some sort of problem with blogspot

hala hala
so i don't know what is going on, i haven't been able to log onto blogspot for a few weeks now. I was under the impression it was shut down in jordan because no one else could either. however, this one friend's house (where i am at currently) inexplicably has access to it. so i don't know what's up. it could be awhile before i write a real post. i may have to move the blog to a different website. we shall see. peace

turkey

just got back from turkey; it was amazing. too tired/lazy to talk about it right now but i posted some pics on my picasa site. unfortunately i had to steal them from friends because i accidentally deleted all the pictures off my camera. oh well. be back soon with a write-up. until then, enjoy:

heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyy

oh hey you're still there?

sorry it has been forever, also sorry that this new format is ugly, i'll get on changing it later, you can't expect me to suddenly be good at this blog thing in one day! so get off my back about it! jeeeeze.

anyway, i've been putting off writing another post. for awhile i wasn't posting becasue i was busy. then i was lazy. then busy again. then i realized that the longer i wait to post, the more interesting and worthy the first post will have to be. that placed entirely too much pressure on me and so i vowed never to post again. luckily for you all, however, i have gone back on that vow and decided to just underwhelm and not worry about it.

on that note: i've been doing some stuff. mostly fun stuff followed by periods of serious depression in the village. nothing for you all to worry about, there is just something immensely depressing about transitioning back to life in the village after living it up outside. what have i been doing that is so fun as to throw my daily life into despair? well let me tell you.

i was in aqaba for a little over a week doing an english camp sponsored by the embassy. there were 12 of us pc volunteers there to help with the activities and supervise the kids. my day started at around 8 when the campers got there and i spent the whole day in a classroom teaching 'environmental english.' this entailed singing songs, playing memory games with animal names, and facilitating games that made them use english. the kids went home at 3 and we had the rest of the time to ourselves. we stayed at a camp that had dorms which were about 2 minutes from the sea, so we would just walk down and swim and snorkel around the reefs all afternoon.

that would be the view from our kitchen in the dorm.

there were 3 days of camp with boys and then we had a day off, followed by 3 days with girls. the kids were between 11 and 14 and they were honestly really sweet. everyone complained about the boys being bad, but what can i say, i thought they were a lot of fun. they were a handful for sure, but they were enthusiastic and entertaining. the girls, as most girls are around age 12 or 13, were just kind of 'over it' and wouldn't really play along with our silly games, or act excited to be at camp. still, both sections were fun, and overall my time in aqaba was really great, a high point of my service so far. it really was just a embassy sponsored vacation, and we got to spend a good deal of it just hanging out in the water, or hanging out in town watching the world cup and smoking naarghila.

this was followed by a week of the previously mentioned crushing depression. it is hard to explain what it's like to go from having friends around 24 hours a day for over a week to being completely alone again. i mean if you look back on when you went to camp as a kid, or vacation, or anything, and that yucky feeling of 'now what' when you get home; remember how that sucked? now take away your friends and family that you came back to. it feels crappy. this doesn't mean that i am sitting here crying, wishing i hadn't come, or need to go see a therapist. it's just a crap transition and takes a bit of getting used to. wah wah.

so the next major event was the fourth of july. this was also a blast (get it, 'blast,' like fireworks?. buh dum cha), and was awesome because it was basically a huge reunion. there are around 40 of us that came in at the same time, and when we do trainings or anything that bring us together we are usually still separated by sector (english, sped, and youth development). so there are some people that i haven't seen since training. we all got to hang out together for the first time, and in what was essentially a mini america in the jordan. the party was on the 2nd at the american embassy, and they opened up the pool, had hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, beer and lynyrd skynyrd. it was pretty amazing.

then it was my birthday. we went out for sushi at one of the two places in jordan where you can get sushi, and they have an all you can eat buffet for 22 jd on sundays. what did i learn there? you cannot eat 22 jd (about a quarter of our monthly allowance) of sushi. but it was still fun, and tasty.

since then, and in between these major events, not much has been going on. i'm teaching english classes a few times a week at a center in the village, still tutoring a few kids in english, and generally i'm just bumming around. since there is no school in the summer i'm pretty much on vacation, though i am not allowed to just sit around all summer, i have to have at least a few ongoing activities on the books.

coming soon: i'm leaving for turkey on the 16th, and i get back the 26th. i'm going to a neighboring village to visit my friend and her husband, which i'm really excited about. anddddd that's about it.

so that was the longest post ever. maybe i'll break it up into two. or maybe i'll just leave it this way and you will just never make it this far in, assume that it was all wildly entertaining and witty, and we will both win. either way, i've started it back up again and we can just continue with the day to day posts as usual.

current music: the black keys and this

reading: nothing much really, can't seem to commit

sandcastle

this one goes out to the pittsburghers. i was reminded today of Sandcastle while i was doing laundry. how are the joys of a waterpark and the mundane drudgery of a weekly (ok maybe bimonthly) chore related? the heat man.

so, as i do not have a dryer, i hang my clothes out on the lines on the roof to dry. i was not wearing shoes today when doing this, mostly because i don't like them, which was probably my first mistake. once i put my foot on the roof i realized it was blisteringly hot. here i was faced with a choice: admit defeat, forgo the joys of being barefoot and free, and walk all the way back downstairs and all the way back up, or suffer through it. guess which i chose. and so i put into use a technique perfected at Sandcastle.

this technique is two-fold. the first step is darting from one patch of shade to the next, while sort of doing a weird hopping, rolling step in which only the very outside touches the ground. the next step, which was much more successful due to the fact that the only shade was 4 feet away from the clothesline, involves creating little, oh so temporary puddles to stand in. so after i hung each piece of clothing i would hold the next item out and wring it so that there was a little spot to stand in while i hung it. this was moderately successful and after laying here for awhile inside, waving my feet around, i think they are back to normal.

p.s. 'bimonthly' means both twice a month and once every two months. how stupid is that?

a taste of the good life

so i went into mafraq today to catch the start of the world cup. to get to see the games here in the middle east you have to pay 120 JD, which gets you all of the games. because of this, the few who are able to afford this ridiculous sum are probably going to become very popular.

i was invited to go into the city to the house of one of the american families. there are a bunch of americans working in the hospitals as missionaries, which makes my life harder, but oh well. but that's another matter. anyway, they subscribed and had a bunch of people over to watch the games today. it was so much fun. i just spent the day with a bunch of americans, got to hang out with the guys who live in mafraq (who i never get to see due to gender separation), ate a lot of chips and pizza and junk food, rode around on razor scooters, just generally forgot i was in jordan for a day. actually, that is not putting it quite correctly. i never felt i wasn't in jordan, nor do i spend much time wishing that i was somewhere else. i simply enjoyed living in jordan with others who are going through some of the same things, and found a bit of respite.

i know this wasn't a very interesting story, but it was kind of a big deal in its very simplicity.

I realize it has been awhile since i have posted anything. do i have anything new to say? no.

still plodding along in the heat. kids aren't coming to the center anymore, they are on summer break till the end of august. soon i will be starting to teach 9 english classes a week, so expect me to soon be complaining a lot about feeling overworked and tired. cause that's how i roll. next week i go down to aqaba to do a summer camp where i will be teaching environmental english. i think this means i will be teaching environmental awareness stuff in english, but really, i have no idea. the camp isn't run by peace corps volunteers, we just sort of help them, more like camp counselors i think. clearly i am feeling very eloquent today. sorry.

oh the most important thing that has happened recently is that i discovered the band The Horse Feathers. love it. well i guess more importantly i discovered the npr podcast 'all songs considered' which is introducing me to all kinds of new music.

for reference this is what i hear all day. there are basically two types of jordanian music: the habibi women who i really dislike and won't subject you to, and the jeash (soldier) music which i do like. i wish i could find a song that i actually hear all the time (swear there are about 8 habibi songs and 12 jeash songs on constant rotation in the country, but this one is pretty representative.

and here are the horse feathers.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Thistled+Spring/2JrXCQ

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Belly+of+June/2KFzFI

oh man

it's 101 degrees right now. in the shade. i only checked because i walked into my house and thought 'oh man it's so nice and cool in my house' then noticed the temp in the nice cool room was 85 degrees.

and i keep being told that this isn't really summer yet.

lest you forget, i still have to wear the same clothes i wore in the winter.