Chronic mishmash

It would seem that I have become obsessed with this whole bullet-point-instead-of-a-fluid-blog thing. It's true. One main reason is that I've been blogging less frequently and have less new things to share. So, here we go, in no particular order...

• I have left Sabha for the last time. My stuff is packed, the apartment is [mostly] empty, the squatter is terrifying full.
• I really didn't have too much stuff in Sabha. I was all packed within 30 minutes, and I didn't even have to try very hard to close the suitcases!
• I was able to sell back both my fan and my carpet, both for about 50% of what I bought them for!
• When I rolled up the carpet I was reminded of why I loved it so much... my tile floor was terrible!
• The squatter had put me in quite the predicament. It was full! And stinky! I rejoice that in Amman I have access to a mostly normal toilet that flushes!
• Of course, in leaving, I had a lot of goodbyes to say. I have never kissed so many men (clarification: on the cheeks, you sickos!) in one day in my life! I will miss Mohammed (bubbs) from work the most, others I will kind of miss, and some people I won't miss at all! ;)
• Austin came on Tuesday to visit me, but mostly to visit his friend in Defyana that he'd met earlier. We were both invited to his house for dinner, so we walked part of the way (about a 30 minute walk). We were trying to get a ride, but since we were two guys (shebab alert!) it was hard. I heard a car coming behind us and we turned to see a red sedan driving really slowly about 20 feet behind us. Creepy! So he pulled up to us and we told him where we were going. He told us that he wasn't going all of the way there, but he could drive us part way. The first thing he said when we got in was "I hate the American government." Uhhh... right. That's not the most uncommon opinion here, but it was weird to have him be so blunt right off of the bat. Anyhoo... we tried making small talk, and semi-succeeded. After a few minutes he told us that he wasn't feeling well, and so I asked him if he was sick. He said "Yes... psychologically." CREEPY!!! He let us off at his supposed destination, which was a half-built building in the middle of nowhere. We happily exited his vehicle as he suggested we could pay him money to take us the rest of the way. We politely declined and continued our walk until Austin's friend, Hani, came and picked us up.
• Dinner at Hani's was really good, and the conversation was awesome. We were there for six hours, talking politics for most of the time. And since he was the one that brought everything up, we didn't have to feel guilty about it. In fact, at one point he stopped and made sure we weren't uncomfortable talking about politics. (Anyone who has seen my Facebook recently knows the answer to that question). He is a pretty conservative guy, but also has some progressive views in areas such as education. Basically, he wants Jordan to progress, but on their own terms; he doesn't want the international community or western culture to determine their future. He also had some off the wall views which were interesting to listen to. I'm glad that Austin was there; his Arabic is better than mine (he's taken through 202) and so the more we delved into the discussion (and the more tired I got) the more I needed to rely on him.
• TANGENT! So I mentioned earlier that a lot of people in this area are not a fan of the American government.  (I won't get into it because this isn't the proper place, but it shouldn't at all come as a surprise that Arabs tend to not be fans of American foreign policy.) I should clarify that, although this is true, they love Americans. They are good at divorcing their opinions of our people and culture from their observations of our foreign policy. I have noticed that the opposite tends to be true when Americans observe the rest of the world. Perhaps it's because we are more insulated of a society and aren't constantly meeting foreigners, but we tend to carry our negative views of a government to their people. It's true that there are several Arab governments which are not our friends, and even some that are our enemies. It's also true that there are some extremist groups from the region that have done harm to our nation. However, the actions of a few shouldn't determine our opinions of millions of people. The Arabs have it figured out, let's get on that bandwagon.
• Last night we went to the screening of a new movie. It seemed like it was really good but there were no English subtitles, so although I got the big picture, I can't be sure about the specifics. Basically it was about Iraq, and the millions of people that went missing as a result of Saddam Hussein's massacres of the Kurdish people. Even though I couldn't understand it, it depressed me.
• On Tuesday I taught my last Tawjihi class. I made them a 3 page chart/cheat sheet with all of the tenses (some of which I didn't even realize existed!) and examples of how to use them. Then to practice, we wrote stories together. I would write up a sentence on the board to start out, and then we'd go around the room having everyone add a sentence. For the second one they had to use an irregular verb in their sentence. I must now tell you what their stories were about: The first one was about a man named Khaled who worked at a factory. His friend got stuck in one of the machines, so Khaled called the police. The police helped his friend out, but then Khaled fell in the machine and he died. Yeah. Then, the second story was about a man named John who was a photographer. He goes on a walk with his friend Mark, and then acid falls on John's eyes. Mark takes him to the hospital, where the doctors tell John that he'll never be able to see again... unless someone gives him their eyes. So Mark volunteers and gives John his eyes, but then John is sad that Mark is blind. Yup, those are the stories. And to think that I was worried when I shared my scary stories with them before...
• Last night I ate a hot dog and it was marvelous. It had tomatoes, onions, cheese, relish, ketchup, and mayo. Mmmmmmm... Afterwards I had snickers ice cream. It was a night of delicious indulgence
• This week when I was hanging out at Anas' shop, his brother was playing some terribly violent car racing (slash running over people) computer game. However, all of the in-game instruction was in English. So they asked me to try and translate. Now, you should know, I never really played video games at all, so I wouldn't even be much help if they had been fluent in English! I tried to pantomime, but it was to no avail. A few minutes later, Anas was playing an Eminem song, and asked me to translate it for him. I told him that (thank goodness) I didn't know the words in Arabic for that. He raised his eyebrow, and then told me [essentially] that my Arabic sucks. And this because I can't translate Eminem (I should just say it's all about sex. That pretty much sums that up, right?) or violent video games. Oh well...
• I met some awesome people on Monday night, and I'm really bummed that I didn't meet them earlier. Khalef is in his 30's and is from Sabha originally. However, he received his education in Qatar and Europe. He has a PhD in European Studies. His wife has a PhD in Economics. They were all set to move to Canada, visas and all, when they felt like they should come back to Sabha. They both understand the intricacies of the bedouin culture, and they want to work within that to help the Badia progress. It was really refreshing to talk to him; he has a lot of liberal and progressive ideas, but he understands that the best way to implement lasting change is to work within the current cultural infrastructure. His brother, Mohammed, was just as cool. Since he was the youngest (I'd guess he's about my age), he was the one who served tea to all of the guests. When I told him that I don't drink tea or coffee, he asked "Oh, are you Mormon?" ?!?!?! I was shocked... I learned that he is a tour guide at Petra, and has worked with a lot of LDS groups, including students from the JC! His English was great, and he learned it just from talking with foreigners. He can also speak some German, French, Italian, and Spanish... all from listening. It almost makes me want to rethink my career goals! But really... it was very interesting in the context of my work, which is assessing the English education program here. The more I experience, and the more people I meet who do speak English, the more I think that student motivation/dedication is a really important element that must be focused on here.
• I was hanging out somewhere and in an hour I watched a cat eat 5 cockroaches. Slimy, yet satisfying, eh?
• Yesterday I kind of lost my temper with a taxi driver. Austin and I were trying to catch a taxi from the bus station back home. Because we had my suitcases with us, people assumed that we were newcomers/tourists and that they could rip us off because we didn't know anything about the city. I deal with that every weekend as I travel back and forth, and this week I let it get to me. One taxi driver pulled over, and said 6JD for the ride (It should be 2.5 tops). I just waved him on. Then another stopped and wanted 4JD, and was being persistent. He was the unfortunate soul. I told him "No, I've lived here for a while, I know it should be around 2JD". He told me I was crazy and that it was 4JD. That's when I started yelling about how he was crazy and I didn't arrive yesterday and how I really do know my way around and he was just trying to rip me off. So, I put on my mean face and waved him on.
• I have less than a week left in Jordan. How weird is that? 

يرمي

PS- Happy Birthday tomorrow to my Dad, who is turning 50. He's the best, coolest Dad in the world, and I respect him a lot. I love you Dad!!!