Old shoes, new country.

So it's been over a week. Way over a week. Almost two. And I still don't know what to say. I've been meaning to write, but I... haven't.

Readjustment has been weird. It's not as hard as I expected it to be, but then again, I was never really sure what to expect. Things have been more surprising than appalling. I expected disdain for American culture, a longing for Jordanian culture, trouble shifting lifestyles. All of that happened, to some extent or another, but thankfully not as radically as I had imagined.

My favorite reintegration anecdote is from my time in the London airport. After getting off the plane, getting new boarding passes because American Airlines didn't think the ones Royal Jordanian printed were good enough, getting through another layer of security and into a new part of the terminal, I stopped to go to the bathroom. In Jordan, the pipes are too small to handle toilet paper - so you don't flush it down, you throw it in a trash can next to the toilet. As I walked up to the bathroom, I got so excited about throwing the toilet paper in the toilet. For the first time in four months! When I was in the stall, I got excited about the fact that there were not one, but TWO rolls of toilet paper. It was wonderful.

Following that, I waited around for an hour in the airport, waited around on the plane for an hour because of mechanical problems, and set off for New York. According to the flight tracker, we were somewhere between Iceland and Greenland when I realized...

I threw the toilet paper in the trash can. Four months sure change a lot.

Money was one of the first weird things. I always keep a twenty hidden in my wallet, and for most of the semester, I kept an American dime in the coin pocket. About the bill: it's so LONG. And green. Boring. And thick-feeling. Weird all-around. And the coin? Oh my gosh. The Jordanian penny is bigger than an American quarter. American coins feel like tiddlywinks.

Clothing is another big one. Maybe this topic has been the strangest for me so far. It's a struggle to look at American summer clothing with a Jordanian mindset. Seriously, shorts? Ladies, I've seen plenty of bathing suits that cover more skin. And don't even get me started on tank tops. Tube tops? I shudder. Guys' clothing isn't so much a problem., and I'm thankful for that. I'm wearing skirts these days, because humidity is way too much to handle but I'm still anxious to ensure that my knees are covered. I feel okay about being stodgy with my sweaters - at least I'm comfortable.

Okay, so that humidity. Ohmygoodness it's wet here. I like it and I hate it. The rains are wonderful (it rained for the first two or three days that I was home; glorious), but the humidity in the non-raining times is oppressive. Extremely so. I walked outside last Sunday morning to get the paper before church, and I came back in sweating. At eight in the morning. I'm not even sure whether it was sweat; it may have just been water in the air that condensed on my skin. Gross. The torrential rain that came an hour later felt incredibly relieving after that sticky weight. Bleagh. I've made a short pro/con list of good and bad things about American weather.

Pros: My hair is pleasingly curly. I don't have to use lip balm. Or hand lotion, come to think of it. I get to watch (and feel and hear and smell) the rain. And the lightning and the thunder. Things are greeeeeeeen, everything green, trees everywhere, even my dying lawn looks green. Emerald City for sure.

Cons: I feel like I should shower twice a day just to get the stick off my skin. Being indoors feels preferable to outdoors, although I suppose that's kind of how it was in Jordan, too. Wet heat somehow just feels hotter than dry heat.

I guess it's easy to get used to life in America because... I'm used to it. This is normal for me. At the end of every semester, I drive down interstates 95 and 85 to get from Richmond to Raleigh. I go to church on Sunday and spend the whole morning giving and receiving warm welcome-homes. I show up at my favorite restaurants to eat my favorite foods and drive all around the streets I love. It's great. I've done it three other times. Granted, nearly a full day of air travel is a smidgen more than a two-and-a-half hour drive. But somehow it doesn't feel a whole lot different.

I wish I could give you something more complete. I seem to miss Jordan more every day. The signs here are only in English. There are few subtitles on television, but when I see them, they're all in - you guessed it - English. There are lots of commercials for car dealerships and Walmart, but no commercials for Sayidaty magazine and Dettol soap. I've found out that I stink at making Nescafe on my own. Apparently I need a maid to do it.

It feels like I was gone for a year, and it feels like I was gone for a second. On January 24th, the day that I left the US, I had a customary post-church Kick'n Chicken Wrap (aforementioned favorite food) from Buffalo's (aforementioned favorite restaurant) with Thomas. So where was I at noon on my first full day back in the US? You know where. Like I'd never even left. Sometimes things can seem so seamless. I'm blending in.

But I'm not. Those new shoes from the beginning of the semester? They're showing their age. Jordan has dust storms instead of rainstorms, so I don't have to worry about mud. Just the dust. Lots of dust. Some of it is pretty ancient dust - stuff that's been floating around places like Jerash, Umm Qais, and Amman's Roman Coliseum. There's also the sand, from Petra and Wadi Mujib but most importantly from Wadi Rum. Right after I got back from Wadi Rum, the soles of my shoes were stained a brilliant red from Wadi Rum's beautiful sand. They've since faded closer to brown, but I can see the remnants of Wadi Rum all the same.

The bottom trim is scruffed up, and some of the rubber is falling off. They laces look appropriately dirty. I've worn through the layer of white canvas at the inside of the heels and even worn through the rubber below that. My favorite is the blood stain on the right heel. It came from that wonderful, wonderful Wadi Feid experience. A battle scar, if you will. These shoes have been through a lot. I've been through a lot. And I'm still wearing these shoes here in the US. When I put them on, I see the colors - the black that used to be a lot blacker, the tannish rubber that used to be bright white - and I think of Jordan. I think of how far I came in four months.

It's been a wonderful ride. Thanks for reading.

With love from the USA,

Sarah

The human experience

This is the "About Me" from my Facebook page:

If I could major in The Human Experience with a minor in People I Don't Understand, I would.

I wrote that last summer, during the time I was volunteering at Dorothea Dix - Raleigh's state psychiatric hospital. They have classes there Monday-Friday, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, and I helped out with a music therapy class and an occupational therapy/arts-and-crafts one. Thomas, the music therapist, asked me partway through the summer what I enjoyed the most about volunteering at Dix. I told him that it was being able to see the residents, the people that are so unnoticed. He replied: "It's a whole new facet of the human experience, isn't it?"

Why yes, Thomas. Yes, it is. I latched on to that phrase so tightly. It just seems perfect to describe what I'm interested in. I think everything that I study (and if you haven't heard my laundry list of major and minors, I study a LOT of things) can be traced back to this concept of The Human Experience. Is that why I'm here in Jordan? For sure.

In my opinion, this study of the human experience is by necessity immersion-based. You can't really understand the mentally ill unless you sit in a room and play maracas with them, singing "Just My Imagination" and "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay." In the same way, I wouldn't be able to understand the Arab world without buying falafel sandwiches and talking with taxi drivers, without coughing the dust and seeing the land. (I've been within a stone's throw of Palestine!)

In fact, I still can't understand the Arab world. Not fully. Not ever. Every day I learn something new about Jordanian customs or Muslims' beliefs. I'm still learning how this world works. Perhaps the most beautiful part lies in my inability to fully comprehend it. And perhaps that's why "The Human Experience" isn't really a major - because you can't graduate.

I find it frustrating how difficult it is for me to express all the wonderful things I've seen and heard and done here. My writing is too slow to account for it all, and if I had written more, I would have done less. It's a trade-off I was willing to trade in on. And this is how it ends up: I've learned so much, and there's always going to be more to learn. I've written so much, and yet there's more that I could have written for every post.

As my time here ends (eight and a half hours until my plane takes off!) I can express nothing but gratitude, coupled with amazement. I'm grateful for everything that my host family has done for me - their generosity and love. And I'm amazed at how quickly Jordan has come to feel like home. A home, not THE home, because I can never give up Raleigh and Richmond as homes, either. This is my problem with leaving. I love too much. My host dad asked this evening if I was happy about going home or sad about leaving. I asked if I could be both. He said yes.

I love love love my Thomas and my parents and my family and my friends back in America. But I love my family and friends here, too. Leaving one home means deep sadness, but arriving at the other will drown me in joy. My best consolation in this is to think about the future, when I'm able to return to Jordan. Because I must return. This can't be the end. I'm absolutely terrible at saying goodbye to people/places/things, and I don't think I could handle treating this like a final goodbye. It can't be.

So to my Jordanian family, friends, life: I love you all. I'll miss you all. Your side of the human experience is fascinating, now more familiar than foreign, but still teaching me new things all the time. I won't forget you.

And to the American side of things: I'm coming! I'm about twenty-seven and a half hours away from Raleigh, as long as things go according to plan. (Insha'allah.) (God willing.) Can't wait.

With love to all,

Sarah

PS: I'm planning at least another post, so please don't go away yet. This isn't the end!

Preparing for landing

My classmates and I went through re-entry training on Sunday morning. I enjoyed it mainly because the name made me feel like an astronaut. Mission: America.

This is an excerpt from my journal on Sunday:

"Re-entry training this morning didn't enlighten me as much as I had hoped it would, but it was still good stuff. Yeah, I'll miss the feeling of being special for being (take your pick) blonde/white/American - getting through the gates, all the ahlan w sahlan's. I'll miss forty-cent lunches. Thirty-cent cups of Nescafe. I'll miss being able to get a cab whenever. I'll miss dry air, although my skin and lips won't. I'll miss friends. I'll miss my family. I'll miss short Arabic commercial breaks and cool (maybe only to me) Arabic commercials. I'll miss seeing Arabic script on signs. I'll miss lemon-mint juice. I'll miss super-cheap DVDs and Habibah sweets. I'll miss the fact that there are so many falafel and shawerma stands that you could eat at one every day and not repeat. I'll miss classes. (Read: classmates.) I'll miss the Village. I'll miss everything on Sharia Rainbow. I'll miss how solid the house feels, nestled on the ground floor. I'll miss green mishmish fresh off the tree and zatar manakeesh fresh out of the oven."

To explain all that.

Getting into UJ has always been pretty awkward, as Thomas and my parents can tell you. They have gates, with officials in very classy-looking suit jackets manning them at all times. Technically, students are supposed to swipe their IDs against a magic electronic pad thing (yes, just like West Grace) so that they can go through. Technically. Sometimes if it's really busy, people just keep walking by and it's no problem. Or at the north gate, you can walk in through the vehicle gate and nobody notices. It's weird because the CIEE students have UJ IDs... just not UJ IDs with the magic chip. Bummer. But the guys at the gates smile and let you through because you just look so danged American.

And then everything changed. I guess UJ decided it wasn't safe enough, so they installed gates at the gates. Wait, say what? Yeah. Turnstile things. Not like dinky DC Metro turnstiles. Like these:

http://www.clarke-inst.com/cm/data/clarke/images/upload_images/Type_480_Turnstile__Gate.jpeg

And guess how you get through them? That's right, by swiping your card. So now, instead of sheepishly walking through trying not to be too obvious about one's special treatment, we have to look around while standing in front of the gate, waiting for one of the UJ employees to pull out HIS card to let us through. Bleaghh. So awkward.

A lot of other special treatment, though, is great. Shopkeepers are nice, everybody says, "welcome to Jordan" all the time, and "ahlan w sahlan" (which is pretty much the same thing) (just in Arabic) (in case you couldn't guess) and people just seem so happy to see that an American is visiting their country. And no matter how awkward the UJ gates are, it's something I've gotten used to. I've gotten used to that feeling of awkward privilege. And I'm probably not going to like letting go. I've never been this special before in my life and I probably never will be again.

Forty-cent lunches, thirty-cent cups of Nescafe. Small falafel sandwich from the place up the street from the CIEE office is 25 piastres (Jordanian cents), and a really good shawerma sandwich from behind the building is 65. They raised the price partway through the semester after they remodeled. Yeah, I was mad, too. Nescafe in the Educational Sciences building is only 20 piastres. Hellllo. I won't be able to go back to the world of American pricing. Headed into a Mediterranean or Arabic restaurant, "What? You want FIVE dollars for this food? FIVE? I could buy this for PENNIES in Jordan!" That's going to be a toughie.

Cabs = nice. I miss driving. I miss my car. But I like being able to get anywhere, anytime. I guess I should just move to New York?

Dry air is self-explanatory. I like not being sticky all the time. At least my home in the US has air conditioning. That will be welcomed.

Commercial breaks? Oh, man. For the first few days I was here, that was the only thing I noticed about the television. The commercials were so so so so short. It was wonderful! Of course I've been spoiled by that, and now American commercial breaks will probably seem excruciating.

And I like the commercials themselves, too. This is probably weird. But where else can you hear a literal English-to-Arabic translation of "I Can See Clearly Now"? On the Lipton yellow-label tea commercial, that's where. And I'll always remember "new volume flash mascara - jadeed, min Rimmel London" - accompanied by that slightly awkward-looking woman telling me to "get the London look." The breaks are short, but they're repetitive, and I have these commercials memorized. Love it.

And the Arabic script? Oh, dude. When I first came here, I was stunned at the fact that I saw ENGLISH on the signs. What? What in the world? There was so much more English than I expected there to be. Most signs are bilingual. For the first three months, I read the English and then started trying to sound out the Arabic. During the past month, my brain has somehow switched itself over to reading the Arabic first. It wasn't even a conscious thing. Before, my brain noticed, read, and comprehended the English part before I even saw there was an Arabic portion. Now, it's the other way around. I'm going to miss that. And no, the fact that the Coliseum Deli (in Richmond, on Broad, near Kroger) has its sign in Arabic doesn't count. Not at all.

Lemon-mint juice, there's just no way to explain. No way to explain how good it is. Lovelovelove.

Supercheap DVDs? It's not like I would buy any of this stuff, because it's rampantly illegal, but it's nice to know that if I were into that sort of thing, I could buy five seasons of House and about ten other DVDs for 25JD. (= $35) You know. If I were that type of person.

And Habibah sweets - baklava and knafeh and other delights. If you come to the airport to pick me up, I may or may not have some tasty sugar-soaked sweets to give out. Hint, hint. This stuff makes me so happy that it's almost obscene.

Seriously, I was going to count out all the little food vendors by campus on my hands, but I ran out of fingers.

The Village is the on-campus convenience store and a very-close-to-campus cafe. Sharia (= street) Rainbow has all the best coffee shops and cafes and lovely views of downtown, along with Wild Jordan, which has amazing lemon-mint juice. Full circle. My house is on the bottom floor of a building and you actually have to go downstairs to get to our front door. I've always liked this, and I don't know why. Also, because we're the ground floor we have the garden (patio, yard, et cetera), which conveniently contains both an apricot tree and a mulberry bush. Whoa now! I haven't had any mulberries, but green apricots are amazing. And zatar manakeesh? Just look at the links. It's tasty and delightful and wonderful. Mmm.

These are such random little things, but I thought they were good to share. They were really what came to my mind first, just a whole host of tiny things to appreciate.

So what did I gain from re-entry training?

I'm going to be doing this a lot - reminiscing, talking about how things are in Jordan, what it was like over there, what I did, who I met, this one time, that other time, this and that - and I'm going to sound like a jerk. CIEE advises that others should tell me to shut up if I start rambling about Jordan too long. Feel free.

In a similar vein, if you hear me saying words you don't understand, I'm NOT trying to show off my Arabic abilities. I'm just used to it. Words you may hear:

Anjad?

Mumkin.

Insha'allah.

Alhamdulillah.

Mish moushkila.

Yella!

Keyfak/keyfik.

Bidee/bidak/bidik.

And of course, shukran. I just know I'm going to confuse some poor flight attendant by continually saying "shukran" instead of "thank you." Assifa in advance, American Airlines.

Let's see, what else... we got a lot of cut-and-dried information about how/when we're going to receive final grades (way too long from now, that's when), we were told to renew our driver's licenses and get doctor's appointments.... probably the one tip of the most substance was the VCR effect. That's what Allison - our program director - called it. Stewart, one of the other (younger) employees, edited the slide and retitled it the Tivo effect. The basic idea:

I have life in America. I go to Jordan. I press pause on America. I come back to America. I press play. OH WHOA WHAT HAPPENED WHY AREN'T THINGS LIKE THEY USED TO BE?

And it goes the other way, too. You have life in America, a life in which I'm somehow involved. I go to Jordan. You press pause on me. I come back to America. You press play. OH WHOA WHAT HAPPENED WHY ISN'T SHE LIKE SHE USED TO BE?

Watch out.

I really have no idea how it'll be, going back. Re-entry training didn't give me anything definite. It confirmed and elaborated on the challenges that I'm going to face, but I don't know how those challenges are going to sort themselves out. So, here goes nothing...

T minus 49 hours until liftoff.

Let's get political

Just this once.

One of my professors shared this anecdote about September 11th. I may get a few details wrong, but he was sitting in some pub or restaurant in England and saw it on the news. His first thought: I hope it wasn't a Muslim.

So when I saw the headline about an attempted car bombing in Times Square, my first thought was: I hope it's not an Arab. I hope it's not a Muslim. I hope it's some stupid white supremacist. Please.

Why? Because Arabs and Muslims don't need any more bad press.

This had been in my mind since the bomb attempt, but I really felt the desire to write about it after doing some reading for my America & the Arabs class the other day. This quotation is from America and Political Islam, by Fawaz A. Gerges, published by Cambridge University Press, in 1999.

"The equation of Islam with "terrorism" has done considerable damage to the image of Muslims in the United States, thus constraining U.S. policy makers from pursuing an accommodationist policy toward Islamists. Several polls conducted in the 1990s clearly show that Americans' images of Islam and Muslims can be dramatically affected by the latest headlines, particularly with respect to suspicions about terrorism. For instance, a poll conducted by coincidence on the very day of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing revealed a sharp increase in negative attitudes toward Muslims. Afterward it became clear that this bombing was not related to Islamist terrorism, and subsequent polls showed a steady, statistically significant increase in "favorable" attitudes toward Muslims on a number of key issues."

I'm tired of this. That we blame terrorist acts on Muslims and Arabs, and ignorance reigns. Last fall, after mentioning to somebody that I was planning on studying in the Middle East, he informed me that it was a land full of - his exact words here - "Looney Tunes." Disgraceful.

But instead of whining about American nearsightedness, let me rave about Arab kindness. I've never lived among more welcoming people than those here. Even strangers. This is a fairly standard taxi conversation upon hailing a cab outside the university.

Driver: Tehke 'arabe? (Do you speak Arabic?)

Me: Shway shway. (A little.)

Driver: Tedroosee fee al jaame'a? (Do you study at the university?)

Me: Na'am. (Yes.)

Driver: Shu tedroosee? (What do you study?)

Me: Al lugha al 'arabiya. (Arabic language.)

Driver: Min wen inti? (Where are you from?)

Me: Amreeka. (America.)

Driver: [Shifting here into very loud and slightly broken English.] Aaamerrriiiikkaaa! Goood! Gooood!

Me: [Blushing.]

Driver: American people gooood. American government - baaad. Bad. Like Obama? Yes? Bush baaaaad. Obama good. [Repeat as desired.]

I love it. Really, I do. Even if it's the same conversation over and over - usually, after this, a driver will proceed into an Arabic lesson, trying to get me to speak as much as I can - it's so much fun to hear. Granted, I've never ridden in a cab in America, but I don't think they're as much fun as the ones here. (Disclaimer: I rode in a cab from my house to the Amtrak station when I was about seven, but we had to call and book it, and it was a minivan. Doesn't count.)

And those are just taxi drivers. Shopkeepers, waiters, everybody. And professors? Oh yes. My professors at UJ this semester have been so kind. They genuinely value their students, which sadly enough isn't totally commonplace... but makes it all the more special. I can't thank Dr. Zubi and Professor Amjad enough for their teaching.

They did nice things for us: Amjad got us on field trips to the zoo, Roman ruins, and a delightful falafel place (although I was too sick to go to that one). And Dr. Zubi wanted to take us on a class field trip to a refugee camp. It was never approved, for what I'm sure were very worthy legalish reasons, but would have been amazing.

They said nice things about us: Dr. Zubi told us that his afternoon CIEE lectures were a bright spot on his day. And Amjad seemed genuinely sad when our Arabic classes ended last week. Beyond that, his wife made a farewell cake for us. Deeeelicccccioussss. Chocolate a cream and fruit and it all looked pretty and professional and wonderful. Earlier in the semester he had gotten somebody to take a group picture of our class on his phone. He had printed out the photo and taped it to the top of the cake box. That's caring.

And my family? What can I say? They're my family, and I mean it. Humorous anecdote, I was once telling a Jordanian friend some story about my family (the one from back home), and I referred to it as usrati al-amreekiya - my American family. She asked, tenderly, "Are you adopted?" Confused, for a second, I explained. You see, I have usra urduniya o usra amreekiya - a Jordanian family and an American one. I want to write about my family some other time, because, you see, there's just too much to say.

So if you, any of you, ever want to talk to me about Arabs, Muslims, the history of the Transjordanian Mandate, the history of occupied Palestine, current events, car bombers, fundamentalists, or anything like that, I'll be thrilled. I can tell you about the cool conversations I've had with taxi drivers and explain that they don't want to bomb your churches. I can show you a picture of my Jordanian nieces and talk to you about how they're going to grow up - comfortable, loved, and literate. I can tell you all about my life in the Middle East and how amazing it was.

By chance, as I was thinking about writing this, my sister showed me this Youtube video:

... the link to which I cannot readily find. But I'll put it up as soon as I search it out. It's the sort of thing I could envision Terry using in the 9:00 service. Or the sort of thing that I would have watched in INTL210 (International Social Justice) with Dr. Wood. Good stuff.

To sum up? Osama, Saddam, and a whole host of their friends - the grainy faces in the newspaper photos - are Arabs and Muslims. But so are the people in my host family, so are my professors, so are my friends.

No CNN, but Fox News?

I'm writing this from home because blogspot is blocked in TAGKS - the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Knowledge Society - the place with the free internet, nice facilities, copying and printing, and air conditioning only a short walk from campus. Also known as the Americans' hangout. In fact, a lot of things are blocked there. I found that out on my first day using their internet, when a friend sent me a link to something on cracked.com. Nope. Can't do that. I explored a bit today to find out what was blocked and what wasn't, and there are some surprising results.

News sources, unblocked:

MSNBC

CNBC

Fox News

Washington Post

Huffington Post

New York Times

Drudge Report

ABC

News sources, blocked:

CNN

BBC

NBC

CBS

I wonder what those four major networks did to bother the folks at TAGKS. You'd think that the stuff on some of the aforementioned unblocked sites would be a little more controversial than NBC. Note that all the newspapers are unblocked - I also checked Raleigh's N&O and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Webcomics and general internet timewasters, unblocked:

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Digg (although a good number of its links don't work)

Texts From Last Night

Fark

Webcomics and general internet timewasters, blocked:

xkcd

Cracked

FML

Postsecret

Qwantz

Youtube

Sporcle

I can't figure out what makes xkcd more problematic than, say, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, but so it goes. And what's wrong with some friendly dinosaurs? For those who follow the FML spinoffs, lmylife and mylifeisaverage are in the clear.

Internet video, unblocked:

southparkx.net

surfthechannel

Internet video, blocked:

Youtube

Hulu

South Park Studios

Note the relative legitimacy of those websites. I was, in fact, surprised when southparkx was still available - I guess there are always a few holes. One of my friends reads a column that is apparently quite controversial in nature. She can't go directly to its website, but she can look up a newspaper that runs the column and access it that way. Crafty.

As for Youtube, I've heard that it's blocked because of bandwidth issues because, let's face it, if it weren't blocked I'd have seen way more Carl Sagan remixes and one-minute videos of cats doing silly things.

Now, take note that this list is only from today. I've definitely read a BBC story that my friend posted a link to on Facebook. Another friend and I sporcled on her laptop. And I could swear that I saw a Jordanian pre-med watching some educational Youtube video a few months ago. Once - just once - Facebook was blocked. It was the week of my program's spring break, and I was only in TAGKS to register for fall classes. (If you want to know, I have the best schedule ever.) Wanting to post something to the effect of, "Sarah Bruce is all registered for classes, yay!" I tried to log on to Facebook, only to be... denied.

Larger significance of all this? I don't know if there is any. There's no way for me to find out exactly why any one website is blocked, or why any other one isn't. I can only imagine what makes Texts From Last Night safe while FML isn't. I don't know what CBS did to get itself blocked, or what ABC did to remain in TAGKS' good graces. It's just that this trip has been my first foray into the world of internet censorship, and I find it very very interesting.

Okay, "censorship" may be too broad a word. It has dirty implications. This is more like how Enloe blocked Facebook (so many proxy sites that it didn't matter) than how China wants to censor Google search results (foiled, China, foiled indeed). But it's fascinating, nonetheless. I'd say that the inconvenience of having to wait until I get home to check xkcd is outweighed by the fun I had today thinking up websites to check.

Other fun? The Westboro Baptist Church's website is blocked. The websites for New World and Buffalo's were both unblocked today, although I could swear one of them was blocked just last week. And all the fast-food chains I checked were unblocked, including Starbucks, which we all know is part of the Zionist conspiracy. Yay.