where have i been? ...jordan

so so so, i have not had internet, for no reason that can be determined exactly or that the internet company is particularly worried about, for the past week so i haven't been able to update. i say this as if any of you out there care, which i am beginning to think you do not. i have a little hit counter thing on the bottom of my page, but i'm thinking it's just my mom checking it 20 times a day. if you are reading, enjoying, hating, bored by, morally against, my blog go ahead and leave a comment every once in a while so i feel affirmed in my efforts. fudtalee (welcome, come on in). actually i believe i read in miss manners or somewhere that the proper way to acknowledge a blog entry is to send a package. i'm just saying. anyway on to the gripping life stories.

the weirdest thing that i have experienced up to this point happened in this past week. it is the best example i have ever heard of to show the extent of jordanian hospitality. the extent being pretty much unlimited and, from an american point of view, often unbelievably invasive. but i love it. so what happened was: i was doing my laundry on saturday. my new friend's family called me to invite me over for lunch. as nice as free food is, i was just not in the mood to run out right then because i was cleaning my house and was just feeling kind of lazy so i told them that i had just finished doing laundry (true) and that all of my pants were fe mai (wet, in Stephanie Arabic, and not entirely true) so i couldn't go out. they said that was okay, they understood. about five minutes later my doorbell rings. standing there is a six year old boy holding a pair of black pants. fudtalee (here, take it) he says. what are these i ask. he says i dunno, my mother says to give them to you, then you should come with me. so i put on the pants and went out for a walk with the family. what else could i do? my presence is so valued that pants are delivered to me to make sure i don't miss out.

tomorrow the kids from my center are going into Mafraq (the city we are outside of) to do a field day with two other PCVs centers. my kids and the kids from another special ed center will be doing different games and activities and the girls from my friend's youth center will be running the activities. we hope that by having her girls run it they will have some exposure to kids with special needs, have a better outlook in regards to them, and, thinking optimistically, will be nice to the kids with special needs they have now met if they are out walking around the community.

i had a bunch of things that i wanted to write about, but of course i have forgotten at this point. which is probably a good thing for all of you since they must not have been interesting enough to remember.

buuuut what is definitely an interesting thing (inshallah (hopefully)) is that i get to meet vice president Joe Biden on friday! i am going into amman to the embassy for a lil meet and greet then photo op. hopefully we all really get to meet him. either way i'm excited to catch a peek. figures that i would live in DC for years and never see anyone important, then go halfway around the world and be introduced to a big deal dude.