Finding my place

Another great weekend. I always come back to Sabha feeling recharged and ready for another week. Can you believe I'm halfway through?  The days drag on like weeks, but the weeks seem to be flying by like days. I feel like I've reached a good place in terms of attitude; I went through a pretty good case of culture shock. I remember in our prep class, they talked a lot about culture shock: the symptoms, the cause, the remedies. I thought it was weird that they talked about it like it was a predictable medical problem, and I didn't think that I'd really experience much of it. Wrong!  Living by myself in a small bedouin village without anyone to speak English to proved to be just as foreign and as hard as it sounds! And for the first week or so out here on my own, I vacillated between being overly gung-ho (I'm going to become fluent in just 3 months!) and brooding (if I see one more cockroach...). Finally, in the last week or two, I chilled out. I am neither gung-ho nor whiny... for the most part. My feelings have calmed down, as I've tried to take the negative things in stride (because they do exist) and enjoy the positive things as much as possible. It's been a great exercise in patience, in self-control, attitude, and self-determination.

Friday was a great relaxing day. After church in the morning, I watched 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', one of my most favorite movies ever, while eating pitas with hummus and nutella (separately, of course). I read for a while (have you ever read 'Mere Christianity' by CS Lewis? So good!!!), took a nap, listened to some podcasts, and watched 'The Patriot' with my roommates. I'd never seen that movie before, and I really liked it. I must say, though, that I'm not a fan of over-the-top gore. I would have been fine if I had lived my life without ever seeing someone's head blown off by a cannon... just sayin')

Saturday was an awesome day. We took off semi-early in the morning for a day-trip. Our first stop was Madaba, where a beautiful church houses the remnant of an amazing mosaic. The mosaic was cool, but I enjoyed the pictures on the walls far more. In fact, when I uploaded my pictures I realized that I didn't even take a single one of the mosaic; but I got one last year). We stopped in at a few nearby shops and browsed. My favorites were the weird postcards: "Life without wife, like 15 without 5" , a picture of a camel with the description: Camel. A "hello from Jordan" postcard with a map of the world with an arrow pointing to tiny Jordan. And a limousine camel. Oh yeah... We also went to a center where handicapped people handcraft BEAUTIFUL mosaics. If I had the money, and a house to put it in, I'd totally buy a ton. (Oh well, I can do it when I get rich by working for the government, right?) From Madaba we headed to Mt. Nebo, which is where Moses may have been buried, where he saw the promised land, and where the fiery serpent thing happened. From there we went to the baptismal site where John the Baptist may have baptized Christ. We were given audio-tour sets, but that got old really quickly. It offered cliche's and "duh!" knowledge (this is where Jesus was baptized. Notice the serenity...) with birds singing too loudly in the background. I didn't notice the serenity until I turned that crap off! ;) The river at that spot is particularly narrow, maybe 20 feet. So, Israel is really close. Example: the observation decks were within not-quite-yelling distance.  Thus, this baptismal site comes complete with armed soldiers! Weird. From there we hit our best and last stop, the Dead Sea. It was saWEET! It was so weird to go in the water and float so easily! Usually my legs start sinking as soon as I start trying to float. In there I could roll around from my back to my belly without ever getting my head wet. I could even float sitting cross-legged! The salt also made sure to remind me of every place I have a scrape or bug bite with a sting. And of course we rubbed mud all over our bodies. This particular beach was sweet because it also had a real pool not too far away. So, once we were done with the 93º filmy water of the Dead Sea we could shower off and jump into the colder pool. It was a weird sensation to jump in and actually have to make an effort to come back up. What is this crap? Aren't I just supposed to bob immediately to the surface? Psht!  So we spend the remainder of the day vegging/relaxing poolside/seaside. And I tried to work on my ridiculous farmer's tan. Oh yeah.

I got back to Sabha today at around 4. While I'd been gone a few of my friends had been calling me unceasingly. Remember what I said about clingy friends? 9 missed calls while I was at the Dead Sea, from 1 person. Yeah. So I called my friend Khaled as soon as I got back. Now, I don't know if he was speaking particularly fast and slurred, or if I was just irritable, or both, but he really kinda drove me crazy over the phone. I maintained control over my emotions, eventually found where he was, and spent a lot of the evening with him and his cousin. Khaled wants to learn English, and wants me to come over twice a week to help him practice. His cousin Aulif (or something like unto that) is pretty good at English. When I asked him where he learned it, he said that he learned it from movies and by watching CNN. Once he had a basic knowledge, he read the dictionary (wow!) and used a computer program to help him learn vocab. I was amazed, because his English was pretty good. It got me thinking about my project, developing English education in the badia. Stories like that make me think that anyone who has the motivation can learn, but that's a dangerous road to go down. English education in the badia is not bad merely because the students don't want it bad enough. Yes, there are a few exceptional outliers, but what ways can the general state of education be improved? I think that if/when that improvement comes, the motivation to learn will more naturally come.

Well my friends, that's it for now. Keep up the emails, they keep me sane during the week! Love ya!

يرمي