The First Week

Marhaba!

I can’t believe that it has been two weeks since I left the US… Home seems so far away!! My days here are so different than back in the States. I still don’t yet have a routine- plans and travels keep getting in the way!

As I already posted about my first 24 hours, I will just follow up that I have not again seen Jon Stewart. He was filming again this past Saturday, but Julie and I were traveling in Jerusalem and the West Bank instead. Last Thursday through Sunday was Eid al-Fitr, the holiday at the end of Ramadan- and we visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron to take advantage of the long weekend! Now that Ramadan is over, I hope to form some kind of a routine here in Jordan. I will also be updating about our trip later this week, once I get all my thoughts together.

The first thing I would like to talk about is my short-lived experience with Ramadan. I greatly respect the month of Ramadan; Christianity also holds the virtues of fasting and sacrifice very close to its core philosophy, so it is amazing to be in Jordan and experiencing the Ramadan atmosphere to its fullest. I think if I were in Jordan for the whole summer, I would try to also fast for Ramadan on the premise that it is such a large part of the culture here.

That said, Ramadan is pretty annoying as a non-Muslim. Restaurants and cafes close down completely during the day. It is also considered extremely rude to eat or drink outside/anywhere public, and since Julie and I will leave the house and not return until late at night, we basically end up fasting all day anyway. There have been a few times that we’ve bought a candy bar and snuck into an alley corner to eat it because we were to hungry and tired!! When I first arrived in Jordan, I was trying to adjust to the heat and dry air & keep myself from getting dehydrated… that was made impossible because I couldn’t even drink water outside of our house!

Although it was a pain to navigate, I’m glad I arrived during the last week of Ramadan. I was able to join Muslim families for their Iftar dinners, or the name for the meal in which those celebrating Ramadan can break fast. All of Jordan knows when to eat because the mosques will play a song/prayer called the adham once the sun sets. Julie and I spent almost all our dinners at Iftar‘s with the Orphan Welfare Association, an organization for children in Jordan’s largest Palestinian Refugee camp Baqa’a.

Volunteering with the Orphan Welfare Association in the Baqa’a Palestinian refugee camp has been the highlight of my time here in Jordan. At first I was nervous to go to Baqa’a; Julie volunteers there throughout the year, and has kept us updated about her time there through our conversations and her blog. Since I only study FusHa, or formal Arabic, at school, I was nervous about communicating with the other local volunteers and children. …Which I quickly learned was just incredibly silly!

All the kids were so excited to meet the new foreign volunteer, and couldn’t care less that I spoke in broken Arabic and had an even worse Jordanian dialect. They all wanted to hold my hand and lead me around, talk to me in their own broken English that they had learned in school and at the OWA, and play with my blonde hair. The little kids laughed when I didn’t understand what they said, and were more than happy to mime what they meant with exaggerated motions. What was even better was that the older kids (around preteen age) were learning FusHa in school and had a great grip on English, so they could practice it while talking to me in a language I could understand! 🙂

The kids also love taking pictures with me!!

The local volunteers were also extremely welcoming to me… And it was so inspiring to see how well they interacted with the kids! Most of the volunteers I’ve met live in Baqa’a, and have themselves gone through and graduated from the OWA program.

I’ve also met a bunch of the other students studying here in Jordan through the OWA! Julie and I planned an Iftar dinner for all the kids in the program (about 100 munchkins) with students at the Qasid Institute for intensive Arabic study. About 30 students came to the OWA, and we played games with the kids before Iftar! It was so much fun… And I think all the kids, volunteers, and Qasid students really had a great time!!!

All of us playing Musical Chairs… it was a big hit!

As for the development of my Arabic, I would say its going well, but i have mixed feelings about it. As much as I love spending time at the OWA, it has caused me to run into a fairly unique problem: As I learn the Jordanian dialect, since most the people I interact with are Palestinian (and male), I’ve started picking up this strange, hard accent!!

For example, the word for “how much (in terms of cost)” is “Qadaish?” in the local dialect. Since I learned it in Baqa’a, I’ve been pronouncing it with a hard G instead of a Q. As it turns out, women pronounce Q softly instead, so it turns into an “Ah” sound.
…of course, no one tell me this. So when I ask my taxi driver “Gadaish?”, I get a long stare and a look of Why is this tiny, foreign blonde girl talking like a Palestinian man??

…this lead to an interesting lesson later. As my sister says, I’m becoming Baqa’awea (from Baqa’a).

As or the rest of my time, while I wasn’t in Baqa’a I’ve been out and about in the different parts of Amman! So far I’ve explored the market of WasT al-Balad (center of the city), the Roman Ampitheatre, the Roman Citadel, the Ex-Patriot area of Webdai, and the popular but very foreign influenced Rainbow Street.

Only 2.5 more weeks in Jordan!!!

Y3tikum al-3alfiyya!