Summer Round-up: New Volunteers

The newest group to Jordan has arrived (J11s) and they swear-in in mid September (poor guys have training during Ramadan!). We are getting five new volunteers down by me, and it’s great because our bus actually passes through the towns of two of them on our way to Ma’an. I’m excited to get new volunteers down here, because we have lost so many this year (3 ET’ed, and one COS’ed, ET=Early Terminate/quit, COS=Close of service/finished the twenty-seven months) Our new volunteers sound great and I’m excited for them to finish training and move on down here!

Summer Round-up: Trip home

In mid-July I returned to the states for a whirlwind trip. The main reason for the trip was to go to Nate and MMG (sorry, going to be MMG forever!) wedding, which was absolutely wonderful, and quite convenient seeing as all of our friends were in town for the same occasion. In addition to attending a wedding, Cuttino and I also had to plan our own wedding (MLK Weekend 2009) since we won’t be home until two and half months before it. We managed to register, book the church, book the reception site (which will do the food, drinks, decorations, and cake) and buy my dress all in the span of two weeks. Hopefully the rest of the details will be easier to do from abroad. I don’t think I ever realized what a racket the wedding industry is! In addition to seeing Cuttino, my family, and friends, the highlight to the trip was picking up the newest Harry Potter book, which came out while we were at home. It was the perfect thing to keep me from being too sad leaving everyone when the time came (Cuttino kept it hidden in his trunk so I couldn’t read it while I was home)

Summer Round-up: Girl's camp

So in Jordan, if you are ever feeling sorry for yourself, or feel like you have low self esteem, all you need to do is head on over to the girl’s school. I had volunteered to help at the girl’s summer camp (grades 4-12) earlier in the year and was excited to get to start in early July.

Every girl ran to greet me when I arrived; they kissed me (the traditional greeting) tried to hold my hand and played with my hair at every chance they got. They all fought to be in my English classes every day (even though as soon as we started they asked to go and play handball instead). We did some basic English lessons, and played some team-building games, the most memorable being radioactive swamp with the older girls. Most of us in the states have grown up playing team building games and “get” the concept without it having to be explained. That is definitely not the same here. And the cheating was rampant! It took the girls’ two days to figure out how to get across the “swamp” (we ran out of time on the first day) but they were so happy and proud of themselves when they did.

My other favorite activity was team Scattegories with the older girls. I have never heard so much high-pitched screeching every time their team got a point. It was a lot of fun.

I hope to be able to work over at the girls’ school more often this year, because the girls are a lot of fun and seem to like learning English.

Summer Round-up: 5th of July Party

Got to spend the 5^th of July (worked out better with the weekend) at the American Embassy, feeling the most American I have felt since being in Jordan. It was everything a 5^th of July party should be, including the Apple Pie. The only thing missing was the fireworks (apparently they caused some damage last year when they landed and so they were nixed) but we get plenty of those in the village, so they weren’t missed.

The next day was the yearly softball game between Peace Corps and JICA (the Japanese volunteers, don’t really know what JICA stands for!) They were trying to avenge their loss from the previous year, but quickly fell behind 10 runs in the first inning. The rest of the game was pretty close, but Peace Corps prevailed and remained the Jordan softball champions.

Summer Round-up: 5th of July Party

Got to spend the 5^th of July (worked out better with the weekend) at the American Embassy, feeling the most American I have felt since being in Jordan. It was everything a 5^th of July party should be, including the Apple Pie. The only thing missing was the fireworks (apparently they caused some damage last year when they landed and so they were nixed) but we get plenty of those in the village, so they weren’t missed.

The next day was the yearly softball game between Peace Corps and JICA (the Japanese volunteers, don’t really know what JICA stands for!) They were trying to avenge their loss from the previous year, but quickly fell behind 10 runs in the first inning. The rest of the game was pretty close, but Peace Corps prevailed and remained the Jordan softball champions.

Summer Round-up: Eleanore's Project

Since Operation Smile (the Iraqi mission) was cancelled for June, I volunteered to be a Regional coordinator for Eleanore’s Project, which is an amazing program which takes refurbished custom fit wheelchairs from children who have outgrown them in the states and donates them to children in Jordan. In addition to the chairs, they send a team of experts to custom fit every chair to the exact specifications of each child. It’s an absolutely amazing site to see.

We started out in Amman, with a very slow start, waiting for the chairs to arrive from Aqaba. Every day we were told “They will be here tomorrow, insha’alla” (God willing). Unfortunately, that turned into almost a week of waiting for the chairs. When they finally arrived, they were in a HUGE shipping container which had to be unloaded and sorted by region of the country. My favorite moment of unloading came when it was time to pull down one of the power chairs. Power chairs are incredibly heavy, and this was unloading from a shipping container on an 18-wheeler onto a pick up truck, and then onto the ground. The guys in the truck said they needed five or six people to get up and help lift it down, and noone was moving, so I decided I could help. Up until that point the men had been carrying all the heavy things and only giving us things like wheels to carry. But since noone else was moving, I figured someone needed to. So I jumped up on the pickup truck and started helping lift the chair down. The man next to me was trying to pick it up by the arm, which was detachable. I could hear someone yelling from the ground “Not from the arms” but of course this was in English and the man didn’t understand. All I had to gesture with was my head, so I started whacking his hand with my head and saying “Mish hatha eid” (not this hand).

Our jobs as volunteers was mostly translating for the team (from America and Canada) and our knowledge of our particular areas and expert abilities in finding bizarre items when necessary (we need some towels and tarps….we need some heavy black thread…etc) We also spent time holding babies and talking to families. Most of the children we met had hardly left their houses in their lives and spent the majority of their time lying on a farsha (a thin foam mat).

It was unbelievable to watch the wheelchair fitting. In Wadi, a team of two primary (with four or five helping occasionally) technicians spent seven hours completely rebuilding a chair for a little boy with the worst scoliosis I have ever seen. It took five minutes trying to figure out where exactly his spine went. He had had a wheelchair before, but it was one of the one-size-fits-all, take grandma to the mall type chair, which didn’t fit him and actually caused more damage. When they were done, Mohaned was able to sit up and look around in his chair. It brought tears to my eyes to be able to see him in that finished chair!