Walking to the Post Office

Me in front of Petra's Treasury.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

-Henry David Thoreau

I always finish an odyssey down to the Post Office with a good story. While most of my mail can be sent to the Fulbright House directly, where I have a personal mailbox, the government refuses to let a package through without a customs check. All international parcels get funneled into the main post office in the busy center of downtown Amman, where they sit collecting fines and fees until its recipient goes through the humorously long, bureaucratic process of retrieving it.

When I receive a formal e-mail from the Fulbright administration that I have, in fact, received a package, I fix my determined gaze on my planner to find the best time I should attempt to retrieve the parcel. Regular office hours technically exist, but I’ve had a handful of experiences where I’d arrive only to find the office closed for a holiday, or for maintenance, or for no reason at all. To avoid these failed attempts as much as possible, I go early in the day, leaving my house at seven in the morning to take the twenty minute walk of winding stairs down the steep slopes of my neighborhood, Jebel Amman, to downtown.

Everyone knows I’m no morning person, but even if I need to mentally prepare myself for an early rise, I quietly enjoy walking in the first morning light and experiencing the peaceful side of Amman waking up from a cool night. The crisp air warms with every inch higher the sun rises. I admire the long, looming shadows cast by the quiet homes. They provide a stark contrast from the brilliant orange glow of the morning sun against the white sandstone facades. I see men silently take their morning cup of coffee in the solitude of their balcony and women opening their windows to welcome a new day. It’s beautiful.

Conveniently, perhaps the most convenient part of such a trip, the stairs leading downtown arrive directly in front of the post office, whose humble entrance gives you no indication of the sprawling mess of bureaucracy within. I cross the street, empty of speeding cars and meandering people at this hour. Entering the post office and walking up the stairs, a cacophony of noise greets me, increasing in volume with every step. A series of strange typewriter-like clicks, grumbling employees’ voices, quick footsteps, and telephone rings fills my ears as I enter the room and approach the first clerk.

“Number, habibti?” the bored, greying man asks me for the package number.

“One hundred and sixty-three,” I say in Arabic.

“One, six, three?” he checks with me in English. I nod and smile. He takes out a half-meter-long stack of receipts and starts leafing through them. Apparently, they have no particular order, because he’s looking at every paper. After a minute of this, I timidly offer, “And my name is Sarah McKnight.”

“Sarah what?”

“McKnight.”

“Might? What?”

“McKnight, like son of a knight,” I explain in Arabic.

He only raises a confused eyebrow, laughs, and continues his perusal. About three minutes later, he finds my paper. “Oh, McKnight,” he realizes with a grin, reading my information. “Interesting name. You’re not Arab?” he jokes, “Go to the next room, habibti.”

I take the receipt with a polite nod and follow his gesture pointing in the direction of a small room in the far corner, where two men sit smoking and writing things in ledgers. The first take my phone number and shouts at a man in the next room over. The second man is the customs officer. I have to open the package in front of him and watch as he inspects everything to see if there’s anything taxable.

My first experience with this gentlemen was quite shocking. My mother, not knowing that anyone but me would be rifling through the box, had last-minute thrown in a pair of forgotten underwear that I’d left behind during my last visit to Kentucky. So, upon opening the box and handing it over to the inspector, I realized what was sitting on top of everything else and grimaced in anticipation for the awkward situation I was about to have. Jordan, a country with a conservative culture, does not leave much room for men and women to interact in the social sphere, and therefore far less room for interaction with unmentionables.

The officer, sipping a dainty cup of Turkish coffee and smoking a cigarette, used his cigarette-laden hand to pick up the underwear. I watched the muscles in his face tighten and heard him stifle choking sounds. He immediately dropped the article and I said, “From my Mom,” as if that would make the situation better. He ignored me and wrote on my receipt. I suppose the customs inspection immediately stopped there. All the better for me, since it garuanteed me no customs fee.

This time, however, my interaction with the officer was pleseantly devoid of any awkward moments. My mother cleverly hid my birthday present between stacks of chocolate bars, and the stolid inspector found nothing to tax.

After he nods at me to go through the rest of the process, I take my receipt and go to one room for a stamp and signature, another room for a stamp and signature, and yet another room for another stamp and signature. The signers are other officers in uniform who usually have other officers over for coffee and discussion.

After this formal series of officiants, I finally take the receipt to the cashier. Usually, I only pay a dinar for the postal services. This time, however, the cashier tells me, “Four dinars and thirty kirsh.”

“What? Why?” I ask.

“You’re three weeks late on getting your package. You get fines,” the cashier explains.

“But it was sent three weeks ago,” I say, “That’s when it was sent.” The cashier shakes his head and shrugs. I realize I have to either spend an hour to negotiate out of three dinars, or I can pay and leave. I sigh and pay the fine, kicking myself for supporting a faulty system. But my frustration quickly dissipates as I pick up the package and gaze in awe at all the goodies to behold.

I jump giddily down the entrance steps and back out into the brilliant sunshine. Amman has woken up and is now humming with energy. Cars have filled the streets, vendors have opened their shops, and kids are bouncing on their way to school.

With a deep breath of fresh air, I begin to make my way up the stacks upon stacks of steps, back up to Jebel Amman. The path that felt like a convenient jaunt now seems like a sweaty, impossible death march. Yet I can’t justify getting a taxi when my home is so close and I could always use the exercise. I find one of my favorite passageways to scale the last stretch of height up to the top of the hill. Its shady staircase with crumbling steps gives me a cool place to take my time.

Finally, I take the last step and heave myself onto the quiet side street. I take a few breaths and then continue my walk, but then I studdenly hear a psssssst and turn around in shock. Usually, predatory young men make this sound to taunt young women, but this time, I see that it’s a smiling, middle-aged woman coming towards me. I take a deep breath of relief and she says, “What a beautiful thing to come out of those stairs!”

My bashfulness and lack on fluency only allow to manage a, “Thank you.”

“You must be tired after that walk,” she observes, “Good, then welcome, come to my house and we’ll drink tea.”

I’ve never met this kind woman before, but I instinctually trust her already. “Oh, thank you so much,” I repeat, then say, “Unfortunately, I’m so busy.”

“Naturally,” she smiles and nods.

“But next time,” I assure her.

“God willing,” she says.

“God willing,” I nod. We share a warm-hearted smile with her. “Go with peace,” I give her the formal, Arabic farewell.

“With peace,” she turns away, still smiling, and starts her way down the same stairs. I smile as I realize that I’ve never seen anyone else use that staircase.

Moments like these make me love Amman.

Love from Egypt

"Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."

- Mark Twain

Here's a photo of me at the Cave Churches, posing with a bunch of adorable kids.

What a crazy couple of weeks! Right after I finished my final stretch of Arabic courses, I took my Mom and sister Norah on a whirlwind tour of Jordan. We floated in the Dead Sea, wound our way around the hazardous mountain roads, strolled through the gorges of Petra, sang with Bedouins in Wadi Rum, and finally relaxed on the shores of the Red Sea near Aqaba.

Of course, a week of tourism wasn’t enough. As soon as Mom and Norah flew off for home, I was plotting my next adventure. My college roommate Asmaah was visiting her family in Egypt and had invited me to tour the country with them. The offer was tempting, a rare opportunity to see a particularly challenging country with people who knew and took pride in its culture.

So, four days later, I had a luxuriously laid-back day of flying from Amman to Luxor, where I would meet up with Asmaah and her parents. I stepped out of Luxor’s small airport and into the sunny afternoon, complete with warm breezes and Asmaah squinting through the sunset’s intensely orange light to spot me. After heartfelt, hug-filled greetings, we took a trundling van ride over the bumpy streets of Luxor to the grand Nefertiti Hotel. I watched about 20 minutes of reality TV before I crashed, and I didn’t regain consciousness again until the groggy hotel clerk rang me at 4 in the morning to inform me that my hot air balloon was waiting.

I rushed to get ready and ran down the stairs to hop into another van with Asmaah and her Mom, from whence we took a sunrise felucca ride across the Nile to our balloon. We watched in amazement as we approached the take-off field, where a handful of parachute-sized balloons billowed majestically in the early morning breeze as a crew of men ran around and commandeered the machines that blew flames of burning gas into their mouths.

Our guide shouted to get our attention. “Remember,” he yelled, “When we land, you need to crouch low in the basket. Usually, we have a nice, soft, what we call an ‘Egyptian landing.’ But sometimes, we have an ‘American landing,’ where the basket bounces a few times across the ground before it stops. And then sometimes we have an ‘English landing,” where the basket tips over to its side and everyone falls out. So, just in case the wind blows hard and gives us an English landing, stay low in the basket, yeah?”

We all laughed and followed him to the basket that was waiting for us. Once we had all filed in, the guide had us up in the air and soaring over Luxor in a swift, effortless minute. In that minute, I could think of nothing but the view, the powerful expanse of desert divided by the winding Nile River that cradled lush, green fields and ran calmly into the infinity of the horizon. We hung over the basket’s side as we drifted over people’s homes. Families looked up and waved to us. Despite their kind gestures, I couldn’t help but feel guilty as I waved back, that I was getting an unfair view into their lives. The sounds of farm animals echoed up to us as we watched the creatures roam along roofs or courtyards.

“Alright, everyone,” our guide called out, “Get into landing positions!” Before I knew it, we were quickly approaching the ground, gliding over a farmer’s field. “Looks like we might have an English landing.” Some of us laughed nervously as we hastily crouched down and braced ourselves for landing. With the first bam, I knew we would have an American landing, but after some bouncing and skidding we landed right by a roadside. The farmers, plowing their field, only glanced at us once or twice. They must be used to balloons landing in their fields?

After our flight, we toured Luxor and Aswan in record fashion, touring a Pharaoh’s tomb or temple after another. I ran around the temple, gazing at the rows upon rows of hieroglyphs like a 6-year-old in a candy shop, trying to memorize sounds for as many symbols as I could.

When we had to pay an entrance fee, Asmaah’s mother had a fun time trying to get me in for the Egyptian price. Tourist spots usually list three different prices: the unnecessarily high foreigner’s fee, the somewhat reasonable international student price, and the incredibly low Egyptian price. “She’s Egyptian?” the ticketer would ask, gawking at my incriminating, blonde hair. “Of course!” Asmaah’s mother would reply. Naturally, some wouldn’t buy it. Upon further inspection, they would demand that I at least pay the international student fee, but not after Asmaah’s mother had given them an earful about the unfair treatment of foreign-born Arabs (the story we adopted was that I was half Arab). It was great.

Though we were busy, we always found some time to relax, whether on a quiet boat ride on the Nile or a pleasant stroll through banana orchards. I found time to savor the deliciously fresh fruits that gave me an explosion of flavor with each bite.

After our fun but tiring speed tour through the South, we had a restful day-long train ride up to Cairo, where the city’s overwhelming craziness smacked me in the face the moment the train doors opened. Cars speeding by, people yelling at each other, music blaring out of store fronts, children racing through the crowds, all mixing into a cacophony of noise I’ve never experienced before. Sitting numb in the back of an ancient taxi that zigzagged its way through traffic, I found a small part of myself missing the serene atmosphere in Amman.

If Cairo’s insanity lost me, the city’s food brought me right back. I loved it all: the savory, grilled lamb cutlets; the freshly fried falafel, the just-caught and seared fish; the ripe fruits and vegetables.

And, of course, we toured the Pyramids. In a horse-drawn carriage, we gazed at them in respectful appreciation. Occasionally, our guide would stop us for photos, telling us to pose in different angles: “Okay, now crouch down… okay, now pretend you’re putting your finger on the top of the Pyramid… okay, not pretend you’re putting sunglasses on the Sphinx…”

In my last day in Cairo, my mother’s friend Mumtaz toured me around a Coptic Christian area known as Garbage City, thus named because the residents have made an occupation out of sorting through truckloads of the city’s trash for recyclables. It was the first area of Cairo where I saw that most of the women did not cover their head. Parts of the neighborhood smelled of decaying organic waste. I covered my nose, and Mumtaz explained, “Yes, before the Swine Flu scare, pigs used to roam the streets and eat all the extra waste. But the Swine Flu hit and the government killed all the pigs, so now the people have difficulty with getting rid of all the organic materials.”

As we continued walking around, I saw that the neighborhood’s residents lived a hard life. Naturally, sorting through garbage makes a small income. “They live a hard life,” Mumtaz continued, “But they are hard-working, resourceful, and tough.” Every person I made eye contact with smiled, and a stream of children continued to run up to me, shake my hand, and practice their English.

Eventually, we walked through a gate that separated the Cave Churches from Garbage City, and the walls of buildings turned into gardens along a cliffside. True to its name, the Cave Churches is an area that houses a series of Coptic churches in the caves that line the cliff. According to Coptic tradition, a place becomes a church as long as an altar is within the space. Mumtaz showed me every one, each complete with a bedazzlingly ornate altar. It was Sunday, so in one church, over three hundred babies were being baptized at once.

We stepped into another just as the most massive mass I’ve ever seen was proceeding into sharing the Holy Sacrament of the Host. I was trying to imagine how many thousands of Copts were in this one church, lining up for communion. You can only receive communion if you’ve been baptized in the Coptic Church, so we eventually left. At the entrance of this cave, a tattoo stall advertised cheap tattoo crosses. Many of the mothers who had just baptized their babies were waiting in line to get their child’s wrist tattooed. As I saw a child shrieking in pain, I squirmed at the idea of causing a helpless child so much pain, and I had to remind myself that parents cause their children pain in many different cultures, including mine (with male circumcision, ear piercing, etc.).

At the end of the cave tour, Mumtaz put me in a taxi heading for the airport, and I got on the plane feeling dizzy. I had just traveled most of the length of Egypt in less than six days.

Long-needed Update

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

Here is a picture of a rainbow that I encountered over the Azraq Wetland Reserve. More on that later.

Wow. I haven’t posted in so long. Sorry about that. Things have been a bit crazy. After a pleasant series of visitors and an unpleasant series of bizarre illnesses, life is finally settling down into a routine and giving me some sense of normalcy.

Well, not quite yet. Later this week, I’m flying to Cairo for an impromptu tour around Egypt. My camera has run out of battery power and I lost my charger in a rental car, so hopefully I can borrow pictures from my friends. Update to follow!

I have finally finished my Arabic classes, and now I prepare for my research period. Two weeks ago, I carefully wandered my way around the University of Jordan campus for the first time, until I found my professor’s office. Over coffee and dates, we introduced each other in a cordial and professional manner.

Despite the formality, I immediately sensed the genuine kindness in his smile and words. I would occasionally address my research project, to which he patiently responded, “You have plenty of time to develop your project.”

Fighting my urge to jump in immediately, I know that if I’m going to do seismology, I have to really understand it. So, I’m starting off my research period by taking two classes, Seismology and Environmental Geophysics. Both in Arabic. Every morning, I take a creaky minibus to the University and sit in on my professor’s 90-minute lecture that tests my comprehension in Arabic, physics, and geology. I’m learning how to say words in Arabic that I never thought I would: nodes, electrical current, salt domes, perpendicular. My brain has never felt so numb after a class.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to define the boundaries of my project. I’m officially here, on paper, to determine if it’s possible to develop more accurate earthquake statistics for the region. From experience, I know I need to stay focused on the basic question. But now I’m realizing that I can use even more methods than I originally anticipated. I can study the underground structure of the fault that runs through Jordan using electrical sounding. I can use geographic information systems to plot the fault’s structure and location of earthquakes. Everything is so open-ended that I need to keep thinking and reading.

So that is my update for now! Upcoming entries include my relay half-marathon race from the Dead to the Red Sea, my Arabic-singing choir that I’ve joined, and how I’ve been learning how to recite the Quran.

I’ll write soon.

Hidden Passageways

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is my friend Mike, getting encouraged by a downtown salesman to show off how to properly wear a traditional Jordanian kufiah in the winter time.

Throughout Amman, I keep finding pathways. Shortcuts. Openings between buildings that can barely fit a human body. Stairs leading to somewhere, or sometimes leading to nowhere. No one else but me takes them.

Of course, I know I’m not the only person who knows these paths exist. I see hints and traces of previous travelers. I find empty potato chip bags and crushed soda cans, I glimpse a wiped-clean wall that still holds traces of vulgar or overly political graffiti, and I even notice that ancient doors with dusted-over locks line the shadowy passage ways.

What do those doors lead to? Why has no one opened them for so long? Why do these pathways feel so empty and unknown? The mystery of it entices me to continue walking along their silent trails.

I prefer taking them over the main roadways. Stepping down the quiet alleyways, hearing my own steps perfectly echoed along the cracked walls as if I’m wandering through a cathedral, I feel like I know the intimate details of Amman. I feel like I’m getting to know the raw, bare, loving, familial, prayerful soul that makes the city so characteristically special.

My love for walking along these pathways reminds of my love and yearning for making a unique difference in the world around me. Call it the American tendency for rugged individualism, but this urge to improve people’s lives using my interests and skills is the main motivation for why I’m here in this city. I keep thinking and wondering how I can possibly create a beneficial change with a combined love for geology and Arabic.

Well, here I am, studying Arabic and getting ready to embark on a nine-month long research initiative to better understand the seismic history of the region. Well, I suppose, if I want to make a truly unique, positive impression, I can’t expect the path to be entirely clear. I need to discover it, realize that it’s a possibility, and take the risk of going down it.

Activism in Amman

Merry Christmas!

Here's a photo of me at the Amman Museum of Arts in Jebel Weibdeh, posing in front of its awesome view with a statue from its gardens.

I haven’t posted for a long while! There’s been so much that’s happened in the past few weeks, and I’ve been so busy I’ve had no time to post! But now, typical of me, a bizarre short-term illness (fever, headache, and muscle aches – something termed "kreeb" in Arabic) has slowed me down so that, confined to rest, I now have the time to sit down and fully complete a post.

My mother keeps laughing at me as I tell her about all the posts I start and never finish, proof of both my creativity and my lack of consistent self-motivation. Here is one that I have started and will finish today:

Jordan is a hub for activism. Individuals, grassroots organizations, and international NGOs congregate in this country, filling it up with as much hope as there exists need. The work of these activists inspires me to learn more, to hope more, and to act.

I wonder at the phenomenon of how a culture for activism developed here, and how it happened so fast. In a candid chat over tea at one of my favorite cafés, a visiting friend from Beirut told me of how, when she lived in Amman as a child, few such organizations existed in the city besides religiously affiliated charities. As a young activist, she proudly grew up watching Amman bud into a hotbed of grassroots-based action. She laments moving to Beirut in the wake of Amman’s activism wave, but she’s proud of all the brave individuals who have built strong organizations for change and proudly stand up for human, civil, and environmental rights.

I don’t blame her. I find myself every day bumping into new forms of activism. One day last week, I found my curiosity getting the best of me as I walked by an open door headed with a modest yet prominent sign that declared, “Justice Center for Legal Aid.” Their symbol reminded me of the Human Rights Campaign symbol, and I wondered whether such an organization would be able exist in Jordan. So I carefully poked my head into the front door, and was greeted by three Jordanian women who excitedly ushered me in and sat me down before asking about why I was even there. When I explained that I was simply interested in learning more about the organization, the women happily pressed a cup of tea in to my hands as they gathered around me to explain their mission.

The Justice Center for Legal Aid (JCLA) works towards giving pro bono legal representation to Jordan’s underprivileged groups, including women, refugees, and foreign domestic workers. We had a lovely conversation. Every sentence I uttered in Arabic elicited giggles and exclamations like, “Oh, how cute.” More women gathered around and added into the conversation, until the initial teatime gathering soon resembled something like a celebratory party. I nodded and smiled as they prided themselves for their impressively high success rate of winning over 80 percent of their cases. Thanks to God, they said, funding for their work continues to grow and they are expanding their services to other cities in Jordan.

However, they constantly have difficulty in translating their documents into English for the international donors to read. Their proposals take weeks to edit, their reports are a laborious process, and they struggle in getting personal narratives from their lawyers. One woman stressed the point that lawyers usually have a dry writing style anyway, so imagine trying to get lawyers to write in a second language! They produce bland and choppy statements. Would I like to help? An hour and a half later, I left the Justice Center having eight new friends and my first volunteering opportunity. I’ve signed on to be a translator, editor, and ghostwriter for the center.

Beyond organizations, some people are taking on their own initiatives to make a difference in the country. Julia, an acquaintance of mine, has taken on the brave initiative of helping as many Palestinian refugees as possible from the Gaza Camp. She works through no organization. Yet, through donations that she gets through her blog, she strives to give as much as she can, from toys to heating appliances for the cold winter nights to life-changing operations. One by one, she encounters a problem and finds the means to solve it. Her motivation is so inspiring.

Activism can reach various channels for spreading awareness and inciting action, such as films and music. Earlier this month, I excitedly attended several documentaries during Amman’s Karama Human Rights Film Festival. The films covered a broad range of topics, from the United States’ army bases throughout the world to drug and human trafficking through Germany to Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009. I found each film moving or thought provoking, and I loved that such large groups of people, both Jordanian and foreign, attended each event.

At times, the shear depth of human rights infringements depresses me. How can we even begin to address all the sadness, need, and injustice in the world? But then, I remember Mother Theresa’s saying, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

The devoted work from the activists that I see in Jordan embodies Mother Theresa’s mission. All around me, I see so many people moved to imagine a better world and to act towards improving the lives of those around them. The need is great, but the hope is greater. Hope is a powerful motivator. It lingers within the hearts and minds of people the way the call to prayer echoes throughout Amman’s hills, encouraging them to try harder, to work stronger, and to love more deeply.

My Rainbow

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. - Maya Angelou

Here's a herd of bicyclists that passed by my taxi one day to a lecture. I don't see too many of them around the traffic-crazed streets of Amman!

Things are changing. The night mist chills my house into a deep, damp cold until the sun rises and lifts the icy haze away, leaving only the inside of our house chilly. The rains slowly roll over Amman, signaling the beginning of winter. My roommates and I are debating how we should heat our apartment for the winter, so while we stall, we also freeze at night and early in the morning when I roll out of bed, getting ready for school. Buildings here are built of stone and concrete, so summer creates an inferno indoors while winter turns your home into an icebox. It always feels better outside than it does inside, so I take advantage of that frustrating phenomenon by going on walks around town.

The chill temperatures have chased the crowds away from Rainbow Street, the main stretch of road where my neighborhood’s social scene thrives. Now, the weekend nights feel more subdued, giving you a calm environment for a nice evening walk.

I went out last night with my friend from Jordan to walk around Rainbow. We enjoyed the slight breeze and the sights. The families slowly processing down the sidewalks, the young men congregating in the squares, the ice cream man making an upbeat percussion instrument out of his ice cream maker as he churns furiously.

Rainbow Street has become my street. I know it so well. At the beginning of the street, cars whir around al-Door al-Owel, the First Circle, from the traffic-clogged road that comes from the Second Circle. All this traffic slowly winds and honks its way into the narrow single-lane, cobblestone pavement that is Rainbow Street.

The traffic is an obvious indicator of the street’s popularity in the city. Cafés and boutique shops line both sides, indicating material wealth and prosperity, but the smaller joints highlighting local artwork and posters for alternative concerts show that this tiny thoroughfare shares a connection to the hip, underground art world that quietly thrives in Amman.

My favorite café is Turtle Green, which is quick walk to my place. Besides having addictive lemonade with mint, their calming atmosphere makes it a perfect place to relax after a stressful day. Farther down the street, I go to Café de Artistes for a quiet evening where I can have a candid conversation with someone and check out the latest happenings and concerts in the area. By the Café, Souk Jaraa opens seasonally on sunny Fridays and Saturdays as an arts-and-crafts market. I enjoyed many weekend excursions to the Souk, admiring the handiwork, tasting the vendors’ different delicacies, and watching the kids run around.

At the end of Rainbow, the street curves suddenly to avoid plunging down the hill’s steep drop-off. Stairs instead meet you at the curve and guide you, after several hundred steps, down to Downtown, the Balad, the busy hub of the city where East and West Amman converge into an action-packed center of commerce. I often take these stairs to meet friends for tea or to pick up a package from my Mom or to check out the many different stores that the Balad has to offer. You can find almost anything in the Balad.

More often, however, I’ll follow Rainbow’s curve to the Royal Film Commission, which houses a wide array of film screenings every week. Foreign films and independent documentaries throughout the world find their way to this small compound nestled on the hillside. During warmer months, the RFC will feature films outside in the perfectly quiet night air. The screen sits in front of a stunning view of East Amman, and the audience often finds it difficult to focus on the film itself with such a view, especially if fireworks go off. And then, at least once during every screening, the obligatory random cat will come strolling in front of the screen and make a shadow. But no one shews it away.

But more often, I pass the RFC to instead have brunch at Books @ Café, my preferred weekend morning hangout. Its spacious views grace the diners, who can relax on lounge couches and smoke shisha. The place has a nice, relaxed atmosphere, providing an open environment to chill with friends.

But tonight, my friend takes me to a different place. She takes me to “Wazzup Dog,” a trendy hotdog place with a creative list of condiments and splashes of graffiti covering the walls. As a former 10-year vegetarian, I’m embarrassed to admit how much I like this place. My friend smiles at my satisfaction and walks me home.

The shopkeepers whose shops line my street are gradually getting to recognize my face. They nod and smile their greetings, sometimes muttering a kind “salaam aleikum” as my friend and I pass. I feel that, slowly but surely, I am making a place for myself here, in hearts of friends and the pleasant greetings of my neighbors.

Now I’m home. I’m singing along to Disney songs with my roommates, writing this post and thinking about the heating situation. It’s all good.

Adventure

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
Bertrand Russell

Many apologies for not posting for so long. I’ve been on many adventures that I’ve neglected to tell you about, and it’s about time that I tell you all about them.

During my first four weekends in Jordan, I traveled outside of the city and went on adventures.

On my first weekend, I traveled with a group called the Zikra Initiative (http://www.zikrainitiative.org/), which is an organization that focuses on connecting the socio-economically advantaged people in the city to the relatively disadvantaged country people. To nurture this exchange, the organization sponsors trips out to the countryside, where city dwellers learn the artistic traditions of basket weaving and bread making from the local villagers. Though this program is mainly meant for Jordanians, the language institute where I study has a connection with Zikra. Qasid thus encourages its language students, who primarily experience city life while in Jordan, to venture out with Zikra on day trips.

I decided to go, and I was so glad that I did. Besides learning how to weave baskets and make flat bread, I had engaging conversation with my teachers, who taught me Arabic words and smiled at my curiosity. After the lessons, we went to one of the teachers’ house for an amazingly delicious lunch of the flat bread we had just made along with a traditional tomato stew. We sat on plush cushions on the floor of the living room, ladling the tasty stew into our mouths with the flat bread.

Our guide then took us on a hike, asking us, “Is anyone afraid of heights?” We all shook our heads and followed him into the mouth of a wadi, which is a whimsically winding desert valley cut deep and narrow by a river. We soon realized that his question referred to a narrow stone staircase with a drop off each side and no railing. I’m afraid of death, I thought. I refused to look down and wobbled up the stairs. We followed the water path until the wadi terminated at a cascading waterfall, where a bunch of us ran under to cool ourselves off from the intense heat.

On my next weekend, I went with Jo Hiking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSRBNabUsvw) to another wadi, Wadi Numeirah. I tagged along with a group from Nadi al-Shabab, or the Boys’ Club, which is kind of the Amman equivalent of the Boy Scouts. The boys had a lot of shenanigans up their sleeves, and oh goodness did they like to sing. They spent most of the ride to and from the wadi dancing and singing in the aisles of the bus. We sang while we hiked, we sang while our tour guides stopped for smoking breaks, we sang while we ate lunch. When they told me that the 3 kilometer hike would take all day, I was struggling to understand exactly how the most challenging of terrain could take that long. I didn’t realize that they had planned a 5-hour break in the middle of the hike to relax along the riverside and play games. Somehow, a portable stove, teapots, and a hookah set were produced. We had ourselves an outdoor café!

During my third weekend, my next and most intense wadi hike was Wadi Hassa. They told me to bring nothing that I would want to risk getting waterlogged. Small wonder, since the first act we had to do to actually get into the ­wadi was to jump off of a 5-meter-high waterfall and into raging waters. I closed my eyes, jumped, and screamed. There were no banks along this river, no place to rest our legs. All we had to keep us afloat were the lifejackets that the tour guide handed to us. The walls of the wadi were so steep that I began to wonder how we would ever get back out. I clung to my lifejacket until I got used to the challenges of the “hike,” which was more of an all-day swim. At some points, the stony river floor off the wadi would steeply drop or rise up, causing me to scrape my knees and run into the underwater boulders that invisibly lurked beneath me. At one point, we had to squeeze ourselves through a long and narrow cave, so claustrophobic that I had to wriggle through it. Exasperated tiredness soon replaced the exhilaration that I felt whenever the currents from suddenly appearing waterfalls sucked me away from the group and forced me to swim with all my might to keep myself from getting sucked off a cliff. I kept wondering how a medical team could actually evacuate me from this place if I broke a leg. Finally, the steep walls fell away, and the wadi calmed down into a gentle river. Along the riverside, we ended the hike by soaking our shaking legs in a natural hot springs.

By my fourth weekend, I was quite tired of hiking. So my roommates and I went with another friend to Umm Qais, the ancient Roman ruins of the town known back in Biblical times as Gadara. Based on descriptions in the Bible, this place was the setting for the story of where Jesus casts demons out of people and sends them into pigs. The pigs then went mad and ran themselves into the Sea of Galilee, which is now known as Lake Tiberias. You can see the lake on the hill of Umm Qais, nestled in the countryside among the expansive Northward views. If the pigs were to have run from Umm Qais to Lake Tiberius today, they would have crossed several contested borders and probably would have been shot by border guards before the end of their run. Umm Qais is about as northwest as you can go in Jordan because it lies at the borders of Israel and the Golan Heights. We had to keep asking people, we just could not believe that the Golan Heights were right there, the next hill over, less than a five minute walk down the valley and across the Yarmouk River. This place has become a popular pilgrimage sight for Palestinian refugees because of the symbolism of this place. So close, and yet so far.

So, this is what I did for the first four weekends of my time in Jordan. The last three have been more Amman-centered, but still fun and exciting, of course. More on that later.