Right on the button

So this summer wasn't just for sparsely-chronicled adventures. I actually went to school all summer and did homework all summer and spoke with Arabs all summer. Not too effectively, though, as I had a [devil] of a time learning this [darned] language. I just couldn't do it. This description accurately explains where I am at linguistically after four months of blood, sweat, and tears (the tears were while watching Saving Private Ryan.)

"INTERMEDIATE HIGH Intermediate-High speakers are able to converse with ease and confidence when dealing with most routine tasks and social situations of the Intermediate level. They are able to handle successfully many uncomplicated tasks and social situations requiring an exchange of basic information related to work, school, recreation, particular interests and areas of competence, though hesitation and errors may be evident. Intermediate-High speakers handle the tasks pertaining to the Advanced level, but they are unable to sustain performance at that level over a variety of topics. With some consistency, speakers at the Intermediate High level narrate and describe in major time frames using connected discourse of paragraph length. However, their performance of these Advanced-level tasks will exhibit one or more features of breakdown, such as the failure to maintain the narration or description semantically or syntactically in the appropriate major time frame, the disintegration of connected discourse, the misuse of cohesive devises, a reduction in breadth and appropriateness of vocabulary, the failure to successfully circumlocute, or a significant amount of hesitation. Intermediate-High speakers can generally be understood by native speakers unaccustomed to dealing with non-natives, although the dominant language is still evident (e.g. use of code-switching, false cognates, literal translations, etc.), and gaps in communication may occur."

I still don't like soccer

Because this country is so soccer-mad, I have been forced to watch more than my share of soccer. It isn't a problem, I kind of like playing soccer and although watching soccer is usually like watching paint set, when I'm with friends it is manageable. One thing that makes me glad this summer is that my beloved Penguins won the Stanley Cup. However, America did not fare so well.

It seems that whenever I am in a foreign land (i.e. Alaska or Jordan) whatever team I watch is cursed to lose. Last summer, the Penguins lost an heartbreaker while I watched every game in Humpy's pub. Everyone in the bar bought me a drink, it seemed, but because I don't drink I passed it along to the already well-toasted Detroit fans.

This summer, I paid casual attention to the USA soccer team. They ended up losing in the finals to Brazil. Nobody bought me drinks this year though. Bummer. I am glad that I didn't watch the Stanley Cup for this reason, I guess I am bad luck.

Oh how the mighty have fallen!

I am now in the slow class here in the Jordanian Arabic Progrum. I have never been so content with being so dumb.

"We come from the west to seek a King!"

"That looks like something a 6-year old did on Microsoft Paint"

- Not me

I would never condone the use of Microsoft Paint.

So today we are going to try to find the King of Jordan, His Royal Highness King Abdullah II. It is the tenth anniversary of his ascension to the throne, so we hope he is giving a speech somewhere that we can attend. I'll let you know how it goes.

Adventures forthcoming

I will post some adventures soon. I just got done typing a 4,500 word searchable Arabic dictionary of all the words we have been given to memorize SO FAR THIS SUMMER.

Really, we have only been given 1,700 words, but I included last years words and words from Arabic 101-202 and all the colloquial words we have been learning from the peeps. It's crazy, man.

Also, we have pledged to speak Arabic as much as we can in our apartment. This leads to a lot of "WEEN AL FREAKING SAUCE PAN! BIDEE ATBAX SOME FREAKING AKAL!" It's hilarious, trust me.

Out of Amman

ight now I am on a roof in Husn, Jordan. I am looking at the stars, which are diminished significantly in lustre by the light of the moon. The moon is incredibly bright tonight, and that makes sitting up on this roof romantic, in a way.

Today began with a whimper. After staying up into the wee hours of the morning doing laundry, I woke up with much difficulty at 0700. I staggered into the bathroom to be greeted by the cologne of a toilet that has gone through three guys so far today. Our water is out again. This seems to happen on a weekly basis. After running around in 80° heat yesterday, in long pants, I was deprived of a shower by the cruel forces of nature. I staggered to class, tried my hardest to stay awake, then after class we got on a bus and headed to the rail station.

I thought the prospect of seeing the rail yard was interesting, I had been reading up on it a bit, but when we got there the reality hit me. The Hejaz railway is cool because of what happened in Arabia, not what happened in Jordan. TE Lawrence didn’t blow up any trains, nor did he shoot any Turks in a fit of furious anger in Jordan! Nothing cool happened there! We soon left and I took a fitful nap as soon as we got back. I couldn’t even cook because we had no water to warsh our dishes from the night before.

I woke up after an hour or so of tossing and turning (Jordan is the worst place to take a nap) and headed downstairs. Colby asked me to attend the Irbid branch tomorrow, a solely Arabic speaking branch, and I accepted the challenge in spite of my tremendous weakness in the language. We’ll see how it goes.

May, Madaba, Mt Nebo, Terrible ATM Users.

Adventure times have started once more! Today’s Saturday Adventure took us around town, past some neat-o castles. Amman has a lot of castles. We also saw one of the coolest mosques I have seen here in town, it is really brightly colored and surrounded by barbed wire. Why is that? It was one of the more radical mosques in Amman and they put up defenses in case of government invasion, which was made quite possible by the Humvees parked across the street.

After some travelling, we got to Madaba. The first place we went was the visitor’s center for the old Greek Orthodox Church. The deal there was a huge mosaic in the floor that was a map of Palestine in the Middle Ages. It was in true Medieval style, no sense of perspective, directions were helter-skelter, people were very two-dimensional and the sixe of buildings, which were the size of mountains. I love old art, it makes me feel so accomplished as an artist.

The Mosaic had been broken up by an earthquake many years ago so it was missing significant piece, but it was still pretty impressive. It was about fifty feet wide by fifteen feet long. The cool thing about the church was not the church, though. It was all the icons all over the walls. There were so many pictures of random saints and a picture of what I guess was Jesus slaying a dragon while walking on water and getting his feet washed by Mary and bringing Lazarus from the dead. It was an interesting conglomeration. Eventually, Nathan Wilke, my roommate in Egypt, found a trapdoor to the roof and the visit got a whole lot more interesting.

As we clambered up to the terra-cotta roof, my first thought was “Dang, why don’t more churches have this?” We passed through a room in the balcony that had a view of the whole chamber and it had benches that had no doubt caused hundreds of years worth of little kids no end of consternation through painful Sunday sittings, candles that those kids wish they had to play with during lengthy masses, and carrying things. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I have seen the Greek Orthodox church in Salt Lake carry them in parades, they look like the Ark of the Covenant and have flowers and incense and stuff on them.

The view from the roof was great. That combination of seeing fifteen mosques, looking at hills, and knowing that at any given time there are thirty guys with guns no less than fifty yards away. Such a rush. Nobody minded our tricks and sports, however, so we safely made our way back down and rejoined the group.

After that, the time came to go wandering through the streets. I met up with Adam and we immediately set out to locate the services of an ATM to get some money. I don’t know what it is with Madaba, but every single ATM we went to had a line. We’re not talking three or four people in a line, this is like a line across the street and into the restaurant! Twenty, twenty five people in a line was commonplace, and the reason readily became apparent. As we walked by we saw people angrily tossing receipt slips and stuffing their cards back in the machines. Nobody in that town knew how to use an ATM. Perhaps they were putting on a show, or maybe they repeated this dance every week, nay, every day I will never know. Adam got his money and I decided I didn’t need any, so we continued our stroll.

We straitway passed by a vacant ATM! Ya salaam! I said “Adam, we will never get this chance again” so I about faced and was met by an ambling old guy who proceeded to not get the ATM to work for about ten minutes. I helped him out and after we talked for some time about standard stuff, who I was, what I was doing in Madaba, and my stunning blond hair and the fact that I spoke Arabic, no matter how poorly, doubly impressed him. That was great.

We left and went to Mount Nebo. The mount where Charlemagne’s mom said Noah saw the Promised Land. I am going to make a lot of people mad for this, but I was not impressed. The elevation was no higher than Amman, there are better views of the Great Rift Valley, and the visitor’s center didn’t have anything interesting. All it had was some translations of the Moabite Stone WHICH IT DIDN’T HAVE. LAME. The air was dusty so we couldn’t see more than a mile or so, and the church was being restored so we couldn’t go in. Disappointment upon disappointment. I’ll just have to ask Moses to show me the film someday.

The final stop of the day was a restaurant/gift shop. We ate our fill of delicious food, talked with Dil and his wife, and went to the gift shop to dodge people hawking things for 900% what you would pay for them in Amman. I am not kidding, it was ridiculously expensive.