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.