Spring Break is Here!

My bags are packed and now I’m waiting for the car to come pick us up and take us to the airport. I’ve mentioned it in my past few posts because I’m so excited, but just incase you missed it, I am heading off to Lebanon with the Junior Fellow Program for our spring break! We are going to spend a few days exploring Beirut, then heading north to Byblos, possibly going further north to a seaside city Tripoli, and then going east into the Bekaa Valley to go to some small cities and wrapping it back up in Beirut for another night. 

I am so excited to get out of Jordan and see another country. I love Jordan, but I’ve done just about all that there is to do. I’ve been to the major cities, seen countless ruins, ancient cities, went to the desert, and just about all of the historic/must see sites that Jordan has to offer. I’m ready to see what else the Middle East has to offer me. I’m particularly interested in Lebanon, a mix of east meets west, different cultures combining, sometimes colliding. I’ve heard only wonderful things about Lebanon, Beirut, and the Lebanese, from the food, to the people, to the cities, the beach, and architecture, it’s supposed to be fantastic, after all it was dubbed the “Paris of the East” plus, I get to speak French, which means I will be able to get around much easier, and I love when I am able to use my French. 

Anyways, this is a very short post, but I just wanted to do a quick update. I won’t be bringing my computer with me so I won’t be able to do any posts while I am there, but I’ll obviously be doing a presumably lengthy post about my vacation in Lebanon. 

Till then!

Accreditation, the basalt ruins of Umm Qais, an Arab wedding, the ancient citadel of Philadelphia, and what may have been my last weekend in Amman.

An accreditation team from the states or Europe or something were here this week to spy on us as we worked to make sure everything was as it should be, so that the school could get accredited again, or for the first time. I didn’t really know the details, all I was told was to smile, look busy, and if they asked me anything I was to tell them that I am an intern and direct them to somebody who could answer their questions. I didn’t actually deal with them much at all. I wore a little plastic name tag around my neck that would snap in pieces on contact with any hard surface, and did my work as usual. I did run into the head of the team once when I was walking out of the library after my Arabic class, and in a funny accent (he’s Scot-Swiss) asked me where the international section of the library was. I thought I was being tested and froze, I stumbled to think of the international room, and I had no idea where it was. I smiled nervously and pointed to the librarian who helped him find the room. I snuck out of the library and briskly walked back to work. 

Black Columns at Umm Qais

I asked for a trip to be arranged for the Junior Fellows to go to Umm Qais, an old Roman in northern Jordan right on the edge of the Syrian/Israeli border, and so we went on Friday morning. It’s about a two and a half hour drive to Umm Qais. I love staring at the landscape when I go on long drives in Jordan. Driving south, vegetation slowly disappears, and massive jagged mountains and red sand appear. But drive north, and large green mountains covered in olive trees, and low valleys line with palm trees appear, as well as snow capped mountains in the distance. We got off the bus at Umm Qais, and were immediately surrounded by young kids selling random items, and welcoming us to Jordan. It was cute three and a half months ago when I first got here that random people would yell “Welcome to Jordan!” with a big smile on their face, but now it’s almost getting annoying, but with my broken Arabic I am no where near being able to respond with “Thanks, I live in Madaba, and have been for almost four months, I know Jordan very well.” So we responded to the kids with a simple “la shukran” which means “no thank you” and after we obviously showed no interest in purchasing whistles, flower necklaces, or fresh almonds, they drifted away to await the next group of tourists. The ruins of Umm Qais mainly consist of the Roman city, but also of a small Ottoman city on the outskirts that was abandoned a couple of centuries or so ago. What makes Umm Qais different from the many other Roman ruins that I have been to, is the rock that the city is carved out of. Unlike the beige stone that the ruins are usually made out of, Umm Qais was built using basalt, and there for all of the columns, buildings, and roads are black, with the exception of a few columns carved out of the typical beige stone. Not only are the ruins beautiful, but the location is stunning, especially in the spring. The mountains are covered in yellow and white flowers, olive trees dot the sides,  and the roads are lined with palm trees. From Umm Qais, looking north, you see the Sea of Galilee in Palestine on the left, the Golan Heights of Syria in front of you, and the  snowcapped mountains of Lebanon behind the sliver of Syria. After walking around the ruins for a while we went to a restaurant up a hill from Umm Qais and sat underneath the shade of some stone arches overlooking the ruins and the mountains of the neighboring countries. 

View of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon from Umm Qais

The Wedding

The Roman Amphitheater in Downton Amman

When I arrived back on campus I was pressed for time as I hurried to get a haircut and get ready for the wedding. As I have probably mentioned in past blogs, my co-worker Ala’a was engaged and invited me to her wedding a while ago, and this past Friday was finally the day. We got a cab at around 8:30pm but got lost on our way so it ended up taking us about an hour to get there. I think we were the last ones to show up, but there were hundreds of people so we were able to sneak in un-noticed. Muslims usually have the religious ceremony weeks, sometimes months before the reception, so the couple is legally married, but they don’t actually get the rings or move in with each other until after the wedding reception. So unlike Christian weddings, there is no long ceremony to wait through, instead it is only a celebration. When we got there the Arabic music was blasting and many people were on the dance platform dancing surrounding the newlyweds. There were cycles of dancing, sitting and eating, and after the eating a group of twenty or so men, presumably from the husbands tribe walked to the center of the room dressed in the traditional white dresses that the men wear, with Jordanian scarves on their heads, and swords on their belts. The men formed a line through which the couple walked though, with the swords forming an overhead passageway, and once the couple reached the end, the men surrounded them in a circle, clapping, singing and dancing to the music. The bride eventually stepped into the circle as the group surrounded the groom, picking him up and throwing him into the air. After a few short hours we left the reception and headed back home. Although I would have liked to stay longer, the wedding most likely lasted until two am, at which point taxis are harder to find to take us back to school. 

Saturday was a parent visit day so I had to go into work to greet parents, and hold down the fort I guess. There wasn’t actually any real work for me to do, because all of the counselors were meeting with parents, and the head counselor was out on vacation, so I spent my time reading up on extra details for Beirut. Today I took a trip down to Al-Balad, the old center of Amman, and walked the never ending steps to the old Roman citadel of Philadelphia located on the top of a hill in the center of Amman, overlooking the whole city, and the ancient Roman amphitheater. Though beautiful, the Roman ruins weren’t particularly impressive because they weren’t in very good shape, but another part of the citadel were the Umayyad ruins, which had an amazing old mosque that was opened to tourists. I’m glad I finally got to see these sites in the city, because I think this was the last time that I would be able to make it out to Amman. I head out to Beirut next Friday for 9 days, then the weekend after I head south to the King’s beach resort in Aqaba, for a mini Junior Fellow vacation, and I leave the following Thursday. My time in the Middle East is coming to an end. 

At the Jordanian Archaeological Museum

Dome of the Mosque

The Umayyad Era Mosque

Citadel Hill

Lots and Lots of Planning

This past week wasn’t extremely exciting, work is really slow now that all of the students have gotten their acceptances or rejections from colleges, I’ve finished the major project that I was working on, and I haven’t gotten a new one yet. I think everybody is in need of a break. Luckily, spring break starts on the 21st, and I’ve been occupying my down time by looking at flights, cheap hotels, (which are not easy to find in Beirut) and worrying about all of the millions of little details that you have to take into account when traveling on your own. 

I can’t wait to get to travel to another country, especially since it’s Lebanon. I love Jordan, and Amman has a lot of things I like about it, but it’s not particularly pretty, it was most built in the 50’s with some older building in the old city, and many new constructions going up, and there isn’t that much to see in the city. So I can’t wait to go to a truly historical city, with lot’s to see and even more to do. It will be great to see another country, especially one with such an interesting history. My only concern is that I there are so many other places in the region that I want to see as well, however given the current political situations in most of the surrounding countries, I think I’ll have to make my way to Syria, or Egypt another time.

This weekend my boss had the office over to her house for dinner in celebration of my co-worker who is getting married on the 15th. It’s great to feel like the people who you work with genuinely like you, even if they are older. I can’t even express how lucky I was to end up in a fun office, with people I enjoy working with, and who make 40 hours a week of office work interesting. So the dinner was great, even though I felt a bit out of place because my office is made up of all women, and the dinner was for my co-workers impending wedding, so the night consisted of a lot of “how did you meet your husband?” and various wedding, dating, marriage, and family stories, though they were all very entertaining to listen to. 

I didn’t go out much this weekend because I need to save a lot for Beirut, however on Saturday I made my way to my favorite hangout spot in Amman. I discovered it a few weeks ago, and I’ve been going every time I’m in the area. It’s a cozy, modern, artsy tea/coffee joint, in the arts district of Amman. It reminds me of a tiny Northstar, with young Jordanians, who probably write interesting blogs, a lot of expats, and a lot of European and American college students who are most likely doing a study abroad in Jordan. So I spent a few hours there relaxing on Saturday, enjoying an iced coffee with friends. 

This week, I plan to spend my time frantically looking for cheap places to stay, buying plane tickets, planning my stay there, and figuring out any last things that I need to see before I leave Jordan next month. Time is running out really quickly. When people told me that walkabout goes by quickly, they were not exaggerating. 

Floating in the Dead Sea

I can’t believe that I have just over a month left. It’s really weird to think about coming home, because when I do I will have a few weeks until graduation, and then a few short months until college. I am not dreading coming home at all even though I am loving my time here. I’m very excited to see my family and friends again, I just feel like it’s going to be a bit weird. Even though I’m working about 40 hours a week, and it gets a bit boring, and even though Amman isn’t a bustling metropolitan city, it’s s going to be odd to go back to my normal routine having come from something so different. 

I’m not really sure what to make of the political situation in Jordan right now. Al Jazeera tells me one thing about the protests, The Huffington Post says another, and The New York Times either distorts the truth, or has useless, poorly written and researched articles that feel so distant from Jordan. This is probably because I am a foreigner, but when I walk in Amman, I don’t feel any tension, or unsafe. Everyone I talk to has different opinions, but they are all in support of the King, some wanting governmental reform, and others not. What I thought was a very interesting decision of the King to do, was to ban pro-government demonstrations in the city, that way the two groups won’t clash, as seemingly happened last week. 

I’m expecting that my internship at University Counseling will start to get very slow now that all of the acceptances have come out, and I just finished my big project on the university tour that my boss is hosting this summer. But I should be able to fill any little free time during the day that I might have by getting my spring break plans in order. It’s looking like Lebanon and Turkey with the Junior Fellow program. I so excited to be able to travel around the region, outside of Jordan, and to go to large, historic cities. 

I also need to make sure to plan my remaining weekends very well because I don’t want to miss out on anything. This weekend I crossed another ‘to-do’ off my list - the Dead Sea. On Friday morning I went to a day resort on the Dead Sea with two other Junior Fellows. The Dead Sea is one of those things, at least for me, that you hear about second grade, and your whole life you have some sort of expectation of what it’s like to float in a body of water. The Dead Sea does not disappoint. The floor of the sea is made of sharp, white, crystalized, sea salt covered rocks. Floating in the sky-blue sea is an amazing experience, and the salt of the sea leaves your skin so smooth. I also covered my body in Dead Sea mud, which is this black, smooth mud known for its rich mineral content that is really good for your skin. The resort that we were at was like out of a movie, cabanas, an infinity-pool that overlooked the sea, loud music was playing, everyone there was really attractive, and the couples were kissing and holding hands, which is NEVER seen in Jordan, it was like another world, needless to say, I enjoyed the day quite a bit, the weather was warm, and the sea was relaxing, and in addition to all of that King’s Academy gets a discount or 15 JD entry fee. Day, and money well spent. 

The infinity pool looking over the Dead Sea at sunset