So, uh, this is my life guys

I’ve been in Jordan nearly two weeks at this point. Those two weeks are in the top running for the most intense of my life. I’m going to be writing two blog posts to help process everything that’s happened/happening – one simply recounting my life over the last couple weeks and the other being more analytical towards specifics aspects of life here, such as gender. This is the first and former of the two.

I live on the second floor of a four story apartment building in a three room one bedroom one bath apartment with extremely idiosyncratic furniture and furnishings (for example: the apartment came with a pot but not a trash can). It's as if someone took originally uniform supplies, modified them with individual purchases here and there, and then randomly shuffled them across the 12 different apartments in my building like a deck of cards spontaneously thrown across the floor.

Classes are good. My Arabic language teacher is wonderful – I love that she has a strong presence and leads the classroom with a powerful and decisive personality. She also introduces an element of fun into learning the language – we all have nicknames; mine is Ibn BaTuuta, a medieval Arabic explorer – which really helps with day-to-day survival and sanity when none of us are speaking our native tongue. Having started the normal semester, we are now taking 2 hours of fusHa (academic Arabic) and 1 hour of ‘aamiya (dialectical Arabic – varies from country to country) per day. The difference between the two is striking – perhaps half the difference between Spanish and English.

We have a strong group of students participating in the program. Surprisingly, I like all the US students. Everyone seems very committed and enthusiastic to be here. No one’s a drunkard or asshole, which apparently they’ve had several of in the past. There is a liquor store and yes, I can legally buy alcohol, but rest easy, I have not gone on any drunken binges. Yet.

I’ve started a cooking program with one of the other students after realizing that, even though I can get a massive and delicious restaurant dinner for the equivalent of 4.5 USD, I was still spending a shit-ton of money doing that every night. Grocery store food is even cheaper. Buying enough food to cook dinners for two hungry runners for an entire week (in-sha’-allah – God willing) costs about 23 USD from the grocery store and so far the cooking has been going great. I was lucky enough to receive one of the apartments that came pre-stocked with a decent cooking knife and my gas stove works wonders. My apartment also came with a cute little tin tea pot (ibriig a-shai) which is now my most prized possession. 

Funnily enough, I’ve also started to get back into serious exercising as a way of coping with stress over here. Every night for the past week and a half (basically after the first few days when I was puking up the food I was eating) I’ve gone on intense short runs with my cooking buddy, exploring the University campus. Over the weekend, we got a gym-door-bar thingy from an Adidas store at the local mall and since then have added upper and middle body exercises to our routine.  Hopefully, by the time we have our fall break and hopefully travel to somewhere with a beach (Tel Aviv, perhaps?) I’ll have washboard abs to wow all the guys and girls.

We’ve (the CET students and co.) also started playing soccer (kurat al-qadim) – four or five games in total since we got here. Last night we played with our roommates – many of whom have now arrived – on a full field instead of the street we’d been using and it was SWEET. I’ve picked back up my sprinting ability from running so I essentially play midfield. Though it is kind of hard to see the ball at night without my glasses (netharaat). I suck at goalie. Like, seriously, half the six goals the other team scored last night were from the ten minute span I played goalie. But it was super fun and a great way to bond a bit with our Jordanian roommates.

My roommate moved in yesterday. All week, they’ve been trickling in, gradually setting up shop in apartments throughout the building. So far, Majid seems like a pretty chill guy. He seems very quiet and reserved, but I much prefer that sort of personality to a loud asshole. I was really nervous yesterday because our initial interactions were pretty fucking awkward, but we’ve had a bit more time to get used to each other and I feel a bit more comfortable around him. I get the sense he’s one of those people you need a bit of time to get to really know. In any event, a decent roommate, all things considered.

Last weekend I took a day trip to Amman with my running buddy and a friend from AU which went pretty well all things considered, although it got off to a rocky start. We tried to take the bus from Irbid to Amman (1 JD) but weren’t sure where the bus station was and got derailed by a group of semi-sketchy cab drivers one of whom said the buses didn’t run on Saturday and he would drive us to Amman for 5 JD. Somehow we ended up taking him up on his offer. Of course, ten minutes outside of Irbid he drove back to the city center to give his brother a lift with us to his house which was on the way to Amman. The driver was a nice guy and stopped at a beautiful cliff halfway to Amman so we could take pictures of the whopping Jordanian countryside blossoming out before us but when we got to Amman he wanted 35 JD for the ride. So, uh , we kinda got screwed there.

Amman was nice though! We visited the massive Roman amphitheater and its smaller cousin to the side which were amazing. Apparently they still host concerts from the amphitheater nowadays, which is awesome. There’s one this weekend but probably not gonna go since it’s a bit expensive. We also visited the Hill of the Citadel (Jebel Qala’a) which had some absolutely amazing Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad ruins as well as an insane view of the rest of the city sprawling out about you on hills rolling in the distance.

So, on the surface level, things are going quite well. I’ve got a bit of a structure going and even if I’m not able to express myself with eloquence, I’m generally able to express myself in Arabic.