Friday August 27, 2004

August 27, 2004, admin

I’ve arrived! I got here this morning at 2am .. but didn’t really fully realize that I was actually in Jordan until this morning when I awoke to the call of prayer. It was an experience I won’t soon forget. There are so few similarities to life back home. It is all so very different .. and yet, I feel very comfortable here. Today was also my 21st birthday, and honestly, it was great. I met probably 15 people and we spent the day doing various things – including going to a 40th birthday party, so that was funny celebrating someone elses birthday on my birthday. It was really cool though.

Today we also got to go to an old caravan stop which is now a restaurant – and we dressed up in bedouin clothing and took pictures .. I’ll post it as soon as I can, but it probably will be another week before I’m able to post any pictures unfortunately.

I feel like I’ve already made some great friends and I’m excited just to get settled in and see more of the city. It’s really neat being the foreigner. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d feel about the stares and all that – but so far, its just funny to me. Especially since today there were like 15 of us Americans all walking around … we def stuck out but people were soo friendly.

The apts here are just gorgeous too! I need to get pictures of them – they’re so much nicer than in the U.S. – you can really tell that people take a lot of pride in their homes.

Another thing besides the call to prayers that shakes me up a bit is the sound of fireworks constantly going off. Apparently its quite common in the summer for night after night fireworks to be going off because they’re set off at weddings. And we’re talking HUGE fireworks that sound like explosions or guns, but they’re not cuz you can just look outside and see them – but still, its a strange sound.

It smells much different outside .. mostly because everyone smokes, indoors and outdoors. Oh, one last thing that I’ve never seen before … Friday is the national day off because its the day for mosque… so people like to do picnics before and after going … they light little campfires for tea and everything … except they do it along the highways. Literally, they just stop the car wherever they want and set a fire and have a picnic – 10ft from the road. And people do it allll along the highway.

Anyways, my schedule is a bit off, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to fall asleep just fine tonight – and I hope that the call to prayer doesn’t do to me what it did this morning. They do a wake-up call (which is SO loud) and thats at like 5:00am and then they do the actual call to prayer a few minutes later .. and the mosque where the speakers are held is just down the road and the speaker is pointed to our house! So its incredibly loud.

Well I’m so excited to be here .. I’m glad I came a few days before school started to adjust because of the 10hr time difference and all the little things to get adjusted to. I know that this year is going to be a huge learning experience and will be a lot of great fun as well. I love seeing all the signs in Arabic, and even though its sort of annoying to not be able to understand anything people are saying – its exciting because I will be able to understand by the time I leave. One of my promises to myself is that when I leave I will be able to read the newspaper and write my journal in Arabic. It sounds basic, but thats really advanced – particularly compared to my 100 word vocabulary, lol.