I mentioned several months ago after first arriving in Jordan that I had joined a Christian choir group that practiced nearby, thanks to Silas’s invitation and urging, and for the last two nights the choir had the chance to show off the fruits of our labor to the Christian population of Amman.

I was surprised but pleased by the turnout to both of the concerts; the church it was held it had about 300 seats in it and both nights it was standing-room only, with people packing both the lower level and the baloney level as well. The Sacred Heart of Jesus church is a huge, ornate affair with hanging chandeliers with dozens of tiny lights, and the transept is done up with huge statues of Jesus and the saints (very unusual and intriguing to a Lutheran such as myself) and rosaries everywhere. The acoustics were amazing though, and especially during the rehearsals we had in the preceding nights, our group of 55 singers made the place echo spectacularly for a good four to five seconds when we released a note. The makeup of the choir was evenly mixed between visiting foreigners like myself, long-time expatriates from across the English-speaking world, and college-age Jordanians. The choir’s rehearsals were always conducted in English, which every member spoke (and sang in) easily and fluently.

The length of the concert was a little over an hour and a half, which included the children’s choir (pictured below), who performed a couple songs by themselves, and four in conjunction with the adult choir. As you can also see in this picture, we were recorded by a Jordanian television channel, too. Our director, Ms. Shireen Abu-Khader, informed us that our little choir was known throughout the country as the largest and most talented, which made me feel really awkward that I couldn’t sing the Arabic hymns with more skill! But the audience which, like the choir, was combination of Arabs and Westerners, enthusiastically sang along with our songs whenever they could (several of the more well-known ones were printed in both languages in the programs for that very purpose). Thankfully, that took some of the heat off of those of us less-skilled in the Arabic language!

It was a beautiful, wonderful experience, and I’m looking forward to working with my fellow singers and the amazingly talented Ms. Shireen throughout the spring, when we put on our next concert for Easter.

In other news – remember how I mentioned a couple weeks ago that my class had joked with me about putting videos of me teaching up on Youtube? Turns out that Ahmed wasn’t kidding about it!

The children's choir sings 'Blessings to Mary' as the TV cameras roll around them

As promised in the previous blog entry, I now find myself caught up with enough of my coursework and lesson planning that I can put a few hours aside to talk about this past weekend’s trip to Wadi Rum, my second one in two weeks. My backbone is slowly shifting into alignment again, and I’m finding less sand in my ears than yesterday. All and all, with the exception of the sore throat, I’m feeling very good!

We left Amman at about 8 in the morning, a caravan of two cars heading south down the Desert Highway. I was with Aaron and his girlfriend Laura, while Jeff and two other friends, Amir and Lillie, came along behind in the second car. We made fairly good time through the light rain in Amman, and the ride was smooth thanks to Laura’s car, a Mitsubishi that to be perfectly honest was the nicest car I’ve been in since arriving in Jordan. The one fault it had, as we three soon found out, that after passing 120 kilometers per hour (around 70 mph) that the car makes an urgent, constant beeping noise. “Warning!” it seems to tell you, helpfully. “This car is traveling quickly! You must be on a highway, where you may hit a goat at any moment! Warning!” Thankfully, the sound of our teeth grinding together drowned out the beeping after half an hour. That – plus the combination of horrible, 1980’s pop-crooner music that the Jordanians must think that Americans love (and rap, of course) and play on the few English stations – was enough to make me happy that I was still so tired from the previous night that I could easily fall asleep in the back seat.

About halfway down the country, a change in velocity (and the sudden lack of beeping) woke me up suddenly and I saw that we were being waved down to the side of the road by a mustachioed, slightly comical-looking police officer (think Mario, with a badge). As cars were clearly still zooming past at almost identical speeds, the guy clearly was noting the nice car and the Americans inside and thinking “easy pickings.” He greeted Aaron in passable English, and after the usual license-and-registration check (some things are always the same in every country, I guess), consulted briefly with a fellow officer and then gazed off into space, stroked his mustache, and said, “you must pay…errrrm….twenty dinars.” Laura muttered, “I’d like to see them give us a ticket.” All three of us clearly suspected that this wasn’t an “official” request for money, but instead a “please bribe me now” request. Aaron spoke loudly in his friendly, I-Am-A-Tourist voice, “No Money! Don’t Have Any! We Are Sorry!” The officers clicked their tongues at us, tsk’ing in reproach, and stepped away to consult again. The tongue-click, or “tsk” is the primary method of showing disapproval here, which took me by surprise because I’ve never seen anyone under 60 do that consistently in the States. Meanwhile, as we watched, the officers tried to flag down another car that was zipping past us. As we watched, the young women inside waved back at them cheerfully, and then sped up again and continued down again. Apparently, that’s what we  should have done. Finally, the two officers returned, and Mario poked his head back into the window, returning Aaron’s license-and-registration again and said, “Well, be more careful next time.”

The sun rose into the sky, racing the now-familiar reddish mountain crags for height before dropping off suddenly into sloping dunes and desert for miles in the distance, broken only by chains of massive power pylons like sentinels, shifting and looking almost animated as the heat-haze drifted over the sand. I wondered if the pylons were carrying power from north to south or vice versa, and why so many of them were needed for the tiny concrete villages that seemed to be the only sign of life besides the hiss of the cars on asphalt. At about 11:30, we pulled off the highway into the entrance to the Wadi Rum Protected Area, the same driveway that my tour bus had gone up two weeks before.

We stopped off at Beit Ali, or “Ali’s House,” a small compound at the edge of the reserve that was the last place to get drinks before heading off into the dunes, or rent ATV’s for desert use at exorbitant prices. We tsk’ed in amazement and disbelief at the cost of a can of crappy Amstel beer (4 dinars per can? 20 dinars for a bottle of wine?) but had little choice but to pay the robber’s fee; “like being in New York, without the civilization,” I commented wryly as we climbed back into our cars.

A few more kilometers into the desert along the small and winding, but well-kept road, and we had reached the end of the track for our own vehicles; further travel inwards was restricted to registered guides to prevent damage to the ecosystem and the whole death/dehydration thing that unfortunately comes from being inexperienced and lost in the desert. We didn’t mind; Laura and Lillie, the trip’s masterminds, had already contacted their favorite guide, Suleiman the Bedouin, and he would be meeting up with us shortly. Sure enough, after only a few minutes of casually tossing a football around the parking lot, the man himself rattled up to us in a sage-colored Toyota pickup with an open bed. He hailed us with a gleaming smile, which matched his gleaming white robe, as he stepped from the truck to help us lift our bags into the bed. He greeted everyone warmly; apparently this group had been using his camp for quite awhile now. I was struck by his height, smooth English, and especially by his very Westernized sense of humor – which made sense, since his job was to be a companion to mostly-Western tourists!

About to make a successful football catch in the Rum parking lot

After we had piled the truck full with our coolers, packs, and selves, the engine grumbled to life, and we lurched out into the Bedouin village, passing by goats, camels, and cavorting children who flashed by us in bouncing blur as we left the low buildings behind and entered the actual desert. I saw a vague blur of a ubiquitous Orange Telecom building (even HERE?), and had enough time to shake my fist and tsk a couple times before it too vanished in a cloud of dust behind us.

All of us except poor Jeff had sunglasses on, which we quickly adjusted tightly across our face because the combination of sun, sand, windblasts, and insane bouncing did not let up for the next 15 minutes of roaring across the dunes. Suleiman was definitely getting a kick from treating his truck like a four-wheeler ATV. As our hair whipped around our faces and we struggled to hold onto our pots, pans, and coolers, the mountains got increasingly larger and even more impressive. I tried to photograph, video, and hold onto things at the same time, but I don’t believe I was too successful and therefore that particular photography won’t grace the website. Laura mentioned that when they needed to travel at night, the Bedouins guided themselves with the lights of their trucks turned off, using the ridges and spires of the mountains as navigational tools. Looking around me at the distinctive crests that surrounded us, I understood that to a Bedouin, born and raised in the desert, they would be as clear as painted signposts.

All right, just one picture. Because you asked nicely.

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Perhaps it’s just the fact that I spent the weekend sleeping outside under the stars in the desert, without a hat, and when I woke up I was covered in cold dew droplets, but I’m not feeling particularly healthy this morning. Thanksgiving was excellent; in fact, I had two of them – one with my colleague Shawn at his house the actual night of, and then I was back down in Wadi Rum with Jeff and Aaron and some other friends to celebrate a more traditional turkey-centric Thanksgiving.

Shawn’s dinner was completely wild; he has this tiny little apartment up near 3rd circle that he just packed with friends and coworkers, and when I arrived, the place already smelled strongly of garlic, hot sauce, and cooking meat. Shawn was one of my first friends here, and now he’s leaving the country for good in a week so I didn’t want to miss one of the last times that I would have to hang out with him. He and his roommates and friends whipped up about 6 different dishes in the span of an hour, and then we all crowded out onto his porch to have what was perhaps the most Mexican food-filled Thanksgiving I’ve ever had. No one spoke for about 15 minutes because we were all so busy just shoveling it down. It was cold outside in the night air, but trust me, after that garlic and sauce did its job, none of us were feeling it. It was a great party, followed by a couple hours of dancing, which left me wondering how I was going to be able to get myself up in time to meet up with Aaron to get to Wadi Rum the next morning. I’ll try to write about that soon, within the next few days – it’ll probably be another longer post, so I need to get all the photos ready!

December starts tomorrow; I don’t have a lot of work with my Iraqi students lined up for this month because it’s going to be filled with so many breaks. The Islamic holiday Eid ul-Adha is next week, which means we’ll have most of it off, and then of course Christmas. I leave for home two days before the 25th, which means I’ll get to experience the joys of pre-Christmas flying by myself, for the first time.

I don’t have time to write much more; Jeff and Aaron will be here in a few minutes to pick me up to take me to Ayn Al Basha for class. Because of the cold and sore throat that I’m now sporting thanks to the weather, I’m glad that Sunday is a half day for my students. Here’s a picture of my friend and translator (or, mutarjeem) Qayssar, leading the class a few weeks ago. As you can tell, everyone loves taking pictures of the action, and several of the students have joked about putting it on Youtube (at least, I think they’re joking!)

So, I figure that if people are actually going to call me a teacher, I’d better actually give out some testing material at some point to prove that my guys are learning what I say they are. With that in mind, I decided that I would give a test or quiz every Sunday morning; the first day of classes for the week.

I knew that my lack of a dedicated translator of the written word would be an impediment to my ability to write a real test, so I settled on a picture-matching quiz that I gave them on Sunday (after I only caught a few hours of sleep from getting back from Petra!). Nothing complex, just matching between English names and pictures of the components that we’d learned about in class. Jeff told me that he could see them frantically studying, outside my classroom, an hour before classes began. Of course, 3 of them were still late and 2 didn’t show, but that’s to be expected here.

I’ve saved a copy here, if you’d like to see it. It’s in PDF form. Give it a try, let me know how you think you did!

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So I just got back from the weekend’s extensive traveling, and even though I feel like my head is filled with sand (literally) and I should probably be finishing up my lesson plans for tomorrow’s class, I wanted to record the details of the trip as thoroughly as I can before it, like the sand, slips from my sleepy brain. As a fair warning, this entry is over 6,500 words long, so I recommend printing it out instead of staring into your computer screen for an hour. Or at least, pour yourself a cup of coffee, or possibly a stiff scotch. Yes, that’ll do nicely. Ready? Let’s begin.

I didn’t want to write about the weekend’s plans before now just because, just like getting Ayn Al Basha and Internet ready and working in a timely fashion, I didn’t want to gush about the future before I was actually sitting on the bus, speeding towards the famous Petra itself. The whole trip probably cost me JD 68, all told, and for the chance to get a taste of three famous Jordanian sites, it was definitely worth it.

I met up with Haitham and his two medical school friends Ee’sad and Hazzum late on Thursday night after I got home from work. Haitham wasted no time in taking charge of the operations of directing the purchases of food, drink, and cooking, and we spent an hour scurrying about Zah’ran Street to various still-open grocery stores picking up supplies. I offered to buy dinner for everyone (why not, at JD .60 a person?) but they all declined, citing the medical issues with the constant eating of fuul and hoummus. Darn it, this is what happens when you hang out with med students.

Haitham bustled about the kitchen, taking charge of making 3 dozen sandwiches of 3 different types: egg, beef, and cheese. He clicked his tongue at us, “dahl hohn! [come here] and let’s get going! We need to be up at 4:30 in the morning to catch the bus at 5:30!” I do have to definitely admit, those sandwiches he made for dinner were definitely far better than the greasy food I regularly eat. As Haitham always quotes to me disapprovingly when I tell him of my enjoyment of the cooked farva beans called fuul, “Fuul makes fools, my friend.”

As expected, 4:30 arrived way too soon, and we were all slightly muddy-headed as we wandered shakily outside at 5:15 in the morning to catch a taxi to Garden street to meet the waiting bus. We were completely laden with sacks of food, courtesy of Haitham, but curiously (I thought to myself) I was the only one carrying a pillow and sleeping bag. No one told me until much later that all that good stuff was provided at the camp, but oh well, at least I had something comfy to continue sleeping on the bus with.

The four of us took our seats as the rest of the bus filled up. I was the only white guy on the bus; everyone else was Arab, or east Asian. There was a couple in front of us snuggling and whispering into each others’ ears, causing Haitham to frown disapprovingly and mutter something about “disgrace to Islam.” I noted that the vast majority of the other guests were a group of around 20 young students, raucously singing and calling out to each other as they stampeded aboard. From reading the backs of their matching letter jackets (which were in English, surprisingly) I could see that they were “Class of 2009 of ITC,” whatever that was. One thing was for sure, they definitely weren’t sleepy like the rest of us, and they started hooting and even (I’m not kidding) banging on 1-2 bongo drums that they had brought with them. Although they were quite rhythmically talented, I very quickly wanted to strangle them with their own checked keffiyeh scarves.

The leader of the trip, a tall, skinny young Palestinian named Kemahl, did his best to keep order as us older travelers gazed mutinously at him, wincing as the ITC kids started singing badly off-key hiphop music. However, his black and white checked keffiyeh wrapped prominently around his neck and his soft, quiet voice probably did little to affect the students, the majority of whom were festooned with the traditional, “true Jordanian” red and white scarves that old families wear to show their wahtanee; patriotism. Adding to the ineffectiveness of Kemahl’s pleas to keep it down was the fact that the bus’s sound system appeared to actually be an old karaoke machine that was set on “theater echo mode” which made his voice sound like he was speaking through a Darth Vader mask. If not for the fact that the rest of us were all trying to sleep, the whole situation would have been comical. “They’re just blowing off steam, you see,” Haitham explained. “When you’re in school, you are always told what to do, when to do, and it’s all very strict. They can’t make a sound; very repressing.”

Although the trip to Petra took about 4 hours, we took breaks every hour or so for people to get out and stretch their legs. Who am I kidding? We took breaks every 50 minutes or so for people to race off the bus and light up as many cigarettes as possible, puffing away frantically in the chilly morning air. At this first such occasion, at a little restaurant/rest stop an hour outside of Amman, we four enjoyed the first few of our tasty sandwiches as the kids pulled out a football (Americans should read as = soccer) and somehow managed to smoke, kick the ball around, and play that !#$! drum at the same time. I don’t remember having THAT much energy when I was 17, but I guess they just have to keep it bottled up all week. I wandered over to the edge of the restaurant’s parking lot, stepping gingerly between tall, thick green cacti and looking out into the desert, which instantly began beyond the cacti barrier. As is sadly the norm in Jordan, the first 10 feet in all directions was strewn with bottles, bags, and various other garbage-related items. In the distance, I could see a herd of goats and a few scattered tents.

Eventually though, we swung around the final corner over the final mountain pass and the amazing, breathtaking sight of Petra came into full view, with the tiny tourist town of Wadi Musa in front of it. The driver slowed down as we all dug out our cameras and snapped away. Of course, slowed down for a Jordanian means, “drove in a way slightly less likely to cause us to fall off the mountain” and so, the picture below is the best of the otherwise-blurry bunch. It can’t do the true sight justice, though – it was completely unlike what I expected to see. The ancient capitol of the Nabateans appears to almost grow straight up out of the desert, and then, as you can see in the far background, fall back away into nothing.

The village of Wadi Musa with the imposing Petran mountainscape beyond

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After the week’s hiatus, classes resumed today to be much smoother than last week. Well, almost. Ra’ouf had to quit suddenly and permanently, citing personal issues. I’ve only known the guy for a week, but since we were spending 9 hours a day together with Jeff and Aaron, every day, I feel like I’ve lost a close friend here. There was little time to dwell on that though, as the students apparently started showing up 2 hours early again. I certainly didn’t envy Aaron’s position, as apparently half a dozen Iraqis showed up around that time and asked to be put into classes (you can probably guess which one they were asking for). Aaron let in a few of them, but had to turn down the rest of them and it didn’t exactly go smoothly.

Without Ra’ouf, Ahmad was pressed back into service as the office translator. As classes started for me, Ali was kind enough to work as the translator for me again. I can’t emphasize enough how great this guy is; he is up there translating for me, not getting paid for it, taking my questions, automatically deciphering my Midwestern euphemisms and in general being extremely helpful. At lunchtime, I offered to get him anything he wanted for food and drink and he politely declined everything. I told him I wanted to hire him as the translator, and he told me he didn’t want money, he was just doing it to help his fellow Iraqis. “All Iraqis are like brothers, and if I can help you help them, than that is all I want,” he told me, shaking his head. Unfortunately, his family is relocating to Britain a month from today, so he and I have limited time to work together.

At the end of the class, many of the students came forward to shake my hand again, thanking me for coming (I think), and asked me what we would be doing the next day. I am already planning on bringing some “life” to the bare white walls with some diagrams and posters of computer technology, and tonight I need to work on a work sheet with different types of motherboard connectors on it for a review tomorrow.

Here are some pictures of Sheraton the little kitten. He has been greatly enjoying living here with me (and occasionally Philip when he visits his own house!). As I write this, he’s curled up on my lap, purring his low rumble-kitten purr and patting at my hand as I typed on the keyboard. Occasionally when I move or clear my throat, he looks up at me and squeaks indignantly.

Nancy presents: Sheraton the cat!

Sheraton hides in Philip's indoor garden

Also, I’ve made a Facebook album of the construction of Ayn Al Basha. Even though it isn’t completely finished yet, I think it’s close enough that I can make a photo album of what’s happened so far. Here’s the link below (you don’t need a Facebook account to see them).