wadi rum

this past weekend was ciee's trip to wadi rum, yet another of jordan's geographical treasures. wadi rum (which just translates to rum valley- and is actually pronounced room not rum haha) is an area of the southern desert famous for it's unique and majestic rock formations.


unfortunately, what with our group of 85 ciee kids it was not exactly a weekend of authentic local experiences but rather a trip of the overly touristic variety, but such is ciee. nonetheless i enjoyed the trip for what it was, and the scenery of wadi rum is amazing no matter how many people you travel with.
friday afternoon was spent careening through the wadi in open-backed pickup trucks, stopping to clamber up and down rocks and sand dunes along the way.






the unfortunate casualty of this adventure was my camera, which was of course in my pocket during a run-turned-tumble down a sand dune, and is consequently now refusing to function due to the sand KATIR that is stuck in all its crevices :( laaaaame, but i'm thinking that one of these days mumkin it is just going to decide to wake up insha'allah haha. but my broken camera provided lots of entertainment for several of our bedouin truck drivers, who used everything from tire air pumps to wires to try and fix it for me. the individual below successfully used his teeth to get the lens far enough out in order to take a picture of himself, but unfortunately that success did not last and i had to forbid the infliction of any further bite marks on my lens.


after watching the sunset we stayed the night in the tourist version of a bedouin camp, but with its campfire, tea, and desert stars i was a happy camper :)


the next morning a few friends and i got up at 5:30 to see the sunrise, which was a beautiful array of pinks-oranges-yellows as the light rose over the hills.



we then set off on a three-hour camel ride through the desert, which was extremely exciting as i had never ridden a camel before. camel riding is quite the challenge in terms of staying on the camel, especially when it chooses to run and when it is time to dismount as both of these involve a sort of jolting teeter-totter motion that is not for the faint of heart. we had lots of laughs during our camel caravan, however, camels/camel saddles are NOT comfortable, and after three hours i was more than ready to bid my four-legged friend goodbye.

smurfs

today i learned a wonderful cultural quirk: jordanian university students commonly refer to freshman as smurfs (sanaafer in arabic). love it.

noor

yesterday noor, my host family's filipino maid, asked me if the reason american people had blue and green eyes was because of the weather? and she was perfectly, innocently serious.
noor is 19 years old, and is the 7th of 10 children in a family from a rural province of the philippines. she came to jordan with one of her sisters, but that sister works in a city a couple hours away so she rarely sees her. noor came to jordan to work as a live-in maid on a two-year (now extended to three-year) contract to earn money to put one of her older sisters through college at home. in jordan today there is an increasingly common practice, supported by the embassies of the respective countries, of bringing domestic workers from the philippines and sri lanka to work as household maids for middle class and wealthy families here. although their wages are determined by legal minimums, the quality of life for these immigrant workers varies greatly from family to family and often does not meet standards that i would consider conducive to basic human dignity. living with a very wealthy family that has a maid is a challenge for me emotionally and morally, and unfortunately my only option is to accept the situation as is without comment or action. noor is hard at work every day cleaning, cooking, doing any/all household chores. she rarely gets to leave the house, and when she does it is mostly to accompany my host mom on errands. her room is a small one just off the kitchen that also serves as a partial laundry and storage room. her bed is a mattress on the floor. she speaks pretty good english, which she learned in school, and over the two years she's been here has learned all arabic necessary for her daily life (at home in the philippines she speaks tagalog). when she has free time noor likes to listen to the radio, read magazines from the house, and talk to her sister on the phone. noor is luckier than the other situations i've seen here in that her relationship with my host family is a positive one (or as positive as possible, considering). what i mean by this is that i can see that after two years they, especially my host mom, really love her and consider her as much a part of the family as their social divide permits them to. however, this does not stop any member of the family from telling her what to do. the thing i find really unbearable is when my (somewhat spoiled) host siblings will sit in the living room watching tv and instead of walking into the kitchen to get it themselves, will yell for noor at the top of their voice and instruct her to bring them a glass of water.
noor amazes me because despite the hardships and monotony of the life she is leading, she is one of the most truly sweet and kind-hearted people i have ever met. she has informed my parents via skype that i am her new sister, and no matter how much work she has done she is always smiling and offering to make me food. her name means 'light', and the radiance of her heart really does embody her name.

la bandera

i keep forgetting what the different parts of jordan's flag represent, so i've decided to write it down.
red triangle: hashemite dynasty
white seven-pointed star: the first seven hadiths (sayings/actions of the prophet muhammad that are an important part of islamic scripture)
black stripe: abbasid caliphate
white stripe: fatimid caliphate
green stripe: ummayad caliphate

dana

i spent this past weekend with my friends mikki and matt hiking in dana nature reserve, a national ecological/biosphere reserve in the south of jordan.



dana was beautiful, a green oasis in an arid desert climate, with wildflowers of beautiful colors everywhere.



there were also an uncommonly large number of thorny/spiky plants, and i have numerous scratches to show for it.


dana village is a tiny collection of simple buildings overlooking the valley.



one of the most beautiful moments was hearing the sunset call to prayer echo off the valley walls with a background choir of birds chirping.


the other sound that made full use of dana's echoing space were the donkeys braying. now every american child knows that donkeys make the "hee-haw" sound, but have you ever actually heard a donkey bray? you would remember if you had; they are flippin LOUD. and it's funny because they're these cute and meek looking friendly creatures that generally just stand around contentedly, but when the emotion hits to make them bray they really let loose- even without the help of an echo their screeching/barking/uncomparable sound can be heard a long ways away, but it was almost comical to hear the peace of dana intermittently broken by some perturbed donkey.
the other interesting moment of this weekend was our hike to the spring. nabil, the owner of our hotel, had suggested we take the short twenty minute walk to a nearby spring, so we followed his advice. as we walked the surroundings got greener and greener so we knew we were heading the right way, and we passed irrigation channels with running water so we knew we were close. after a little while when we still hadn't found the spring, we backtracked, thinking we had missed a turn, and when we ran into a jordanian family picnicking, we asked if they knew where the spring was? "right there!" they replied, pointing to a small pool of inch-deep water that channeled a small stream of water from the mountainside into the irrigation channels.



we had been picturing a river, and mikki and i had even contemplated bringing our bathing suits, and what we found was just a small waterflow, but we realized that in a country where water is not easy to find, even a spring like this would be considered a big deal. definitely an amusing cultural moment though :)

tribal spat

'tribal spat' is ciee's euphemism for the reason our classes have been cancelled both last thursday and now today. the concept of families or tribes is still very strong in jordanian society, and thus it's easy for disagreements between individuals to become larger issues of family honor that all members must protect (and sometimes avenge). thus, the stabbing that occurred at a different university in another part of amman last thursday quickly led to fights breaking out on my university's campus between other members of the same extended families. tribal laws of honor dictate that the victim's family must act in response, but in modern times its common that the family leaders officially turn the matter of justice over to the government's legal system rather than the tribal system. however even despite this tensions are high, and thus we get the day off classes :)

istanbul

i spent the second half of our spring break in istanbul and LOVED it. i met up with carrie at the airport and after successfully making a turkish friend to lend us his cell phone, got on a bus to meet adrian, a friend of carrie’s who’s living in istanbul with her turkish boyfriend çaglyan (the g actually has a little hat on it but my computer doesn’t seem to have that letter- the point is it’s pronounced chaah-lee-ahn). these two were so very nice enough to let us stay at their apartment for our trip and were wonderful hosts, suggesting/showing us all the bests spots of the city.
for me istanbul felt like a very european city compared to my other travels, but for carrie it felt like the middle east with all the mosques everywhere. side note: the call to prayer was in turkish! i was so weirded out the first time i heard it and noticed it did not sound the same as in jordan haha. one of my favorite moments of the trip was our first night out to dinner, the waiter asked us if we wanted çay (=tea in turkish). this word happens to be very similar to the arabic word for tea (shai), so adrian and i said that yes all three of us would have çay. moments later we were sipping our tea when carrie announced “guys this is not chai, it’s english breakfast.” after overcoming our fits of giggles adrian and i explained to carrie that in turkey (and in jordan, syria, egypt, everywhere), varieties of tea do not exist and “çay” always implies a cup of standard brown tea. it was a great cultural moment :) and although i do think istanbul is very european it would be interesting to contrast the city with the rest of turkey, because i have a feeling it would not be like that throughout the country. but being in istanbul where not as many people cover their heads and there’s not as much homogeneity of appearance was a nice break from my constant sticking out in amman.
my trip to istanbul was also the first time in my life being in a place where i don’t speak the language and let me tell you i felt like a ridiculous and tongue-tied idiot the first couple days not being able to say even thank you. it was a very strange feeling but definitely an interesting experience for me, despite that it made me want to learn turkish (preferably within the six days we were there, but that didn’t quite happen despite our commandeering adrian’s turkish phrasebook). turkish is apparently related structurally to hungarian and finnish, but it also shares random words with arabic and it was fun to discover those.
istanbul as a city is friendly and beautiful with the bosphorus running right through the middle and the grand ottoman style mosques dotting every skyline. turkish food definitely receives a grade of A+ as we had delicious meals and treats and wine every single day. highlights include simit (bagel-ish things covered in sesame seeds), kebabs, turkish pizza, fresh seafood, turkish delight, roasted chestnuts, and these peanuts covered with sesame seeds and sugar that were quite the addictive snack.




carrie and i wandered all over istanbul and it feels like we saw and did so much that it’s impossible to blog a recap but i’ll make a quick attempt:
the mosques we visited here (the new mosque and the blue mosque) were magnificently grand both inside and out with their bubble-looking domes and thin minarets, and inside covered floor to ceiling in intricate and colorful designs.





we took a cruise along the shores of the bosphorus to see istanbul from the water and then had lunch next to a bridge full of fishermen and it was the only fish sandwich that has ever come close to rivaling the salmon sandwiches of the market grill in its freshness and deliciousness.




the spice bazaar with its myriad of smells and mixed and blended tantalizingly together and its piles of colorful spices and sweets begging to be tasted


one day we took a ferry boat to buyukada island in the sea of marmara south of istanbul, and we were reminded of seattle what with the seagulls, ferry boat, blue water and green islands on all sides. buyukada is a tiny island that boasts that its citizens only use bikes, horses, and their feet to get around, but after seeing a couple motor vehicles driving around (granted they were service vehicles not personal cars), carrie and i are a little skeptical about this. but all the same the island had a quiet and relaxed feel and we enjoyed our carriage ride and walk past cute victorian style houses to reach the monastery at the peak of the island.





the aya sofia truly embodies the phrase ‘the meeting point of two religions’ since it is a church that was at one point converted into a mosque. from the outside you can tell that the original basilica looks older than the four minarets now attached, and inside the walls hold a fascinating mix of christian mosaics and muslim arabic calligraphy all decorating the same sacred space, and this in addition to the simply amazing scope and architecture of the building itself.



the grand bazaar is literally a labyrinth of shop after shop- if they didn’t post signs pointing toward the exits i don’t think anyone would ever find their way out. we had fun getting lost in the shops of scarves, pottery, lamps, leather, jewelry, etc. as the shopkeepers had fun trying to entice us to buy by calling us ‘sunshine,’ ‘angel,’ ‘shakira,’ and many more.



topkapi palace was worth the 20 lira they made us pay to get in (no student prices for anything is my one complaint against istanbul). the grounds stretch on and on overlooking the water, and each and every room is ornately decorated. the highlight of the palace was the treasury, which displays the crown jewels of the ottoman empire, many coming from faraway lands as gifts to the sultans. after seeing pendants of gold, rubies and emeralds we had a hard time being dazzled by anything we saw in the grand bazaar :)



a night out dancing at ritim roof, a place off nightlife hub istiklal caddesi, that was my favorite bar/club i have ever been to- a smallish one-room bar on a rooftop terrace until around 10:30 when it turns into a dance party to a funky international mix of music from all over the world, so much fun.


a sunny afternoon in ortakoy, a small neighborhood outside the city center and right on the water. since it was sunday it was packed with families enjoying the sun, the water, the delicious waffle treats, and the beautiful mosque and bridge rising behind it.


since i stayed a day longer than carrie i got to see çaglyan’s band give a concert at a local bar- they play covers of american songs and did a really fun version of ‘these boots are made for walking’.


and to end, one last random side note: istanbul, similar to Santiago and valpo, has a funicular (füniküler in turkish haha), but istanbul’s version bears zero resemblance to the creaky and ancient wooden funiculars of chile- istanbul has a modern and underground version resembling a metro train, but it still serves the same purpose of getting people easily up and down a very steep hill. interesting contrast though they call it the same thing.