This weekend, I'm going to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba. It should be great except that we are camping in the desert and it's supposed to be literally 100 degrees.

Tonight is a friend's birthday so we are using it as an excuse to go out on the "town", which so far has been an interesting experience. Arab business men who are very, very wealthy like my friends and like to buy us drinks, but we are being careful. They are so wealthy that it's creepy. Most of them studied abroad. Mom, I will not marry one of them. One of them we call the pock-marked Arab. Also, there are very few women "out" late at night at bars/resturaunts because they are at home dong whatever women do with their time here, so when we walk down the street it is literally piles of Arab men staring. It isn't actually a problem, because the street that we like to go to actually has a guard/army man with a large gun and camo at the entrance so I'm pretty sure I'm safe. Relatively speaking.

Arabs also eat DISGUSTINGLY. Example:
 Someone told them that the way to be Western is to eat "American", and to do so you need everything to be deep fried/breaded/greasy. It's kind of true, but I feel like I'm at the OC fair every time I try to find something quick to eat. The place where I get coffee on campus (for 15 cents) also sells only one type of sandwich-- the french fry wrap, which involves literally french fries wrapped in bread. 

I am not complaining!

I am only complaining for a minute, but disclaimer: I promise that I am having an amazing time, that I am very happy here, and that the only reason this "blog" is full of angsty stories is because those are the only interesting ones.

Last night our taxi driver (driving a sedan with 6 girls as passengers, sorry mom/dad, it isn't the worst thing i could do in the middle east) was very very drunk and high. He was swerving, wasn't watching the road, was touching my friend's back very sketchily (new adverb), was telling us about american marijuana and how he smoked it, refused to stop the car when we asked him to, kept driving, and then pulled out a 1/4 full bottle of whiskey and started drinking it. Needless to say, we opened the door in the middle of the street, bailed, and did not pay. We walked quickly up the street to more populated areas (it was 10pm) until we found our guy friends. Then, 10 minutes later, our taxi driver found us, started screaming out the window at us to pay him, and then we gave up on all rules about being inconspicuous and sprinted down the street to a crowded burger king to hide. He didn't find us, but still, it was not fun. Turns out that running through the streets in a group of 6 American girls makes people think you're in serious trouble, so all the cars were stopping and people were trying to ask us what was happening.

Next- my peer tutor is a very conservative hijab-wearning young lady who told me today that she doesn't like American pop music because "it is all about girls and boys loving each other and doing things that I don't do and I do not love any boy, so I cannot listen to it". Interesting, but valid.

P.S. it was my birthday, i am 20. blah.

Week one

I arrived in Amman last Sunday, and it's been a long and very good week. Orientation was boring but necessary I suppose, and on one of the days we got to go to the Dead Sea. Everyone was talking about how beautiful it was and I will say that it technically was, because it was freaky to realize Israel was just on the other side and I was at the lowest point on earth, but the pictures I took are hideous and not worth posting, ever. It was salty and it hurt my cuts on my body, but I floated very well. Cool.

Since the dead sea I've wandered Amman and gone to the Citadel, which are a pile of ancient ruins from the Romans, Byzantines, and Umayyads, in some order. It was cool and located right in the center of the city, which is strange. Also, you can walk all over them, because apparently no one cares about maintaining the piles of very old rocks.
My apartment is enormous and absurd looking, which I like very much. All of the girls have good apartments, and I will probably not be able to see the boys' apartments ever because that's against middle eastern rules.

Things are awkward being a girl, because although I don't have to dress as modestly as one might assume, there are lots of rules that I'm not used to. We are told to ignore all conversation by taxi drivers because that is showing them that I have honor and they will like me for that, but when someone directly asks you a question is is really strange having to look out the window and ignore them, so I'm not doing too well. I guess I have no honor, but I'm American and white so I'm probably  a prostitute anyways. You can't get into the left side of the taxi because its "dishonorable" too. Men literally stop their cars to look at us, or leer at us, or whatever, and everyone says things as we walk by but I don't understand what they're saying. The only phrase I know they always shout out of cars, from balconies, etc. is "WELCOME".. which isn't very offensive, only weird. Today we noticed a car with a young creepy looking man following us, so we stopped outside another apartment than ours and waited while he circled around trying to find where we lived, but that's manageable. My doors lock. Free drinks at the bars (which they have here, because drinking is legal, and the legal age is 18, so I'm allowed to write this in this blog) are the upside.

I have nothing more to say, except that I love it here, I've found an amazing group of friends, my classes aren't hard yet, and my Arabic is barely improving. There was a cockroach in my shower once, or twice, but that's okay. I am in the Middle East, so I think I can manage a few animals.

STRAY CATS ARE EVERYWHERE and the girls who live above me kidnapped one and have it in their apartment, despite the fact that it definitely has rabies/scurvy/lime disease/swine flu/whatever.

Bye Laguna!

Bye laguna, be home in 3ish months. I'm flying to Amman on September 11th from New York.