it's extremely helpful. I learn from correcting my mistakes, moving forward, working from the criticism that he gives me.

Why is Prof. NagiH's criticism more useful to me than, for example, somebody telling me that the pictures on my blog could be better, or that I could be a better writer? Several reasons:

Prof. NagiH is (duh) better than me at Arabic. I absolutely respect his criticism. I believe what he says, and value it.
A certain aforementioned person is not a better writer or photographer than me. His criticism is not from a base of deep knowledge about the subject, but rather his own - albeit informed - average opinion. I do value other people's opinions, but - sorry - I trust opinions of specialists in the designated field more.

[Ceci dit, I need to improve my both my writing and photography.]

Prof. NagiH does a lot of nodding and smiling - go to ANY foreign language class, and you will find that the more positive reinforcement, the more the teacher gives out aseenti-s, tamam-s and momtaz-es, the better the student-teacher relationship will be (not to mention class dynamic), and the more respect the student will have for the teacher's criticism. The main consequence of all this is real learning, and real motivation to continue learning.

Fortunately for linguists and their profession, the subtleties of language are ENDLESS. Words are not the only tool used in communication - and one thing linguists do is define the layers of meaning behind the words.

I am sensitive to these layers.

Prof. NagiH does not think we are stupid. His criticism is to help us learn. It's his job to criticize us. Friends criticizing friends leads me to ask, "why is it important for them to criticize me? What do they want out of it? Is there some hidden implication in what they are trying to tell me?"

For example:
"Kate, your laugh is really loud."

The sentence isn't necessarily just an evaluation of the volume of my laughter. Depending on tone, context, and stress of words, it could mean lots of things.

"Your laugh is really loud and I wish you would shut up."
"Kate, I've told you a million times how loud your laugh is. Do I seriously have to tell you again?"
"Congratulations, Kate, you won the contest for World's Loudest Laugh."
"No, no, I didn't mean your laugh was quiet! It is really loud!"

"You could take better pictures," could mean:

"I expect better from you because you are intelligent and capable!"
"I'm disappointed because I know you aren't doing your best."
"You should be doing better."
"Your pictures suck and I hate them all."
"You should just give up now."

Expressing criticism in a clear and direct way minimizes dangerous misinterpretations/miscommunications.

Language learning is hard. Daunting. Like a mountain. Especially Arabic - you can't fudge your way like French, and, at least for native English speakers, grammatical structures are not second-nature.

Learning a language requires you to recognize both your mistakes and your successes. It's scary to learn that the little lines and circles above the word can change the ENTIRE meaning (ex: from passive to active: "The book was written by Kate." "Kate wrote the book." In arabic, the only difference is the vowelling), and to realize that I haven't EVER payed much attention to them.

If I were to focus all my thoughts on all of the things I don't know about Arabic, I'd be on the next plane out of this country. It would be too difficult. Even I, Kate Vasicek, "Stick-To-It-Like-Super-Glue" fifth-grade motto girl, would give up. People like Prof. NagiH with his infinite patience make this place for me. The "Wow! She speaks Arabic really well!" statements keep me confident, and able to pick myself each time I make a mistake.

I love this language, and I'm going to conquer it. I love the complexities of ammiya (spoken Arabic) and the depth of meaning found in fusHa (written Arabic). I am confident of my ability to learn both, and I will continue to strive to learn.

SUMMARY:
Telling me that I suck motivates me to figure out why you would say so, not how I can change to be better.
Telling me that I am capable of better will not motivate me unless I respect you.
Focusing on my flaws without any acknowledgement of my accomplishments lessens my respect for you.
Arabic is really hard, but a mixture of positive and critical feedback helps me learn.

It would be interesting to analyze the difference between "to critique" and "to criticize" - both denotations and connotations.

Arabic Grammar is Hard

2007-03-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

3.4.07

Today is the day that I started to pay attention to Arabic vowels, and verb forms.

In Arabic 201, I remember hearing these specific words, “Don’t worry about learning the verb forms right now.” So I didn’t, and it didn’t matter.

Now, it matters.

I wonder what it would be like to teach English as a Second Language. Would I die of boredom? Seriously, how do our teachers not want to kill themselves – the monotony of the job, the repetition, how little we understand…seriously. These teachers of mine have seemingly endless patience. They remind me of my High School mentors, Mr. Luikart and Mr. Hing – they inspire learning, they listen to us, they are extremely skilled and knowledgeable in their subjects…knowing Arabic is one thing, but knowing how to teach it to foreigners is another. I love my class dynamic. It’s so nice to be in a class where there is no communal language besides Arabic. It provides true immersion. I also love how we represent different parts of the world, and political, economic, and cultural topics always seem to come up.

Before knowing Nagihan and Aicha, the only thing that I knew about Turkey was from a documentary about Noah’s Ark that we used to watch as kids. Eye-witnesses accounts of sightings of the Ark on Mount Ararat (located on the border of Turkey) filled me with intrigue and wonder. I have always wanted to go there, climb that mountain, and see the ark with my own eyes. I totally believe it exists. In the documentary, there was this old guy that spoke in very slow, broken English, about his experience discovering the ark. His story always made me cry, even as an eight year old. Weird, remembering that.

I just helped Hibba with her English homework. She’s been writing her name “Heba.” I told her that “Hibba” looks a lot prettier. She decided to change it. There really aren’t rules for transliteration.

I don’t think I’ve ever studied past perfect and past continuous in English, but from my experience learning it in French, Arabic, and ASL, I was able to give Hibba a clear explanation in spite of my limited vocabulary.

Hibba has had a toothache for a long time. We went to the dentist after school. I was really worried about the quality of the dentist from how dirty the stairway to his office was (trash, cigarette stubs, dirt…nasty). I was pleasantly surprised to find the inside super spick and span, CLEAN. Rare thing in this place.

Adam and I talked a little bit about this. I told him that the Jordanian government could create hundreds and thousands of jobs by subsidizing pollution control or trash collection programs. He basically said that it wouldn’t work in this culture because this is a culture of “honor.” Picking up trash is not an honorable job. It’s humiliating. Think China, ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, or ‘Mulan’.

In fact, the Arabic word for honor, sheref, in certain contexts can be more powerful than the F word in English. You can say, bishereffi! – On my Honor! But don’t you dare mention his honor, or her honor, especially in a negative way.

I know that it’s better for language acquisition purposes to not translate languages directly. However, for me, I’ve found that if I don’t try to attach English words to powerful words, like swears, I may end up embarrassing myself. It’s important for me to keep a word with similar power connected to it.

The F word is not strong enough for some usages of the word sheref. It took a while, but I finally found a stronger word, with the help of a friend.

Since I’ve left home, I’ve prayed and read my scriptures every day. However, only in the last week have I prayed before I go to sleep AND right when I wake up. It’s made a huge difference in my life. I understand more in class and at home, and I am happier. I miss people and places back home less, and I live more in the moment. Life here rocks.

Last week went by super fast. Insha’allah, it will continue this way!

Sacrament Meeting in Jordan

2007-03-02T15:09:00.000+01:00

Today, in church, Virginia told us about a phone call she got from Hannah.

Several years go, there were three branches in Jordan: the Amman Branch, the Al-Husn Branch, and the Irbid Branch. Because of inactivity, lack of priesthood-holding members/full tithe-payers, and people joining the church to get humanitarian aid, money, and visas to go to the states (to serve missions), they combined the Irbid and Al-Husn branch.

Hannah was a member of the Irbid Branch. She and her family are from Iraq, and as such recieved quite a lot of persecution. Already, Christians consitute only 2% of the population of Jordan, and Mormons are a minority in that group. On top of that, there is extreme prejudice against Iraqis, and apparently most of the persecution was from other (currently inactive) branch members. Sister Bradshaw said the abuse was physical as well as verbal - fist-fights even. annah would routinely call the police.

It got to such a point that Hannah and her family couldn't stand living here anymore, so they moved back to Iraq. Hannah and her husband and kids, her sister, her brother (the former Branch President of the Irbid Branch) and his family all moved to the Kurd area of Northern Iraq. Sister Bradshaw says it was a very emotional parting. "She left with her temple recommend in hand, knowing that there would be nothing." Iraq does not currently have any organized LDS wards or branches, besides those on military bases, or perhaps in the Green Zone.

Hannah called Virginia last week to ask her to pray for her and her family. They are living in a house with three other families. Every day there are bombings around their house. Neighbors and friends die. Virginia asked the branch to pray for Hannah and her family.

I am asking you, whoever may read be reading this, to pray for Hannah, too.

It's difficult for us to put ourselves in Hannah's position, to understand the kinds of daily problems faced by her and thousands of others in Iraq. Hearing stories like Hannah's reinforces my desire to learn Arabic. Learning the language will help me learn and understand the problems of this part of the world.

"Problems in the Middle East" are not in a seperate box. They may seem very far away when you have your own car, you eat whatever you want whenever you want, take half an hour long showers multiple times a week, and have a job that pays more per week than the average Jordanian gets per month (approximately 200 JD's, or 250 USD - PER MONTH). The problems are relevant. The people here are real. They matter.

I hope that I can inspire you to learn more about this place. I want you to care about Jordan, and Iraq, and Palestine, and Israel, and the entire complex world of the Middle East.

Break-throughs

2007-03-02T14:48:00.000+01:00

This is a list of some of the personal/cultural/language break-throughs I've had in the past few days:

I was sitting on the bed with Ala2, Sana'a, Hibba, and Mama. Ahmed walked over and started going through my little book-cubby, looking for his school books. I wanted to say, "Why the crap are you looking through my stuff, it's super obvious that it's not going to be there!" Instead, I blurted out, "Shoo bidduk feeha!?!?" without processing it in my mind. "What do you want in there?" - all the sisters and Mama started laughing and laughing. My reaction was very Arab. It felt almost surreal that I had shouted that without thinking about the words before hand. Language is coming!!!

Last Sunday, I translated the YW lesson for Sister Bradshaw. I only understood the main ideas of what she was talking about. This Sunday, when I translated, I understood a whole lot more of the actual words. It felt great.

I used the bidet without thinking about it.

Hibba wanted to know about what makes Mormons different from other Christians. I told her about the Book of Mormon, and let her read my copy of 'The Living Christ' in Arabic.

I learned that when Muslims pray, it is not 100% rote prayer; they can ask and thank God for specific things.

I know where the international student office is. "Office of Ex-Patriot Affairs." Hehe.

During my class, I had an overwhelming sensation of the importance of me learning Arabic.

For the first time in my life, I have gone more than three consecutive days with good study habits. I LOVE studying now!

I read the first chapter of the Book of Mormon in about 10 minutes. When I read it about this time last year, it took me over an hour.

Kissing people on the cheek at church isn't weird anymore.

This morning, there was a TV show about Jordan-America exchange student programs funded by the states. Mostly, it was focusing on a specific program allowing Jordanian High School students a home stay experience. At the end of the program, the interviewer asked the US Amabassador if there were similar programs that sent American students to Jordan. She mentioned the summer programs briefly - referring to things like BYU and the University of Virginia, University of Alabama programs. I felt a redoubled surge of how important it is for me to be here NOW, in a non-summer program. What a huge chance I have, to be living in a home-stay situation. Wow. I am the only one to be doing this PERIOD. Wow. WOW. Incredible.

I am happy to be here, and learning a lot.

On Wednesday, I will go down to Amman with the YSA kids in my branch (me, Majdee, and maybe a few more) and the Missionaries to meet the BYU Jerusalem Center students.

Anticipating the Journey

2007-03-01T00:37:00.000+01:00

Mrs. Hing, my photography teacher’s wife, once told me that the anticipation is half of the journey itself.

This is something I wrote exactly a month ago, in Uncle Jon’s apartment in Battery Park, NYC. It kind of cracks me up.

1.28.2007

I don’t know if I will be able to connect to the internet this way. I am at Jon and Bev’s house in Battery Park, NY, NY. I have a feeling that internet is going to be an interesting adventure on my trip. For example, last time I was there, Hana “Abdo”’s house was the only place I remember there being a DSL connection – well, Mohammad’s must have also, they had a freaking servant.

I’m hoping that I will be able to strike up a connection with the owner of an internet café somewhere – that the street with the most internet café’s in the world will have a place I can connect with my wireless, or that there will be some sort of resource on campus. If not, that would be…

I know that these things are possible in Paris.

What’s not possible is that soon I will BE in Paris.

Seriously, I feel like my eyes are going to fall out of my head. I got a grand total of 5 ½ hours of sleep for the past two days. Which is the worst it’s been, so far!

Krista, Trevor, and I walked to Ground Zero. It was…[insert a non-vanilla pudding adjective here that expresses awe and sadness and depth].

Oh boy!!!!

I didn’t realize to what extent the internet would be a problem here. I don’t like using the Language Center’s computer labs. The internet is slow, doesn’t work half the time, and the guy in charge of it has this air of naswangi – he looks at girls in a funny way. Creepy is a pretty good translation into colloquial English.

So I’ve been trying to find a better way to connect to the internet. Three new possibilities arose:

1. Aihud Abu-Sha’ar’s office

2. this one nice internet café down the street whose name I forgo

3. dial-up at home!

Aihud Abu-Sha’ar is the guy in charge of International Students. He is funny, kind, and trustworthy. He helped me with my visa. His office is friendly and welcoming, and I feel comfortable there (so far, the classroom, church, and home are the only places I don’t feel super tense). There are always international students coming in and out, and friendly teachers and counselors.

The name of his office cracks me up, though. “Office of Ex-Patriot Students.”

Yesterday I met an Iraqi from Tekrit. Aihud joked around about having an Iraqi and an American in the same room. Last time he lived in Iraq, Saddam was in power. Really, really, really interesting to listen to him.

Today I met a few girls from Egypt, one from Syria, and some from Maghreb.

Yesterday I met the only other non-Arab American at Yarmouk. His name is Adam, he’s from Tallahassee, he’s here on a Fulbright. Aihud connected us – he said, “Hey! You should meet Adam!” He gave him a call, and fifteen minutes later I was speaking thick, sumptuous, INTELLIGENT English! It felt good. Understatement.

Today, after a Turkish Cultural Event/music concert hafla, Adam showed Pina (a girl in the language center from near Naples, Italy) and me this café down the street with free wireless internet. I guess you are just supposed to buy something, like a Pepsi; Adam said the owners let him stay there for hours. It was clean, and there were tanks of goldfish.

I figured out how to use a dial-up connection from my phone line here. It really boosted my ego; after hours of pretending like I understand what people are saing, my technological feat made me feel better about my intelligence. Maybe that’s why talking to Adam felt so great; it was real-time, living proof that I can maintain an intelligent conversation.

About 20 minutes ago, I helped my Arab dad with this neat temperature box contraption. The family farm has lots of chickens. He needs to regulate the temperature of the eggs, so he bought this temperature thing, but didn’t know how to change the degrees from Celsius to Ferenheit, or how to set maximum/minimum temperatures. I fiddled around with it, figured it out, and then taught him. “Aseenti! Aseenti!”

Good day today.

And EFY set up a phone interview!!!!!

Going to the Bathroom

2007-02-27T21:39:00.000+01:00

I'm sorry if this post offends some.

Eating is a universal need. Thus, certain activities that go on in a bathroom also become a universal need.

A typical American bathroom contains:
- a toilet
- toilet paper
- a flusher

I've used two bathrooms here that have contained all of those; one is the Al-Husn LDS Church building, the other is the American Embassy. Technically, only one of those is on Jordanian soil.

A typical Jordanian bathroom contains:
- some type of hole
- a hose
- a trash can

At first, you aren't quite sure what to do. It's embarrassing to have someone explain it to you, especially when they've never seen an American bathroom.

The first time I walked into the University of Jordan's Language Center Women's Bathroom, I was absolutely confused. I had no idea what to do. It was literally a hole in the ground. What? I realized that it had to involve some sort of squatting, but - how!??!

There are two types of bathrooms here. Toilets, and holes.

In my house, we have both. I never use the hole, but I think it's mostly "the boy's bathroom", anyway.

Pretty much every time I use the bathroom in my house here, I think of the way I described it in a previous blog post, "it may not be my favorite room in the house" - and how that phrase continues to hold true.

The family bathroom here doesn't disgust me as much as it confuses me. I don't understand a toilet without a flush is possible. I don't understand what I'm supposed to do when a flush would come in handy. Usually I just take the hose, which is normally used in place of toilet paper, and try to "flush" things down...

Basically, if you urinate in the family bathroom, it just sits there. The "water" in the toilet isn't ever - well - water.

Then, there's this hole in the middle of the floor with a circular piece of metal over it, that were I to lift it, I KNOW I would see my bodily excretions flowing...somewhere...somehow...

During the family party last weekend, somebody had the brilliant idea to discard their cigarettes down the hole-in-the-ground "boy's" toilet. The result was everything got stuck, and crap (literally) overflowed into the main walkway of the house. Mama, Hibba, and Sanaa did most of the cleaning.

Several minutes after using a sucking-hose type thing to drain the stuff into what I assume must have been the gutter in the street, Mona was walking in bare feet on the same floor.

I keep repeating to myself in my mind, "These people aren't dead. You're not going to die, either."

It's part of the experience, I guess.

More blog goals...

2007-02-27T12:37:00.000+01:00

The first time I was told that I need to work on my brevity skills was in my 8th Grade Science class, my Ms. Newton.

It has come to my attention that more people would read my blog if I worked on my brevity.

So these are my new blog goals:

1. Not be boring
2. Be interesting
3. Brevity

I think that I do a pretty good job of not being boring.
I think that what I could do to make my blog more interesting is incorporate more photos, videos, and links. It's difficult here, because the internet is [insert a slew of really nasty dirty words]...but I definitely want to better my photography and writing skills.

Photojournalism here I come...

Language Learning is a Bicycle

2007-02-26T11:12:00.000+01:00

2.24.07

I was once told by a dear friend that I should write a book on language acquisition. I’m not really sure what it means to be a “goal-oriented” person; if it means that the action of forming a goal is enough motivation/incentive to drive its completion, I am definitely not “goal-oriented.” The goal is nothing special itself; the idea of it, the interest in it, the knowledge it apports me…I am a child of the 18th Century, le Siecle de Lumiere. Were it not for my allergies, you could classify me as “feline,” – insatiable curiosity. I am interest-driven. My list of goals is a towering sky-scraper next to the doll-house of goals accomplished. (I feel like a snob saying this, but I want to point out that just because I have a lot of unfinished goals, and I haven’t finished one billionth of the goals that I have, doesn’t mean that I haven’t accomplished quite a few things in my 20 years of earth life.) The friend who told me I need to write a book on language acquisition probably did so because he is information-driven. It is possible that someday my N.Y. Times Best Seller “The Art of Learning a Foreign Language,” (two birds with one stone!) – will fall into his hands, and we’ll both enjoy the euphoria of basking in our personal motivation-system.

“First, I want you to read the article, get the general gist of it, and then we’ll go over the vocabulary questions. Wadi3?”

I totally agreed with Professor NajiH, but since language acquisition interests me, I put on my well-worn journalist cap, and asked, “Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why is it more important for us to read the whole article without caring about the individual words? What makes doing it that way better?”

“Kate! Kate, Kate, Kate. It is DEFINITELY better to learn languages this way. In my experience teaching students a foreign language, I have found that you will get more out of reading if you try to understand what’s going on in a general way first, and then dissect the individual words. The article is like an ocean, or a lake, and the words themselves are fish. First, you take your boat out onto the water, you sail to a good spot, and then you reel in the fish. You can gut them, cook them, and eat them…”

Prof NagiH said this with such passion and sincerity; that alone would have made me crack up, but because my information-driven friend and I had already used the ocean-fish metaphor in previous conversations, it took a lot of self control to not go into hysterics.

I came nearly halfway around the world to learn Arabic. I started with three goals:
1. Live with an Arab family
2. Take Arabic classes in Yarmouk’s language center

3. Work for an NGO

I have been here for a little over two weeks, and learned hundreds (literally) of words from living with the Hammouri’s, or I should rather say, from being bint Hammouri il-xhamees (they call me their “fifth daughter”).

I didn’t expect the language center to be that good, but it turns out that I have the best Arabic professor in the world. Professor NajiH’s teaching style seems to have been fine-tuned in the pre-existence to compliment my language learning style. He is expressive, funny, uses hand motions, does not belittle or make fun of mistakes (which doesn’t mean he doesn’t laugh if something turns out to be a funny mistake), makes sure that everybody in the class is clear on what’s going on while at the same time not letting the class’s pace slow down to a snail-tread. Professor NajiH is my hero.

I have an unfair advantage, English being my mother-tongue. If the Turks look confused, Prof NajiH will give a synonym and at least one of them (usually all) will get it (I don’t know where they got their enormous Arabic vocabularies, but I would willingly pay double at the same store in a heartbeat!), and explain it to the others in Turkish. If either I, or the Spaniard, don’t get it, he will first give a synonym, and upon seeing our blank faces, a synonym in English. Happily, English and Spanish have worlds of cognates, but translation strips words of their power. I love speaking English.

How rude, I don’t think I’ve introduced you; my classmates here are Nagihan, Jihad, and Aischa from Turkey (all from different cities, one from Istanbul, the others from cities whose names I’ve seen on a map maybe once in my life), and Omar is from Spain. I am from “America”.

Side note: I think it’s interesting how Arabs rarely say, “The United States of America,” and never say, “the States” – unless they’ve been there. The most common word for my country is, “America.” I am amrikia (GoH!!! – “original!”). “Where are you from?” “I’m from America.” Even typing it in English is funny to me – just slightly off. I would never say that. The word ‘America’ by itself is for July 4th and Fireworks and Apple Pie and Flag bumper-stickers. Don’t you think?

I have done a lot of thinking about how I learn languages. First of all, because I am interest-driven, languages automatically attract me. There is motion, movement, change – when you learn physics, you are stuck in a box. When you learn a language, you explore hundreds of new boxes. I could learn physics in Arabic, for example. (Yeah, if I were completely out of my MIND…last time I learned anything about physics was in 8th Grade Science with Ms. Newton!).

Not only do I have the unfair advantage of English, but I also have a limitless interest in language-acquisition. Arabic fascinates me.

I like to give myself many difficult and challenging goals, hoping that I will attain a handful of them, attacking it with the attitude of, “You should be able to do them all,” but then when I don’t, instead of self-mutilation, I just make more goals. For example, some of my current language goals are:
Do all the homework
Write down how many hours I spoke Arabic
Write at least 10 new vocab words I learned each day
Write a conversation I had
Write a journal-type entry in Arabic daily
Watch al-Jazeera in English and Arabic
Read 1 news Article in Arabic daily
Read the Book of Mormon out loud daily
Go over the class notes with someone in the family daily
Do exercises from il-kitaab t3lm il 3rbee 2 every day

These types of goals change on a weekly basis. For example, I noticed that the goal to read a news article every day in Arabic was sort of stupid. I don’t really want to buy a newspaper for one article, and I can’t read it fast enough standing in the Tunnel il Jam3a waiting for Hibba to stop using the phone in the cell-phone store (more on that later). So instead I made a goal to underline every word I don’t understand from the homework reading, and circle the ones that seem more important, or that come up multiple times, and then learn them.

It’s such a personal process, language learning. I constantly have to evaluate my progress, effort, and goals. This process is energizing and filling. I drink it up. I love Arabic.

I think the process of language acquisition is like a bicycle. First, you have to get on it.

“Hey, I have 4 credits free – why don’t I take Arabic and see how I like it?”

You have to learn how to ride. That takes a long time. Some people fall down so often that they never really learn how to ride one, but if you start learning young, it is not terribly difficult. It takes balance, patience, and tough knees.

I feel like my experience with French taught me how to ride the bicycle. Just because French is a Red (did anybody else hear about France’s new socialist candidate for prime minister? Or see what she wore when she introduced her platform?) bike and Arabic is a Green-White-Red-and-Black bike doesn’t mean I use different muscles and motions to ride it.

The wheels are the interesting part: 3teefee (no English words come to my mind right now that express the meaning this one does in Arabic…it means something like feeling, heart, opposite of logic, sensing) feelings are like a bead on one of the wheel’s spokes. I am a feely person, but even if you aren’t, you still have a bead on your spoke. Feelings are always involved no matter where Myers-Briggs puts you. My bead is very very very very big.

It’s like this. You get on the bike, you grasp the handlebars, you push off from the ground, and start to peddle. Your peddling is the amount of work you do – learning vocabulary words, doing the homework, speaking x amount of hours etc. When you peddle a bike, and you’re balanced, the bike is going to move. When you work, and you work the right way for you, you will learn the language.

Your feelings are directly related to the language-learning process. Sometimes you will feel extremely intelligent and good about yourself and your ability to conquer the language. Sometimes, the amount of vocabulary that you lack will be so depressing that you may wonder why you even got on the bike in the first place. The beads go around and around, up and down. Your emotions will do this, too, as you learn a foreign language. They will be cyclical.

When I was very young, I remember staring at the beads on my brother’s bike. He would go around and around the caul-de-sac, and the orange bead would go up and down, up and down. If I had remembered more from Mrs. Newton’s class, I could describe the action with more specific vocabulary. Something to do with centrifugal force? I stared at that thing for hours. It was interesting to me how if my brother slowed down, the bead would fall down to the center of the spoke. If he sped up, it stayed closer towards the tire of his bike, and became a beautiful orange streak. However, the position of the bead didn’t seem to depend on his speed as much as his balance.

No matter what you do, the bead will be in motion; if you want an emotionally stable goal, language learning is not for you. The trick is to find a peddling pace and equilibrium that doesn’t jolt the bead up and down the spoke. Anybody can handle changing emotions (we are, after all, human beings!), but rapid jerks of mood swings can cause depression, self-pity, and feelings of failure.

I would definitely say that my language learning has been cyclical. In an email to my dad, I described how my feelings and emotions seem to be on a 24-hour cycle. I feel like if I have a fantastic day, the next one is almost definitely doomed to be miserable. “Never feel homesick again,” or “Never feel stupid again,” are dumb, unattainable goals. However, I do have goals like, “Make the space between attacks of homesickness longer,” and “When you feel stupid, control your negative voice.”

Despite its many challenges, riding the bike is worth it. I’m biking up the mountain of the Arabic language. Someday, I want to look down on the breathtaking biblical landscape and feel the shivers down my spine as I imagine the men and women who passed here before – the sun setting over the Al-Aqsa mosque…incredible.

*The bicycle has been equated to “language acquisition” several times in this post, however I would like to clarify what that entails. To me, Arabic is not translated English. It is the whole experience of being here, walking in the streets, reading the signs, not letting the Taxi driver overcharge me, learning to live in a culture that doesn’t believe in privacy, drinking water that I am not sure is healthy for me, using bathrooms that I am sure aren’t, facial expressions, proxemics, political ideas, the weather, the cost of living… ‘language’, to me, is not reserved for the dead philosophers who wrote great ideas way back when – it’s a living, breathing being. I’ll save that metaphor for later, though.

A Flood of Political Opinions

2007-02-25T11:24:00.000+01:00

2.23.07

Someone much wiser than me recently convinced me forcing someone to listen to your ideas, much less changing them, is impossible, but the best way to come close to achieving understanding is to listen. Historically, this has not been my forte, but since my main goal for coming to this place is to learn the culture, listening is mandatory, akeed.

So I listen. I flinch to hear some of these radical political opinions that you and I would automatically recognize as propaganda and conspiracy theories. These are some of the opinions that I have heard since arriving in Jordan sixteen days ago to study Arabic at Yarmouk University:

“I like the American people, but I don’t like American politics. I liked Clinton.”
“Jews are the cause of all the problems in the Middle East.”
“America is only interested in Iraq for economic reasons.”
“America has no right to be the World’s Policeman.”
“The most important thing is to examine the cause of the war in Iraq, the reasons for entering the country.”
“Those are American soldiers being killed, don’t you see?”
“I like Saddam Hussein, don’t you? At least he was powerful.”
“Try to IMAGINE. This is only 2% of the actual dead.”
“All Jews are liars and thieves.”
“Americans are terrorists. Do you see what they’re doing in Iraq?”
“More people have died since the start of the war in Iraq than ever died during Saddam’s regime. Therefore Saddam was better for the country than the forced ‘democracy’.”
“American doesn’t understand the Middle East, and never will.”
“I’m trying to prove to her that Saddam Hussein is a good guy.”
“Democracy can’t exist in the Muslim world.”
“If Allah told me to go and be a terrorist, I would have to submit. That’s what Islam means, “submission.” The terrorists that think like this aren’t not far from the truth.”
“Jordan First.”
“President Bush is just trying to finish what his father started.”
“Americans don’t know the truth of what’s going on in Iraq on a daily basis.”
“Jesus Christ was a terrorist.”
“Americans are the cause of all the problems in the Middle East.”
[They showed me a clip of the World Trade Center attacks on a cell phone, laughing]
“All Jews are terrorists.”
“Israel’s flag signifies the Jordan river to the Euphrates river in Iraq. They’re trying to expand it, until it is the largest power in the world, bigger even than America.”
“All Arabs are terrorists.”
“The CIA has files in their basement detailing the United State’s Government’s plan on how they are going to help Israel expand its borders to the westernmost side of Iraq.”
“Don’t talk about politics.”
“They don’t show this kind of stuff to you on American television, right?”
“The Hadith say that you can’t kill men, women, children in another country, that you don’t strike someone from behind their back, so obviously what the terrorists did in New York City was haram, was a sin, it wasn’t true Islam.”
“She’s a ‘48 Arab. She’s really strong.”
“You can’t know the truth. Everyone is liars.”
“The problem with Iraq isn’t that it had an oppressive dictator, or that it can’t be a democratic country – it’s the Iraqi people themselves. They are all two-faced liars.”
“Just kill them all. I don’t care.”
“I don’t like American politics, just Clinton.”

Markaz I-Shorta

2007-02-23T15:37:00.000+01:00

Today was a great day. For the first time since I’ve been here, I felt some semblance of “home”. I know that it will never be the lie-in-the-front-yard drinking lemonade after washing my car feeling, but it was still closer than paranoia and negative comparisons.

Baba Hammouri took me to the Shorta, the Police Station, to take care of the business of my Visa. It’s so insane to think about me paying the equivalent of $10.50 after stepping off the airport in Amman for my Visa for the next six months, where Jordanians stand in line for days and days at the American Embassy, in a huge line, waiting to get a Visa that will last them a few months and cost thousands of JDs. I wonder how I happened to gain the great privilege of being born an American Citizen. I try not to think too much about that; it’s kind of a depressing thought. I value my citizenship like I value my virginity, like I value my soul.

So we went to the Police Station. It was great. I felt so…COOL. That’s definitely the best word to describe the feeling. There I was, in my black coat (in France, I bought a raincoat at my favorite store. It turns out to have been the absolute most intelligent purchase of my trip so far. It’s long, which is perfect for here – Muslims wear long coats and shirts for modesty. It’s not heavy, it repels rain, and I look fabulous in it), with a million Arab police around. I didn’t feel any hint of fear, mostly because Baba Hammouri was there. Also, I felt…power? I don’t know how to describe it.

We had to go to a second police station. I don’t really understand why. Actually, the whole business of Visas in Jordan is quite confusing.

The State Department says that you buy your Visa in the airport, and then go to the local police before the end of the first month you are there to extend it for a maximum of two months.

This worried me, because the duration of my stay here is longer than three months. I called the Jordanian Embassy in Washington D.C. to ask them what to do. They said that there would be, “No broblem!” when I go to the police here.

Last time I was in Jordan, we went to the police station in Al-Husn a month after being there. I had no idea what happened. Nedal and his dad took our passports and a copy of them, waved their hands around, we waited for about an hour, and the result was a bunch of additional squiggles added to our passport that meant we could stay for the next while. I don’t know how long.

This time, the police in the first police station took my passport, wrote some stuff in it, and apparently said that I needed to see the bigger city police, because that’s where Baba Hammouri and I went.

They gave me a form to fill out, expressed wonder at the fact that I came two weeks early (“You should come after a month, not two weeks!”), and apparently instructed Baba Hammouri that I need to get a physical by an Arabic doctor to ensure that I’m not bringing dangerous American microbes into the Middle East.

Tonight on Al Jazeera I learned that Tony Blair is pulling out 1,600 troops from Iraq. I also had the joy and privilege of watching Al-Zahra2, that crazy anti-American station. Baba Hammouri called me from the kitchen. The program tonight was in English. I saw the dead bloody bodies of American soldiers while someone expressed anger and hatred towards George Bush in broken English. It wasn’t as emotional this time. Mostly I just felt like it was the most stupid propaganda I’ve heard. Then there was the usual American tanks exploding – infijarat. Baba Hammouri tried to make me feel better about the whole thing by saying, “Don’t worry, when they captured the actual soldiers inside the American tanks, they found out they were actually Israeli Jews dressed like Americans.” As if that was some sort of consolation.

Some other extremely ridiculous things I have heard in the past few weeks:

“The CIA has hundreds of files and documents in their basement, plans on how they are going to help Israel extend its borders to the westernmost side of Iraq.”

“Jews are the cause of all the problems in the Middle East.”

“Shi’ites are all bad people.”

“Saddam Hussein was a good ruler and an honest man.”

“You can’t have Democracy in Muslim countries.”

Trevor made an excellent point the other day, though. No matter how stupid someone’s opinion is, it has value because it is their opinion. It would be just as likely for me to convince someone that Liberal Democracy and Inalienable Rights and a Free Market Economy are the “right” way as for them to convince me that Saddam Hussein was respectable leader, Israel doesn’t have the right to exist, and Democracy in the Arab World is impossible. Basically, Trevor’s main point was the only thing I can do is listen, without the spirit of wanting to argue my points. I can reason with them, and try to get them to understand me, but they will only listen if I really want to understand their point of view. It’s really hard to sit back and listen to some things, though.

Democracy in Iraq: Class Discussion

2007-02-22T11:15:00.000+01:00

After listening to three Turks and a Spaniard tell their opinions about why the United States' war with Iraq is a disaster, President Bush is crazy, the motivation behind the war is purely economical, and how the states should pull out troops immediately, this is what I said.

Nobody has access to the truth. You see one thing in the Turkish Media, you see another thing in the Spanish Media, I see something else in the American Media. The fact is, unless we see it with our own eyes, we can't determine exactly what is happening. We can't know for sure how many people died today, who started what fight with who, or what the good consequences of the American presence in Iraq are. All media is biased. There is no way of knowing the actual truth.

Democracy is the only way to peace in the Arab world. I am not saying that America should or is even able to transpose our own ideas of democracy and put them onto a people whose culture, religion, and lifestyle is completely different from our own. The fact is, without a democracy, you will end up with another dictator like Saddam Hussein, who kills his own people for the mere fact of their race, or religion. Democracy is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, multi-partisan politics, a free-market economy, safety, governmental protection - democracy means that the person who gets elected doesn't have enough power to screw everything up. Democracy recognizes the basic rights of humankind. Every culture, every people, every country need democracy.

Thousands of more people have died since the beginning of the war in Iraq than were ever killed during Saddam's regime, but I would rather that millions die fighting for democracy than one person die because of somebody else's unlawful dictatorial rule. I would die for democracy, I would kill for democracy.

It may not be pointless to argue over whether or not the American presence is justified in Iraq, but it is much MORE important to discuss "What do we do now?" It's the same thing in Israel; yeah, sure, we can complain all day long about how the UN resolution of 1948 was unlawful and unjust, but you can't send three-four generations of Palestinians who have lived their whole lives as refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan (although technically the "refugees" of Jordan have Jordanian citizenship, making them not real refugees in the true sense of the word) back to Israel; there is a whole country there! It's not a question of kicking out the Israelis anymore, it's a question of, 'Where do we go from here?" or "What do we do now?"

So what do we do now in Iraq? I am not saying that I agree with the way the American occupation is working. I think the structure is not good. In a perfect world, the Americans would be there to protect the people, so the people themselves could form their own NGO's, schools, and ESPECIALLY their own democratic governmental system. Unfortunately, this is impossible with the increasing violence, car bombing, and radification of political thought amongst the general public.

I think the main problem lies with a general misunderstanding on both sides. The Americans can't expect a country to just sprout a flourishing democracy. The non-Iraqi Arabs, and the REST of the world can't expect that the United States will just let country like Iraq alone. I am not saying that the United States has the right to be the world's policeman, but I am definitely saying that without the largest world power's financial, military, and intellectual help, Iraq will inevitably fall into the hands of another Saddam, and then another, and another.

We need to focus on what to do NOW. I think Tony Blair is making a mistake by pulling out troops. I think it's a cunning political move, but it will not be beneficial to the Iraqi's in the long run. I think President Bush was right to have increased the troops in Iraq. I think that it's fairly obvious that if the United States pulls out of Iraq now, it will be a gigantic bloody disaster.

At this point, everybody in the class exploded into accusations, arguments, and lost of Arabic vocabulary I didn't understand.

At one point in the conversation, one of the Turkish girls said that the United States is the cause of all of the problems in the Middle East, and I said, "I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you." She said, "Well, everybody has the right to their own opinion!" I said, "That's the main idea of democracy!" "Then why are you shouting at me?" Because...I'm...stupid," I said, and then burst into tears. That made the class turn into a, "Kate, don't cry!" party, which made me feel even more stupid.

I believe in the reasons that I came to Jordan with all my heart. I know that learning the language, culture, and religion is the ONLY way that real progress can be made towards a peace process. My country is tied up in this part of the world, and this place NEEDS my country's resources and power. If we can't even speak the same language, how can we get anywhere?

Death of my Phone Card

2007-02-21T10:16:00.000+01:00

12.18.07

I guess I should just take a deep breath and laugh. All these ridiculous problems with technology are quite hilarious.

I bought a 2 gig flashdrive in France for about $30. I brought it here. The first day I was with the Hammouri’s, Hibba and I went to Yarmouk to start an equally tedious process of signing me up for classes in the language center. Sanaa had a problem with her phone. It couldn’t open the media files anymore. Granted I was observing everything that was happening in a second non-indoeuropean language, what I got out of the whole thing was that somehow the driver became corrupted or was deleted. Hibba wanted to recover the files that were lost. I heard the words, “bring me a flashdrive tomorrow,” so I decided to be a really cool person, and pulled out my flash drive. The idiot stuck the thing in the computer, and started moving the files. But the computer was slower than a turtle and the files were many and big – it kept fluctuating between “49 minutes left” and “39 minutes left”. We had already been in the stupid store for about an hour and fifteen minutes. So the guy decided to stop, so he just pulled the flashdrive out of the computer without ejecting it, while the files were being transferred.

The next time I tried to use my flashdrive, it was not recognizable by the computer. This annoyed me. I tried it on at least four computers, and none of them worked. I talked to my Information Technology Savy friend, who said that taking a flashdrive out of a computer while files are being transferred may ruin the whole thing.

We went back to the store and explained the problem to the guy. He agreed with us, but also thought that the problem might be that somehow my computer didn’t have the right driver. My IT friend had explained to me that one of the advantages of Windows XP is that it automatically has the driver for any flashdrive you put in. He told us to come back tomorrow, and if it didn’t work, he’d give me a new one. I was pissed off. I rely on my flashdrive to transport pictures and blog posts; there are SO many changes I am dying to make to my blog, but I can’t because there is never time!!!!

So we went back the next day, and he said that he wanted to give the flashdrive to his friend in Amman because he is much more technology-savvy. He said that he could give me a 1 gig flashdrive in the meantime, but I should come back in two weeks. I told him I was pissed off at him, and that I need at least a 2 gig flashdrive. He said he didn’t have any there, but he’d give one to me if he finds out that his friend can’t fix mine.

Allah ya-oghdhoo!

So this flashdrive has been pretty good so far, except for the problem with opening the word document the other day.

Internet is ridiculous. Mama said that she would use it maximum once/month. I obviously know that I can live without the internet, but…I love it. Instant information. Instant connection. A worldwide network in one place. I can’t express to you how much I love the internet. Life without it is frustrating.

Life without a telephone is frustrating. I have a telephone, and I have friends, but I don’t have the bridge between them.

I finished my phone card. I bought another one, for the soul purpose of calling Pierrick. It didn’t work. There was a whole craziness of exchanging SIM cards. We’re gonna go see someone’s friend to figure out what the heck is wrong.

Calling France is three times more expensive than calling the States.

If anybody is out there, and doesn’t mind figuring out a cheap way to call me, CALL ME.

PS
Two days later, which would be yesterday, the 20th of February, I ended up buying another phone card to call BYU's admission office. It turns out the deadline for my reapplication (having deferred more than 2 major academic semesters, it is a whole reapplication process) is in a week, March 1st. Good thing I bought another card!

So far I have tried three different types of international calling cards: eyoonik, AmmanCall, and faraH. By far, faraH has been the cheapest and most reliable. It means "happiness" in Arabic.

"The Stocks"

2007-02-21T10:09:00.000+01:00

2.17.2007

“Kate, do you want to go with us to ‘the stocks’”?
I heard “stocks” and thought “NASDAQ”. This quite confused me.
I said, “sure!” thinking, “well, if I go with Sanaa and Ahmed, then I’ll at least get to understand what the crap they’re talking about…and since they’re asking me if I want to go, it can’t be dangerous for me.”

When I was in Photo II with Mr. Hing, one of our large projects was an advertisement. We had to go through all the stages of production, including brainstorming, reforming the idea, actually photographing the thing, and working with photoshop to add text. I remember helping Mr. Hing put the photos up on the wall in the main hallway in the Reed Center. He stopped at an advertisement for a pair of shoes. “Something just doesn’t work here…the photography is excellent, but the wording just doesn’t work. It got lost in translation.” English was a second language for the student photographer.

Basically, everything in English around here is like that. For example, the “International Student Office” is called the “Ex-patriot Student Bureau.” Yarmouk is organized into “villages” – the word makes sense in Arabic, but in English…it doesn’t really. “English Village” sounds like some quaint little moor somewhere in the United Kingdom. By far and away my favorite are the daftarat, or the school notebooks. Most of them have cheesy pictures of babies, flowers, or landscapes with the most hilarious phrases, made triply hilarious when there are spelling and grammar mistakes. Here are some examples:
“You are happy when you see a flower and recognize the blessing.”
“Fish for a dream, you never know when you might use it.”
“A Friend…makes the world we live in a better and happier place. A friend is someone we turn to when our spirits need a lift A friend is someone to treasure, for friendship is a gift A friend is someone who fills our lives with Beauty, Joy and Grace and makes the world we live in a better and happier place”
“Thinking of Future Mysteries with pure minds. Wondering What is Future with innocent eyes. Babies Future.”
“Blue as spring sky shining as a day light roaming as a bird to get further looking future with a big smile.”
“Flowers write with the sence of romance…2 the one you love…I love you Can be said with Words…

So when Sanaa asked me if I wanted to go to the “stocks”, I automatically assumed that I was wrong about us going to something that had to do with the NY Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Probably she either heard a poor translation of the word balay, or she looked it up in a dictionary and took whatever definition came up. “Stocks” would definitely not be the word I would use. Maybe I would use that word to refer to a place like Costco, or the Bishop’s Storehouse, or any wholesale place, but the place we went had nothing to with those kinds of places.

The words I would have used were more like: bazaar, flea market, second-hand shopping, or graveyard for American clothing. Before coming to Jordan, I went shopping with Trevor. We spent the whole time looking at where the different things were made. So far, everywhere I’ve gone with Hibba or Sanaa in the Soog (market) literally everything I have seen – including makeup and accessories – has been ‘Made in China’. So it was quite a shock to see things like a Dallas Cowboys jacket, a sweatshirt with ‘Los Angeles’ on it, sponge-bob square-pants slippers, and brand names like Land’s End, Old Navy, American Eagle, and Abercrombie and Fitch. There was a black and white Armani blouse underneath an XXL pine green sweatshirt with a giant tweety bird on it. Table and table and tables of dirty clothes, dirty shoes, dirty coats for miles and miles and miles. People walking, rummaging through them. I couldn’t tell where the balay began or ended. It was insane, and all around were Arab men shouting/singing, “25 cents! 25 cents! Any 3 for 25 cents! Just today!” I felt like I was doing a double-take for four hours; strange enough to be in a foreign country, in a bazaar reeking of dirt, mold, urine, coffee, and the ever-present tobacco, but then to see random objects from home completely out of context. All of this was odd enough to take in, even knowing that most of those products are not made in the United States. Then I decided to check the tags.

Eight – nine – ten in a row I counted before coming to one that was not “Made in the USA.” I didn’t know how to feel about this. I kept wondering, “Where the heck did all of these come from?” Seriously, I love second-hand stores. Deseret Industries, Salvation Army, Second Hand Rose in downtown Westfield…four hours of looking at this stuff, and there was only one, and I repeat ONE thing that I saw that evoked in me a desire to buy it. This place was scary. Miles and miles of crap, stuff I would never dress myself let alone my children in, yet it was crowded with moms, dads, children – holding shirts up to shoulders, bartering down the price. I took over 100 pictures, and not one of them was easy to take. People already stare at me wherever I go, being the only white red-head that apparently any of them has ever seen in real life, but the whole camera-in-face thing substantially increases their tendency to stare.

It was interesting; the whole dynamic of me-Ahmed-Sanaa. We all helped each other stay safe. Sanaa was the oldest and dictated where we were going. I stayed right by her side (they warned me quite forcefully to take care of my purse and not let it out of my sight); she kept me safe. But Sanaa could not have gone by herself; this is not a country for walking alone in. Ahmed’s male-ness assured that nobody would harm us. He’s 18, but looks younger. If there was one of us who could have gone alone, it would have been him, but Sanaa’s knowledge and go-getter personality definitely helped him. You may wonder how I contributed to the dynamic; I held the bags of stuff they bought. I stood with Sanaa when we were waiting for Ahmed to pick up the showarma from the mataam, I told Sanaa when something was extremely unstylish/dirty/not worth buying, or when we found a hidden treasure. But my most useful job of the night was translating the English written on the endless sweatshirts, coats, shirts, and shoes.
“What does ‘Sassy’ mean?”
“No, you shouldn’t buy that one.”
“Oooh, this is Nick!”
“You mean Nye-kee!”
“What does ‘Big Dog’ mean?”
“Yeah, you don’t want that one either.”
“What does this say?”
“Sanaa! Do you really want underwear that says ‘call me’ on it?”

The funniest thing I saw was a purple child’s sweatshirt with a picture of Malcolm X on the front, and one of his quotes on the back about protecting rights and freedoms BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. It seemed a bit out of place in the “stocks”.

Besides wondering how Irbid, Jordan had ended up being the final destination of a long journey for all the stuff, I also wondered over and over, “What would drive someone to work here?” Maybe I’m too much of an idealist; maybe people do aspire to work in these kinds of places. With unemployment being what it is in Jordan, I shouldn’t be shocked at anything.

Anecdote:
I came to learn later that most of the clothing in the bala is either used, or there was a manufacturing mistake. And even though you can buy a used Armani jacket for 2 JDs (about $2.75), it cost the people selling it about 2 gursh (about $0.05).

Church in Jordan

2007-02-21T10:08:00.000+01:00

2.16.2007

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; I am LDS, also known as “Mormon”. Believe it or not, there are Mormons in Jordan. I go to the North Jordan branch in Al-Husn. A Google Search on the LDS Church in Jordan comes up with out-dated, irrelevant information. Here are some facts about the LDS Church here:

CHURCH ORGANIZATION IN JORDAN
- There are two branches in Jordan: the North Jordan Branch, and the Amman Branch.
- The hierarchy of the church in Jordan is as follows (there may be mistakes):
President Dew – Branch President
President Doug Bradford – District President (he was my Arabic 201 teacher at BYU)
President Enrickson? Nobody around here, including the Americans, can pronounce his name (German seems like an easier language to master than Arabic but oh well) – the Mission President of the Greece/Eastern Europe Mission
President Uchdorf, Area President
The First Presidency
- President Doug Bradford presides over all the branches and wards in the Middle East (not including those on American Military bases or in Israel) which are:
Branches: North Jordan (20ish active), Amman (40ish active), Beirut (4 active, including the humanitarian aid missionaries), Syria? (I don’t remember)
Ward(s): Cairo (about 100 active)
- The church in the Middle East is not organized by stakes and districts, but by mission. However, the branches that President Bradford presides over are technically our “district”
- The Mission President’s offices are located in Frankfort, Germany
- The Bradshaws visit each branch/ward in the district at least once every 3 months

THE NORTH JORDAN AL HUSN BRANCH
- The North Jordan Branch is located in a rented building in Al-Husn.
- It is big enough to host over 100 people
- It is new, clean, and has the best bathroom I’ve seen in Jordan so far
- It has three floors, a kitchen, three bathrooms, one large room for sacrament meeting, approximately eight classrooms, and one large lobby-type room with couches
- there is a hired cleaning lady who is not Mormon.
- President William Dew (the Branch President of the N.J. Branch) and his wife, Sister Joleen Dew, are from the suburbs of Salt Lake City, UT
- The Dews, and Elder Jeremy and Sister Marilyn Bradshaw (also, I believe, from UT), are full-time humanitarian aide missionaries for the church. Their missions last for 23 months because of something to do with tax laws and international foreign aid
- The Dews will have been here for a year in March
- President Dew studied Arabic at the University of Utah years ago
- The North Jordan branch is the only Arabic speaking branch in the world
- There are two missionaries serving from the North Jordan Branch: Ibrahim Tashman serving in Ghana, and Amr serving in South Africa
- There is one Arabic Returned Missionary from the Middle East in the entire world: Nedal Tashman (and he’s my close friend)
- The first ever temple trip of the North Jordan Branch is at the end of this May, to the London, England temple (and I am going with them!)
- There are six Americans in the North Jordan Branch: the Dews, the Bradshaws, Virginia (wife of a Muslim, from the Midwest, has 3 girls in their 20’s), and me

RANDOM FACTS ABOUT THE LDS CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE EAST
- Most of the members in Amman and Cairo are ex-patriots from the Philippines, Europe…
- Active proselytizing is illegal in Jordan and can result in jail time
- Muslims converting to Christianity is illegal in Jordan
- Not only is it against the law, sharia, or Muslim religious law, requires the convert’s family to kill them
- although this is true, not all families will do this, especially in Jordan, which is in a constant state of westernization/modernization

Call Me.

2007-02-20T13:46:00.000+01:00

I'm homesick. This is my phone number.

0776528532

The Hammouri Family

2007-02-18T11:42:00.000+01:00

Well, since I've been here for almost a week now, I suppose I should write a little bit about the people I'm living with.

I am a little bit (understatement) annoyed at how difficult technology is here. It's like...I finally figured out a system that somewhat seems to work; when I have to write a long email, or when I want to write post about something, I write it on my own time on my computer, save it to my flashdrive, and then post it in a matter of minutes (home, it would be seconds...they don't really believe in DSL here). So I wrote a long post about what I did this weekend, and about my family here, and my opinions about blah blah blah, but for some reason when I saved it to my flashdrive, the files got corrupted and I couldn't open them. Or rather, when I opened it with word, my beautiful 4-5 page essay was a bunch of dots. Highlighting it and putting it into "English" didn't work, either; the files must have been corrupted, I'm thinking, because I wrote a long email and was able to open that file fine to cut and paste into my email client. Bleaugh.

Tomorrow I have a meeting at the American Embassy with the HR director. I have seriously been looking forward to this for about a week. More on that later.

I am living with a Muslim family. In this family there are:
Maysoon
Mohammad
Alaa2 (2's in Arabic represent glottal stops. Like when people from Utah say "mountain")
Sanaa
Hibba
Ahmed
Mona
Mahmood

Maysoon is my Arabic mom. Families here are matriarchal. Well. I dunno. Women are not powerless here, though most of them wear veils. I think that's the worst stereotype Westerners tend to have of women, but that is a subject for a different post. Maysoon is amazing. She treats me like her own daughter. She looks after me, she cares about me, she helps me with my homework; every day right after class she calls me to know where I am - she does this with ALL of her daughters. She is also great because she has an open mind about things. Not all Muslims would like to have a little Mormon girl stay with them forever. She and Sanaa are the main reasons that I decided to come to Jordan. I knew her personality before, and knew that I can trust her. She, like the majority of women in the Middle East, is a stay-at-home mom.

Mohammad is my Arabic dad. He is very funny. He (and his wife) are addicted to Viceroy cigarrettes. He hates technology, cell phones, politics, electricity...he's had the same car since 1981. More about "Auti" later. He likes his farm (they have a farm 10 kilometers from the house), he likes his family, and he LOVES Islam. He likes to joke around, and explain things to me slowly.

Alaa2 (24?) is the oldest. I usually only see her in the evenings. She works at Macdonalds in Irbid. She taught me how to play cards.

Sanaa (21) is one of the biggest motivating factors of my decision to come to Jordan. She graduated from Yarmouk last semester and is also working at Macdonalds in Irbid. She and I have similar personalities. Definitely a life friend.

Hibba (20) is 6 months younger than me. She's a junior at Yarmouk. I spend most of my time with her, because we both go to Yarmouk. I thought that we wouldn't get along, but it turns out that we really do. Hibba is more "prissy" than Sanaa. She is definitely a life friend, too.

Ahmed (18) is a senior in highschool, or in other words, he's in tawjihi. Tawjihi is a national test in the Arab world that all seniors have to take, very similar to the "Bac" in France. If you do well on this test, you can have a good job. If you do poorly, you can't. He's funny, sometimes underestimates my understanding capabilities. He cracks me up.

Mona (14?) is fun. She and I talk a lot, I help her with her English - she's cute. She doesn't wear the hijab yet. They explained to me that you don't start wearing the hijab until you have your period. She is probably the epitome of innocence, in my opinion.

Mahmoud (12?) spends most of his time at school or in the mezra3a or local family farm. (3 is for the arabic letter "aaauuu" that sounds like Kermit the Frog...we don't really use that sound very often in English, but we do sometimes). He doesn't like being indoors. He has the hardest accent to understand.

Well, the Language Center guy just waved his hands at me to say that I have to leave the lab now, so more about everything later...more more more...

CHECK OUT MY PICTURES!!!

http://picturesofkateinjordan.blogspot.com

It's not finished yet, but there are a lot of really cool pictures!!!!

The first time I cried in Jordan

2007-02-15T11:36:00.000+01:00

2.14.07
(Habby Valentine, by the way)

Al-zahara?
LA! Al-Zaqra2!
Kateer moghatelef!

I had just completely killed my phone card from talking to Trevor. My last phone conversation for at least 4 months, maybe more. We had discussed many things, including, as usual, news and politics. “Kate, you have to be careful. The news there – you can’t trust the news anywhere, but at least in the States you have more access to, you know, the truth.” About five minutes later, my phone card cut him off in the middle of his sentence, and I sat for a while staring at the ceiling. My Arabic sisters were staring at me, talking with their secret boyfriends (more on that later), my hair was wet from my first decent shower in the middle east (turns out their bathroom may not be my favorite room in the house, but the shower faucet actually has water pressure!). The water from my wet hair was starting to soak into my pillow. I sighed, and got up. It must have been around midnight; people were awake, talking, watching TV…instead of going to bed with, “I miss Trevor,” thoughts in my head, I decided to fill it with something else.

So I started watching Al-Zaqra2, the local Iraqi television station. I wasn’t really paying attention, just sitting on the couch. Baba turned to me and said, “This kind of television is illegal in America, no?”

Flashes of Freedom of Speech and “We the People” flying through my head at lightening speed. I didn’t know how to say, “The government doesn’t determine what can or cannot be broadcast on television; it’s the Broadcasting stations themselves that make the rules; if you want something to be broadcast, or published, or said, there is always a way. ‘It’s a Free Country.’ I believe that Freedom of Speech is one of the most important aspects of the Constitution of the United States of America, and I will do whatever I can to uphold my rights, while at the same time recognizing that there are duties I have to perform – governments are here to protect the people as long as people protect the government and there is a specific buzz word for that but I forgot because my mind works with general ideas not rote memorization...”

I was not ready for what happened next.

“This kind of television is illegal in America, no?” he repeated.
“Um…what is it?”
“This is the Iraqi television station. Those are American soldiers that you see – see? The Iraqis are killing them.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. My eyes were staring at the television screen. It was showing shaky, fuzzy video clips of army tanks driving in the desert and suddenly exploding. The clip would repeat several times. Over and over, the same thing – an American army tank driving along and suddenly bursting into flames. Little arrows added by a computer, pointing at where you should look to better see the explosions. You could see the people inside the tanks being blown to bits. “Those are Americans?”

“Yes, those are Americans.”
“What?” – I didn’t get it.
Ahmed was looking at me funny. He was grinning, “What’s the matter? You’re crying?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Why?”

I didn’t know how to say: “I know people who are in Iraq right now. Wives, children, families – I know them. For nearly six months I worked with someone whose husband was recently deployed. I love my government, I love my flag, I love my state, I love my country – “I’m PROUD to be an American! Where at least I know I’m freeee” “My Country ‘Tis of Thee!” “O’er the land of the free! And the home of the brave!” I visit the cemetery every Memorial Day and Veterans Day to remember to the people who served for my country. I may listen to NPR, but that doesn’t mean that I believe the war in Iraq is completely unjustified. That somebody would glorify the killing of American soldiers in such a way is pure evil. It disgusts me. I feel like I want to throw up. I feel terrified.”

“Why are you crying?”
“Um, those are Americans?????”
“Yes.”

The screen changed to show a room with dozens of books and papers scattered across the floor. On further examination, I could see that they were Korans. In my ‘Islam and the Gospel’ class at BYU, I remember learning that to Muslims, the book of the Koran is actually deemed holy. My friend Mohammad didn’t really participate in religion, but his Koran was in a special place above his desk, without writing inside. Haram!

My Arab family was staring at the screen with the same kind of terror in their eyes, except instead of destroyed people, it was destroyed books.

I don’t want to see the world that way. The Koran is important. American soldiers die everywhere in the world, not just Iraq. I felt disgust at seeing the desecrated Korans, too, but not the same way. I wondered if I am a prejudiced, bigoted American. I wondered if deep inside, I sort of want to stay that way.

Then, the scene changed to close ups of dead bodies. I didn’t really understand what was going on – Baba said something about Iran and Iraq and problems and Americans. I think they were showing the Iraqis killed by American air-bombers. It was disgusting. Bodies lying in the streets, covered by sheets. The camera person would zoom in on the bullet holes in the heads of the children, at the crusted, dried blood. The bodies looked like dolls. They didn’t hide the faces, but some of them were so deformed from explosions that you wouldn’t have been able to recognize them anyway. Genital parts of babies fully exposed, flies. It was horrific. I wanted Aslan to come and breathe life into them, even though I didn’t really understand the circumstances.

“Can you read what that says?”
I slowly sounded out, “Democracy in Iraq,” the caption on the top of the screen.

Trevor was right. I need to be extremely careful to not be bombarded with propaganda here. While I may be here to open my mind, I am certainly not here to become an extremist Islamic terrorist.

Blog Goals

2007-02-12T18:23:00.001+01:00

I have kept a fairly consistent journal throughout my life. In 3rd grade, my journal went something like this, “January 9. James looked at me today. I love him so much.” “January 10. I wonder what it would be like if James and I got married.” “January 11. Since James’ name is James Chipello the Third, would I be Kate Chipello the Third if I married him?”

I don’t want this blog to be a, “Hey, I went to Pella today. It was cool. I have to go”-type journal. How boring. I want people to actually find what I have to say interesting and useful. That, combined with the way internet usage works here (I don’t have a wireless connection – I have to save my posts/photos to a USB drive), and the realization that I could be a really fantastic writer/photojournalist has helped me develop the following goals for my blog:

1. Not be boring.
2. Be interesting.

I suppose, on further examination, both of those goals can be applied to my life in general. I don’t want the ordinary life. I don’t want to be normal. I don’t want to settle.

“I want adventure in the great, wide somewhere.”

I don’t want to be the little housewife who sits at home and waters the plants that are going to die anyway. You know?

Every 7 ½ minutes there is a car accident somewhere in Jordan. I know this because of the state-sponsored traffic awareness billboards posted every mile or so. The US State Department specifically advises Americans to not take the bus in Jordan (I took the Irbi-Amman bus every day for two months), and to avoid car travel as much as possible. “Sabaa wa noos!” – “Seven and a half!” I said last night, as the car stalled in the middle of a busy circle, or as an on-coming taxi missed us by about 3 inches this morning on the way to Yarmouk.

I can measure the distance between curling up in the fetal position and skydiving, between being a little housewife with her plants and a world traveler fluent in language, food, experience, and love – between boring and interesting, between wasting life and living it. Seven and a half minutes.

What exacty is a SIM card

2007-02-12T18:21:00.000+01:00

12.11.07

I drove Mohammad and Rani to a Hinckley Hall 2100 Floor Activity. We got there after most of the girls had left, which was disappointing; I was overextending (as usual), trying to be a “cool” RA by organizing a s’more campfire activity with my girls, as well as show off one of my favorite American cultural activities to my international friends. Not just any international students; these were my Arab friends. I was a sophomore in college, in Arabic 201. I had barely changed majors to Middle East Studies and Arabic. Two Arab boys lived a stone’s throw away in Budge Hall, and I became extremely collante, as the French would say – sticky. I would have done just about anything for them.

Even though most of the girls had already left, I was determined to make the campfire be an enjoyable experience for my Arab friends. I called some people, we got a big fire going, a modest crowd, stories, jokes, laughter – Mohammad wanted to invite Omar. I thought “Great! He must not be having too horrible of a time!” Alas, Mohammad’s phone was dead. He asked to borrow mine. I told him, “I don’t have Omar’s phone number!” “Is okay!” replied Mohammad. I gave him a confused look, but handed him my phone. My stomach lurched when I saw him open the back, where the battery is. “What are you doing?” “No problem, no problem, dohn’ worry!” He switched our SIM cards, put the battery back in, called Omar, switched the SIM cards back, Omar came with two cars full of people, and we lived happily ever after.

A cell phone is nothing without a SIM card, a tiny little computer chip that not only stores the names and numbers (unless you have it set to save-numbers-to-phone in your settings menu), but also allows the phone companies to recognize you. The body of a cell phone is nothing without a SIM card, and vice versa. It’s kind of like a door and a key.

When I came to Jordan last summer, I bought a phone for 30 JD, and my friend Nedal gave me an old SIM card with the company Fastlink. Jordanians understand SIM cards. They switch them (like Mohammad), and separate them from their phone with ease (like Nedal).

Driving to the JFK airport with Trevor, our conversation somehow stumbled upon this subject. At the time, we were in a spot of heavy traffic – bad drivers exist everywhere in the world, seriously! Black van, no lights, hugging Trevor’s blindspot!? – I made a bold statement: “Americans don’t know what SIM cards are.”
“Yes they do! Everyone knows what a SIM card is! It’s…”
“I know you know what a SIM card is, but the average American has no clue!”
“You’re underestimating their intelligence!”
“Ask anyone!”
“Fine!”
“Hey! Matt Cox just called! I’ll ask him, and you’ll see!”
I wonder if Matt was confused why I was asking, practically shouting, about SIM cards when he was trying to give me a bon-voyage phone call. He didn’t act like it was weird, but then again, one time, I asked him if boys and girls could be identical twins, so…
“Um, let me ask my brother,” said Matt.
“See, SEE?!?!?” I shouted at Trevor.
He proceeded to curse, both at me, and the moron with the black van. Country music was blasting, the New York Skyline was in sight, with a beautiful sunset – “Can I change lanes? Can I go??!?? Can I go!?!?” – what a beautiful memory!!!

As smug as I felt (after all, I had proved the general American ignorance about SIM cards to be true), I double proved my point waiting for my plane to France the next day. I had two phones, the one I bought for 30 JDs, and my pink Razr that Cingular never gave me the rebate for. Two SIM cards, one ultra-super roaming (the Atlantic ocean mean anything?), the other with all my numbers and info. I didn’t bring the charger for my Razr. I looked everywhere in the airport for someone who would sell me the right cell phone charger so I could call my friends. I even went out of security (pain in the cul) to check the inside-the-airport-outside-security-area stores, but nobody had what I was looking for. I sat down, sweaty – mostly from wearing half of my wardrobe to maximize my weight limit – and pissed off. Supply and demand, where are you? I was willing to pay the $15-20 they would have charged for a charger. Then I realized that I could pull a Mohammad and switch the SIM cards, which made me feel like a complete moron.

In the end, I just memorized Trevor’s number. It was an easier solution.

Cell phones are a status symbol here. My Arab sisters Senaa and Hibba agreed that I need to get the same service provider – Mobilecom - as them, to be more cost effective – and that I need to use my Razr, not my 30 JD Nokia. We went to the store last night, and bought a SIM card that dials 3 numbers free (or cheaper; I may not have understood), and a charger for my cell phone for a total of 9.5 JD, which is either $7 or $15, but either way, the SIM card in the states would have cost at least three times as much.
Majnoon!

Where I decided to live

2007-02-12T18:19:00.000+01:00

Feb 10, 2007

I had to choose between living with Mormons or Muslims. President Dew had me read the scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that I’ve already read about a million times about how to make decisions: D&C 9:9-8. “Study it out in your mind” etc. Lots of studying – and I chose the Muslims. Here is my list of Pros and Cons:

Cons to living with the Tashman’s:
Arin is 15. I’m really close with her, but she’s not the same age as me. Deals w/ different problems.
It would be EXTREMELY difficult to explain to Senaa and her family that I want to live with the Tashmans, whereas the Tashmans understand the situation.
They already had Americans live with them so A. it’s not as interesting for them for me to be here, and B. they have assumptions about what it’s like to live with all Americans, but I am completely different from Becca, Jana, and Jenna
I don’t want to mess with the memory they have of their American girls
They have the Al Husn accent
They live far away from the University

Pros to living w/ the Tashman’s:
They’re Mormon. I’m Mormon. It would be easier.
Adam said that I should live with his family. I trust my entire life with him.
They already had Americans live with them, so they understand what it’s like.
I’d have my own bed.
Flushing toilet, toilet paper

Cons to living with the Hammouri’s:
I don’t want to trespass on the Tashman’s hospitality. They’ve already been extremely kind to me
They’re Muslim. I’m Mormon. It would be harder.
Christians here say horrible things about the Muslims, mostly indirectly, or with euphamisms. “They’re not Christian,” they’ll whisper. From what I learned last year, the local prejudice here is that most Muslims wouldn’t think it wrong to rape a Christian. I don’t know how true these things are, but…
Crowded. The mom and dad smoke. One bathroom, 8 people. I think…Mohammad, his wife, Ahmed, Mahmood, Alaa, Senaa, Hibba, Mona - then me.

Pros to living w/ the Hammouri’s:
Senaa is 21. We have similar personalities w/ different cultures. We deal w/ similar problems (i.e. who am I going to marry?????)
Hibba is 20 and goes to Yarmuk.
Her really loves me and wants me to live with them.
Mormon-Muslim relations in Jordan
I will never have this opportunity ever again in my life. Think of all the things I can learn!!!!!

Those are a few of the things that went through my head. Ca y est, the decision is made.

I can pinpoint the exact moment the decision-scales tipped in favor of the Muslim family. After President Dew had me consult the scriptures for advice, and I was packing up my quad in its case, he said in passing, “If it were me, if I were sending my daughter over to live in the Middle East, I would probably consult her to live with the Mormon family. It would be easier.”

That last sentence stuck with me. I realized, “If I wanted it to be easy, why would I leave my little house in Westfield, Massachusetts!” Nobody in the entire world has ever done what I am doing now. I am not here to follow a crowd, to be a lemming, to be completely in my comfort zone. It may be harder to be a Christian among Muslims, but it will certainly teach me more about what typical Jordanian life is like – 98% of the country is Muslim. I made the right choice, even though it may be the harder one.

Right now, I am writing this on my computer in the Tashman house. Abu Nedal, aka my dad (“When you’re here, I’m like your father!” is what he’s said to me at least five or six times since I’ve been here.) got my a/c adaptor to work. It was hilarious, actually. It involved two surge protectors, a socket-thing adaptor, and a hair dryer to test whether or not it was working. We laughed a lot over this. It’s working. If only somebody in Al-Husn had wireless internet besides the missionaries who live a hill over…ya raaaaayt (I wiiiiish…).

I don’t know exactly how internet is going to work here. So far, I’ve been pretty frugal with my money (except a shopping spree in Rennes, but when I come back in June, things won’t be on sale, and I my boots are soooooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuute). Ha! For example, I’ve been in Jordan for about 3 days now, and the first time I bought something was tonight, to buy 21 JD worth of bataga – phone minutes. I have a really silly goal; who knows if it will work. My goal is to only use one phone card to call the states during the next four months. The one I bought will last me approximately 4 hours if I call from a landline phone. I know that I will have to buy more cell phone minutes; right now I have 14 JDs worth.

That’s the only thing that I’ve bought, and so far I have made one phone call.

I really enjoy the conversations I have with my friends back home. Whenever I would have a problem, I would think, “Who should I call?” I think it was mostly because I never had to think very much about my phone bill. (By the way, if my family is reading this, I called Cingular, and they are taking off approximately $80 worth of over charges to my account. They said it may not show up until the next bill. This will more than pay for my share of the bill). Here, people don’t talk on the phone, they talk in person. “Missed call” is an English phrase that they use more here than they ever would back home.

So, I’m not going to think of things in terms of “Who can I call?” It’s different this time; I don’t feel like a stranger. I know people, I understand the culture, I feel like I need to really profit from every moment. The only times I don’t speak/think Arabic are in the early morning (this morning, I woke up thinking in French! Arin started speaking to me and I answered in French – “Oui? Quelle heure est-il?”), when I speak with the missionaries (the only other Americans in Al-Husn, to my knowledge), when I’m online or writing on my computer, or when I’m reading my scriptures. Last time, I got lonely often. I think that, as long as I get enough sleep, and can stay in contact with my family and friends online, it would be a good idea to avoid too much contact with home. I’m not here to call my friends and family and talk with them for hours and hours on the phone.

I read the story of Ehud in Judges 3. It’s hilarious, especially around vs. 22. The Old Testament rocks my socks.

Here is a play by play of the last 48 hours here.
7:00pm – Pierrick and I went shoe shopping in Rennes
8:00pm – Pierrick and I were still running around Rennes
9:00pm – Me + Pierrick + Pizza = HAPPINESS
10:00pm – Went home to Betton
11:00pm – Started our all-nighter (nuit blanche)
12:00am – nuit blanche
1:00am – nuit blanche
2:00am – nuit blanche
3:00am – nuit blanche, Pierrick fell asleep, Trevor came online!!
4:00am - talked with Trevor online!!!!
5:00am – alarm went off – time to get up and go to the train station
6:00am – Claire and Pierrick went with me to the Gares (train station)
7:00am – I left Rennes in a Train a Grand Vitesse (super fast train).
8:00am - TGV
9:00am – TGV
10:00am - Arrived in Paris, Montparnasse, took a bus to CDG Airport
11:00am – Went through security, arrived 3 hours early (pheeew!)
12:00pm – waiting, called home, Pierrick, and Trevor
1:00pm – boarded the plane
2:00pm – in the air!
3:00pm – in the air!
4:00pm – in the air!
5:00pm – landed in Jordan – it is 6:00pm, 4 hour flight, 1 hour time difference
7:00pm – Abu Nedal and the missionaries were at the airport to pick me up!
8:00pm – Showed them pictures of Nedal and me in SLC
9:00pm – Still awake…really…really…really tired
10:00pm – went to bed
11:00pm - sleep
12:00am - sleep
1:00am – sleep
2:00am - sleep
3:00am - sleep
4:00am - sleep
5:00am -sleep
6:00am- sleep
7:00am - sleep
8:00am - sleep
9:00am – woke up, got ready for Friday church
10:00am – Church! Majd was the translator. New protocol from Raees Doug (he was my Arabic 201 teacher at BYU and now is the District President) – Church is only going to be 2 hours from now on
11:00am - Church
12:00pm – Went home, ate
1:00pm – still eating
2:00pm – went visiting neighbors – tawjihi of the first semester is over!!! Party in al Husn!
3:00pm – visiting Abu Nedal’s family
4:00pm – visiting relatives in Irbid
5:00pm – still in Irbid
6:00pm – We left for Zarqa
7:00pm – visiting relatives in Zarqa
8:00pm – Arin wanted me to watch Star Academy – Arabia. I fell asleep.
9:00pm – Still in Zarqa!
10:00pm – Went to Hibba’s house (daughter of Abu Nedal, Nedal’s sister)
11:00pm – First chance I got to go online!!!! Pierrick was online!!!! I felt so happy, I had a ton of really good emails to read!!! EMAIL ME!!!!
12:00am – Still in Zarqa
1:00am – we left for home
2:00am – arrived!!
3:00am - slept
4:00am - slept
5:00am - slept
6:00am - slept
7:00am - slept
8:00am - slept
9:00am – woke up, got ready for the branch outing to Pella
10:00am – got on the bus, sang and danced and played the drum most of the way!
11:00am – we got to Pella
12:00pm – walked around
1:00pm – had a picnic
2:00pm – played a really, really makeshift game of volleyball
3:00pm – danced, sang
4:00pm – still dancing, still singing, still playing whacko arab volleyball in the middle of a valley with ruins from before the time of Christ. What!?!?
5:00pm – left for home, I slept on the bus a little, but then they wanted me to sing for them. It was fun; definitely epuised my entire Arab-song directory…
6:00pm – Got home
7:00pm – some people came and visited us
8:00pm – bought my minutes
9:00pm – showed them pictures from home
10:00pm – called Nedal, spoke with him for about 15 minutes, but it was good!!
11:00pm – chilling w/ Abu Nedal, watching Al Jazeera
12:00pm – writing this.

I’m totally safe, and totally happy. Life here could not be better.

One really astute observation: It is SO NICE to be away from “mushakil hub” – love troubles. I had enough in the States and France to last me for a loooong time. This summer is going to be pretty…euh…interesting I guess. I don’t want an Arab boyfriend. I want to speak this language fluently, and come home to the people I love. We’ll see how it all works out…I have some ideas, but it would probably be best to keep them as beautiful daydreams. And oh are they beautiful!!!

Whoah.

2007-02-10T17:38:00.000+01:00

There are about a billion things that I wish I could write, but there simply isn't time.

France feels like home compared to here. When I think about how terrified I was to get on the airplane to France, it makes me laugh. You know, I could probably live in France. After a week, I felt comfortable enough with the language. Both Pierrick and Claire told me that they were super surprised at how fast my French accent came back. Huge, huge compliments.

But now I am here, in Jordan.

I am writing this from one of the couple missionary's house, President and Sister Dew. They are from Salt Lake City and have been here for a little less than a year. There is another missionary couple here - the Bradshaws - both of these couples focus primarily on humanitarian aid work and other such things.

Something I didn't count on - it's COLD. I would estimate it's about 40ish degrees outside. The thing is, in Al-Husn, there's a ton of wind, and nobody has heating inside their houses.

More later...tomorrow my school starts.

Ma nuit blanche avec Pierrick

2007-02-08T02:00:00.000+01:00

Voilà, maintenant on est en train de passer une nuit blanche chez ma chere famille d'accueil. Il n'y a que moi et 'mon petit père calin' Pierrick qui arrivons à tenir. Nous avons passé toute la soirée ensemble. Tout d'abord, nous avons essayé de trouver une paire de chaussures pour moi (mais il n'y avait qu'une paire qui me plaîsait et je cherchais qqchose de très spécifique - une paire rouge comme celle que j'avais achetée il y a quatre ans). Puis, nous avons chanté sous la pluie. Maintenant, nous sommes dans le bureau d'Etienne en parlant. Il corrige toutes mes erreurs de français, et m'embête de temps en temps. ("Non, je ne suis pas d'accord, c'est tout le temps que je t'embête!"). C'est le paradis.

Nous sommes allés au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. J'y suis allée au moins vingt fois quand j'habitais ici...je fais tout le temps la comparaison entre maintenant et le passé.

Il existe plusieurs Katrine. Celle du présent, la Katrine française d'il y a quatre ans, la Katrine follement amoureuse de Trevor, celle qui attend patiemment pour un certain missionaire, celle qui l'attend mais pas patiemment du tout, celle qui est gamine - petite, bête, innocente, celle délurée, dévergondée, savante.

Vivons-nous à l'épicurien?

They Remembered Me

2007-02-07T01:31:00.000+01:00

Yeah, so I just made an executive decision: I am going to attempt to cut myself off from my heart for the next 4 months - I don't mean it in a physical sense! That would be suicide, and I have no desire to be involved in anything like that. Just, I am so not going to Jordan to get an Arab boyfriend. At the moment I am absolutely sick of boys that I love that don't appreciate me enough. I am fragile and sensitive, and I'm sick of certain people not caring about my feelings, or not paying enough attention to me. For example, for the first time in a while I felt annoyed that Danny didn't write me this week. Just - annoying. I got a very short email from his dad that got sent to his family, but he didn't even put a single sentence in there for me. I mean, obviously, that means he's busy and I would way rather he be a busy missionary than not at all, but it's...very heavy. Love sucks. I would rather not love than love and be hurt, right now.

So I'm officially turning off that part of myself. You won't see it for the next 4 months. Point final.

I have 3 goals:

1. Become fluent in Arabic
2. Understand Arab culture/customs/history/politics
3. Deepen my testimony (esp. by reading the Old Testament)

Today was a really great day for me. I spent most of it talking with Claire. Seriously, she is a mentor. One of my great life friends, somebody I can really look up to. I really love her.

I helped her do her shopping, and then play with the kids, and finally to organize the photos. She went into the other room and found a stack of photos she had put aside to send to me. Finding time to sit down and write was really hard for her, but she had put aside an entire pile for me.

Looking through the photos and drawings done by the children, it just...it opened an emotion I didn't think I had. I suddenly found myself crying hard. And then, she gave me a long, long letter Pierrick had written me, and I was completely done for. They remembered me. All this time, they loved me.

I think that people need other people. I know that I do. What do you think?

I don't think that the automatic blog-timer is very correct, so I added a clock to the side so you can tell what time it is where I am.