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Location: Monterey, California, United States

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Jordan Class Day One Email

All,

Well, I am pretty much established here in Jordan and more or less adjusted to the time difference. We had our first class yeasterday, and let's just say the teacher was a tad intense, but a rather remarkable teacher. The lessons are entirely in Arabic, and she moves extremely fast (but is quite understandable), so it is impossible even to pause to think before answering. We are supposed to read 40 pages a night of rather difficult Arabic to prepare for the next days lesson, but this is impossible unless we wish to forgo sleep altogether.

The trip in was quite nice, if long, with a seven hour layover in Frankfurt. This was nice as I was able to see Marlena, the German girl I met in Africa last year, and will probably see again on the way out. There were a few rough moments at the beginning of the trip when we first arrived in Jordan. Some of the senior guys were somewhat paranoid and one (my roomate) seems to have allowed his new rank to go to his head. They attempted to put us on a rather short lease. Had to flex the muscles a tad and bitch quite a bit, but they pretty much leave us alone now. We had some briefings which said pretty much what I already knew, that it is not particiularly dangerous.

We have been existing primarily on Shwarma sandwiches and fries, but last night a few of us went to a really nice restaurant and had some hummus, baba ganoush and heaping plates of mansaf (bedouin dish consisting of rice with lamb). Of course using the language is awesome, and the dialect among the more educated people is close to Modern Standard Arabic. The less educated are simply impossible to understand. There is a considerable Iraqi refuge population here (700,000), and most of the population is actually Palestinian.

We also went to Jerash yesterday, which has possibly the best preserved Roman ruins I have seen (lots if pics), better than Volubilis in Morocco, but without the wonderful mosaics. Today's subject is honour killings and we are going to talk with a reporter and women's rights activist, which for me should be the highlight of the trip. I hope to pick her brain a bit about working in that field in the future.

Take care everyone.

Joel

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