umm qais

first of all, when it rains in amman, it pours. despite my raincoat, umbrella, and the cover of trees, the small windows of time i spent outside in amman yesterday between the door of my house and the bus to umm qais were more than sufficient to leave me resembling a wet rat. this is mostly due to a) the excessive width/depth of the river of water running along the gutter between me and the taxi which made jumping across impossible and thus the submergence of my entire right leg below the knee into said river; b) my forgetting that this large puddle of water existed long enough to receive a tsunami in the face when i was standing too close as a car drove by; and c) my leaving the aforementioned umbrella on the bus making it of no use whatsoever.
however, luckily it was not pouring in umm qais that afternoon. umm qais is an out-of-the-way site in the northwest corner of jordan that is home to the ruins of the roman city of gadara. it was interesting to see the many structures made out of black basalt rock, the colorful mosaic floors that still survive in various buildings, and the beautiful greenery and wildflowers that cover the site.





umm qais also has a very cool view, as it overlooks israel's sea of galilee as well as the golan heights territory.


and lastly, here's some ancient roman love from me to you :)

tidbits

--going to my all-women's gym here is often an amusing experience, as it is frequented by some rather quirky characters. some examples: the woman who uses a fluffy white scrunchy that is bigger than her head; the woman who wears plaid pajama pants to work out in; the numerous women who enjoy "singing" at the top of their lungs to the loud workout music played over the speakers- often these include american songs, in which case the language barrier does not whatsoever inhibit their singing, they just sing "words" that approximate what they hear in the songs. gotta love it.

--taxi drivers here seem to think i am blind. often when i'm walking along, say from school to the gym, every empty taxi that passes by will honk numerous times and flash its lights at me, as if saying hi-meghan-look-at-me-this-taxi-is-empty-don't-you-want-to-ride-in-it in a very obnoxious way. you'd think that after the first unsuccessful honk they would assume that i simply do not want a taxi (which would be a perfectly logical assumption- if i did want a taxi i would be standing, not walking, with my hand out to flag one down).

--the king's picture is everywhere here... king abdullah is also, in case you didn't know, a georgetown alum- maybe that's why my visa application got accepted so quickly... :)


--yesterday kelly, ali and i went to explore the never-ending souq (street market) in the city center near king hussein mosque. the souq itself was of course fun to see, but the coolest part of the day was being by the mosque for friday noon prayers. friday is the muslim holy day, and going to noon prayers is like christians going to mass on sunday. while waiting for friends to join me, i got to sit and watch the hustle and bustle of the mosque in the half hour before noon. men came walking up from all sides, some stopping to perform ablutions at the washing station outside, and as noon drew closer and the mosque itself became full, large mats and strips of cardboard began to be unrolled in the courtyard, and then in the streets in front of the mosque. it was really amazing sight to watch the streets full of men praying together to the beautifully melodic words of the incantation coming through the loudspeakers.


--after the mosque and the souq we stopped to see the nearby roman amphitheater, a perfectly intact relic from the 2nd century that can seat 6,000 people, now juxtaposed by the modern urban setting on all sides.


-arabic sweets are deeeelicious, and are baked in these HUGE metal trays- hard to resist :)



-stray dogs in chile = stray cats in jordan

veils and fiances

one of the things that most interested me about coming to study in the middle east was the opportunity to learn about and hopefully come to better understand what it means to be a woman in a muslim society. after being here almost a month i can definitely say that my knowledge is growing, but i am still nowhere near a full comprehension.
one of the classes i am taking here (and by far my favorite) is called arab women writers, and it is taught by one of the most interesting professors i have ever met: rula. rula is a hardcore feminist, made even more hardcore by the fact of the region she lives in. example: today in class she told us she respects women who wear the hijab because it can be an important part of islam, but she does not support those who wear the burqa- in fact, she informed us that when she's driving and she sees a woman in the car next to her wearing the burqa she will roll down her window and shout at them "that is not true islam!"- if you met her you would believe her that she actually does literally yell out her window. like i said, she's hardcore. but more importantly, she is a fountain of insights and information about the women's movement here, about the obstacles it faces, and about the realities of women's situations. today we briefly discussed the hijab and how covering one's head is part of the quran, and that faith is the reason many women choose to wear it. however, the hijab has over history taken on greater political/social/cultural symbolism: some see it as an anti-western statement, some are forced to cover by their husbands/fathers/brothers etc. because it is seen as societally appropriate, some feel that covering in fact gives a woman more liberty because she does not have to be recognized or scrutinized. the list goes on, and i remain unsure as to how to tell whether wearing the hijab is truly voluntary, or is due to family/societal pressures. i am also unsure of my own opinion regarding the hijab/burqa, beyond that i believe it should be every woman's choice. but how can that be ensured or enforced in a society where this is often not the case? it is also interesting to recognize how incredibly overblown the issue of the veil has become in the international and local arena as a symbol of misogyny in muslim societies- i would bet that if you asked arab women feminists what they were working towards, a world-wide ban on the veil would not even appear on the list. the hijab is part of islam and the culture here, and should neither be a symbol for something it does not represent, nor be the centerpoint of a struggle when more important rights are at stake.
another aspect of a woman's life here that is incredibly different from my own culture is the rules/process for dating/marriage/etc. ciee hosted a conversation between jordanian and american students about the differences between our cultures in this regard, and it was incredibly interesting to learn how it works here. although people do break the rules and there are exceptions, if you follow muslim customs this is how it works: a guy, our age or older, decides he's at a point in his life where he wants to get married; he tells his mom; his mom is elated that her son wants to start a family, she starts asking around through the grapevine for beautiful/smart/from good family/good reputation girls; she calls the mother of a potential girl and asks to meet her daughter; the meeting occurs, if the mom likes the girl she tells her son 'oh she is so nice you must meet her etc. etc.'; the boy and girl meet, in the girl's home under family supervision, and talk, get to know each other a little, talk about what they are looking for in life/marriage/etc.; if they get along well and seem compatible they meet another few times in the same rather formal setting; after these few times they decide to be 'engaged', which is a formal agreement between the families stating their intention to get married; the engagement is then usually quite long, a couple years maybe, which gives the couple time to really get to know each other; if the engagement is eventually broken it is not a big deal, but the point of it is that it gives the couple a formal status for their relationship so that it is not 'haram' for them to be seen together in public etc.- but absolutely nothing physical occurs before the actual wedding. sometimes it does happen that the couple meets on their own like in university, but before having a relationship they go to their families and go through the formalities for approval- family is the most important thing here, and if one family does not like the other the wedding will not happen; the concept of eloping is unheard of, it is almost inconceivable that someone would choose love over their family's approval. i can't help but think how strange so many of our american movies/tv shows must seem in this culture, which i can imagine partially because of how alien the customs here seem to me. and when i see alien, i don't mean bad, i just mean so incredibly different from the mentality i have grown up with that it is hard to understand. but it so interesting to realize how the lenses my own culture gives me can make something different seem so strange, but when considered from the standpoint of the society and cultural norms here this system makes perfect sense. i hope to talk more about this with the jordanian girls so that i can understand it well enough to cancel out my urge to cry out "what about love??" when they describe it to me haha.

petra

petra definitely lived up to its hype- it deserves its place among the 'seven wonders of the world' and the 'ten places to see before you die', and i already know this weekend will be one of my best memories of jordan- the past two days i spent exploring the site were truly that incredible.
you enter petra by way of the siq, a geological phenomenon so awe-inspiring that it merits a national park of its own- the siq is a long, narrow, twisting split between two behemothic rock faces, which was formed naturally by a combination of cracks in the once-unified sandstone mountains and waterflow. ambling along it is a magical entrance to the city of petra, with the walls towering on either side of you in crazily patterned red-orange-gold-brown color patterns towards the sliver of blue sky between them, and nabatean carvings and irrigation channels guiding your way forward.



eventually a bend in the path reveals your first glimpse of petra's most-famous/photographed building: the treasury.


perfectly preserved, it presides over the valley with its majestic rose-red columns and grand scale.


camels, donkeys and horses muddle around the valley floor with offers of rides, but we declined and found our own way around petra. our first adventure, shortly after the treasury, was to leave the main (and crowded) tourist path to follow a set of stairs that zig-zagged up into the ridges. after quite a climb, we arrived at the high place of sacrifice, which afforded us our first aerial view of petra- it is a beautiful way to see the site, and to grasp the harsh and beautiful scale of the landscape that characterizes it.


then instead of returning back the way we came, we took a trail that cut through the back valley of the city, marveling at the rock formations/colors and the ruins of tombs and other structures along the way.



along this trail we also got our first clue that many of the bedouins of petra live in the infinite caves of its hills, making their living from tourism. it was great to get off the beaten path and see a quieter side of petra hiking through the hills. the trail spit us out at the back end of the main valley, and we decided to climb up to the monastery, since we'd heard that the site is best in the late afternoon sun. after another stair-filled hike up, the monastery made the climb very well worth it- it is a building of similar style to the treasury, but golden instead of rose, and much more approachable due to the lesser number of tourists who make the trek up.


we then hiked a bit further to sit on the top of a hill for an 'end-of-the-world' type of view across the mountains and the desert beyond. a bedouin flute player graced us with his music, which echoed beautifully off the hills and added to the unique tranquil atmosphere. not wanting to get caught in the dark, we decided not to wait for sunset, and began to head back down. but first we decided to investigate a rumor we'd heard of a scramble trail to the top of the monastery itself. when we encountered a 'no climbing' sign, we were about to give up when a couple of friendly bedouins walked over and said 'of course you can climb, follow us'. five minutes of rock-climbing later, we were literally standing on the roof of the ancient monument, gazing at the setting sun ahead and the rest of petra behind. we sat there until sundown with ibrahim and mohammed, our new bedouin friends, and marveled at how comfortably they jumped among the rocks, and at the fact that we were actually on top of the monastery.



this was our first of many experiences this weekend with how incredibly kind, welcoming, and hospitable the bedouins are- once the sun had set they led us back down to the base of the monastery hill, and since by then it was really dark, told us to walk with them to the bedouin village instead of wandering out the main route by ourselves. so we walked along, lit by the stars and the lights of their cigarettes, toward the small village where a couple thousand bedouin live- others of them choose to live in a community in the caves on the other side of petra. ibrahim and mohammed spoke english very well, and knew the basics of about seven different languages, all of which they learned from talking with tourists- they had not even finished high school. they were also quite the comedians- when we were on the monastery the joke was "jump! it's okay- if you die, we have lots of tombs here!", and the banter on the way to the village included "i am popeye and you are zeituna"- an inter-language play on words: zeituna means olive in arabic, but english speakers might hear "ze/the tuna". anyway, after they called our hotel manager, who was scheduled to pick us up from petra that evening, and explained how/why/where we were in the bedouin village instead of at the main gate, we said good night to our new friends.
the next morning we got up early enough to beat the crowds to the treasury, then walked over to see the royal tombs. a bedouin girl, maryam, saw us walking and invited us into her shop for tea, so we sat and chatted with her for a while and it was interesting to learn about her way of life. we then followed the bedouins' suggestion and hiked up the ridge behind the royal tombs, which eventually led to a lookout point above the treasury, very cool to see. on the way back we stopped to enjoy the view out over the whole city and listen to some bob marley tunes with ibrahim and mohammed.


next we headed back down to see the rest of the main ruins like the great temple, qasr al-bint, and a beautifully preserved mosaic church floor.



we then decided to make the trek out to the snake monument, which the bedouins had told us was near the community of caves where they live. when we reached their village we were joined by three quick-footed bedouin children who took our hands and showed us the trail through the rocks to the snake monument.


talking with them was a bit of a challenge since they spoke only colloquial, but with smiles, gestures, and a little arabic we enjoyed getting to know them. on the way back down one of the girls cut her foot, and since a bandaid wasn't working, ali volunteered to give the girl a pair of her socks to wear, which i think made the girl happy enough to forget about her foot. our last adventure was exploring a beautiful canyon with some (tiny) natural springs, and then it was time to head for the bus back home, by way of the included-in-expensive-ticket-price horse ride :)


petra would have been an amazing experience with even just the ruins, or just the landscape, but i think i will remember it most for the warm friendliness of the bedouins and our off-the-beaten-path adventures with them that made the weekend truly incredible.

mcdonalds

yes, unsurprisingly, this icon of america does exist here in jordan. in fact, there is one located right across from the university, and today for the first time i happened to notice what the billboard out front was advertising: the McArabia. judging by the picture, the McArabia is just a chicken pita sandwich, although probably the least authentic one in the entire city... quite silly.

jerash

today amanda, ali, katie and i took a day trip to jerash, a huge site of roman ruins about an hour north of amman. i am no sort of expert on ancient ruins, but i'm pretty sure this site was incredible both in size and in how well preserved the structures are- i for one was very impressed. we spent hours walking through the ancient city, imagining how quadruply incredible it must have been at its peak.





the journey back to amman was almost as exciting (and much more comical) than the ruins themselves- we knew we wanted to take another minibus (same way we came), we just didn't know where to catch one. logically, we asked the man at the visitor's center ticket booth, who's directions to us were "go out of here, cross the street, wait at gas station, bus come there." so we did just that, and proceeded to stand on the side of the road in front of the "gas station" which was in fact an auto repair shop and await the minibus. we attracted more honks, hellos, and various other salutations in five minutes than i ever experienced in chile, and we seemed to provide a great deal of entertainment to the growing crowd of men at the auto repair shop. eventually a few of them got the nerve to approach us and inquire what we were trying to do; we explained we wanted to catch a minibus to amman. in broken english/arabic they got us to understand that the buses to amman stopped further down the street. one individual offered to drive us to the aforementioned other bus stop, which the do-not-get-into-car-with-strangers rule made necessary to refuse, and then another took the initiative to walk us down the street to the bus (he + the four of us = even more honks/yells). we thanked our helpful friend, then proceeded to ward off several taxi drivers who thought we had walked over there in search of them, then followed the bus driver to his bus (as he received some choice words from the taxi drivers who seemed to think they had first dibs on our business). success at long last, and a nice laugh over how extremely amusing/ridiculous the last fifteen minutes had been. the minibus turned out to be an even greater success when we realized it would drop us off at the university instead of the far-away bus depot. hooray! great end to a great day.

snow day!

for those of you that think the whole middle east is one great big desert, think again. today classes were cancelled due to the snowstorm that is currently covering amman in white.


and on a completely unrelated note, i finally got my hands on a friend's picture of us floating in the dead sea :)

the citadel

today ali and i braved the most likely second coldest day of the year in amman (to be surpassed only by tomorrow, when it is supposed to snow) to explore a site of ruins downtown called the citadel. the citadel sits on amman’s highest hill (amman was originally built on 7 hills, its sprawl now covers 19), and houses ruins from three different periods of amman’s jam-packed history: roman, ummayad (one of the islamic caliphates), and byzantine. we saw the towering pillars that are the remnants of the roman’s temple of hercules,



the outlines of a huge ummayad palace with its very well-preserved domed hall,


and the ruins of a byzantine church.


the citadel site is also home to jordan’s national archaeological museum, which houses treasures such as the oldest examples of sculpture in human history (8,500 years old) and parts of the dead sea scrolls. no big deal really :)



being on the city’s highest hill also afforded us some great views of amman on all sides, including being able to look down on the roman amphitheater- another historical site i’m sure i’ll be visiting soon.


looking out over amman today reminded me of valpo- same hills one after the other, same houses stacked on top of each other- there’s just a slight lack of bright colors here that make it a liiiittle different haha.


but today’s adventure really made me realize what a historically/culturally/archaeologically/etc. place jordan is- as ali reminded me, we are in fact in “the cradle of civilization,” so i guess ancient ruins come with the territory.
our touristy experience ended in a very touristy way: a taxi driver trying to get us to pay him 10 dinar for the ride home. obvio we laughed at him and refused, and it was cool to know enough arabic to explain to him exactly how/why we knew he was being completely ridiculous- those aamiyya (dialect) classes are definitely proving worthwhile.

things i saw in amman today

--five american kids looking silly when we saw how big our lunch plates were- we found a restaurant serving egyptian fateer, which i now know is a delicious pizza/quesadilla type of food with various things inside, but when we each ordered our own fateer we received much more food than we needed, but at a price of about $4 each we just assumed they were personal-size. however, the fateer was so delicious that we didn't have too much trouble finishing up the extras :) below is my friend amanda with some fateer remnants


--a goatherd and his flock on the side of the road in the middle of an otherwise very urban setting- this is two days in a row now i've seen the same goats on my way to school

--a traffic accident where after one car rear-ended another, the man in the hit car got out looking a little peeved, inspected the back of his car for damages, decided there was no serious harm, waved at the guy in the other car, and got back in his car and drove away. life can be so easy and simple sometimes.

--one of the women trainers at my gym praying on the floor of the locker room in full hijab, then two minutes later leaving her scarf and dress behind to go back to work in a t-shirt and exercise capris.

--the petro truck: these pickup trucks cruise the streets of amman blaring the arabic version of ice cream truck music, but selling canisters of fuel instead of tasty treats.

--how much prettier the city looks in the sun- all the buildings in amman are the same beige color, which on hazy days is not too exciting. but today the sun was out in full force and the city looked bright, shiny and new (albeit still very monotoned).