I’ve been letting the blog languish quite a bit, unfortunately. Without something new and exciting like a trip across a major ocean, I just don’t seem to have the energy to write the lengthy blog entries that people came to expect from me. I’ll be going camping for a 5 day weekend at the end of the month, right before Halloween. I’ll be rejoining my old friends from Jordan who have all since returned stateside, like me, for a little bit of Appalachian mountain hiking and camping.

A little bit of fun that my friends and I have been having over the past couple months are Lords of the Trident music videos. My friend Ty is the lead singer of this amazing metal band, and not only does he sing like a guttural, insane, metaltastic songbird, he also does most of his own mixing, artwork, back-story writing, and now – music videos.

Here’s the first one that he did – his most recent album’s title song, “Chains on Fire.” Both my brother Josh and I are in it – him you can recognize with the axe and venomous look on his face during the crowd shots. You can’t recognize me because I’m wearing a robe and death’s head mask.

Today’s shooting, however, is for “Face of the Enemy,” and is going for a more story-based video instead of melt-your-face rocking like “Chains on Fire.” We spent three hours rolling about on the concrete getting some great shots (and “shot” at), with Ty acting as our director. Making an action video is so much easier in the 21st century for a bunch of young folks – you don’t need blanks, fake blood, or questionably legal explosive compounds – just a high definition camera and Adobe After Effects (please note in the previous video: Ty did not actually light a stone building on fire, or disintegrate those people (including Christine, one of the poor vaporized victims)).

It took 3 takes of me pulling off my shades and sprinting towards Bookman, our hero in the khaki trenchcoat. I destroyed my black shades on the first take when they hit the ground, then Ty gave me his to use, which I promptly scuffed against the concrete on the second take. Two casualties in less than five minutes! Some soldiers never go home…

So, enjoy the first rough cut! And of course, I’ll be posting the final as soon as Ty completes it. He tends to work himself to the bone on these videos, so I expect we’ll see the entire thing shot, edited, and with special effects within 3 days. Just kidding, Ty.

I’m no stranger to back pains, even ones that last for a couple days. But these ones were different – they didn’t seem to be caused by lying, standing, sitting, or slouching in a particular way. It was kind of a dull ache that was focused specifically on my lower left shoulder blade, and over the next few days, i found that its intensity would increase while walking, running, biking, or doing anything that wasn’t sitting perfectly still. I noticed at work that I was getting a bit out of breath while climbing the stairs (and since the elevator up to the 8th floor has been out all summer and I have numerous computers to configure up there, I have been using those stairs pretty constantly). After returning my desk, though, the pain would fade to its general dull ache. At its worse, it felt like a needle being jammed into my lower back that would slowly radiate pain up into my upper shoulder – but always on my left side. At my parents’ house for my birthday this past weekend, my family urged me to look into seeing a doctor. But I kept hoping it would just go away.

Besides taking a sick day off of work and sitting with an ice pack occasionally at home, I didn’t do anything about it until a week later, when I finally called the doctor this past Monday. I imagined at best it was pleurisy, at worse it was a very slow-acting heart attack. Most likely it was just a deep muscle ache that a back rub couldn’t reach. But why was I short of breath?

Although I wouldn’t be able to use my new “primary care provider” due to a 9 month long waiting list for an introductory appointment (ah, so that’s why people make fun of HMOs) they got me into an appointment on Thursday, although they said that if it was an emergency of course they wanted me to come in right away. I told them that if I had made it this long without seeing anyone, I probably wasn’t going to keel over.

At yesterday’s appointment with UW Health, they shuttled me between the x-ray room and the on-call doctor. After explaining to a nurse and Dr Greg my entire family medical history – a downside of switching to my own insurance with a different provider than my parents – Greg listened to my lungs through his stethescope several times. He reported that my left one sounded different, and sent me down for the first set of xrays. He looked at them, then sent me down again to do more, this time while exhaling my breath entirely outwards so that they could see where my lungs were. I could tell what they were assuming, and it didn’t look good.

After I returned to the exam room, Greg sat me down with the xrays and showed how the upper edge of my left lung had detached itself from the pleura and there was now a pocket of air pushing its way around between my lung and the inside of my body cavity. The bubble would shift itself around as I moved about, and would probably explain why I felt most comfortable while lying down. He transferred me over to a pulmonologist in another building who explained things even more clearly – apparently, I am the perfect demographic to get this injury, which is called primary spontaneous pneumothorax, PSP, or more colloquially – a partially collapsed lung. Sufferers are usually tall, skinny, male, and between 20 and 30 – how fitting that I had just passed my mid-twentieth birthday. “Basically, people who look like Abraham Lincoln,” joked my specialist, Dr. Cole. He further explained that it was because I was tall and skinny that my lungs had a lot of surface area on them, and a lot of weight pulling them downwards – apparently, the left one had succumbed to gravity and pulled away from the upper pleura.

I had several options, he continued. I could either wait and see how quickly it would heal – as it was only a 3% partial collapse, he figured that I should heal up nicely. More drastic measures would be to stick a needle into me and pull the lung wall back out again, taking the air with it, or keep a quarter-inch thick chest tube in my side for a week to siphon out the air. But those would be overreacting, he concluded. Because I have a trip to Costa Rica planned for next month, however, I asked him if there was anything else I should worry about.

He got a little more somber and told me that possible health complications could result from the air pressure change in a flight, and that although the risk was small in my case, it could be a big problem if that air pocket swelled while in reduced air pressure. Some airlines don’t even let you fly unless you can tell them you haven’t had a pneumothorax for 6 weeks or longer. He said that if we could get it done with 2 weeks of safe period before the flight, he’d think I was safe.

Two weeks from today is when I fly out. Well then, our fastest and least invasive procedure is treating you overnight on 100% oxygen, he told me. It seemed suspiciously easy to me – lie in an air conditioned hospital room with a mask on? How could that possibly remove air trapped in my chest? Because the air in that pocket is plain atmospheric air, Dr Cole explained. Pure oxygen in your lungs will cause the nitrogen-rich regular air molecules to diffuse through the lining and back into your lungs, where it can be exhaled normally. Then your lung will be able to press up against the pleura again – and then hopefully reseal itself there permanently.

I checked myself back in later that evening, and was escorted up to my room by an admittance nurse. Over the course of the next hour, three different women visited – two with badges that said CNA, and one RN. No oxygen during that entire time, so I just read my book and snacked on my jug of peanuts I’d brought with me. But eventually someone came in with a mask in a sealed plastic bag and a long tube, which was plugged into a green faucet-looking device that came out of the wall. Gone are the days of individual oxygen tanks, apparently. They plugged it in, plugged me into it, and cranked up the output to 15 liters per minute. Considering that the normal flow rate for senior citizens on oxygen is about 2 LPM, the attendent CNAs must have wondered what on earth could be wrong with me that I would need that much oxygen.

I amused myself for a few minutes watching little rubber output gasket on the side flutter as I exhaled, but the constant hissing noise of the system got tiresome quickly (I wish that I had bothered to check for earplugs sooner; I found some on the nightstand in a little bag the next morning). The nurses cycled around through shifts, each time coming in and checking my pulse and oxygen count with a little device that clipped onto my index finger, which without making any sort of cut in me, was able to measure oxygen percentages in my blood. I had been at 96 that morning, but after being on pure oxygen for a few hours, I hit 100 each time.

The oxygen mask had a strange little bag under it, like a wattle on a goat, that didn’t seem to do anything except be filled with air at all times. It’s not like it was needed, though – the hose kept an unceasing supply of air roaring at my nose and mouth at all times. The bag constantly got in the way though as I shifted and tried to get comfortable in the bed as midnight drew near; it’s difficult to lie on your side with a tube coming off of your mouth and an air-filled bag trying to sit under your chin. I licked my lips occasionally; I could feel them getting chapped with the gale-force winds blowing at them.

I woke up somewhere around 4 in the morning when a nurse named Walter with a Russian sounding accent came in to check my vitals yet again, and he rolled down the shade facing the east (I could see the capital rotunda from my window, twinkling cheerfully at me in the darkness) and whispered to me that otherwise, I would be blinded by the morning sunlight in a few hours. The next thing I remember is my alarm waking me for work at 6:45, causing me to snap my head upright and the airbag to pop up and bap me playfully in the eye. It looks like you can sleep through anything if you get accustomed to it, even a hissing, oddly-constructed air mask.

My morning x-rays followed some hours later as the sun rose. It was time for the doctors to see if the pneumothorax had indeed withdrawn into the comforting fold of my lungs yet again. I wasn’t willing to bet anything, yet – my back always hurts on strange new (hard) beds like this one, so I couldn’t tell if I felt any different yet. And the nurses certainly weren’t assisting in my wish to see if I was still in pain – I was carefully bundled out of bed into a wheelchair, with a blanket wrapped around me, as nurse Ginny soothingly told me that she would disconnect my air just for a second and then she quickly attached it to a portable air tank on the wheelchair. None of the nurses seemed to understand that I wasn’t suffering from oxygen deprivation and that I wouldn’t turn blue and die if I was off the feed for a minute – they just saw the high flow rate and assumed that I should be treated like delicate glass.

I was carefully wheeled down the hall a “transport” nurse, to the elevator, and down to the x-ray room, where the x-ray technician told me I didn’t need to remove my nightshirt or my oxygen mask; a far cry from the torso disrobing that was ordered the previous morning. Once again, it seemed like I was being treated very gingerly. I wasn’t sure if he knew that the only way to see my small pneumothorax was to take the x-ray while exhaling fully; after all, the previous technician hadn’t apparently known it on the first try yesterday. So I did so without telling him (even though he told me to inhale, like most x-ray techs do) as I hoped it would be helpful to Dr Cole or whomever would look at the scans. Then I was carefully eased backwards into my chair again (the whole process had required me moving all of a foot) and a second transport nurse took me back to the room. She asked me in a slow, over-annuniciated voice if I was a student at the UW. With some amusement, I told her that I was a computer consultant and technician for the UW. “Oh!” she replied with a note of some surprise. “Well that must be a very good job for a smart young man like you!”

It’s interesting how one’s attitude towards people change if they seem helpless, ill, and needy. To the eyes of the many nurses who had been attending to me for hours, I was a skinny, frail looking guy with glasses in pajamas who had been wearing an oxygen mask all night and needed chest x-rays. They spoke in a very cheerful, evenly-paced upbeat tone without fail. Once I asked about whether their computers were running Epic’s medical software, or mentioned my work as a consultant for another UW department, the tone changed a bit and then they would talk to me normally – or at least, until they cycled out again and a new nurse arrived and I needed to repeat the process over again. I felt silly being babied and assisted about. I had gone 9 days with a partially collapsed lung and I knew I could handle it – so I didn’t feel like I should be accepting their professional kindness. I didn’t want to be a burden.

After returning to my bed and my wall-based oxygen source for another half an hour, Dr Cole came in with the good news – the pneumothorax had disappeared, and my x-ray looked normal – his plan had worked. My back was still stiff enough (probably in part from the lack of my own personal locomotion!) that I couldn’t tell if I felt better or not, but I was greatly cheered that things looked normal from his perspective. He confirmed his guess with a quick listen to my lungs again with his stethescope, and I could feel the tension and relief ebb out of me – I could go back to normal.

But wait, he cautioned – I still want you to come back next week for a followup. Oh. Well, of course that makes sense. “And,” he continued, “we’ll need to keep an eye on your lungs. No lifting anything over 20 pounds for 2-4 weeks. Also, you have a 33% chance of developing a second pneumothorax, now that you’ve had one.” I asked him what the odds were for the general population. 18 in 100,000 he replied. So my odds of a relapse have increased significantly. And if I were to get a second one, my odds of a third one would increase to 80%. “At that point, there is a surgery that we would recommend after the second to irritate the pleura of the lungs with some powder, which would then develop a sticky blood clot along the edges which has a 98% success rate at making your lung stick in place, permanently.”

I took off the breath mask and shut off the oxygen myself after Dr Cole left. The room felt very quiet without the constant hissing sound I’d grown accustomed to for the past 15 hours, and it took me an hour to become re-acclimated to working hard to breath again in the regular air. I packed my things and prepared to walk back to work, but the nurse told me that walking a mile seemed like too much stress for me because it was “very hot outside.” She wanted me to take a taxi but in the end we compromised with the bus system.

It feels really good to be free of that twinging lung pain (and have it replaced with good old familiar vertebral back pain again) but I guess it was a wake up call for me – they never tell thin young people to be on the lookout for collapsed lungs. In comparison with heart disease and diabetes, I guess I’ll be thankful that there’s comparably less things that affect people with my body type. Except, as I told my boss, the fact that people like me will be the first ones to succumb after the next ice age due to the lack of fat storage!

After two years of often mind-meltingly hot weather in the Middle East, I never knew how much I could miss leaping into almost-frozen water through a large hole cut through 2 foot thick ice. The Special Olympics Polar Plunge has more or less become an annual tradition for my family, with me starting it back in 2007, my little brother Josh joining me in 2008, and then him taking over in 2009 and 2010 with his own team. It takes a special kind of person to do this jump, which some people might aptly define as “absolutely nuts” or “better you than me, you lunatic.”

Ready for freezing with plastic weaponry for all

In the video above, some interesting things of note are:

• How much farther away from the ice-cut hole the spectators are kept. Is this for safety reasons, or because Special Olympics has acquired a lucrative rights deal for specific corporations to do the video and photo work, and allowing family and friends to do the same (or *cough* better *cough*) would potentially damage this contract?
• Not to complain, because I know she’s working hard, but I really wish that the announcer woman doing the countdown would have stuck to the basics for our jump. She had been saying “3…2…1…Pluuuuuunnge!” for the past hour of us being there waiting, so that’s what we were going to time jump-with-synchronized-punch for. Instead, she mutters something into the microphone along the lines of “3…2…1…*muttermutter* sensei!” Yes, we get it…sensei…we’re ninjas…we know what you were trying to do, but it wasn’t appreciated. This completely threw all of us off and we sprang into the water not with the grace of ferocious deadly ninjas but rather with the comedic value of a bunch of young adults falling into cold water.
• I obviously won a bet with Josh about staying in the water. “I’ve been in the desert for so long, I’ll need to stay in the water extra long to make up for the years I’ve been gone,” I boasted. “You can’t,” he scoffed back. “Your body will make you get out; you won’t be able to help it.” Ha! I said to myself – I’ll prove him wrong! So when I say to my buddy Collin while we’re still in the water “This is just like the Middle East,” what I’m really saying is “In your face, little brother!”
• How quickly most of the girls separate themselves from the men as we’re exiting the water – by the time Collin and I are high-fiving after getting out, four of the five women are practically up the hill in the hot tub by that point. Was it even colder after getting out of the water and into the windy air? Come to think of it, I didn’t notice
• I apologize that some of our jumpers aren’t very well shown off in the video. The Special Olympics people keep so many support, security, and safety personnel standing around the pool that it’s a wonder that anyone is able to get any pictures of anything at all. I chuckle whenever I hear my dad’s voice behind the camcorder muttering “Move your butt!” to the oblivious guy standing right in his line of sight as we line up on the plank. Even better is that I timed the music to it. Move your butt! Hey!

As always, thank you to our donors! As I mention in the video, all nine of us combined raised a whopping $1,888 this year for the Special Olympics. We’re already planning for what the Ninjas might do for 2012! (Possibly front flips)

But no, I managed to evade any sort of driving mishaps until I was making an illegal left turn in the tiny village of Brooklyn, on my way back to my parents’ house after a weekend cleaning up my new house in Madison. Conveniently enough, the municipal court they directed me to was mere feet away from the point of collision. It’s like they built it there for convenience.

It's some sort of conspiracy!

Anyway, that was several months ago, back at the beginning of November, and due to government proceedings taking forever to occur, my court date wasn’t until last week, January 4th. I was looking at 4 points removed from my driver’s license, and almost $90 in fines. I spruced myself up after work and put on my dress shoes and suit, and drove back south from Madison to Brooklyn, through that familiar intersection, and to the “court,” which for some odd reason had high schoolers playing intramural basketball in a gym. At first I thought I’d gotten the address incorrect, but a police officer told me the court was “in the basement” and they’d be ready for me in a few minutes.

I’ve never been to a court before, and my only preconceptions of it was that it would be large, there would be a judge, and numerous items smelling of leather and mahogany. When my fellow defendants and I were escorted downstairs through a heavy fire door, I discovered that the village of Brooklyn’s court was a storage room with a desk, a few metal folding chairs, and a USA flag. I barely had time to sit down in one of the chairs and read through a printed brochure on the chair, “how to plead guilty or innocent” before everyone else leapt to their feet. I looked around, realized I was the only one sitting, and climbed to my feet in time for the judge to walk past me. Judge Sandra Glasier was wearing a black robe (at least some things were as expected) and was carrying a sheaf of papers. After smiling around at us, she welcomed us to the Brooklyn Municipal Court, and glanced down at her paperwork. “We’ll just do things in alphabetical order, I think, so… Zach Hise?” She gestured to the folding chair sitting uncomfortably close to her desk. I actually had to push it back slightly in order to not hit the desk supports with my knees.

She asked me how I was going to plead, and from the brochure on the chair I knew that I either had a choice of “guilty, not guilty, or no contest.” After I asked her to explain what the last one meant, I probably proclaimed to her that I was “guilty” of my illegal left turn. There was no point in denying it. She chuckled and commented to the police officer bailiff by the door, “It’s so refreshing when people are actually willing to admit guilt.” I explained what had happened, and she asked me if my record was clean. I was momentarily surprised, as I had expected that all that information would be down on her stack of papers. I told her it was, and the bailiff shrugged and told her, “we can take him at his word, I guess.” I told the judge that the police officer who had written my ticket mentioned something called a “paroled ticket” in which people with otherwise clean records would be given a year’s parole from their time in court, and if they didn’t get into any other traffic police problems, their ticket would be wiped out. Although I didn’t mention it to her, that was basically the only reason why I had bothered to attend the court session, as opposed to just dropping a check in the mail and forgetting about it.

Judge Glasier looked rather embarrassed. “Well, yes, that does exist, but we really only do that for people who are 16 years old, not for adults.” She then told me that she’d knock off a point from the ticket, and turn it to “failure to stop at a stop sign” instead. I mused on whether I could ask her to take off six points instead, and knock the ticket fee down to $40 instead. “The ticket just shows you’re only human, that’s all – you’ll get your points back in a year.” I resisted the urge to point out that I didn’t really care about the points at all, that she could take off 11 for all I cared, and thanked her for the modification, stood up, and left. I had my checkbook with me, and wrote the check for the same amount that was on my November ticket, and dropped it in a box next to the kids’ gymnasium, where they were still playing basketball.

And that was my experience with being in court! Less flashy than I had imagined, but they were definitely fast about it – I was only in the room for about 15 minutes from start to finish. And I guess, now that I know that I’m “only human” I’m happy to have donated to the Brooklyn Municipal Court – perhaps someday, with slow but steady $90 contributions from people getting into accidents at that intersection, they’ll be able to move the intramural basketball team to its own building!

It took me over a year to track down a copy of the DVD, which was being stored at the YWCA – luckily, quite close to my house so I could visit whenever I wanted to. I immediately ripped the video off of the disk into an AVI, and then converted it into an FLV. I was hoping to be able to upload it to Vimeo or Youtube or some other well-known video sharing site so that more people internationally would be able to see a great concert from the Arab Christian world, but none of them accept files longer than ten minutes or so.

Without further ado, I’d like to present the full hour-long concert to you, locally hosted on my own website. Please be warned that the video below is over 320MB in size so it’s not for the faint of bandwidth. That was the reason I hadn’t uploaded it earlier, instead of over two months after returning to America…after finally getting it into Flash format, I had to find a fast enough internet connection!

Taraneem Eid Milaad ترانيم عيد الميلاد (or “Hymns for Christmas”) at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church.

If you would like to download the full and complete FLV file for playback whenever you like, you can get that from this link.

Fittingly, I’ve had a very busy week and the events were piled just as high. There were two more wadi hikes – one with my friends Jo and Margie, and one with my usual hiking buddies Nelle and Jeff. I returned to the fateful Wadi Hasa – this time no cameras were lost! And toured a new wadi along the Dead Sea, Wadi Attun. The former was only the first few kilometers, although it still took us about seven hours to traverse! The latter was a short hike, but had some of the hottest water I’ve ever hiked through; vapor was practically rising off the river.

I took a Ramadan bike ride for the last time with my Cycling Jordan friends – this trip was filled with hugs and embraces from my many Arab friends in the club and implorations to stay in the Jordan and tear up the tickets. I asked Sa’ad if we could visit Haret Jdoudna again, like last year, and he agreed. A short ride of only ~30k because most others were fasting, but it was memorable. My friend Sufian, one of the first guys I rode with back in February of 2009, was my partner for most of the trip, and we raced each other and he humored me as I played the ‘role reversal game,’ which is where when children and teenagers run into the road to shout at me, I shout first: “HELLO HOW ARE YOU WELCOME TO JORDAN ARE YOU VERY GOOD? VERY GOOD FINE?” Their confused expression at hearing the commonly-taught phrases used by the bearded foreigner are always amusing. It usually keeps disoriented enough that I can get by without the unfortunately-typical stone throwing.

Only in Jordan can you bike past a graying, bearded imam in a long white robe, chatting with fellow robed farmers in gray cloaks, and all of them wearing baseball hats. The imam was wearing a Yankees cap. I wish I could have gotten my camera out in time! We all took the semi-legal ‘minibus’ system from Madaba and Haret Jdoudna back to Amman – only in Jordan can you get a tough looking, grizzled Arab driver who has hung a combination of Harley-Davidson pillowcases and fluffy, dusty, spangled polyester hearts with “I LOVE U” and “I NEED U” printed on them with glitter glue. It’s a country that plays bagpipes at weddings; Jordanians will proudly tell you the bagpipes were invented by Arabs, but I’ve heard that the Scots disagree with this assertion.

Work has been filled with cakes, cards, hugs, and in many cases, prayers for my safe journey and wishes that I’ll return soon. Of course, no Arab Goodbye would be complete without the requisite cheek-kissing and although my face hasn’t been rubbed raw like it was during my old EGT graduation days (~30 bestubbled men kissing you on the cheek in a row will do that) the IRD-sponsored iftaar that I returned from tonight definitely had a few as I bade a final farewell to my fellow teachers, the Iraqis and Jordanians. The cooking teacher, Husam, told me mock-severely that if it was about his cooking, he promised to make my favorite foods all the time if it would convince me to stay. All of the Iraqis told me that they would see me someday, be it either in Jordan – or hopefully, in America, where most of them are still hopefully holding out for an immigration authorization.

One last day work day remains, at Whitman, where I’ll repeat the system I’ve established of official key hand-ins, paper transfers, tours for replacement technicians, and last-minute questions from my former colleagues. Currency transfers need to happen at the local bank, too.

After that, perhaps Abu Jbara restaurant, or Schwarma Reem, or al-Borij. They all know me well from my years of attendance, and they already know I’m leaving. The flight I’m on, Air Baltic, probably won’t feed me anything in the country-hopping flights from Jordan to Latvia, Latvia to Copenhagen, and Copenhagen to Chicago – so I hope they won’t mind if there’s a delicious smelling schwarma or two in my carry-on bag.

It’s two in the morning now, and these piles aren’t getting any smaller. Before I finally call it a night, I’ll take a large sack of my clothes down and put them next to the dumpster up the street. When I’ve gotten up in the morning at 4 or 5 for some reason, I can see poor families scavenging in the bins for salvageable items. Hopefully these clean, folded, and gently-used trousers will be of use to them.

You haven't heard anything until you've heard the high notes in "Prelude in C" hit in a perfect falsetto

After the full-house all-out success of 2009′s Ramadan Quiz night, my choir, Dozan wa Awtar, decided that we’d pull off the same feat a year later, except with available seating for another hundred guests. Last night, we had a great show at the Action Target shooting range/go-karting club just south of Amman’s city limits.

Although we started selling tickets weeks ago, there were some times when it was touch-and-go about whether we’d be able to sell enough tickets to be able to justify the concert to our always-generous sponsors. Last year we had no trouble, but this year, Ramadan’s movement of two weeks earlier means that school isn’t yet in session again, unlike last year. Both foreigners and Arabs alike with the means to justify 23 dinars per person for a dinner and a show often leave the country in the summer, and I was unable to find a single friend still in Jordan who was able to go.

I couldn't imagine a better place to hold an iftaar show - looking out over the distant lights of Amman

Thankfully, the fact that our choir is still majority Arab, with large families and strong familial ties, meant that we were able to pull through in the nick of time and get the sales we needed. Action Target had a great stage set up for us (although it was probably not for us but for their singer a few nights ago, the “Voice of Jordan” Omar Abdullat) complete with outdoor seating, below-lit palm trees, and a bar that was still serving alcohol – amazing. I saw more than a few people in the crowd casually and furtively emptying silver flasks into glasses though; ahh, the tradition of Ramadan fasting and the government closing all liquor stores and most bars is only equaled by the tradition of circumventing these laws, both religious and secular alike.

All and all, we were there from around 5 to warm up and get ready til 11:30. The sun set at exactly 7:25 and people immediately dug into the buffet line of pastas, Chinese stir-frys, and of course the required Arabic mezze appetizers like hummous, salads, and kubbeh. Still no mensaf, though (the traditional Jordanian dish) – frankly, I’m always disappointed when these massive restaurant/catered iftaars can’t carry the national dish. Haven’t seen a single one do it thus far.

Seating was done in big tables of 10. If you didn't bring quiz night teammates with you, you could make some new friends at your table!

The quiz aspect of the night’s events started soon after the meal, with the full choir only doing a few small numbers and the majority of our time onstage dedicated to solos or duets of popular music. We had musicals – both Western and Arab – and Disney music to sing. Amusingly enough, apparently Egypt’s massive film industry translates Disney classics into Egyptian colloquial and so we had people doing “Bibbity Bobbiby Boo” and “Hakuna Matata,” in Egyptian. For that reason, we were sure to remind people that their quiz night teams should definitely be made up of people from both cultures – what a great way to foster intercultural cooperation!

Personally, I did “Kiss The Girl,” from The Little Mermaid. Some of the women in the choir volunteered to be the “sha la la la” girls in the background, doing their own little dance, and Um Tulip provided a couple snorkel headpieces, too. By the time I had practiced this piece and our choreography, I was sad that we were only doing little bits of each song…I wanted to sing the whole thing!

The choir concerts were held in the Jordan Museum, a large structure down in Wadi Abdoun within easy walking distance from my house (in fact, I can see it down below me when I stand on my roof). The building has been under construction for years with a grant from Japan, but only recently was given minor details like electricity and a roof. Just like last year’s performance in a half-constructed Maronite church, Dozan wa Awtar seems to have a talent for picking out interesting new venues that we can literally say no one has ever seen before.

We’re really lucky to have some great professionally-trained soloists with us, like Joe and Allyss. Their skill really shines in our presentation of Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem” The video of Libera Me below, courtesy of my friend Maya, really showcase’s Joe’s baritone vocal talent.

Note: As Babs has pointed out below, I forgot to check the embed privacy settings for Maya’s videos so, I guess the videos wouldn’t be viewable unless you were friends with her on Facebook or tagged in the video! I’ll ask her if she wouldn’t mind changing that…

We all look pretty serious in that one. To switch things up a notch, here’s a video from our last show on Friday, where instead of black suits we’re in loose white outfits with multicolored strips of cloth all over us. The main idea of this, said our director Shireen, was that we could help the kids learn about different vocal parts by showing them visual cues. You’ll see some of the kids raising up little pieces of paper during the video; earlier in the concert one of the activities Shireen had scheduled was to raise one color when they heard men singing, and the other when they heard women. Apparently they liked that so much they decided to do it for the duration of the concert.

Yeah, that’s me in the front row, probably the first and last time I’ve been featured in that position. Being 1.9 meters tall tends to relegate you to the rear. But, I got the speaking role because I was the only male choir member who showed up to the kid’s concert planning meeting; it was me and a whole group of altos. I was apparently outvoted on what color each section should wear; in order to challenge “gender stereotypes” it was revealed that all of the manly, deep-voiced bass section would be wearing hot pink sashes. Sigh.

A few days afterward, Dan and I went down to check out the first Souq al Balad, a cooperative craft and organic food market that Entity Green is deeply involved in organizing. Surprisingly enough, it was also held in the Jordan Museum, on the other side of the courtyard where I had sung just the day before. The weather was beautiful, and with picnic tables out under the shaded and vine-covered terrace, it was like we had opened up a swanky new restaurant right there in the middle of downtown Amman.

All of my coworkers had come down before Dan and I (lucky folks with cars) and could be found browsing the selection of crafts, coffees, and natural soaps, vegetables, and honeys. Lillie, our primary organizer, was handing out flyers to visitors and Winkie could be found chatting with some of her friends and hooking together a new rug. Aaron and I sampled some amazing cheesecake (I eventually went back and bought four more slices; at a mere JD 1.25 for American-style desserts I thought I was dreaming) and some of my fellow choristers were lured by my invitations that I’d given to them during the concert rehersals (after all, they knew exactly where to go!)

SEO time! If you’re in the neighborhood, check EGT’s extremely well-designed webpage for more information and directions to the museum.

Bishop Williams greets everyone outside Aheliya's main gates

Besides the morning practice, the exciting event of the day was a visit from Rowan Williams, better known as the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. As the primary church that I attend here in Jordan is Anglican, this is major event for my fellow congregants, both Arab and expat, and there was a large turnout of about 75 people at the Aheliya Girls’ School next to the church for a meet and greet with the Archbishop. This small amount of people were exclusively invited, there was no public announcement of this gathering, but Pastor Lex let us know a few days ahead of time. That morning, His Grace had held a service at the Baptism Site and placed a cornerstone for a new Gothic-style church funded by HRH Prince Ghazi, who’s apparently an appreciator of that particular type of architecture (who could blame him?). That service was attended by approximately 600, or so I’m told, and tomorrow morning he’s going to be holding a regular Sunday service for the Arabic congregation of the Anglican Church, in the same building that our English congregation meets in the night before.

The last time I had been in the Aheliya School was almost a year ago, when Whitman held the Fiddler on the Roof musical in the school’s auditorium. This is the first time I’d seen the place filled with so many students, high school-aged girls and boys in their best school uniforms to greet the Archbishop and his entourage of purple-robed Bishops from all over the region.

We were all milling about outside, enjoying the wonderful Jordanian February weather, when Bishop Williams appeared, wearing the traditional simple black robe with a purple sash. He looked similar to his Wikipedia pictures – yes, I did do the obvious simple research before meeting the man; I wanted to be able to know which gray-haired gentleman he was, after all – and he and the other Bishops glided towards us easily, chatting amicably and smiling for the half-dozen TV cameras and journalists that buzzed around them. His eyebrows gave him a somewhat owlish appearance, but his manner was immediately warm and empathetic as he greeted us, shaking hands and exchanging a few words with each person before Arab men in gray pinstripe suits gently moved him onto the next group of people.

Inside the building, servers flitted about noiselessly with platters of hot hors d’oeuvres and sweet tarts, as well as juice and the mandatory mouth-scalding Arabic “visitors” coffee. A friend of mine encouraged me to go up and introduce myself to the Archbishop. I replied nervously that I wasn’t Anglican and I wouldn’t know what to say if he suddenly quizzed me on the formation of the Church Doctrine or something!

Archbishop Williams stopped to have a little chat with me...

I shook the Bishop’s hand and introduced myself, saying that I was from America. He smiled and asked me what part, to which I replied Wisconsin. “Really!” he chuckled. “I stayed there a night in a seminary once while I was traveling through America.” Very neat that he’s been to our comparatively-unknown state. I asked him if he’d be able to stop by and visit our English-speaking service after the meet and greet. He shook his head somberly and said that he knew he was going to be in meetings and ceremonies for the rest of the night, but that of course he wished he could. I realized then that when you’re the Archbishop, or the Pope or something, your professional life is nothing but a series of meetings and ceremonies. He patted me on the back in a friendly manner, and then he had moved on to the next group of people waiting for him.

From left to right: the Mayor of Amman, the Bishop of Ireland, and Archbishop Williams

About forty minutes into the gathering, the Archbishop was joined at the front of the room by his traveling companion, the Bishop of Ireland. After being introduced by the principal of the Aheliya school and the Bishop of Jordan, His Grace gave a small speech about his love of Jordan (this being his third visit) and his pleasure that it was always a safe and welcoming country for all Christians, Muslims, and everyone else to enjoy. He made a momentary comment about how he and the rest of the church were very concerned with staunching the flow of Arab Christians leaving Jordan for the West, saying that these original Christians were incredibly important to the stability of the region. I loved listening to his voice, a deep, warm, and musical baritone which must be amazing to hear sermons in. Check out some of the clips with him on Youtube and you’ll see what I mean.

The last thing I saw before I left to go and attend my regular church service across the street was one of the Aheliya students singing a song in Arabic on the stage, of which I only understood the title, Wahtuhnnee, which roughly translates into “My Country.” As I approached the exit, I was passed by a group of black robed and cowled men; members of the Orthodox contingent of Jordan who kissed their Anglican counterparts twice on each cheek. Privately, I wondered why they were so late to the festivities; by the schedule of events the Archbishop was only going to be at the school for another fifteen minutes or so.

I know that the Archbishop is doing a tour of the Holy Land (it seems to be a primary reason for religious leaders of all denominations to visit) and that he’ll be entering Palestine today. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time here, Your Grace!

This is what we residents of Amman were treated to via word of mouth, newspapers, and radio announcements. With all of the talk, you might have thought that the second coming was about to take place. While it’s true any snow at all is cause for hubbub in Jordan, when I got the 6 AM wakeup call from one of the other Whitman teachers to notify me that school was canceled, I was expecting Wisconsin-levels of snow, perhaps piling up outside my window. On the second floor. I exaggerate my expectations slightly here, but when I looked out and saw nothing more than the same dreary drizzle that has been coming down steadily for a week, I had to chuckle a little. Primary schools in souther Wisconsin aren’t shut down unless the principal is knocked out with a hailstone the size of a basketball.

Just because Whitman was canceled didn’t mean that my training lectures in Ayn al Basha would be so lucky. I tried sending a text to Aaron, explaining to Aaron about how bad the weather was, and how I was worried I might step in a puddle and make my socks wet, and he texted back, “nice try.” As we drove north towards the training center, I caught a glimpse of snow on the side of the road and even stuck to the back of one car. It was the first time I’d ever seen snow in Jordan that hadn’t been in a grocer’s icebox.

Several teachers called in to fearfully tell Aaron and Jeff about how dangerous it would be for them to leave their houses now, but Aaron, having also grown up in the Midwest, wasn’t having any of it. Not that EGT could do anything about it anyway, even if we wanted to give the students a day off; we’re bound by IRD’s and ISG’s policies. As Wamidh and I taught our lesson on Windows Server 2008, the pounding roar of the rain on the aluminum roof above us was almost deafening and we frequently had to shout to make ourselves heard. I now understand why people in America use padded shingles on houses. However, we didn’t have to put up with it long. Only a couple hours into the lesson and just before lunch, Aaron stopped by our classroom, clutching a green umbrella to shield from the pounding rain and shouted that both IRD and ISG had made the call and that the students were to be sent home for the day.

As it was only noon, I settled into my classroom to puzzle out some FTP problems on our server. Before I knew it, it was 2:30 PM and our new guard at the site, Saalim, was knocking on my door. He asked me what time I was leaving, and how I was getting back to Amman. I chuckled and told him that I was at the mercy of Jeff and Aaron for that answer. He looked at me askance and told me that they’d left half an hour ago. I told Saalim that they probably just needed to get something and they’d be back later. He urged me to call and confirm. Aaron didn’t answer my call, but Jeff did. “Zach…Zach…we’re SO sorry about that. Aaron’s practically in tears right now.” I glanced over at Saalim and shrugged, and told him he had been right. My coworkers had forgotten me at the site and gone back home. Guess that’s what I get for working late! Jeff told me that Anselm, one of the recycling specialists, was heading back to Ayn al Basha now to pick me up. Guess I’ll never be able to say I’m “unforgettable” again! On the way back into Amman with Anselm, we saw the “blizzard” that had hit the city with our own eyes.

Careful there, kids - those snowballs are filled with dangerous SNOW!

In other news, I’ve got a new housemate now, for the first time in almost 10 months. It’s weird to not have this Big Glass Box to myself anymore, but I’m definitely enjoying it so far. I think I was starting to go a little stir crazy before with just my computer and my music. I took him to my favorite argeilleh cafe, Al-Borij, and introduced him to Haitham, who seems to be pretty much be up to his eyeballs with work at the pharmaceutical company Hikmeh these days, working anywhere between 60-70 hours a week.

In other OTHER news, Dozan wa Awtar is officially back in session for the 2010 year, and we had our seasonal retreat to the Dead Sea last weekend, just like the year before. Unfortunately, the differences in weather were huge; unlike 2009 where we all spent as much time as possible salting ourselves down in the sea or in the pool, this year it was barely warm enough to spend a sad 10 minutes in the pool, and I don’t think a single one of us tried the sea itself. It was a lot of fun and a great way to meet all of the new members and reconnect with the old, but I wish we could have used more of the 5-star Holiday Inn Dead Sea Resort’s features!