Utter Failure!

I'm sorry, everyone. I stopped writing, but I also know, based on the nifty 'Stats' page that I have, that y'all stopped reading as well, so no hard feelings?

This weekend I went to Mt. Nebo, Mkawir (too many consonants!!), Madaba and the Jordan River. The most interesting part of the day was standing at the bank of the now-four-meter-wide Jordan River and looking across to the highly-developed Israeli baptismal site center, and then turning around to see the wooden, straw-roofed gazebo on the Jordanian side. Did you know that 90% of the water in the Jordan River is diverted? And people are wondering why the Dead Sea is, you know, dying. The most beautiful part of the day was climbing over the boundary of the guided path to get a phenomenal view of the entire Dead Sea at sunset.


Yesterday, I went to see Jeffrey Sachs speak at the Columbia University Middle East Research Center (aka. Epcot). It's a palace, donated by a woman who had lots and lots of money. I suppose that's all we really need to know about her. Anyway, Jeffrey Sachs talked about how dumb senators are and how we are heading toward the apocalypse and how we have to do something now and how things are weird and how he will be mad when the earth is f**ked up beyond repair (I'm paraphrasing). No surprises there. I also ran into a professor that I saw every day this summer who didn't remember me. That was only slightly awkward.

I've also lost a sock.

I've Run Out of Applicable Movie Quotes

I started this post but didn't have time to finish it all in one sitting, so here is a post from Sunday -- more to come on the rest of the trip:
_________________________
We are all now still in Rishikesh.

Yesterday, we wandered around the town, ate lunch overlooking the Ganges, relaxed, and walked about 5 km up the road to see a tremendous waterfall. The whole day was full of incredibly interesting people.

As we were trying to find an ATM earlier in the morning, we met a kid from Georgia and a woman from Toronto. Brandon, from Georgia, was just finishing up a 3-week yoga course in Rishikesh and was about to go home. The woman, whose name I don't remember, was just travelling through Asia until she got to Singapore to meet up with her boyfriend in December. No plan. No companion. Just travelling.

Later in the day, we wanted to go visit a waterfall that we had heard about. After Aaron was nearly attacked by a monkey (his fault), we reached a sort of trail/non-trail that an Italian guy had told us about at breakfast. We had asked some women earlier, on our way there, where exactly the waterfall was, but they said that they couldn't make it up because there was a guard with a gun saying there was a wild elephant. At the head of the trail sat 6 or 7 French punk-types from Tours, but no armed guard, so up we went. About five minutes up, we found some lovely evidence of an elephant which must have been there earlier -- but since it wasn't steaming, we decided to continue up the trail. Once we reached a fork in the trail, the last 'bad omen' hit us in the form of a man screaming. I turned to Jackie, Jackie looked at me, Aaron was looking at something else, as he usually is, and we decided to walk back down. When we ran into the French punk-types again, as they were heading up, and who had now been joined by two Brits, we changed our minds again, turned around, and joined the larger group back up the trail. Aaron said to one of the Brits 'Well, if we're all trampled by an elephant, it will probably be on the BBC,' to which they replied 'Oh that's funny and quite likely, seeing as we work for the BBC.'

When we reached the waterfall, it turns out that the screaming man was actually this dude having a religious experience under the waterfall. He was also partial to growling and being generally odd. The waterfall was beautiful and well worth the going up and down and back up again. The water was clean, the colors were vibrant (a far cry from the monotonous, though likewise beautiful, desert) and it was a very nice find. After the waterfall, we walked back with the Brits, Howard and Jack, and talked the whole way. It turns out that Howard has the coolest job ever and frequently reports with Jack, who has the second coolest job ever. Howard was posted in Bangladesh until quite recently and just moved to Delhi. He's reported from Japan, Bangladesh, India, Uganda, the US and, of course, Britain. Jack has filmed him in most of those places, but from what I understand travels less. If you want to see their reports, look up 'Howard Johnson and Jack Garland' or one of their names and 'couchsurfing.'

Later that evening, we went to a restaurant near our hotel for dinner. As Jackie and Aaron were sitting down at a corner table, an older gentleman with a book, long grey hair and robes was just sitting down at the same time. When I joined them, they were talking and eventually we just invited the man to join us for dinner. As it turns out, he was also an interesting character. Living in Rishikesh, he had become a Hindu monk when he was 17 and somewhere along the way, his guru had told him to study anything and to do it anywhere and everywhere. He told us about how he followed Martin Luther King Jr. around in the 60s, how he had devised a plan for peace in the Middle East (which involved moving Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula and creating a new state) and sent it to Arafat (??), went to Thailand every year for visa purposes but has another life there, created a space-dancing computer game, studied in Germany for a number of years, knows some professor at Harvard really well....and that was only what we learned over the course of a few hours. I know it all seems a bit far-fetched and I'm not sure how much of it was true, but regardless, the conversation was phenomenally interesting. He has a website, which Jackie, Aaron and I will soon visit, where he posts his ideas and his photography.
______________________________________

More to come on Delhi and making it back to Amman.

Love,
anneke

To Infinity and Beyond

Hello all,

I'm on the clock (a whole 20 rupees per half hour...which is like 50 cents), so this is going to be quick and dirty.

Jackie, Aaron and I are now in Rishikesh. When Aaron and I arrived in New Delhi yesterday at 5:00am, I was so happy to finally see color. In the desert, there is not much color. Despite the beauty that is countless tons of sand, it has been nice to see trees, shrubs, brightly painted vehicles and goats (also brightly painted, in case you wondering). We wandered around for a bit and we learned how to ignore insistent people, that I look Indian (...with this hair?), where to hide your money and that 4am fireworks are acceptable. We spent most of the day being hassled because we didn't no any better but made it home alive, had a wonderful dinner with my friend Raman and his wife and watched a little anime in Hindi.

This morning, Jackie arrived (hamdulillah, seeing as the hostel is unmarked, two streets past one dirt road, across from a building without an address and between an Indian food restaurant and an apartment, both so clearly marked...) and we moseyed over to the bus station, found a bus to Rishikesh at 9:30am and made it here by around 7. Awesome.

Jackie and I are staying at a dank (good dank, not bad dank) place at the top of a mountain and drinking tea while overlooking the Ganges. Jealous? Thought so. Aaron is.....somewhere else and hopefully we will find him in the morning. He's the only white person in a baseball cap for miles, so I can't imagine it being too difficult....*sigh*. Good thing we have a nice vantage point?

love,
anneke

Addendum 2

things that should not happen:

Seti, the maid, should not tell me that I'm more beautiful than she is because I'm whiter than she is.

some bitch at the gym should not tell me that I shouldn't run because that's not how one loses weight.

said bitch should not touch me when explaining to me where she thinks I should lose weight.

people shouldn't confuse brown people for other brown people just because they are brown.

epithets that demean certain groups.

war.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Hellooooooo!

Well, the whole daily posting thing has (clearly) not worked out. For that I apologize. This week was actually particularly hard because of midterms. I would, however, like to thank the good people of Oregon for not electing the governor whose name was easiest to pronounce.....as I was somewhat afraid about 3 hours before all of the results were in that that was what had happened.

Internal dialogue of the Oregon voter that I fear:

- Kitz-ha-what? Ooooo Dudley. Yes, like Doright. Or the kid in Harry Potter. He's got my vote!

In other news, this week was went well. Last weekend, I stayed in Amman to do research for the professor that I work/slave/do-things-for-without-charge-for-the-sake-of-let's-be-completely-honest-here-my-future-career-and-job-prospects. Staying in town led to a terribly fortuitous outing with Ella, Jackie, Alyssa and Chris, which ended with Jackie and me deciding to go to, no, not Beirut, not Damascus, not Egypt, not even Turkey, but to India. Yes, ladies, gentlemen and intersex, by this time next week I will be in New Delhi, India. We've also managed to convince our friend Aaron to join us on this trip and he will (hopefully) be buying his ticket this week.

Most of my week, thus, was spent preparing for this trip and studying for midterms. The process began with a panic attack. I am not the most organized person and so, when I realized that my ticket had already been bought and that the visa process, for a non-resident, would take between a week and 10 days, I went through all the required phases. My denial and isolation stage consisted of mostly talking to myself (out loud and, of course, in a public place) and reassuring myself that everything was going to be ok and that awful things like spending money on a plane ticket and having that plane ticket go to waste don't happen...My anger stage should really be called 'visible nervousness,' wherein I sort of twitched a lot, called myself stupid over and over again (again, out loud and in a public place) and called one of the program administrators waaaay too many times and waaaay too late...The bargaining stage proved fruitless, since the only deity I could think to pray to was Squat, who is actually the goddess of finding parking as opposed to foolishly impulsive decisions regarding plane tickets....Depression....Finally, I reached acceptance, which meant that I started to constructively look for answers.

I started to think. I considered skipping my midterm and applying for the visa as soon as possible, which turned out to be an exceedingly bad idea. I considered attending another section in order to take the midterm and apply for the visa as soon as possible. Finally, though, I found the answer in the form of a lovely woman on our program named Alyssa -- she shared with me that, if one has residency, one can get one's Indian visa in just one day. One day!

I, thus, now have Jordanian residency until October of 2011! This apparently also means that I can get discounts at certain grocery stores like 'old-people-tuesdays' at New Seasons.

The plan now is that we will land in Delhi, leave for Rishikesh the next day (a wonderful place for Yoga), spend 2 or 3 days there, return to Delhi for the remainder of the trip but spend one day going down to see the Taj Mahal. I do not look forward to the day that I run out of luck, as I have spent most of my life being very fortunate in recovering from my ineptitude (luck being, I'm sure, a combination, of privilege, crackpot creativity and the forces of the universe).

Once this ordeal was finished, I studied for my midterms, took my midterms, went through the grief process one more time over said midterms and am now quite at peace. The weather has been getting colder (which merited, for those of you who saw my status on that-site-that-I-said-that-I-wouldn't-go-on-anymore-but-lasted-only-like-4-days-because-i-have-no-self-control-dilini-you-know-what-i'm-talking-about, my Smartwools) but the weather has stayed nice, which has given Amman a nice autumnal feeling. Coming home today at around 4 o'clock reminded me of leaving school to come home in September in Portland, when everything still felt new from the beginning of the school year and there was nothing to worry about besides waiting for my afternoon snack (preferably Graham Crackers, if anyone cares).

I will write more times this week as I prepare for the trip and, hopefully, have some insightful thoughts.

Love,
anneke

p.s. I'm not sure how all of you from Australia, Russia and Poland found my blog (welcome to the information age....creepy, huh?) but thanks for reading!

Prison Tattoos and Coke Nails

I sneaked/snuck into the house today in order to avoid being fed immediately.

Last weekend, Dana, Mara and I went down to Karak in an attempt to meet up with other friends who were already in the area and planning to go hiking. We met at the bus station at about 6:30 (I was, of course, there closer to like 6:50 -- love me as I am!) and from there boarded a small bus going to Karak. In our collective wisdom and against all odds, really, we managed to fall asleep in the exceedingly uncomfortable seats on the bus and nearly end up on our way back to Amman. Luckily, though, a good samaritan informed us that we were, indeed, already in Karak and that we should probably.....get off.

And that we did. Then, we were completely lost, having no idea where to meet our friends, where they were or how to get to any trail. Luckily, though, Karak is only a little bit of a shithole and actually has a very nice castle, which we decided to visit after a pushy cab driver tried to insist to us far too many times that he could drive us anywhere, at any time, forever. After getting his number and having him call us (read: unfortunately, me) about nine times, we decided to stay at the castle and hash out our plans so we could bypass ever seeing this cab driver again.

Inside the castle, we ambled around a bit before sitting down with my guide book, which I, only on a whim, brought with me. Despite the presence of said guide book, however, we were still a group of three completely indecisive people and our reading amounted to about just a notch above nothing. All we knew was that we wanted to hike. Luckily, though, we had the vocabulary (sort of) to express this desire to a very nice man inside the castle who chose a place for us, directed us to where we might find a van that would take us there and told us about how much it would cost, all while giving us a brief tour of the castle. He also had an excellent mustache -- one that I would grow if I had the balls....heheheeeeeeeee.

After shuffling our way down the giant hill upon which the castle was perched, we found a line of vans and hopped into the first one we saw, complete with fringe from the top of the windshield and nearly unbearable shag carpeting. (Sidenote: many things that in the states would be incontrovertible deal-breakers in the States seem to be whole-heartedly embraced here, such as shag carpeting on the bottom of vans, lots of hair product, visible chest hair, leering, tiny mustaches (particularly in Syria) and living with one's parents.) The driver, who was actually very nice, was either hard of hearing or was for some other reason completely unaware of the fact that he was always yelling. Always. Every time he turned around to talk to us, every time he got on the phone (really comforting when were racing through the precarious roads in the steep desert mountains) and even when he was talking to his friend's wife (a friend who he stopped to pick up, along with this man's groceries, on our way to our mysterious destination), he was literally bellowing. Friendly bellowing, but bellowing nonetheless.

When we reached our destination we were pleased to find that......there was no destination. The name that we had been given was actually just the name of an area -- Wadi Bin Hammad. Lovely, but hardly a way to start a hike. Mashallah, we found a sign that read 'Hot Springs -- 8km.' I'll leave it to you to translate that into Arabic for the full experience of the story. Either way, we were on our (more expensive) way, mostly thanks to Dana who encouraged both Mara and I to splurge a whole 5JDs. I'm my father's child -- what can I say? Upon reaching the hot springs, we realized that we had definitely found a gem. The man who greeted our disoriented selves welcomed us with a speech in English that he had clearly prepared many years ago but had only had the opportunity to use once or twice. He asked us how we found them, as they didn't normally get very many foreign tourists. He was only slightly disappointed when we explained to him that we literally stumbled upon the place.

The wadi was beautiful. Walking into it felt, for lack of a better description, like walking into the movie Avatar. It was lush, green and full of water. The stream running down the middle, which was a beautiful and welcome antithesis to the desert we had just driven 45 minutes through, was lukewarm and welcomed our bare feet. Soon, though, the rocks in the bed of the steam tickled our feet and were just downright uncomfortable, so we continued down in our shoes. The mosses were bright green and the rocks were vibrant reds, yellows and blues. Water dripped down from overhanging rocks like desert icicles, in a solid stream. I came to understand the Looney-Tunes-style oasis, complete with palm trees but, unfortunately, lacking the beautiful (and animated) women. Instead, we got a nasty dude who wanted to show us his dong who, even more unfortunately, was not animated. At least in that case the size would have been embellished.

The trip back was interesting. We managed to find one of the last busses heading back to Amman from Karak. It was much larger (and only 5 JDs for the three of us) than the bus on our trip down, but we did get a lovely man with a scorpion tattoo that looked like it had been etched rather than done with a machine, a pseudo-mullet, long scars and a few open wounds on his arms (indicative of knife fighting, both in the past and recently), lovely eyes, a coke nail and an impressive amount of shit in his teeth. We're talking like plaque build-up. Presumably, he could have used to coke nail to remedy the teeth problem, but I guess he just wasn't interested. Either way, as a result of these qualities, since I was terribly distracted when he was talking to me, only mildly afraid that something of him (be it a tooth or a flap of skin) might fall off and hit me, I did not fully comprehend that he was telling me that they had only /two/ seats on the bus instead of three. The first half of the ride, thus, was terribly uncomfortable for the three of us mushed together on two seats. Finally, though, some men shuffled around, people got off, we got an extra seat and, in the end, we made it all the way back to Amman. Time well spent.

Also, our cab driver told us all about how he had been in America, having visited Texas and New Mexico. When we asked him about it he told us about how the Jordanian government had sent Jordanian soldiers to the southern border of the United States to, in his words, 'round up the Mexicans and throw them back' in order that they might learn how to do the same to the Iraqis coming through the Eastern Jordanian border.....you should have seen his excitement. Yet another mindfuck in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

love,
anneke

insomnia

I can't sleep -- it's 1:30 in the morning and I'm exhausted, but for some reason I can't sleep. I have already found another idea for a tattoo, decided to build a pinhole camera to make up for the one I lost (because I really can't justify the purchase of another one) and listened to a lot of J Dilla and Neil Young.....because they are similar.

This week was something of a roller coaster. I began the week, fresh back from Wadi Rum and adorned with the henna which has now faded to an unnatural orange that makes it look like I scribbled on the inside of my hand with a marker like a second grader. Not something that is beyond me, but, for lack of a better description, this is honestly what it looks like. Anyway, that evening I came back for dinner, was very well received by everyone at home and fed....again. That night, however, was Qur'an study again, so I was relegated to the study, which was fine since I had a lot of work to do anyway. Nothing like being trapped by the discomfort of the local religious leader to really force you to get your shit done.

The one person who came in to check on me, though, was Seti. For those of you who haven't been reading, Seti is the maid. She and I get along very well as she is incredibly sweet, if somewhat young-minded, though I wouldn't expect anything more from someone who has not spent much extensive time with anyone her own age since she was 18 and came to this country with no knowledge of the local language. The second time she came to check on me, she asked me if we could look on googlemaps for her house again. The context for this request is that last week she explained to me that she knew nothing about computers, so I (in my mind now, foolishly) tried to help her find something familiar on googlemaps -- an attempt which proved fruitless because she knew neither the street name of her house nor the English spelling of her neighborhood. On our second attempt though, she told me a little bit about how much she missed her country and, as her eyes welled up with tears for just a moment, how the last time she was on the phone with her son, he asked her only once to come home. My dueling emotions were first telling me that I was so stupid to have shown this to her and that reminding her of what she's missing and has been missing for the last 12 years, that being her son's entire youth and her marriage. On the other hand, though, I can't imagine that she doesn't think of home every day already. Either way, I'm at a loss. The only conclusion I've been able to come to thus far, though, is that, young-minded or not, no one deserves that.

Over the next few days, on a completely different note seeing as life apparently goes on, it was found that it may actually be possible for Jackie and me to visit Damascus as well as Beirut during Eid, since we may be able to send our passports back to the embassy, get them back with visas, pay for a bus through Damascus to Syria and still pay less than a plane ticket. This new development was, however, still overshadowed by the stress of planning the trip logistics because I have a lot of trouble with commitment, like my dear friend Zoe who I believe still has trouble peeling an orange for this reason.

Things that made this week nice, though, include:

- lunchtime argileh at a new, super-secret cafe that is not frequented by CIEE students

- having my french tutor tell me that I do have a shot at passing the test that I need to pass when I get home

- baking cookies for my host family and, subsequently, having a long and mostly Arabic conversation with my host mother, who is now trying to convince me to stay for the year.

- sitting in on a World Affairs Council meeting, which not only consisted of about 20, nine-bajillion-year-old Jordanian men and one woman, all of whom were once MPs, ambassadors, etc., but was also conducted entirely in Arabic (read: my only contribution to the entire event was sitting there and looking pretty, rather, not horrifyingly wrinkly)

- getting to retake a test that I failed (to be fair, I'm in a class that I don't really belong in because, to be quite honest, I think that the administrators forgot about me and then used the hyper-scientific assessment of throwing darts at the fucking wall to determine my placement.)

- taking an online quiz about what shape I am at Betsy's house.

- finally getting another language partner after having been dumped by my first one, who I never even met

- getting the number of an older-than-he-looks, tattooed, bald-headed Jordanian man named Ahmad who, a) was a bouncer for a long time, b) is who I should apparently call if I ever have a problem and c) invited me over to his house, where his wife will make mansaf, and then out on the town, where he intends to help me get a tattoo.

I apologize that non-cohesive posts have now become a trend here. Bear with me while I develop, you know, basic writing skills. Also, I'm only sort of sorry that this post isn't as much fun. I just have a lot of feelings.....nothing more than feelings.

love,

anneke