Visiting families

So after six months, I have finally started visiting the families of my students. It is something that I have had trouble with, because I am used to America, where you wait to be invited. Here it is totally aadee (normal, fine) to ask someone to be invited to their house, and when you know the family to just show up. I finally took the initiative to do this, and it has been wonderful. Muhamed, one of my students has a wonderful supportive family, and they are really fun to visit. His next door neighbors (I’m confused on the exact relation, I believe it is his aunt) has a huge family and so whenever I go over there, there a billion children running around, which I love. This week I brought over my camera (we are making a picture book to help the students with communication, so I wanted pictures of Muhamed’s family) This picture is one that one of the older girls took of me surrounded by all the kids. Figured it was a good Peace Corps moment picture! My student is the one to the left of me in the picture, about to clap his hands (such a cutie!)

PDM

I just got back from a great workshop put on by Peace Corps. R, the teacher in the deaf classroom and I spent four days in a nice hotel in Amman (hot running water immediately, someone else cooking and cleaning the dishes, and power, it was great!). This is a PC worldwide program where volunteers and counterparts learn the steps in creating large projects. At the workshop R and I started the process of planning to build a playground for our center. I have never written grants before, or done a project like this, so it was neat to learn the whole process from visioning, to listing assets, to budgeting to monitoring and evaluating projects. It was an exhausting four days, especially since I had to do the whole thing in Arabic (a lot of the counterparts spoke perfect English since they were English teachers, so their volunteers got to do the work in English). It was difficult since I didn’t know words like “evaluate, delegate, asset, etc” in Arabic, but in the end it was very rewarding, and I think R learned a lot as well. We are starting the work on the playground already and I am excited to see what becomes of it. The goal is to finish before Ramadan (early September) which I think might be a little ambitious, but R thinks we can do it. The problem is that if we aren’t finished, no work will get done during Ramadan, and then it will be winter and too cold to work until next spring. One of the counterparts listed weather as a deficit, or obstacle to projects, and some of the other counterparts argued with this. But it is for sure an obstacle for us in Rajef!

The other exciting part of PDM (Project Design and Management) was finding a fantastic, cheap, Indian food restaurant near the hotel. The food was fantastic and made me miss Rangoli and Gary’s cooking! It is for sure on our list of places to return to in Amman!

This week is a short one, because we have a community meeting at our center on Wednesday (still not exactly sure what it is about, but it means there are no kids) and then on Thursday our center is taking a field trip down to Aqaba (on the Red Sea) for the entire day. Should be a fantastic and exhausting trip, I’m looking forward to it!

The Rock Bridge

A friend came down to my site for the weekend, so we could write a grant for our special education workshops. Since my site is so close to Wadi Rum, we decided to go hiking for one of the afternoons. In Wadi Rum there are three natural rock bridges, and on my first trip I had climbed the smallest of the three. She had already climbed the largest one, but we decided it would be a fun hike and headed up. The path wasn’t entirely marked, which made scrambling up the face of a mountain a little tricky. We would occasionally find a little pile of rocks marking the way, and small arrows carved into the rock face, which for the most part kept us on track. The hike was absolutely beautiful, and the temperature was perfect (further up the mountains, in my town it actually snowed, but we only had a little sprinkle in Wadi Rum) The Rock Bridge was amazing and we ate our lunch of peanut butter, nutella, and banana sandwiches next to it.

Getting back to the main entrance was the scariest ride of my life. The 4x4 driver kept looking in his rearview mirror and laughing as we clung to the “Oh no” handles as tight as we could and tried to keep our faces neutral. I’m surprised we made it out alive the way he drove that jeep over the sand!

The day after the hike, I managed to get sick again (it had been 36 days without being sick, which is my new record!) Hopefully next time I can make it to 40 days!

Biblical Weekend for Easter

It’s pretty amazing to live where parts of the Bible actually took place. In a period of two weeks, I managed to see Jabal Haroun (where Moses’ brother Aaron is buried), Lot’s Cave (check out Genesis 19:30-he gets drunk in this cave and sleeps with his daughters….good stuff! that's the second picture), Mt Nebo (where Moses died, check out Deuteronomy 34:1-12, God shows Moses the beauty of the land, and then Moses dies, the first picture) and I also saw the baptism site (the third picture). There is actual archaeological and historical evidence that this site is the actual baptismal site of Jesus. There are letters that explain the exact location, as well as a series of churches built on top of each other right next to the spot. The site is now located outside of the flow of the River Jordan because it has changed course. The River Jordan is what separates Israel from Jordan, and is only about 12 feet across. It was interesting to look across the river and see Israeli soldiers guarding their side.

For Easter service, I went to the sunrise service on Mt. Nebo, followed by an Easter picnic on the mountain. Getting there was interesting. There were about fifteen volunteers going, and our servees (little van) driver at first told us ten people could fit in his van. He then changed his mind and allowed us to have fifteen, which had us a little worried about where we were all going to fit. In the back of course! Unfortunately those of us in the back also had the deviled and colored Easter eggs, in an enclosed space with no air. I love deviled eggs, but the smell of them in such a small space for thirty minutes was not what I wanted at 5:30 in the morning.

Luckily we arrived safely. The outgoing Episcopalian bishop of Jerusalem gave a beautiful sermon and the entire service was in English. This was probably the most acutely that I have felt homesick the entire time I have been in Jordan. But it was wonderful to share Easter with my fellow volunteers on such a beautiful mountain.

Driver's Ed

During one of the many hours we spent in driver’s ed, there was a video we watched that explained why it was important to keep your eye’s on the road at all times. We thought it was the most ridiculous video ever and I remember laughing about it for days afterwards (this might just be a Michigan video, so if it is, I apologize!). The video is shot from the perspective of a driver. The camera pans down to the radio for a second, and when it looks back up, there is a camel standing in the road in front of the car. I thought this was ridiculous, until the other day.

The women from my center and I headed down to my friend’s site near the Dead Sea to work on a series of special ed workshops that we will be doing later this year. The road between my village and hers passes through “Wadi Araba” which is basically the desert between here and Israel. The road from my village down the mountain to the wadi is absolutely stunning. I’m glad I don’t get carsick, because the road is very very twisty, and our center bus driver loves to drive fast to scare me. I was talking to my coteacher and as we came around the corner I looked up to see not just one, but a family of camels meandering down the road. I guess you really should keep your eyes on the road at all times!

Literacy and Jabal Haroun

Marhaba!

I have had a busy week, with a lot of exciting things to share.

First off, thank you all so much for all of the books you have sent! I know I have told some of you this in private emails, but it is absolutely wonderful to see. When I first got to my center, we had some books in the bookcase, which the kids largely ignored. Now, with the combination of books you have sent, and a million books I have written, the bookcase is colorful and exciting. I now have the problem of the kids fighting over the books because they are so excited about them. We have had many conversations about how you carry a book, how you look at a book, and how you don't throw books or hit other students with them. Several of the students will choose to look at books instead of play with the toys during their free time. This makes me so unbelievably happy! So thank you so much for all of the books! (I would love more as well if you still want to send them, it is nice to be able to switch out the books so there is always something new in the bookcase for them to read....just remember that I am translating all of these books into Arabic, so books like "A Fat Cat Sat on a Mat" is great in English for phonetics, but when you translate it into arabic, it doesn't make much sense....)

The translation process: First I take the books over to my tutor's house, and we go through them and translate them, and I write out the Arabic. Then I go to the computer lab at my center and type them out in Arabic (I'm getting faster at hunt and peck on an Arabic keyboard!). Then my coteachers all fight over how each sentence should sound (since I am writing these in Amia, the colloquial language, and all written material is usually Fus-ha, the standard, there isn't a set system for writing the way I am, thus the endless debates). After they finally decide how it should go, we print the words. I then cut these out and paste them into the books. Then we scan the books, so if my kids destroy them, we will have another copy on the computer that we can print another time. It takes a long time for each book, but it is totally worth it to see my kids excited about reading!!!

Ok....onto Jabal Haroun. I don't know if I have mentioned this, but from my house I can see Jabal Haroun, which is where Moses' brother Aaron is buried. From my house you can see a huge mountain, with a small mosque on the top of it. We have been saying since we got here that we needed to climb it! So Saturday, the volunteer in my town, another volunteer and I decided we should go ahead and do it before it gets too hot. It was an amazing 7 hour hike, starting in Petra. The town where the other volunteer teaches is all of the people who used to live in caves in Petra. In the 80s, the government relocated them in order for the tourists to be able to see Petra, without stumbling over people's houses. But on the outskirts where we were walking, there are people who still live in caves. Now, I had heard this, but to see it was completely different and quite humbling. I complain about my house being cold in the winter, but these kids live in actual caves.

I have a lot of picture from our hike, including a bright blue lizard, and me standing on top of the mosque (there were stairs), and several pictures of the four dogs that followed us for our whole hike. I hope to post them sometime this week or next, I'll email when I finally get them up!

Hope spring weather is finally starting for everyone! Miss you all!
Jessica