or the next two days after we returned from the southern desert, I caught up on my work and my parents traveled with another JD Tours driver to the northern sites of Jordan, such as Um Qais, Ajloun, and Jerash. I wanted to go with them, but there’s no way I could have been at ease leaving my job(s) unattended for two and a half straight weeks; I needed those two days to make sure that everything was working properly, and to teach. I’m sure my students would have missed me, anyway. Besides that, I took my parents to dinner at Haitham’s house in Zarqa’ where they got to experience real homemade mensaf, made with love, care, and extra sauce. Haitham proudly presented us with large plates mounded high with lamb and rice and potato, which we all quickly demolished before chatting with Haitham and his parents about life, work, and teasing me in what I hope was an affectionate way.

The famous view overlooking the Old City from Mount Olives. Foreground is the Jewish cemetery, with the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock behind.

One of the highlights of my parents’ trip to the Middle East was to be the Dozan wa Awtar choir trip to the Holy Land, Palestine, to see Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and Bethlehem – all important and famous historical Christian sites. The culmination of it would be singing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which encloses what remains of the Hill of Golgotha and Jesus’ burial site. The whole tour would be paid for and tour buses would ferry us around the various other sites. Board would be free for choir members, and families (such as mine own and several other interested parties) would be get excellent discounted rates on 5-star hotel rooms. We would sing “Al-Zahara al-Madaa’en” (The Flower of the Cities), which was written about Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. It would be amazing.

Then the whole thing was canceled, the day beforehand. “What could happen, after all that planning, practicing, and scheduling!” you may ask. Israel happened, of course! Our favorite people across the river decided to throw an extra dozen papers and forms at the Jordanian and Diplomatic Visa-holders in the choir group, and there was no way to get it all done in time before we were scheduled to leave. So the whole thing had to be scrapped thanks to the wonderful, lovely Israeli government. Thanks, chaps – right kind of you. PS: I hope you enjoy never being able to leave your own country because your passports have the same appeal as the Black Plague to the rest of the world.

Slight bitterness aside, we decided that just because Israel security was less than intelligent, we weren’t going to be stopped from having a fun vacation in Palestine. The Tulip family (frequent commenters on this blog) felt the same way, and together the two families took one extra day of rest to replan an entire trip and left early on Friday morning, the second of October. Considering that she was only given one day of warning, my mother pulled things together in her typical excellent way. With almost inconceivable foresight to this cancellation, she had even brought a “Guide to Israel” guidebook with her and we spent Thursday (the day we were supposed to have left) figuring out where we would stay and what we would do.

The ride to the border was simple and wonderfully inexpensive (cue ominous foreshadowing) at only 12 JD for the ride to the border, and then another 3JD for the specially-licensed servecee taxi to take us the last bit of the way. Because of (guess) more border security (you guessed it), any taxi or public transport you take has to stop about a kilometer away from the border and then you need to switch into what is essentially an identically beat-up, banged up bus or taxi, and pay more money to go the last 3 minutes. Oh well, like I said – at least it was cheap.

The bouncy transport systems weren’t finished. It took another trip for the three of us by a large tourist bus (JD15 I believe, including our baggage fees) to actually cross over the Jordan Puddle (no way I’m calling that dribble a river), now joined by the Tulips. On the other side of the river, things changed very noticably and very quickly.

Our bus swung to a wheezing halt in front of a low, squat building…the Israeli border security and clearance center. Notices written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English were posted everywhere, something along the lines of “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Standing there to “greet” us as we exited the bus was a tall Israeli boy who rather resembled a curly-headed brick wall. Holding a loaded M-16 machine gun. And wearing khaki shorts, polo short, shades, and a (poorly) hidden mic under his shirt on the left shoulder, which he gripped self-importantly every few moments and muttered Hebrew into it. I say “boy” because he was just the first of many Israeli “soldiers” all over the base which looked as if they were either ready for spring break in Cancun (like this guy) or were wearing their dad’s baggy soldier uniform. Speaking of which, this gentleman was maybe one of five males I saw during the entire 1.5 hour stay in the base. The vast majority of soldiers were young women who looked as if they should be talking about their latest boyfriend and arguing about senior prom, instead of wearing pistols strapped to their belts and glaring suspiciously at my Tajiki and Uzbeki visas in my passport. The girl who questioned me stared at them in confusion, having probably never before seen those two large stickers that take up an entire passport page. “What were you doing there, and why? Who were you staying with and how did you know them? What was their family name?” was an example of some of the questions that were fired at me. My mother elbowed me and told me to mention that their daughter stayed with the family in America and the father works at the U.S. Embassy. Even so, the girl took my passport to an office a few meters away and vanished for several minutes. I can only imagine how that conversation went.

• Girl: Quick, boss – where’s Tajikistan? And do they hate us too?
• Bored office guy: Next to India or something. Naw, I guess they’re cool.

After being fingerprinted and photographed by another soldier, plus one final cattle-herd like line of people shuffling forward to get their Israeli-scanned luggage, which had already been scanned twice before, we were through. Abu Tulip arranged a microbus for all of us and using his fluent Arabic, negotiated what west of the river may call a “fair price” and what we east of the river would call “a little bit steep.” No problem, though – with three young children in the Tulip family, the main order of business was getting us to Jerusalem and to some lunch!

Dad said up near the front seat and chatted with the driver, who spoke a little English and was happy to talk. Like myself, dad had been forced to put the filming and photographing devices away for the last few hours as we were in “security” territory, but now that we were free of the border region and moving westward, he quickly dug out his camcorder and fired it up, just in time to catch The Separation Wall up on the hill above us.

It was the first time I’d ever seen it in anything but pictures and online videos, and even though we were quite far away from it, it still struck me with its sense of foreboding, segregation, and loss. In this particular area, the wall wasn’t so much a separate, free-standing entity but more of a component of the luxurious-looking Israeli apartments built above it. All the land we had been driving through since leaving the border was technically Palestinian (remember, this means nothing as Israel occupies it all anyway) and these high walls were built facing the desert to keep everyone else out, but at the same time provide apartment inhabitants with a beautiful view of the desert and the Jordan Valley behind us. I can’t look at these gashes of separation without wondering what might have been there over the past few hundred years. An olive farm? A village? Israelis touts themselves as being a beacon of modernity, an oasis in a land surrounded by desert and despotic rulers – I’ve actually seen comments with those phrases used in pro-Israel blogs and forums before. But these walls, separating the modern apartments, parks, libraries, and swimming pools from the desert sands, only serve to fill my stomach with a feeling of dread and nausea.

Houses on stilts: necessary for protection or just to remind Arabs that they aren't welcome within?

For that reason, I’m glad that we spent almost the entire duration of our time in Jerusalem in the beautiful Old City section, the historical treasure of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian history. We left our driver behind near the “New Gate” of the Old City (so named for being “only” one hundred years old, as opposed to thousands) and quickly found our hotel, the Knights’ Palace between the New Gate and the large and famous Jaffa Gate. We only took the time to drop off our well-scanned luggage in the hotel room, taking but a moment to admire the medieval suits of armor and paintings of Crusaders that hung in the wide stone hallways. Apparently the building had once been a theological seminary, but these days they merely harbor an odd love of Henry Kissinger in a knight costume (This amusing painting was hanging right next to our stairway).

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The house has returned to its previous quiet and still state, albeit slightly messier than before. The hard drive is filled with another 700 pictures, the wallet with a dozen new business cards, and the fingernails have been introduced to an entirely new layer of grit and sand from the deserts and Dead Sea. My parents just left a couple days ago from their 2.5 week trip to the Middle East, and I finally have the time to sit down and write about our friendly adventures in The Jordan in solitude. But really, as anyone who knows Amman would tell you – what is solitude when every night is a fireworks show and there’s a dozen children laughing and playing in the street below you, even at 11 at night?

I teased my parents a little bit before their arrival, joking with them that I was going to send Ahmad to the airport with their names written on a sign – in Arabic (almost the same way he had collected me from the airport a year earlier). They had been using my old CDs to learn some common phrases, but the thought of having to read Arabic lettering made them blanch. I was 45 minutes late to the airport to pick them, thanks to bad traffic around town, and found them surrounded by their luggage in the Queen Alia Airport lounge area. They probably thought I was serious about the Ahmad and the Arabic name sheet. Turns out I was only half serious.

My folks were pretty exhausted after over a day of traveling between O’Hare to London to Jordan, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to introduce them to Schwarma Reem, which has always been my favorite little schwarma joint in my neighborhood. Like the sign in the airport, I liked the symmetry – my first meal in Jordan had been schwarma from Reem with Pat and Philip after I arrived. My mother was aghast at the traffic and driving etiquette (or lack there of) in the streets, and lingered nervously by the buzzing circles, watching the cars whip around. I recalled what she’d read to me before I left for Jordan in a guidebook, something cheesy about needing to find a little old woman to hold in front of you as a shield in order to get across safely. Darn book made it really difficult to get her to cross streets; I needed to practically stand in the road to hold up cars while she would quickly bolt over. After an extremely long wait (unfortunately one of the longest I’d ever seen at Reem’s) they got their hands on the greasy meaty goodness that is a schwarma. A miniature gyros, if you will. By this point, mom was practically falling asleep with schwarma in her mouth, and I still needed to get her to cross back over the street again.

The main events of the next day were traveling around the Eastern Desert with a special driver and his car from a tour company, JD Tours (Jordan Direct Tours, I believe they’re called). Our driver, Mahmoud, was a friendly Palestinian fellow in his late 30s who chatted happily with my parents as he drove, swerving expertly around massive fuel trucks and farmers with one hand on the wheel. He was more than pleased to talk about Islam with us and offer his descriptions and opinions on everything we passed by. The desert castles were the primary attraction of the east – from the massive stretch and barracks of the Azraq Citadel that supposedly was a stopping point of Lawrence of Arabia in his travels, to the tiny stone domes of the Umra Castle pleasure palace, filled with hot baths, and (religiously forbidden) pictures of animals and humans, including women in states of undress. As mom’s guidebook sums up about the Umra, “Islamic historians like to frown and discuss the Umra as an un-converted outpost from the distant past. However, more likely it was merely a place for the Muslim Umayyad rulers of the time to kick back and just be human.”

The elderly caretaker of the Umra Palace has a little merry-making of his own with the single-stringed Rababa

We tarried a little bit too much out in the desert, and didn’t get to see quite as much as we wanted back in Amman. At my parents’ request, Mahmoud took them “shopping.” He might have got a little more than he bargained for with me in the car with them though. I frowned at him when he dropped us off in front of a large gift shop on the edge of the city. “Why not take us to the Bel’ad for shopping? More places to choose from.” He protested that the quality was better here, though. I also noticed he seemed to be good buddies with the shop owners, too. Oh well…no one’s perfect. My parents enjoyed it and found a few things to purchase.

The Roman Theatre in the downtown was closed for some reason and we couldn’t get in, and we almost had the same problem at the Citadel Hill as well. Mahmoud asked about us at the gate, and we were immediately rejected, even though I could see families and kids playing around on the hill a few dozen meters away. Mahmoud resignedly started to point out things on the hill from the parking lot, but I went back and tried again. An important-looking man in a business suit spoke to me in both Arabic and English, and when I asked again if we could enter the hill, he quickly agreed to it. Mahmoud tried to walk with us through the entrance, and the suited man curtly told him to go wait in the car. My parents and I both felt that was rather rude and uncalled for. We were able to wander around the site without problems, my parents marveling at the view from the hill that made it such a prime piece of real estate for the Ammonites and early Umayyads to build upon. Unlike last time though, the domed and mysterious Umayyad Palace had its huge doors thrown wide open. I questioned a man and his wife walking through as to why there wasn’t the usual bribe-able guard in place, and he told me that because it was the Eid holiday, they just left the place open and unguarded. Ah, Jordan – sometimes I love how your bureaucratic mind works. Sometimes.

Okay, I'll admit that I told them to pose like this but it was just too cute to pass up

We got to bed moderately early after making some cold ham and turkey sandwiches for the next day’s activities – hiking in the always-spectacular Petra. We left at about 5 in the morning and arrived a good three hours later. My dad sat up with me in the passenger’s seat, filming everything he could and enjoying the Arabic music stations, which I wailingly sang along with whenever something familiar came up (namely, the word “habibi“). This being my third trip to Petra, I obligingly acted as a tour guide for them, rattling off anything and everything I’d ever heard about each one of the sites and tombs we came across. Even after two previous trips here with Haitham et al and Christine, there was always new things I hadn’t noticed before. My Arabic being improved over the course of the six months since my previous visit, I had even more conversing with the Bedouin children and sellers. For example, as the three of us sat next to the Ad-Deir Monastery eating our hard-earned sandwiches after over an hour of heavy stair-climbing, we were approached by a little boy. He looked like he was wearing a karate uniform, but curiously enough, I thought I recognized the logo on the belt that he was wearing. Sure enough, it was a Harley Davidson motorcycle belt, from our very own Milwaukee Wisconsin (or China, take your pick). He developed an immediate love of my cracked sunglasses and when he found that I could speak with him, he told me his name was Ahmad, and he pleaded with me to let him have them as a gift. I warned him that with my sun-weak green eyes, I’d fall off the cliff on the way back without them, and he relented and instead contented himself with the fruits that we offered him from our packs. The apricots are yucky, he told me plaintively. Just like any other 6-year-old boy might, he asked for a dinar so that he could go buy chips and a soda from the Bedouin vendors next to the monastery below.

Little Ahmad forgets my busted-up sunglasses and moves onto this British woman's nicer looking ones

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I just finished up my most recent web project, changing and redesigning Whitman Academy’s webpage to be easier to modify, with more features and “Web 2.0 compliant.” I don’t like using that buzzword because I feel as if it’s way overused, but if you had compared the old site to the new, you’d understand it by way of its definition. I define 2.0 as allowing and encouraging user input back to the website. Web 1.0 would be a newspaper that you read. Web 2.0 is a newspaper that you can read, comment on, and share easily with others.

The site is not completely done yet (but then, what website ever is?) and I’d like to take some of the Whitman art students’ work and replace the default plant photos in the rotating PHP/javascript display, but that may take a little while to get ahold of digital copies of the artwork. And of course, the Gallery at the end of the menu there is still mostly empty, but I hope to fill it up as the year goes on with new pictures. I used the most famous Gallery program, the NextGallery plugin, and the thing is a pure dream to work with; couldn’t be happier.

As always, I enjoy using WordPress (obviously!) and I found a great theme to use, the Atahualpa. It allowed for completely menu-based CSS modification from a new menu in the Dashboard, which really made my life a lot simpler. I wouldn’t be surprised if the world sees a lot of themes based off of Atahualpa’s design and format out on the web soon.

My parents arrive in only a few hours now; I’m really excited to go pick them up from the airport at 9. It’s going to be one of the best couple of weeks ever!

As the sun sank over the rooftops of Jordan last night, the usual sunset prayer was louder and longer than ever, signaling to Muslims around the city and world that the month of Ramadan had ended. The signal, just like every year, was the final sliver of moon vanishing into the new moon of the next Islamic month. It’s interesting to compare the mostly static Christian holidays to their lunar Islamic counterparts. What would you do if you didn’t know exactly when Christmas was going to be? Whether it would be on the 25th of December of the 26th? Devout Muslims have to worry about that every year when they’re stocking up on groceries and gifts for the final iftaar and the first days of Eid, not to mention making their travel plans.

Nicholas and I tried to have an iftaar at the famous Hashem falafel restaurant a couple nights ago, but to no avail: even though we arrived 40 minutes before the 6:50 sunset, the restaurant was still packed beyond capacities and people were spilling out onto the sidewalk of the surrounding businesses, and some people were even running from surrounding streets bringing their own tables and chairs to the restaurant. After the two of us fruitlessly searched for any possible chair, or table, or bench, or even someone’s lap to sit on, we ended up going to a burger joint across the street, where the owner was more than happy to feed us while glaring balefully across the boulevard at the masses of Arabs breaking fast. You have to feel sorry for the restaurants that surround the most famous eating establishment in Jordan – I mean, this is where two sets of royal families have eaten before, they’re open 24/7, and everyone and their aunt has heard of them (my own aunt included).

For yesterday’s iftaar, the last of 2009, Haitham called me up and invited me to join him for dinner at his home in Zarqa’. It was a conveniently-timed invitation, as I had returned only hours before from picking up a new Mitsubishi Lancer from a rental dealer in preparation for my parents’ upcoming arrival in Jordan, only two days from now. I figured I needed the practice anyway; driving in “OhMyGodEidIsTomorrow” traffic seemed like the best possible way to get re-acclimated to driving on Jordan’s highways after heading south half a year ago. After 20 minutes of crawling through a mere kilometer of traffic in the bell’ad downtown area (only a few blocks from where I had eaten the night before) I found myself wishing I had rented the helicopter option instead. I didn’t let it try my patience too much though – I understood that it had only been yesterday that the Islamic clerics of Saudi announced that the Eid al-Fitr celebration was officially going to start on the 20th.

Haitham served me his mother’s chicken schwarma with fried potatoes, and we listened to the aforementioned chorus of happy chanters singing from the minarets. For the first time, it sounded like there were multiple voices joined in harmony wailing happily down on us, and it created a neat auditory effect as the loudspeakers echoed and bounced around the faces of the concrete buildings of Zarqa’.

After dinner, Haitham and his friend Mohammad and I headed out into the Zarqa’ downtown. Although Zarqa’ is quite a bit smaller than Amman, its downtown district is massive and garishly lit like a miniature Las Vegas and it was filled with thousands and thousands of people. As we pressed through the mob, Haitham jokingly compared it to his haj to Mecca a few years ago, in which thousands of Muslims simultaneously circle the Kabba stone in the center of the mosque. “Everyone is shuffling forward, stepping on each others’ heels, and trying not to accidentally curse at someone because you’re in a holy place.” As always when I leave Amman, young slicked-hair teenagers got a kick out of randomly calling  “Hello, How are you,” “Welcome to Jordan,” and “Fuck you!” to me in the streets. I guess they have to practice their English somehow.

I went to lunch today with two new friends from America, Jon and Jonathan, who live down the street from me. I took them to The Pizza Company on Mecca street in the Lancer, and although the streets were empty of traffic compared with the previous day, the restaurants were quite full in the early afternoon. The three of us sat next to a table filled with maybe two dozen muhijabbeh (covered) women, excitedly talking and eating. Looks like everyone is just really happy to be able to eat whenever they want in the daylight again – at least until next year!

After what Dozan wa Awtar billed as the first combination of Iftaar, plus singing concert, plus quiz game night (probably not hard to be first at that combination, actually) at Books@Cafe, I just returned home from a packed rooftop audience. It was a good night, even though the venue was a little bit cramped (with us in a corner of the outdoor cafe area) but the sound setup was quite powerful – even deafeningly so when I had the accidental misfortune of standing too close to one of their speakers and my ears rang for a good 5 minutes.

We did a compilation of all of our other concerts since the beginning, most of which had been shortened for time limit purposes. Each one of the songs we sang had a question related to it which was put up on a projector sitting on the roof of the main building in front of the audience. Surprisingly, there were about 50 questions, and we as a concert only provided clues to half of them. The other half were related to questions our “DJ” asked in both English and Arabic, and to songs that were played over the speakers that people were asked to identify. There was a good mix of foreigners and locals in the crowd that night, which meant that the questions were mixed as well. Some questions, like “name the main character in this theme song” (Mickey Mouse Theme Song) might have been easy for the Westerners in the group, but when the choir danced out the opening number to an Arab cartoon named “Belle and Sebastian” I certainly know I was as baffled as the foreigners in the audience looked.

During those small mini-intermissions where the audience was working on questions unrelated to our singing ability, the choir members milled about, chatted with friends in the audience, or in the case of Yanal and Nedy and I, sampled the local hot chocolate. Because it’s Ramadan, no alcohol can be served or purchased anywhere in the country for the entire month. Some more liberal businesses have been known to evade the rules, though, and I remember last year, Books@Cafe was shut down for the entire month of Ramadan for alcohol-serving infractions. I was helping Nedy grade some first-round quiz sheets that had come in, and Yanal handed me a white mug in passing and said, “Can you hold my hot chocolate for me?” I grasped the wet base of the mug and looked at him in confusion. “Yanal, this mug is covered in condensate…?” He looked at me blankly and said, “You know, my hot chocolate. Feel free to have some.” Following his directions, I quickly discovered that the mug contained neither hotness nor chocolate.

Wait a second...

Besides questions on songs we’d already done, and mp3’s courtesy of Yanal’s laptop, many of the singers in Dozan also did solo or small-group bits and pieces from musicals. Besides famous Western ones like Miss Saigon and Grease, there were also (apparently) famous Arabic musicals as well. I was a back-up singer for my English friend John’s rendition of “Bui-doi” from Miss Saigon and part of the militant men’s number of “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Miserables (which took me back to high school when I sang the same song in costume for one of my favorite performances of all time). The last act of the evening, though, was our director Shireen and I singing a little cut from Grease‘s “Summer Nights” which was a lot of fun. I wish they would have let me sing the whole song, but oh well!

In other news, class has resumed at Ayn al Basha for the second year. I was there on the first day of class on Sunday. It was strange to be there as a technical support contractor and not a teacher for the first time, and many of my former Hardware students or other random people came up joyfully to shake my hand, and expressed their disappointment when I told them I wouldn’t be teaching this time around. I have so many other jobs to do now that I’ll probably only be at the training center one or two days a week to check over the computers and the network.

I have to say, I was extremely impressed with how Jeff handled everything. With both Aaron and Ahmad on vacation, he handled the entire center and everyone’s questions with amazing professionalism and calm. In the half hour before classes started, he probably had 20 people milling around him, demanding to know why they didn’t get into this-or-that class for this-or-that reason (usually no one’s fault but their own for not properly filling out the application previously). As I observed from the sidelines, wrists-deep in a server case that needed to have hard drives replaced, I knew that if I was in his shoes there, I would have gone insane and started shouting epithets in Arabic and Wamidh would have to administer tranquilizers to me with an elephant gun. But Jeff held his ground with every demand and cajole and calmly took everyone’s questions in an ordered and logical matter. If I had been wearing a hat, I would have taken it off to him.

We’re getting good turnout at EGT, or so I’ve heard. There was some worry as to whether or not people would show up because of Ramadan, but people are apparently coming to class as they should be. We had a little “celebration” party and iftaar at my house a week ago to commemorate the end of the first year, and Aaron and Jeff went over the policies of the new year with the teachers. It sounds like things are more strict now then previously in terms of attendance and behavior, but EGT has really built up a respectful name for itself and the students, both young and old, seem to have a craving for rules and order. After living in Iraq, a country that is decidedly unregulated in many respects, it’s probably a breath of fresh air to have a nice daily schedule to fall into.

Cycling Jordan has suspended its Friday morning ride activities for the duration of Ramadan, and has instead been changed to Friday-evening “Iftaar” rides, timed to finish just as the sun sets and the daily fast can be broken by observant Muslims. I decided to join my friends and colleagues for yesterday evening’s ride, which was made more adventurous by the simple unspoken rule: No drinking water.

Now, let’s not be overly incredulous at this statement: most of us had water with us, in backpacks and hidden around our persons. But, especially for Muslims and even for obvious foreigners such as myself, when biking along the highways, it’s best to not antagonize fasting people who are already grumpy, especially while they’re driving vehicles weighing several tons. I had hydrated myself before leaving for Cycling Jordan, but just like everyone else, I left my water bottle holder conspicuously empty when we left for our 40K ride.

Sa'ad and Sufian attempt to calculate an alternate course, with slightly fewer nails sticking out of concrete

The advanced ride wasn’t in huge demand because of Ramadan, but besides me there was Sa’ad and his son Karim, Sufian the cycling Olympiad, and Dag and Svenka, the Norwegian couple.  The ride south from Amman was uneventful, besides finding one of Jordan’s many wonderfully unmarked construction sites  in the road (“permanent construction” we joked as we portaged our bicycles over the rebar and concrete; they’ve been working on the Jordan Gate now for 7 years) and our slow but steady dehydration process. Thankfully, the sun was already mercifully low in the sky and although my lips felt as though I’d rubbed them with rusty sandpaper, we reached the Cycling Jordan farm (Madaba version) even before the beginner group had returned from their 20K!

The iftaar was great – Sa’ad had guys slaving away over a hot barbecue fire for hours before the sun went down, and even after we arrived, most of (including me) respectfully refrained from drinking any water until the sun finally shed its last fiery sliver over Palestine – quite spectacularly, in fact! The meal was lamb kebab, shish tawooq (kebab, except with chicken instead), and 3a’rees, which is not only the Arabic word for “wedding” but also the word for the flat Arabic khubiz pita stuffed with lamb kebab meat and grilled that is traditionally served at weddings. My friend and colleague Roola (who works for IRD, Entity Green’s primary financial sponsor) was also there with her husband and children, for their first ride with Cycling Jordan.

Roola's son Omar, who coincidentally happened to be dressed very similarly!

In other news: the first week teaching at Whitman has gone quite well. I have a couple very small classes and I only teach twice a week, which allows me to focus more attention on my student. It’s weird to only have 45 minutes per class to do it – it’s only been a year, but already I’ve forgotten how comparably short high school and college sessions are compared with the 5 hours per day I had with my Iraqis! I’m looking forward to being able to branch out and spend a much more even and fair amount of time with all of my different contacts now.