Currently...

UPDATED WITH HOUSE PICS!

Well currently I'm sitting on a mattress (farsha) on the floor in a room adjacent to my kitchen listening to my water boil, eating pita/olive oil/ thyme mix sandwich, drinking sweet tea, trying to decide what movie to watch, but this post is not really about that.

Sorry the title was misleading.

I wanted to give you an up-to-date sequence of events from my village. So far I have:

*  acquired most things I need to survive (still no fridge). This includes buying cleaning soaps from
    giant barrels in the back of a truck.

* sat inside a giant tin tent (think of an old shack really) with a bonfire inside for at least an hour     

   daily. I permanently smell like day-old bonfire, which no one likes.

* successfully hand-washed my clothes and wrung them out.  I have new respect for the 

   pre-washer/dryer generations. No wonder great-grandparents have incredibly strong grips.

* walked through my village market twice a day to go to work without incident (besides the typical,   

  "What's your name" that we all love so much)

* Read an O.T. manual for 5 hours at work because there were no kids (we are on break), and it was 

   not a day the physical therapist works. It was the only book in English. 

*Said "yes" to numerous questions I did not understand. I wonder what life they think I lead now...

*Found out Sandook Bareed means P.O. Box and that I should probably have a number that goes  

  along with that in the address, but they didn't give me one. I promise you if you send the 

  package/letter to Megan in Kreimeh...with the various information I gave, it will get to me I am now 

  friends with the mail ladies.
* Participated in a basket weaving workshop at my center. I am now a pro at using banana paper and
   what I can only describe as prairie grass to make fun baskets. 

As you can see, not a lot is happening in my world right now. Hopefully it will pick up when the students come back. Miss you all and I hope exciting things are happening. Give me updates!

UPDATE: for those of you not on facebook, here are the pictures of my house-enjoy!

First, here is the tent/shack I mention in some posts (I think):
View from my front door-

 Inside the tent/shack/shed-

The kitchen- cozy

 my stove top set up

 My shower situation.

Turkish toilet-

  

the living room I never use because a)its right next to the landlady hang out spot, which means not the best for privacy and b)its weird big and not cozy. 

My resouce making, internet using, reading, writing, everything area.

 

My bed. I used to have an actual bed, but it was horrible so I sleep on a farsha on the floor.

 

 A quote that makes me feel better on horrible days.

The first week

What a terrifying experience! The past couple weeks have been full of all kinds of emotions, most of them positive. 

Swearing-In was relatively uneventful I must say. We all donned our abeyas (traditional Jordanian dress) and dish-dashes (traditional Jordanian menswear) and trekked across the Al-Bayt campus confusing the Jordanian students, who were all wearing jeans. I think it counts as a cultural exchange moment. When we got to the auditorium, we were told we were going to have to introduce ourselves, say which sector we were working in, and where we were working…all in Arabic. Needless to say, we were all frantically practicing the three sentences before the service began. After the U.S. ambassador made his way to his seat with his large entourage, we all took our seats in line according to height. That means I was sitting front and center for the whole service, which was being televised on Jordanian television. No pressure. After what seemed like an unimaginable amount of speeches, we made our way to the stage for introductions and the oath. I immediately forgot Arabic as I walked to the microphone. Eventually I stuttered by few lines, and went to join the group. I was shaking as we swore our allegiance to America, well the constitution to be more specific, and to work as volunteers. Then it was done. We were officially Peace Corps Volunteers that would be working alongside Jordanian counterparts for the next two years…and we would no longer be in the training bubble with each other. We all mingled with our host families for the last time, and said the final goodbyes (but still promised repeatedly to visit).

Team Manshieh (our training village)

I immediately went back to the dorms to face the giant pile of stuff I had acquired over the past two months and tred to figure out how to pack it all. It would be my biggest challenge of the Peace Corps. I eventually gae up and opted to go on a trip to Mafraq in order to get money out of the bank, and pick up some last mnute necessities (peanut butter, cereal, and nutella) before leaving for my site. When we got back, I noticed that the pile still hadn’t packed itself, and went to dinner disappointed.

That night we were having our Talent Show…so basically Peace Corps training was summer camp for us, a really really difficult summer camp with a ton of paperwork and shots. The talent show was a booming success! Here is link to an edited remix of the night made by my favorite LCF, Mu’ad. 

Talent show
 

You might notice that my talent was not put into the video, but I had one! My talent was watching other peoples’ talents and laughing really loudly the whole time, which I excelled in. After the talent show, we decided that sleeping was for the weak and we would watch movies and have a dance party (we tend to have these every time we are together) until the next morning when we were shipped off to site. I was game for the staying up all night, until approximately 3:30 when I crashed.

 I woke up at 6:30 and got ready for the big day as they wanted us to leave by 8am. The vans all had a few people in them going to the same general area of Jordan, except for those going south. The south group (10ish total) got a giant Embassy bus to take them since they were traveling for a long time. My bus had Meg and Kasumi, two volunteers who did their PST with me in my village. Naturally we were happy to have the support, but knew saying goodbye to each other would be heartbreaking. We finally said our tearful goodbyes to the other volunteers and hit to road north. After about 20 minutes of nonstop sniffling, we settled into our ride and one by one were dropped off at our sites. I was the last person left in the van, which gave me about an hour of silent panic time. 

We rolled into my village at about 12:00 and met my mudeera (director) and the school bus at the markiss (center). After loading my few things into the van, we made our way to my house. My landlady, a hadja (elderly woman) and the family that lives above me were waiting with open arms for me to join them. I was immediately swept away to drink coffee while my mudeera and hadja talked business. When I was finally permitted to get up and see my space, I thought it was much larger than I remembered…and full of stuff! Well, full may be an overstatement, but it had a bed, curtains, a stovetop, chairs, and a dresser. In the kitchen I noticed they left a set of mugs as a welcome gift and I immediately wanted to cry. I was so overwhelmed at the idea of having to buy everything on the very small allowance PC gave us for moving in, and I found that I was almost fully furnished! I am confident in saying Jordanians are the most giving people, especially if you are a young single girl living in a foreign country. I have received a lot of “ya haram”s (poor thing!) when we are visiting, and have yet to eat dinner alone.

I have been getting plenty of invitations to visit and gift varying from a fridge to rides to the next town to get internet hooked up. The first time I visited Kreimeh it was kind of a disaster and I was not thrilled about the idea of living here for two years, but now I can say that I feel welcomed and excited about getting to meet more people and to be part of this community. 

I have completely nested in my house, as much as possible. I have pictures of friends and family up on the wall, cards that have been sent to me hanging around my world map, as well as a poster of the Arabic alphabet. I still haven’t completely unpacked, but my Cubs afghan is on my bed, so it may as well be home! I still don’t have much in the kitchen. My mudeera gave me a basket and some fruits and veggies to keep in it, a giant bottle of water (the water here is not drinkable without boiling or filtering), and on several occasions has sent me home with food for the night. I received a dozen oranges as a welcome gift from a neighbor (she had no idea how perfect that gift was since I LOVE oranges) and a bag of pita bread I bought under close supervision from Hadja. I have a knife/shredder combo thing, one fork, and one spoon. I have two travel mugs, my water bottle, and the two mugs from the set. That makes up my kitchen! I should probably get on that whole buying things to eat off of thing… baby steps. I will take pictures as soon as Mom sends me my battery charger!

That has basically been my life thus far…a lot of visiting people, a lot of tea, coffee, sweets…you name it. This is the key to surviving in a strange, new place where language is limited…eat and drink whatever they give you!  

I have news about sending me things, but first here are some guidelines:

1)     1)  Don’t send anything that could be labeled as “haram” (forbidden). This includes: magazines that aren’t news or nature related (most magazines have scantily clad men/women- a volunteer got kicked out because she threw away a muscle/fitness magazine and the neighbors saw it), booze (but that’s a given), inappropriate gag gifts…etc. As a note, if you wouldn’t send it to a very Christian grandma, don’t send it to me

2)     2) PC says letters should be sent “International Airmail” because it gets here faster

3)      3)Try not to send packages via Air or Sea Freight because they have to be cleared by a customs broker (that costs money and takes forever!)

4)      4)Typically packages over 4kg are opened at the Post Office and assessed a customs duty of 12% on contents whose declared value is greater than 20JD (so declare things as SUPER cheap!!)

5)    5) Don’t send me meds or vitamins (they have to be sent to the Ministry of Health)

6)      6)Basically…packages are great, but make sure you declare things as less than 20JD (I’m not sure the conversion rate), and don’t sent inappropriate things since they open it at the post office. Just as an easy comparison, typically people pay up to 10JD for NICE shoes,  .10$ for coffee, .15$ for a kilo of pita…so things here are pretty cheap, so it wont be weird for the contents to be less than 20JD. 

7)      My Address…I believe (im like 99% sure on this one) is:

Megan Mozley

Jummeat Shaharbeel Ben Hasnah Women’s Society

Sandook Bareed

Ajloun-Kreimeh, 51682

Jordan

I am actually sharing a box with the Jummeat (private center AKA markiss), so my mail will go to their box. My main concern is that it will be in English, not Arabic. It shouldn’t be a problem though as I am confident that I am the only person getting packages written in English so they should get to me.  Oh because I’m sharing the p.o. box with the school, please keep the envelopes looking the least ridiculous as possible (I’m looking at you mom).

I can’t wait to hear from you! Letters and always always always welcome!

Oh and I have internet in my house now, so I would love to chat with you all on email: memozley09@gmail.com, facebook chat, and through Skype (once I get a microphone).

Talk soon!

Here are a couple pictures I took of Kreimeh before my camera died
The view from my mudeera's window-

The view from the street. The hills on the other side of all the trees is Palestine/Israel (depending on what side of that discussion you are on...I have heard it referred to by both here)

So this is the new year...I don't feel any different.

Greetings! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas season and were able to get together with friends and family! I can picture it now: a cozy room with giant blankets, a fire in the corner, a giant tree decorated with handmade ornaments…my family gathered around the table eating Christmas cookies and listening to carols while drinking egg nog….okay so I realize that is nowhere near any Christmas I have ever had. It typically involves the following:  a beautifully decorated room (thanks mom!) cookies I haphazardly decorate against my will after the first 10, my family watching some new movie, probably based on a comic book, and inevitably some argument about whether or not the movie stayed true to the events in the book…and I hate egg nog. A girl can dream right?

This year my Christmas looked even more radically different than my image of it. We started out by leaving our host village and staying at Al-Bayt from 24-26^th so we could have a somewhat American holiday. On the 24^th we went to see the Peace Corps office in Amman and then to the Embassy for a Christmas lunch. We all got on our enormous bus and waited anxiously to get on the road to Amman. Our training director wished us luck and then dropped the bomb that our group had our very first Early Termination. She was an older woman who went home because her mother was ill. After we got the news, we sat in contemplation for approximately two minutes before the caroling began and we were off to Amman. Most people that know me know I am in no way a fan of Christmas carols…well more specifically listening to a month of Christmas songs nonstop. The caroling was nice for about five minutes, and then I popped in my headphones and listened to my own Christmas mix, having nothing to do with Christmas. Well, it had to do with Christmas in the fact that the music was from Kevin’s various Christmas mixes…thanks Kevin!

We got to the Peace Corps office and were supposed to get into groups, fill out a getting to know you worksheet, and meet everyone in the office. The introduction day turned into us spending two hours in the PCV lounge going through the shelves of books, the heaps of movies, and the mounds of clothing left behind by the previous volunteers. The room full of free wonders became the final tour spot for most of us, much to the annoyance of our secretary who planned the tour worksheet activity. I left with a few movies and books to take with me to my village. We then filed back onto our bus and set off for the Embassy. I wish I could tell you all about the Embassy, but security risk…blah blah…so I won’t describe it much. We got inside and it was the perfect image of a Christmas party, there were trees decorated, giant gingerbread villages, hot chocolate, the works! Our other training director welcomed us and read a lovely letter from President Obama thanking us for service. He then told us the lunch was only possible through the donations of Embassy workers…thanks guys! We then ate more than I have ever eaten. We had turkey, stuffing, roast beef, sweet potatoes, veggies, and of course…pumpkin pie!! After eating, we chatted with the J13s and J14s that were at party and got to know our new family a bit more! Eventually we were forced back on our bus and shipped back to Al Al-Bayt for Christmas Eve.

Some of us at the PC office blatantly stolen from another volunteer (thanks Evyn)

In true J15 fashion, we chose to celebrate Christmas Eve with a crazy outfit dance party DJed by my LCF, Mu’ad. I must say it was a huge success! Meg and I made signs, which means Meg sat in my room and made the signs while I watched, and we posted them around the room. I believe everyone attended for a bit and we all decided a couple hours of continuous dancing was the most cardio we have done in the past couple months. It died down and the room became the card playing/ internet room (it’s normal role) while people talked to family members and reminisced about Christmases past.

Dance party pics courtesy of Michelle:

Christmas morning it was raining. We have to walk outside our dorm building, across the parking lot, and into another building to get to our meals…so we schlepped across the parking lot to get our special Christmas breakfast of pita, cheese, cucumber, tomato, and falafel. At least our chef said to me “I prayed to my God that there would be snow for you on Christmas”. I instantly wanted to cry and hug him, neither of which are appropriate, so I thanked him, took my usual breakfast, and left. I told as many people as possible about it, and they had the same response, so I guess we were all missing home a little. 

As is the Peace Corps way, we had a couple sessions on Christmas. Our warm-up was brought to us by a J13 who was leaving. She made a White Elephant game and we got all the stuff she didn’t want to pack. In a way, it was perfect! Naturally the warm-up took longer than expected, so language was shortened, which was good because none of us were mentally checked-in for learning on Christmas. After an excruciatingly slow morning, we ate our special Christmas lunch of Kibsa (what we eat EVERY lunch at the university), and I went to my room to watch Tron:Legacy  (Merry Christmas to me, I gave myself the gift of Daft Punk and Garrett Hedlund. After about an hour, we decided to all get together for the Secret Santa finale!

We gathered in the dance party, internet, movie, card room (AKA the Training Of Teachers room officially) and set our presents under a tree drawn on butcher paper. There were farshas thrown about, sleeping bags around, people in giant sweaters, the heaters were on, and a slight glow came in through the windows, providing the perfect Christmas morning effect. We paused Office Space, and started the gift giving. Everyone had a gift and as far as I know, people were happy to have some semblance of Christmas involved in Jordan. We included the LCFs and counted it as a cultural exchange. One LCF received a handmade card, and instantly started crying…apparently handmade items have the same effect everywhere.

I found out Meg drew my name and was my very own Secret Santa! She gave me a Wenik card (to call home), a jar of Nutella (LOVE), and the best mug I have ever seen, it comes with a spoon! It was perfect!  I immediately went back to my room to eat my Nutella and watch the rest of Tron. I also took a much needed three-hour nap. When I woke up, I joined my  PC family in the multipurpose room to talk to family, play cards, and just be together.

Our SPED-Manshieh group with Mu'ad

Christmas was more than I could ask for. 

After Christmas it was business as usual and we had a fun-filled day of sessions and were taken back to our training villages. I was greeted by my lovely family, who made me a homemade card calling me precious, and gifts of chocolate and lotion. I felt incredibly loved and it hit me that my time with them was limited, as we only had a week before we moved out of training villages and ended PST. The next few days were spent getting ready for the LPI and spending as much time as possible with my family.

As expected, LPI day was horrible. I was incredibly stressed about not knowing Arabic and felt self-conscious about every word I said. During my test, the interviewer asked me about the plot to both Batman and Groundhog day…turns out I don’t have words for either of those plots…I can barely explain them in English, let alone Arabic. I left the room feeling defeated and sat with everyone as each one came out of the room feeling confident; it was unpleasant. We then had to wait a couple days before we got the results. I achieved Novice-High, which is what I needed, but I am incredibly disappointed with it. The other trainees in my village got Intermediate-Low so that was a bummer for me. I feel like I am the incapable one of the group, even if we aren’t supposed to be comparing. I don’t know, it was one of those moments where I felt like I disappointed my LCF and, as many of you know, I don’t handle disappointing people very well. So that’s where my mental state is right now.

Anyway, on to my experience leaving the village, it was awful. I felt so connected with my family and it broke my heart to leave them. Like some divine act, the power in my house went out and we sat around the kerosene sobba and the old-school oil lamp in the kitchen. My new grandmother, aunt, uncle, and the cousins were over to wish me safe travels. We all sat in a sort of calm silence for an hour and discussed the fact that I have nothing when I move to site. I learned some quick cooking tips, and politely reminded them that I would not have a stove-top at first. Of course the first appalled reaction was my aunt saying “but how are you supposed to make tea?!” I felt it was a perfect Jordanian response. They left and I promised to visit as much as possible. 

I miss these guys!

The next morning was a blur of tears, promises to visit, promises to eat more than pita and cheese sandwiches, promises to call, promises to buy a sobba…and more tears. I finally made it out of the house as my hostmom was crying at the front door. The bus picked us up and we made our final ride from Manshieh to Mafraq. In two days I will be swearing in with 36 other trainees, and we will be the official J15 Peace Corps Volunteer group. It seems to have gone so fast, and yet so slow all at once! Our host families will be at the swearing-in and we will be forced to say our final goodbye (until we visit of course!). 

On the 4^th I move to my site…with nothing but my two giant bags and the miscellaneous things I have acquired since coming to Jordan. It is completely surreal. I hope I learn to love Kreimeh. I hope I learn to cook. Hopefully I get internet hooked up within the first week so I can inundate the blog with pictures stolen from other volunteers, boring blog posts, and facebook updates. When I move to site the markiss will be on holiday for a month so I will have nothing to do but learn my way around and hopefully buy my necessities. This may be it for a while team, so I made it nice and long for you. 

You’re welcome- wish me luck!