maybe im getting spoiled

well i realized that that last post was pretty whiny considering that i got to go to have a little mini vacation sponsored by the peace corps. to make it clear, i had an amazing time in aqaba, it was great to get out of the cold and to somewhere where it was at least comfortable to walk around in just a long sleeved tee-shirt, and i can't believe that i have made it all the way over to the red sea. i swear im not all jaded and ridiculous about traveling. humdullah (thank god) i have the chances i get.

a holiday at the beach

thought i'd give you all a little update on what i've been doing the past few days. we had our first IST (in service training) this past weekend. all 37 of our cycle of volunteers met up in Aqaba for what was mostly a language workshop. though i was a little disappointed that it wasnt being held in Amman, if it was there it would have been easier to get to, i could have gotten some shopping done, and more importantly i could have gone to the peace corps office to pick up some dvds and books from the swap shelves, i was pretty excited to go all the way down to aqaba. i had actually heard of aqaba before coming here, and i knew it was a pretty big tourist area on the red sea. now that i have been there i would never recommend it to any traveler in the area. here's why.

maybe it was my own fault for picturing something when i have really no idea but i thought it would be this beautiful beach with lots of green and, i don't know, something close to like an exotic island or something. what it is is a lot closer to the jersey shore. there is only something like six miles of beach there, and the beach itself is only about twenty yards from where the ocean ends to where the city streets begin. the private beaches, where you could actually (maybe) wear a bathing suit, or at least go swimming with clothes on, are owned by hotels. the public beaches are filled with mostly young men (shebob, you will probably hear me talk a lot about shebob) just sitting around. and i mean filled, there is approximately 3 feet of space free between every person. im not saying i didnt have fun in aqaba, i had a really great time, but if you are planning to take a trip to jordan, avoid aqaba, and if you are planning to take a trip to the red sea, i hear the israeli side is great.

anyway i did have a really great time there, we had four days and three nights there and it was amazing to get to spend that much time with my friends. most of the others in my group i hadn't seen in about a month, and that was a huge change from how much time we all spent together during the first few months of training. letting my hair down (literally) and getting to spend time not worrying about what people were thinking about what i was doing, who would find out about it, and having to be demure in all that i do was a great relief. aqaba is so far from where i live, and there were so many other tourists there that i felt confident that nothing that i did will get back to my village. not that i did anything crazy by my own standards, but i did go to dinner in mixed company every night, go out dancing a few nights, wear shirts that showed my collarbones, and generally did not behave like a good jordanian girl.

we were in classes from 7:30 in the morning to 6 at night, and we spent most of the time on language classes. i was not so psyched about having language classes at first, because at the moment i am a little overwhelmed by the whole language learning things and did not want 3 days worth of vocab thrown at me to remind me of how little i know. however, it turned out to be really great because we worked on the things that i really need. we mostly got to ask questions about the issues we had run into with sentence structure and grammar and things like that, which i still don't really understand but am getting better at. the teachers were rotated every lesson which i thought was really helpful because they are all from different areas of the country and so have different accents, and they all have very distinctive teaching styles so it was nice to not be stuck with a teacher you are less than compatible with.

i didnt even take any pictures because i left my camera at home, but i will try to snag some from my friends and post them up here.

stay warm homies.

jordan gets cold

it is 43 degrees in my bedroom right now.

Waiting for the Gasman

the day before yesterday my soba ran out of gas. my soba is a little space heater that has a 3 ft tall tank of gas in the back of it that runs three panels of basically live fire. so two days ago it starts to sputter and goes out, which left me in my uninsulated, cinderblock, 52 degree room without any way to warm up. which was not too big a deal because i am essentially in bed by 7pm every night, unless i am out visiting in which case i am paying for heat with the entertainment of my very existence. so yesterday it was really cold again (of course we are going through a particularly rainy, cold week right now) so i went next door to borrow a wrench to disconnect my gas tank from my stove to put the tank in my heater instead. it is impossible to visit a house for any reason, or to speak to someone on the street even, and not go into their house for a visit. so i visited for a hour or so, at which point they proposed that i go visit the husbands family. i politely decline, and they politely ask why i hate his family so much that i cant go down the street to visit for a minute. i stay at his family's house for a few hours, until their kid falls asleep and we have to come home. when they drop me off i ask where i can get a new gas tank. they tell me to come back to their house tomorrow when i get off work and they'll make "the call" and help me get it.

today when i got off work i went straight over to their house, as planned, and she wasn't there. i give her a ring and she's like, im at my family's house, come here and we'll get the tank. so she sent her little sister up to get me and we head down for what i know will be another long visit. we start by having breakfast, and after six hours, three rounds of tea, one round of pepsi, one round of coffee, and another meal, i head home. without a gas tank.

she told me come over tomorrow and we'll sort it out.

More pictures

so i dont know how easy it is to get to my picassa site so i posted a few

pictures here. they are all of skyscapes basically, because the sunsets

here are completely unreal. just click the pic to get to the whole gallery.

burning city

fine i'll write something

so i have been chastised for not posting more and told that i need to just write something; it doesn't have to be earth-shattering. This is what i have been told so dont go reading this and then sit back in your chair and wonder "why did she bother to tell me this, i should have been reading perez hilton instead".

i have been starting to settle into my new community. I think the town is about 10,000 people, but i'm not completely sure of that. It feels a lot smaller for a number of reasons. The most obvious of these is that it is extremely hilly so the town is sort of separated into these little segments. i, for example, live "foug". foug means on top basically and is used to indicate the whole quarter of the town that is on top of the highest hill, sort of in the back of the town. I am at the very top of the top, behind my house the empty hills start again, which are the domain of the wild dogs. these dogs look like regular dogs, i guess they were at some point, but they would not be amiable to you slipping a leash around them and calling them Rex. They usually don't venture into the town, but you can hear them howling all the time and i can only imagine that they get a good bit of the nutrients from the many goats that are raised in the area. The goats on the other hand are all over the town. they are herded from the backyards where they spend most of their time to the outskirts of the town where they can graze, leaving a little trail of goat poo everywhere. Luckily my major walking route that takes me down to the "supermarket" follows one of these herding routes; this is when im happy that you have to take your shoes off before going into a house because i dont have to worry about tracking goat poo in my new friends' houses.

I guess i haven't even really explained what it is like here at all up to this point have i? the whole of jordanian culture centers around being with other people. this may seem like a no-brainer, what culture isn't centered around people right? no, a jordanians life is empty if there is not at least one person in the room with them at all times. They just love to talk all the time, especially about food, how much things cost, and the local gossip. in order to facilitate a good flow of information on current prices and the goings on next door they like to keep a steady rotation of people coming in. they also cannot abide the thought of someone walking alone, coming home to an empty house, or passing up the opportunity to talk so they will invite you in off the street when you pass. This is not just me, they will invite fellow jordanians in off the street as they pass as well. As you walk and greet people standing in their doorways you hear a constant call of "tfudtali" (come in/welcome). they are especially insistent that i come in because they know that i live alone in my house and just know that i must sit around and cry all day because how could anyone stand to be alone that much? so they ask me to come in, they tell me i'm welcome 5 different ways, and sometimes i let my American impulse to always refuse help or generosity for awhile to make sure they really mean it go by the wayside and step in for a few cups of tea and many questions. My arabic is certainly progressing but it is still probably really painful to listen to, nonetheless everyone is very proud of me when they find out i only started learning 2 months ago, and overjoyed and shocked that i plan to stay here for 2 years.

The jordanian fear that you will die if you are on your own for any amount of time has really helped me out since i have moved into my new house. the fact that i am 22 ("bes isreel"/ just a baby) and a woman has really kicked the famous jordanian generosity into overdrive. my neighbors have been consistently bringing me little plates of food or inviting me over for dinner, especially in my first week here. that has been a lifesaver since i didnt have any food in the house, wasnt really sure where to get it, and didnt have any pans to cook it in for the first week. i only just bought a plate and a bowl this morning (i have just been using the plate that a neighbor brought food over on until that one needs to be returned and i get another neighbors to replace it and so on), i have bought a pot and a skillet and have been handling the food situation pretty well when i haven't managed to wrangle a dinner invite.

my neighbors have been absolutely wonderful with everything. my house has a courtyard to the side of it which has three other houses around it. all of my neighbors have come over to check on me, in fact i think i caused one of them considerable distress when i left my phone in my house while out visiting another family, didnt check it when i got in, went straight in the shower and had to cut it short because someone was repeatedly ringing the bell and calling my name. when i answered my neighbor was standing there looking worried and asked what had happened where was i, what was going on? i didn't understand her concern until i looked at my phone and saw i had 6 or 7 missed calls. they are just not sure that i will be able to survive in a whole house on my own, who knows i may drown because i didnt know that you need to turn of the water faucet when you are no longer using it. (this is really the kind of advice i get, they are just adorably afraid for my life) But the mothers of all three of the houses around me are really young (i think they are all in their early to mid twenties, though honestly they look older) and have one or two kids.

Ok more later but im tired now (its after ten, late for me here where you have to stay in your house once it gets dark at 4:40) and i have to get up early tomorrow for work (7:30).

I am also going to start adding the book that i am reading, movie im watching, music im listening to, or something like that at the end of each post to 1) make it relatable to my adoring readers and 2) keep me interested in updating in case that adoration is not quite enough of an incentive.

Reading: Paula, by Isabel Allende

Obsessed with the music of: White Stripes

whoa

so i realize that it has been a ridiculously long time since i have last posted. all kinds of new and interesting things have happened and i am going to try to go back and fill you all in at some point in the future. i am putting it off again because i still do not have good access to the internet (this is the first time i have been on since i got to get a few hours in at christmas) and so i want to just get the basics across. here they are:

-i have moved into my new house. im putting a pictorial tour on my picasa account now, which should show up over in that little slideshow thing, and if you click on the slideshow it should bring you to my picasa page. my new house is extremely well furnished for a peace corps house, not to brag but i am probably in the top ten nicest houses of my group of volunteers, at least as far as i know. be jealous. but not too jealous because i didnt have a heater for the first few days, and its damn cold here. i had both an electric heater and a gas heater in my home but neither was capable of producing heat because i didnt have a gas can and my electric one melted (see pictures) which produced a bad smell and some interesting smoke so i left it alone.

- i have gotten a post office box, so if you had something against Amman (and who doesnt) and were waiting for a new, high-class, Mafraq address to send things to me at, here it is:

Stephanie Paulick-Maloney

PO Box 155

Mafraq, Jordan

-i do not yet have internet but chances are high that i will be able to get my house wired within the next month. i am currently using a friends computer at her house on the other side of my village so that is promising that someone nearby was able to accomplish it. the hardest part about getting internet to your house (and the reason that i have yet to do so) is that you have to tell the internet man in the nearest big city where you live. no problem you say? well that is because you are living your coushy, address-having, road-following, ordered lives in the good ol u s of a. jordan, on the other hand, does not believe in this and so i honestly dont think my house even has an address in any capacity. you have to go in and say "i live in this village" "you get to my house by going up the first street, past the blue ducan, to the fourth mosque, turn left and my house is the third one with the green gate." this is not how you actually get to my house, i have no idea how you get to my house if you are not coming from one of the three places that i have been in the town, and i also would have to be able to say all of it in arabic and everything. so when i get that together ill have internet. in shallah.

ok maybe more later but i have to go now. hope everyone had a happy new year and christmas and everything.