17/6: Aqaba!!!

Okay, I can't remember whether anything came in between these weekends (I'm sure there was), but insha'allah I'll remember it and add it later.

So Aqaba! This was an interesting trip. Kind of planned, kind of "insha'allah things will work out". One of our trip-mates organized it. But we suddenly added two / three people on the last leg.

So we left pretty much directly after school ended. Allie (the person who organized everything), booked us trips on this fully air conditioned, double decker, bathroom equipped bus (== awesome!!!). It's a four hour bus ride. Ya haram :(.

So there were a bunch of us on this trip. 7 guys in total (this gets fun later, just wait), and 4 girls: Joey, John, Tyler, Mark, Lanyon, Zane, et moi, Caroline, Ester, Nicole, and Allie.

So pretty much the whole bus ride, except for the first half an hour when I took a power nap, John, Joey, Lanyon and me were bro-ing out. There was this ridiculous Arabic comedy going on about this fat Britney Spears girl. It gets a twist when this one guy falls on his head after she starts dancing to hit me baby one more time (shakes the whole club) and suddenly thinks she's beautiful. It's a lot like Shallow Hall in that sense, but still one of the most ridiculous and annoying things in a while. I'll be sure to get it.

Most of the crew. I booked it on the bus, because I wanted to act Arab and not wait in line... Unlike these American tourists! PSH.

Some of the Bru Crew. I swear I'm on this trip.

The thing that makes Aqaba such a great place is that it's a tax free zone. So while we're coming through, they have a customs check point making sure you're not brining anything in out illegally. As you get closer to Aqaba, you're driving on a road in a valley, with huge rock hills on both sides of you. Beautiful, stunning, and kind of imposing.

We get to the bus station and it's completely dark outside. We each quadruple up and get in a taxi to drive back. This guy looks just like AH's uncle. Dressed conservatively with a big white beard. Except acts totally different. Firstly, he asks us where we're from, when we say America, he bursts into cheering: "AMERICA!!! I LOVE AMERICA! (proceeds to poke his head out the window) AMERICA. I LOVE AMERICA!"

Definitely one of the more bizarre senses of welcome I've heard ever. But hey, he's working for a tip. I didn't realize where we were staying in Aqaba until then, but we were on a maybe 15 minute trip outside the city and I got a whiff of that fresh salty sea breeze. Such a nice change compared to grimy Amman.

Turns out our hotel is less than five minutes to the Saudi border (win!), which means its due south of the city of Aqaba. We were staying in the Coral Bay Diving Resort (win!). Obviously, as the name sounds, it was expensive (and here's where the 7 guys comes into play), but we decided to minimize the cost and maximize the fun by putting all of us in one room (maximizing efficiency win!) -- Oh wait. No. 7 guys in one room doesn't work. So all of us get to this hotel, half of the group (two guys / two girls) go to the main entrance and check in to facilitate the charade that this is in fact one small group of American tourists, while half the group (namely the Bru Crew) sneak through this awfully convenient door that opens up to the beach. We bro out there while Zain fetches us and shows us our ridiculously roomy room (not). During our bro out session, we decide, "hey what a great idea it would be to sleep out on the beach chairs tonight". So we drop our stuff off, and head off to the beach, lacking preparation as we ever could. We were so excited.

Us on our soon to be beds

Aaaaand saba7 alfelafel!

It was the best nights sleep I've ever had. Those beach chairs were hard as rock, especially since I like to sleep on my side. You think the waves slapping the beach would be a soothing sound to go to sleep, but you also forget that you're outside and you can probably hear that nearby euro-disco-rave dance marathon in the middle of the night. Also, apparently Joey woke up in the middle of the night with two partakers of said dance marathon, staring at him. Great... Also, I should've learned this before when I slept in a bathtub and woke up with 83 mosquito bites in a Bali hotel while my family and were trying to not have to buy another room (sound familiar?). Bugs were flying all over the place. I got bit on the bottoms of my feet (which sucks big time), because they itched the whole time. I ended up using my spare shirt as a blanket for my feet, and my other shirt as a pillow. Think the stars would be nice outside? Yeah so did I, but there was another nearby hotel area that had this huge freaking stadium light pointing right in the direction of my eyes. Great.

That said, definitely worth the story. We woke up at 4:30 in the morning to the bright sun. Looking up, I see John covered in a sheet, using a room pillow and Mark using one of the beach chair cushions. I wish I was that smart to do that. But we all got up and went to the room, only to find out that our roommates dead bolted the door (apparently the room alarm goes off if you don't do it after a certain time at night). So we wake everyone up, and all crawl into the room sleeping on comforters (which actually was 10 times better than the beach chairs). Ahh rest. Glorious rest.

We wake up about four hours later and get ready for the glorious day. Namely, diving.

Tyler and Lanyon taking a dip

The hotel was stunning in the daylight

The group about to get our dive on

So the shabaab wakes up in phases the next morning, Zane and Tyler wake up first. As we didn't want to alert the hotel staff to the sudden influx of Americans at the breakfast buffet, Zane and Tyler brought back plates and plates of food. This stuff was gourmet, scrambled eggs and potatoes dish, quiches, toast, pita, hummus. Everything we could have wanted, except for maybe drinks. But hey.

Afterwards, we all get dressed for the beach. As you can see from the pictures above, this hotel was right off of a reef. It was fantastic: crystal blue water.

Saturday 12/6: Hefla kabeera!

Hey guys,

Sorry about my lack of posting. I realised two things in the past two weeks:

*1. I'm not interesting enough to post a blog for everyday
*2. It's hard enough trying to keep up with posting consistently, but insha'allah, things will go better.

I spoke about Abu Hazeem (my peer mentor) in one of my previous blogs but if you don't want to go back to check it out, here's the summary. He's a boss. See below:

Like I said, Boss.

So during the first week he actually invited me to come to one of his cousin's graduation party out of military college in his home in As Salt.

I leave around 4:45 on a Taxi to meet up with him by a bus station in a region called Swaylieh. Swaylieh is pretty much transportation central in Amman. There are buses to anywhere in Jordan there (one of Abu Hazeem's friends joked: "If you want to get to America, come to Swaylieh). I picked up Abu Hazeem and he directed him to this small shop in a small building on a decent sized street. We then went up a sketchy elevator and bought some blanks for his gun.

Yes it really was that sketchy haha.

We then went back to Swaylieh and took a bus to As Salt (Abu Hazeem's [going to shorten it to AH, no offense Abu Hazeem, your name just takes a long time to type :-P] friend gets off here, he told me I was welcome to have dinner at his family's house sometime, I'm telling you these Jordanians are absolutely excellent hosts). It was my first experience on one of the local buses that travel to destinations across Jordan. They weren't bad at all. The buses are a lot like the old school buses in Doha, except no air condition. This isn't too much of a problem because these drivers are booking it down the highways. Best part about them though is that it cost 50 cents to get to As Salt, nearly a 30 minute drive.

So we get to As Salt, AH grabs me a felafel from his favorite felafel place (score, <3 felafel), and then we go pick up the gun he's going to use for the hefla (party) that night. Arabs love firing guns at their parties (video to show soon).

We walked all the way to his cousin's place. In true arabic fashion (yet again), his cousin invites us into his house, serves us coffee, soda, and melon and they talk about the news. I follow shwai (little) of the conversation, but turns out he killed a nearly six foot long snake that got into his backyard with a rock. Looks like boss translates into Abu Hazeem in Arabic. After begging us to stay for dinner with them (something so simple as picking something up can turn into a multiple hour affair, it's absolutely amazing how this happens in Arabic culture), we left the house to catch a taxi to the hefla.

View on the way back from his cousin's place

Another view

We arrive at the hefla as it's about to get dark. I meet AH's relatives from his uncle's side. His uncle is dressed up in traditional arabic garb (see man dressed in white below) and bears a hefty beard. AH had to go leave quickly to change into his military style clothing, so he sat me down with his relatives.

I'm not going to lie, for the first few minutes I was actually a little scared. As I was walking over towards the family, I was sure to take off my American flag pin off my backpack; I didn't know what to expect really. I've been in situations like this plenty of times before, but never have I felt so alien. It was me, the only white American guy, in company of maybe 15, 20 middle aged men I have never met.

I began to talk in my best Arabic with one of AH's cousins close to me. I told them I was American, lived in Qatar for five years, studying engineering, and studying Arabic @ UJ. After that there wasn't much else I could talk about. One of his relatives came over (he was a bit more boisterous than the others) and started talking to me very quickly in Arabic. I got the gist of it replied the best I could, and then he began pointing at his uncle, the traditionally dressed, bearded man. He said in broken English "Bin Laden in Jordan! Tell Obama!". Everyone laughed, I laughed too, more out of nervousness more than anything. I'm sure he meant no harm or discomfort, but he kept going on after that in Arabic into something that I didn't really understand. I didn't really know what was going on, but no one was threatening or angered at anything, just really really happy. I felt a little bit better after that, was served some more coffee and some tea. The uncle joked around with me saying the tea was too sweet, he couldn't drink it, which did wonders to ease the nervousness.

Beginnings of the hefla

AH came back soon after, and the hefla began to fill up with scores of people in military garb. It really was cool to see. There wasn't much structure to it (like most of Arab culture), just a lot of dancing, gun firing, and fireworks. Best thing was, is this all happened in the middle of a busy street; cars were driving through debke (traditional Arabic dancing).

A debke line

The guys in military apparel dancing while a taxi passes by

The party went crazy, people yelling, dancing, speaking so much Arabic I couldn't understand, but it was fun. People always introduced themselves to me just like everyone else at the party and tried to make me feel at home. I sat next to a middle aged cousin of AH who spoke to me in English, practising his language while I practised mine. He spoke with me for much of the party, AH introduced me to a bunch of his other cousins, one of them studied French in university, they were all pretty amazed I was able to speak quite fluently! Only issue with speaking french now is that I would consistently mix up prepositions and smaller phrases with Arabic. My mind was swirling with intense concentration of me trying to separate the two.

After a bit of hanging out with AH's cousins, he brought me over to try dancing (which thanks to my previous debke knowledge from my Lebanese dance party in Pittsburgh wasn't too bad!). I did try some of the more traditional Jordanian dances (one of them is kind of like slap the bag, but instead of slapping the bag when you say something you dislike, you "stomp it to the ground" with a series of dance moves). Also, you might be able to hear the guy in the videos but a really high pitched voice usually making a weird noise, but that guy is one of AH's cousin's (surprise). He kept saying "Bryan Spencer! You are a brother among us! Ahlan wa sahlan!" (except in perfect Arabic). That really was one of the best things to hear. I really did feel welcomed after that. In addition, everyone started to call me "America" which was kind of fun. Videos after the jump.



Well that's pretty much my experience with the hefla kabeera. After that, I stayed over at AH's house, which has a beautiful view towards Amman. There I took some boss pictures with the gun (there's the explanation Mom!!!) and took a taxi to UJ in the morning.

Like a boss

Thursday 10/6

Next day, it was Thursday. The weekend started after class al hamdulillah!

After smoking arghileh all week, we planned to play soccer with some Jordanians that Joey, and John met before. It was really fun! It was the first time we got some exercise all week, so we were struggling a bit, but we still played about an hour of soccer in some 95 degree weather. It wasn't too terrible, but we ended up losing, Team USA 4 - Team Jordan 5 on a debatable corner call ;). The fact was, we got some good friends from this interaction. We talked with them for a bit afterwards and turns out they're some fun guys to hang out with.

Bakir and Ahmed with Joey and Zain

We go through our similar routine by hitting up AB's with the Brew Crew (Mark, Joey, John and me).

The Texas Bros

We ended up meeting a guy called Lanyon (think Grand Canyon with an L instead of a C), who's from California and interning with the King (SWEET RIGHT?!). He's helping out with some foreign energy investment in Jordan which immediately piqued Mark's and my interest (oorah petroleum industry!). Well turns out Lanyon's a really chill bro.

We then meet up with Zane and head to one of the numbered circles to hang out with the ladies.

A bunch of the guys leave in search of a beer, Joey, me and a few of the girls stay to hang around a bit more. Good choice for us. We got some coffee and grabbed a cab to meet these guys at the Marriott (#1 indication good idea we stayed). We got to the Marriott and got through the front door through a metal detector (#2). Tried to find the bar that they were in and spoke to the very well spoken concierge who politely pointed us in the right direction in perfect english (#3). While walking up the stairs, we noticed a wedding reception was taking place in the ballroom next door (#4).

Here's a picture of the guys hanging out in the bar with their 52 dinar pitcher-tain (two pitchers) of Amstel. 0.700 dinars to the dollar. You do the math.

From L->R: Lanyon, John, Mark, Zain

Got back to the apartment ready for a nice sleep.

Wednesday 9/6

The next day, classes were getting settled. We ended up eating some felafel (one of my favorite foods now) and had some hummus. Awesome.

After class though, we went to this place called the citadel which is a combination of a bunch of different types of ruins on this hill in East Amman. The ruins weren't fantastic, but the view from the hill is amazing. There, I also started my "soon to become the rage" lahme photo series. Stay tuned for more.

XXX 784, 793, 814, 837, 849, 852, 853, 855 XXX

After our trip, we decided to refresh ourselves with doing homework at a cafe. Lemon wa nana juice (lemon mint == best juice EVER) and matching argileh. While we were doing homework, some older guys sitting next to us starting chatting with us. One of them used to live in the US and started telling us stories about loose women, and one skinny Kuwaiti guy involving prostitutes. Apparently this skinny Kuwaiti guy traveled to the US in search of loose women but couldn't even get a prostitute to sleep with him. Definitely not what we were expecting but hilarious nevertheless.

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We finished the night with felafel and a late night movie. I think that day we watched "The Skulls". Definitely a must see thriller.

Monday & Tuesday 7 & 8/6

Next day, we went to our first class which we were assigned to initially. I was placed in Intermediate 1. Class was fun, we learned a lot of cool colloquial words (or a'amia) and learned how useless Al Kitaab actually is in learning spoken arabic. I must have learned more conversational words in that class than all of my time in arabic class total (no offense to the teachers of course, but do we REALLY need to know how to say united nations before we learn "to think" Al Kitaab?). We got our placement exam back at the end of class, I got placed in Intermediate II. Yay. Nothing else really happened on Monday. AB's again and some chilling like always. Late night movie to top it off.

Next day, tried to visit my intermediate II class. Turns out it was perfect for my level and am now happily in there!

After lunch, we went to our A'amia class (field trip today yessss!!!). We took a taxi ride to a small shop area and learned a lot of the words for foods and appliances. This guy below (what a gem) was in the butcher shop. He was hilarious, every single time, he would lift up a certain body part of an animal (including a skull with eyes and tongue) and would act out the body part as well, yelling his heart out the whole time.

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We also went to the fruit market and appliance store. Nothing to write home about due to the absence of crazy man acting out body parts.

Finished the night @ AB's with argileh, shawerma and late night movie with our newly bought pistachios. Life couldn't be better.

Sunday 6/6

Sunday, started off pretty terribly; we took our placement test from 9 - 12. I wasn't expecting to do too well in this exam because obviously, it was meant for people with much higher levels of arabic to pass. However, I got out of that exam sore in places I shouldn't have been. That exam was the opposite of what was fun and passable.

We then met near the cafeteria and were assigned our peer mentors. Turns out I got the biggest boss in Jordan, Ahmed Abu Hazeem (see below).



Abu Hazeem for short (meaning father of thunder [even his name is completely boss]) is a true Jordanian (his family is originally from Jordan. Many Jordanians have roots in Palestine). His father worked as a guard for the former King Hussein. He knows a lot of people also, pretty much I could ask anyone on campus, and they'd know where he was (he's also huge, taller than me). I went around with Abu Hazeem (later found out that he has wasta up the wazoo) for the rest of the day with my bro's, we ended up smoking some arghileh, grabbing some felafel then heading home.

Saturday 5/6

Hey loyal blog followers!

I'm baack with some awesome stuff to post. I'll separate my posts by day to make things easier

So I'll start off with our first trip to Aj Jami'at Al Ourdunia (University of Jordan).

Before I got here, I had my initial thoughts about the university: small, lines of buildings, pretty bland. When we got there, on Saturday (the last day of the weekend in the ME) it turns out we I was so wrong. The campus was huge and lined with tall green trees (an odd sight for a Doha-ian [I guess?]). As you enter the main security gates (dubbed "Guantanamo Gates" by the student body ), straight a head of you a few hundred meters down the main street you have the burj al sa'a (clock tower). Modern style buildings litter the campus, each with its own "faculty" (architecture, art and design, foreign languages, learning sciences). It amazed me how many things that they studied in university here. I had a hard time comparing this to what was in Doha (Education City, Qatar University); the buildings weren't nearly as modern or expensive, but this campus had such a more homey feel. You could see students sitting in benches by the street, some people playing tennis in a closed off area, Jordanian flags literally everywhere: definitely a larger sense of community here.

That said, the campus is beautiful. It's nice to see so much green again!









We didn't start school yet, however, just a small tour of the campus and where our classes would be. After, all of us went back to our apartments.

The frat stars (as my roommates and I were later dubbed) decided to take a bit of a stroll and see what the surroundings are like. We pretty much took a step out of our apartment and boom, taxi blaring its horn looking for a fare strolling down the street behind us (there are pretty much two taxis for every person in Jordan, or so it seems. They're also dirt cheap at around a dinar and a half for a ten minute ride coming to about two dollars).

So we hop in the cab and take a ride to the nearest commercial area called Douwar Waha (Waha Circle). We stop by a local fruit store, pick up some noms for breakfast (juiciest apricots I've had in a while) and keep strolling down the street. We see pretty much everything we need: a bakery, book store, phone store for credit, electronics store, nuts store (yay pistachios!), and our favorite place... AB's. We don't know the actual name to the shisha bar there, but the owner's name is Abdullah. He speaks pretty great English (used to live in Canada) which helps us a lot when we don't know exactly what to ask (we asked for the check [or so we thought] the other day and the waiter got AB and he asked if we wanted a chocolate cake. Al humdulillah (thanks be to God), AB was there to save the day (or just a few dinars).

That said, AB has become one of our frequents with some awesome sandwiches, cheap arghileh, and a projector screen for the world cup!



After AB's, we went to get some shawerma at the local sandwich store next door. We ordered some shawerma, and were given free felafel while we were waiting. Joey non chalantly asked how to make felafel, and the guy took us on a tour of the felafel making facilities. Sweet beans (chick peas = some sort of bean. PUN WIN).

It's actually a pretty cool process, they mix some kind of green and chick peas and put it in the deep frier. I wish I could be more specific, but I kind of forget haha.



We then went back to our apartment, fully satisfied after our first trip to AB's, and crashed after a late night movie. Nomsasaurus.

Post Awaal!

Ahlan wa sahlan!

"Welcome to Jordan"! It's something I've been hearing a lot since I got to Amman last week. Despite everything that's been going on in the Middle East these days, despite being American, I have never felt unwelcome.

We arrived in Amman, Jordan, a number of days after the "Gaza flotilla" catastrophe. We stayed at the Al - Manar hotel, nothing to write home about (hence the blog) but it had internet which was nice. A bunch of us were excited to head out and start exploring Amman, but the staff told us we couldn't leave. Apparently, our hotel was located close to the start of a rally point for demonstrations, and it being Friday (generally the day where demonstrations take place), we were told to stay in for safety reasons.

So we hung around the hotel for a bit, massing around the internet room (typical American college students can't get enough of facebook). I ended up meeting a bunch of people the first night: Joey (one of Nabeel's close friends from Texas A&M [Nabeel is a good friend of mine from high school]), and Bri (got our wisdom teeth taken out one day apart by the same dental surgeon) just to name a few with small world mentions from Texas.

The next day we took a trip to eat some great Arabic food (half the reason why I'm abroad at the moment. Ohebu shawerma, falafel, wa hummus!). Apparently, King Abdullah II goes there to eat all the time. It's a quaint little place about twenty minutes outside of Amman, cool architecture (see pictures below).

Picture of one of the courses of food we got. Ohebu hummus!!!

After we ate our multiple course meal (in full Arabic fashion, we were all fit to burst afterwards), we went up and saw some beautiful views of the countryside. The owner then began speaking with a few of us, showing us around. He was very kind, again welcoming as ever. He began to ask questions starting out with "Who is from Texas?". Obviously, being from Texas, and a conservative I was a bit uneasy about this. I knew he was going to at some point slam Bush for his foreign policy in the region. I raised my hand, said yes, bracing for the worst. He came up to me and asked me "Where are your guns?!". We all laughed, and I was relieved. He began to ask a few other questions, who's from Chicago, DC.

Picture of the building and everyone gathering around for the questions!

Never once did I feel threatened by this man. Welcoming as ever, he invited us back down for coffee.

After our absolutely fantastic lunch we went to the King's car museum. It was pretty cool, lots of nifty cars from way back when, but not being too big of a car buff, it was nothing to write home about. The coolest things were the motor cycles in the front before we got in (see below).

Joey on one of the motorbikes.

We got back to the hotel, internet-ed, and chilled for the rest of the night. I found myself hanging out with a few of the guys, Zain (my hotel room roommate -- chill guy from Colorado. He had spent some time recently in Morocco), Mark (KapSig from Penn State, chill "bro", also a petroleum engineer, we've made some engineering jokes here and there), John (another "bro" from GW. He's a Pike, chill dude), and Joey (KapSig from Texas A&M, mentioned before). We bro-ed out in the hotel bar for a bit before hitting the sack.

Next day, we were to move into our new houses / apartments. Turns out John, Joey and me were rooming together in our own housing section. We were first ecstatic, being the total "bro" house, but then we were worried; either we were going to be in the house that they could only afford one apartment in, or the more likely, stuck us in the place after they couldn't get anymore of the nice apartments. We also heard from one of the Resident Staff that there were "two or three of us living near the Israeli Embassy" (obviously a place that throws great parties [I see a lot of pictures with guys waving flags and dancing in front of it, see below]). Being the only group with three people in it, it was obviously us. We were... excited about this all.

Us bro's doing what we do best.

We got in the van to take us to our place with a few of our resident staff. They told us we lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Amman, and one of the safest. Because the Israeli embassy is close, there are tons of police (and secret police!) patrols around our house all the time. We also got very excited about the fact that we lived in the nicest neighborhood in town. We got to the apartment and we were thrilled. See pictures below. Everything was decked out in true Arabic fashion, frills, trims, and doilies everywhere. Our rooms were huge, kitchen nice and equipped, have a water cooler == save katheera dinars (lots of money) on water.

Best part: open wireless connection next door. It goes good and bad here and now, but it works, and it's 80 dollars cheaper than renting out an adapter.

Picture of the outside of the house

Kitchen picture. It's huuuuge!

Dining room slash seating room

Bedroom picture

Porch outside our house. Much chilling to be had

When we first moved in, we were introduced to our landlord and guard (who was initially introduced as Ahmed, but promptly "corrected" the landlord that his name was "Ramadan"). He wore an NFL Coor's Light polo -- obviously a complete bad ass and total bro. We later asked him about the polo, said a friend gave it to him. He obviously had no idea he was wearing a beer shirt.

We then proceeded into the completely logical conversation, "Who you rooting for in the World Cup?" Pretty much everyone and their dog is rooting for Brazil. Obviously they want to root for the winning team. Apparently, the city goes crazy during the cup, we're super pumped.

Well, it's getting a bit late. And I have to wake up early for class. Inshallah, I'll have time to write about getting ready for classes soon. I hope you enjoy this!