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)