كرة القدم ، قهوة ، والبتراء !

       Well, eventful is the word I would use to describe the past couple of weeks. I realize that this post is going to be a bit like an essay because of how long it's been since I updated you guys, so maybe I'll put an intermission right in the middle to break it into bite-sized chunks!

Where to start...

I'll get the boring stuff out of the way first: So, I've been spending 18 hours a week in classrooms, equally split between the biggest and oldest university in Jordan (celebrating its 50th year this year) and the American-infested study abroad office building, 12 hours of that being entirely focused on written and spoken Arabic, with professors that refuse to speak a word of English (lovin' it), and the other 6 hours studying the history and perspectives of the Arabs! It's been a crazy 100 years for them. Apart from giving me a ton of ensight into how everyone around me views the world (and me), class is far from being my favorite part of the trip (naturally), so I won't spend too much time talking about it!

When I left off, I had just moved in with my host family. I actually got super discouraged after I moved in with them, having a really hard time understanding their Arabic and losing all motivation to study the language, but once classes started I snapped out of it and was right back to spending all of my free time studying local phrases and idioms and anything else that would make my time here more productive. It does feel a bit belittling to have people assume that you don't know a word of Arabic and ask childishly if you can read the name of one newspaper or another, but it is humbling and I've learned more than I expected from conversations that started that way.

I've committed (verbally at least) to not speak English at any time for the rest of the semester  (besides a couple of rare exceptions) starting on October 1st, and that's coming up pretty soon, so I'm looking forward to seeing some Arabs' reactions when I say "I don't speak English". It is intimidating, though, but I think I'm more excited than anything. Not sure my roommate is too excited about it though! The University and my study abroad program paired me up with a peer language tutor last week who has committed to hang out with me for at least 3 hours a week and chat about whatever we want in Arabic. When we met we were sent on a scavenger hunt, wandering all over downtown, trying to do a whole list of things, talking to locals, etc. and, of course, I spent the whole time following him around because I had only been to downtown once before. The funny thing about this is, though, his name is 'Issa... which, for those of you that aren't too fimiliar with Arabic, is the Muslim name for Jesus. My name is Christian and I spent an evening following a guy named after Jesus. We thought it was hilarious, if you don't, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Anyway, we ate Kunafeh (a cheesy, baklava-esque Middle Eastern dessert), tried to buy a poster of the King, and went to the strangest art museum I've ever been to. He's an awesome guy, very grateful for that.
Story time!

Despite my best efforts, people here found out about my birthday 2 weeks ago. It was a crazy week/weekend to say the least. I'll start with the day before my birthday. Sadly, I couldn't make it to the Jordan v Iran friendly soccer match (for a number of complicated Middle-Eastern-style-planning related reasons), but luckily the Jordan v Australia 2014 World Cup Qualifying match was being played the night before my birthday! It was an ordeal just trying to catch a taxi out to the stadium, because it felt like every Jordanian from every city within an hour drive of Amman was trying to go. After 30-45 minutes spent stuck in traffic, we made it to the outskirts of town where the modestly-sized national stadium is at, only to find out that the stadium was completely full already (for Jordanians at least) and half of Amman was still trying to get in anyway. I tried to slip through the police baracade set up to keep them out, thinking that I looked enough like an Australian to get through, but I was turned away somewhat forcibly. Eventually I slipped through with a big group of white people that showed up later, and got pointed to the Aussie section (caged off from the rest of the stadium), and played the role of the obnoxious American (rare for me, but it was fun), and cheered as loud as I could for Jordan right in the middle of all of the Aussies. Amman went nuts when Jordan upset Australia beating them 2-1. Thinking I'd save some money going home I got on a bus with my roomie instead of taking a taxi, which got packed like a can of sardines full of Jordanians. I hung out of the bus window the whole drive home (through a celebratory traffic jam), prompting a lot of Jordans who thought I was Aussie to give me some rude gestures and laughs, until I responded with either "I'm American!" (no doubt the ONLY time I will be yelling that to anyone) or "I'm Jordanian!", and their gestures turned into smiles and thumbs up and "sorry! I love you!". The whole bus found out it was my birthday so they sang to me in Arabic just like they had been singing about Jordan's victory. Turns out I was on the wrong bus though, and was driving into the middle of nowhere north of Amman at around midnight. Quickly hopped out and caught a taxi back (I guess I can't avoid those after all), and then started 4 hours of Arabic homework! (I spent my birthday in a zombie-like sleep-deprived state in class, but it was worth it.) I went out and got the mandatory 21st-birthday-drink that weekend (and no less than 3 birthday cakes) and spent the evening on a roof-top cafe overlooking Amman. Great birthday.


INTERMISSION!
 + some interesting pictures for those of you whose concentration is fading!

The weekend was restful and fun, but after 2 really short days (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday, work and classes start back up every Sunday-Thursday), I was right back to spending enough time in class and on homework to re-enforce my desire to drop out of class and just learn Arabic from studying dictionaries and textbooks on my own time and wandering around the streets of Jordan, but sadly that's not really an option, and besides, my professors are pretty great and the classes are awesome (at least when I'm not completely exhausted). The 3-day weekend/trip to Wadi Rum, The Red Sea, and Petra came to my rescue. We all packed into a few buses and drove out into the desert, where we hopped into the back of little 4x4 pickup trucks and bounced around the desert (the same place where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed) stopping at awesome look-out points and running down massive sand dunes as fast as we could, and riding camels out to a Beduin (nomadic Arabs) camp, where we spent the night dancing, smoking hookah, and star-gazing. It may be somewhat lifeless out there in the desert, but God sure made it beautiful, He really speaks pretty loudly about who He is in places like that. From there (too rushed in my opinion, definitely going back on my own later in the semester), we woke up the next morning and drove down to the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea and got on some big tour boats. From the city of Aqaba we could see Israel, Egypt, and Jordan all at the same time without so much as turning our heads. From out on the water we could see Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all from the same spot. Mind-blowing. We snorkeled a bit in (apparently) the 2nd best coral reef for snorkeling/diving in the world, and then drove off to Petra for the night. Our hotel put on a party for us, filled with Mansaf (the traditional dish of Jordan, which you eat with your hands and pack into bite-size, rice, chicken, bread, and sauce packed handfuls), traditional Jordanian dancing, and loud Arab music.

And then came Petra itself. One of the Seven Wonders of the World and rightfully so. We spent the whole day wandering around seeing all of the ruins (there are a lot more than just the one in the Indiana Jones movie). Just a little history side-note: The Beduins that lived in and around the ruins after Jordan became an independent country made a deal with the royal family when Petra was being established as an World Heritage Site. The deal was that they would move out of the ruins as long as they were the only people ever allowed to ever own businesses in Petra. The only reason I bring that up is because there were awesome little Beduin kids all over Petra selling things like postcards and necklaces. One of my favorite selling pitches I heard from them was "For your wife! she love you more!", but there were plenty of great ones, haha. After we finished the tour, we had the option of climbing the 800 stairs to the Monastery (the one in my Facebook profile pic), which was a complete no-brainer. I half-jogged the whole 800 stairs out of excitement. It looks really similiar to the famous "treasury" shown in the Indiana Jones movie, but it's even bigger. Around 150 feet tall. Crazy. Here's a panorama shot from the top:

Aaron's (yes, Moses' brother) tomb, where all of the Jews in the Old Testament went to bury him, was just two mountain-tops away. Sadly, we didn't have the time to go see it, but I'm going back for that, for sure. After all of that, we got back in the buses and headed back to Amman and to classes. In a couple weeks I'll be seeing more of the Biblical Sites around Jordan, and a month from now I'll be spending a few days in Jerusalem. Crazy, crazy.

I promise I'll talk more about the culture and Amman in my next post, but I had to get all of the more eventful stuff out of the way first.

Prayr requests!
-My relationship with Jesus has suffered a little from being so busy/tired (not a real excuse, but it is what it is), and I'm needed His help to keep it healthy
-Class can be a bit overwhelming, ask for energy and focus for my studies while I'm here
-Arabic only starting Oct 1st! ask that God would bless that and help me learn quickly

خلص!

الله معكم!

شاورما!

I'll never be able to think of myself as a blogger, but here goes my first post. Be patient with me if I start to ramble, but Amman is pretty cool, and my life occasionally has some pretty cool highlights when I shut up long enough for God to do things with it and get credit for it.

Traveling is usually pretty exciting for me, especially when I get thrown into sink or swim situations because that's when I seem to learn the most about God and myself and all of these crazy cultures that I've become so obsessed with. Sink or swim is definitely how I would describe this entire trip so far. I don't know if any of you have ever had a connecting flight through London-Heathrow, but when you're flying by yourself and you decide not to check which airline you're flying with beforehand, London isn't the easiest place to navigate, so that's where I started my semester-long swim. I had 5 terminals to guess from and I guessed the right one first, and even guessed the right airline first, which God deserves credit for. After paying for a $15 piece of French toast (the cheapest thing on the menu, mind you, all thanks to America's awful int'l trade deficit, but that's a rant for another time), I boarded the most exciting plane of my short uni-lingual life to Amman, Jordan. Apparently not exciting enough to keep me awake for the flight over southern Europe, but I couldn't help but stare out of my window in complete awe once the pilot came on the intercom and said that we were flying over the Medditeranean, over Israel and Palestine and eventually over the deserts of Jordan. Realizing that you're looking down on the mountains and towns that Jesus walked and taught on, where Moses looked across the promised land, where John the Baptist was executed, is something to weighty for my little brain to handle.

I don't know if swimming is the best analogy, seeing as I am an awful swimmer, but it seemed like I was back to doing it when I landed in Amman. Planning ahead isn't one of my strong points either, I'm sure a lot of you know, and I flew into Amman a day before everyone else in my program was planning to get there. I didn't have a phone on me or anyone who knew that I was at the airport and I didn't know which hotel to go to, so, I used what little Arabic I remembered and got a cab to the only hotel I knew of in Amman. What's life without a little adventure? Long story short, I used the hotel's internet to get a phone number and called with their phone and got to the right hotel, yadda yadda yadda. Out of either an overwhelming sense of adventure or of boredom, I spent the day before everyone else came wandering around Amman on foot (almost nobody walks in Amman, you can tell because they've planted low-branched trees right in the middle of all of the already-narrow sidewalks) looking for a restaurant that a friend told me about. Asking for directions here seemed to be pretty hard for a newbie because they only named a lot of the streets a few years ago and no one knows the names of the streets.
After about 5 days of orientation and touristy things, I was all oriented out and my host family (yes, I got to live with a host family!) came and saved me from the hour long sessions teaching the girls how to deal with harassment. After that it was, again, back to swimming because they don't speak any English! I think it's awesome now because we chat bil Arabi bas, but the first night was overwhelming with 5 guests coming over and all of them speaking in the fastest Arabic I've ever heard. The incredible food more than made up for it. I could eat hummus and pita bread and olives for breakfast everyday (which we do, among other things) for the rest of my life. Classes start on Sunday, so I don't have much to say about that yet, but 9 hours a week in the classroom working on Arabic and living with a family is going to work wonders for my awful conversational Arabic. Very excited.
About 2 weeks from now I'll be driving out to see Petra, Wadi Rum (camping with Bedouins), and the Red Sea, and a couple of weeks after that I'm taking a tour of a ton of Biblical sights around Jordan: Mt. Nebo (where Moses stood and saw the promised land), the spot in the Jordan River where the Pope claimed that Jesus was baptised, Herod's summer palace where John the Baptist was beheaded. It's enough to cross off most of the things on my bucket list. Anyway, there won't be much more to write about until classes start, and I've already written too much, sorry for the lengthy and late first post, but it is what it is. مع السلامة والله معك

-Christian