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!
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