Guest post #1: Thomas "The Boyfriend" Dudley

Sarah and I decided to mix things up a bit this time. This is Thomas, Sarah's boyfriend, visiting Jordan for a little over three days. I'll be writing this time about some of the things we've been up to. Expect a similar post from each of her parents in a couple days.

Dry information about the trip here:

I had flights between RDU, Dulles, Heathrow, and Amman. All flights were on time or early and each layover was about three hours so, unlike Sarah's adventure, definitely no running in airports for me. I left Wednesday afternoon from Raleigh and got to Amman Thursday night Amman time. Honestly, it was all pretty uneventful. On the DC to London flight I sat next to an occasional contributor for the Huffington Post. He pointed out the Thames and Hyde Park as we arrived in an unusually sunny London.

Thursday Night:

Sarah, her host dad and sister (Rasha) picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at my hotel. A few days ago I thought they weren't going to be able to, so I was very grateful I didn't have to find a taxi to my hotel. Of course it was great to see Sarah for the first time in two months. Trip worth it already.

First Full Day:

On Friday we walked around the city some in the morning before reaching the top of a large hill overlooking the city (the place with the view of the flagpole from a previous post.) We were up there sitting and talking among the ancient ruins when the call to prayer started. The call to prayer happens five times a day and serves to remind Muslims it is time to pray. All mosques I've seen have what look like megaphones near the top of their towers and project out the lyrical prayer. Most places in the city you can hear one or maybe two at a time but on the hill overlooking the city we could hear many more. Hearing the prayer while looking out over the crowded streets, nestled homes; nothing could better reinforce my image of the Middle East.

After that we checked out a nearby DVD store and stocked up some cheap DVDs. I think in all we got 25 DVDs for about $40. The joke is we're trying to recoup airfare costs.

Next we ate a late lunch with her host family which was very nice. Initially we didn't think I would be allowed to be at their house as the culture dictates, but her host parents decided to make an exception. The food was very good and I enjoyed seeing where she lives.

Then I met Rasha's boyfriend Noor, and with Sarah's older host sister Alia we went to the Royal Automobile Museum. The most impressive car was the newest, the Bugatti Veyron, once the fastest production car in the world. (Top speed 253 mph.)

(Photograph courtesy of Sarah's other visit to the museum.)

Saturday:

We taxied three hours each way to Petra and saw the iconic treasury. That was definitely the coolest part and sadly we didn't have enough time to check out all the "off the path" sites. From what I've heard from multiple sources, Petra should be seen over two full days. With six hours of driving and me still not caught up on sleep Petra was about all we did Saturday.

Sunday:

Sunday morning Sarah showed me around her university. We walked to a couple of her classrooms, and I met some of her friends. Sunday is the first day of the school week in Jordan, so at 2:00 Sarah started class. I spent the next three hours in TAGKS, composing most of this entry. Also, I learned the video streaming site hulu.com doesn't work in Jordan, which was disappointing. After that we grabbed a pizza at an Italian place near campus which was surprisingly good. We next spent some time looking for a European style three-pin power adapter so I could charge my laptop but were unable to find one. Because my laptop ran out of charge we couldn't post this entry until now, when I'm back in the US.

Anyway, I had a great time, and I'm very glad I went.

A very un-Sarah sort of Saturday

You never realize how afraid you are of heights until you're walking backwards off of a sixty-meter cliff attached only to one springy blue rope.

WHAT?

Let's put that in perspective for those who aren't used to the metric system:

The Statue of Liberty, from toe to torch, is 46 meters tall. (The base, however, is another 47 meters.)

The Cape Hatteras lighthouse is 63 meters tall.

The Bald Head lighthouse is 33 meters tall.

Whitewater Falls, the largest waterfall in North Carolina, measures 125 meters.

A 60-meter waterfall is equivalent to about six Courthouse Falls (Fallses?) stacked one on top of another.

So how did I get into this precarious position on such a perilous precipice?

Well. In the UJ cafeteria a week or two ago, my friend Hanne asked a group of girls from our Arabic class if we might like to go on a wadi (canyon) hike. Her mom is visiting for about half a week, and she wanted to take her mother out to do something fun. She described this hiking trip she had found online, with a Jordanian guide, taking us through Wadi Feid and seeing twelve waterfalls in the process. Let me tell you, I'm a sucker for waterfalls. It's one of the highlights of going up to my grandmother's cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains every summer. (The aforementioned Courthouse is my absolute favorite.) So this trip was a no-brainer. Hanne, her mom, and one of the other girls, Kelly, left right after class on Thursday to go down to Petra and spent Friday touring there. The rest of us took a taxi down from Amman Friday night. We checked in at our hostel, ate dinner, went to bed, and woke up at 4:30 the next morning to get up and out. Four. Thirty.

So, we packed up, checked out, and walked outside, where Hakim, our guide, was waiting with a driver and a pickup truck. You know those moments you get every once in a while, looking around you and all of a sudden wondering, "What in the world am I doing?" Okay. Saturday was a string of those. The first notable moment came at about six AM, after the sun had risen, as I was sitting in a pickup truck that was winding around dirt/gravel roads on mountainsides, snuggly in the back seat with three other people, two in the front seat, and three in the truck bed. Driving, driving, and then our car stopped. We were told to unpack our backpacks and remove anything that would suffer from water damage, repack them with sandwiches and water bottles, and suit up in our harnesses and helmets.

Wait. What? Harnesses?! I privately thought that this might be a little bit more than I had bargained for, but went on without saying a word. We embarked. It's sort of hard to communicate this story because cameras are just a little bit susceptible to water damage. We had to leave all of them in the car. Walking into the canyon during the first few minutes of our trek, I realized just how alone we really were. Cell phones (also not too friendly with water) were left behind, and there was no reception anyway. Cameras were stowed in the truck. If we wanted to tell our friends and family about it, we would have to send telegrams and letters written with fountain pens. These thoughts were bobbing around my head throughout the day, and in the absence of physical photographs, I decided to take mental ones.

Photograph: the elephant graveyard.

We descended from a hill into the canyon. It started out wide and barren. We picked our way through the rocks on the ground and stopped every now and then to stare up at the canyon's wall rising above us. The rocks had stripes that looked painted on, they were so perfect. It was still early in the morning, and the sun wasn't able to reach the canyon floor. The sunlight touched the tops of the red canyon walls to our left. I felt so small in there, and it was so strangely quiet, that it reminded me of the elephant graveyard from the Lion King - minus elephant skeletons. LIke Whoopi Goldberg would leap out in hyena form at any second. Surreal.

Somewhere in there, a trickle of water showed up, and a little bit farther downstream, plants joined the party. As we walked, the stream widened while the canyon's walls narrowed. We walked toward what looked like a big cliff - really, it did look big from that side. I panicked. We weren't next to the edge and couldn't see how far down it was. I knew that we would be learning to rappel at some point. And I was so terrified. It seems my fears were obvious; Hakim, upon seeing my red eyes and sniffly nose, asked if I had allergies. I didn't lie. In retrospect, I'm surprised he didn't laugh at me. It turns out that the first waterfall is actually really small - maybe five meters - and we didn't have to rappel down. We did some rock scrambling, and it was lovely.

I should explain to you what I knew about Wadi Feid before goin

g in. Hanne gave us a link to the company's website. Whereas the descriptions of other hikes include the number of rappels - "7 rappels, rock scrambling, expect wet shoes," for example, Wadi Feid is described "rappels, scrambles, fully wet." But how many? How much? The website lists it as a one and a half day hike. Hmm. Seems like we need more information. So I searched Wadi Feid online and found further information:

"A strenuous trip with with never-ending cascades and waterfalls. Abseiling skills are necessary and an ability to swim in cold water; this is certainly not a trip for novices, even with an experienced guide! ... Please note that two ropes of 70m are essential here, the waterfalls 10 and 11 are both over 60m high."

Why didn't this deter me from going? Why didn't I let myself back out? Well, of course we must not be seeing all of the canyon. I checked with the other girls, and most had never rappelled before, either. And we were only doing a day trip - I'm sure that there's a place to leave the canyon after waterfall 8 or 9, and we won't go near the big ones. Sure. It'll be fine.

But back to the canyon. We hiked on past the first waterfall and came quite quickly to the second. Yes, rappelling. Yes, me, crying. I was third or fourth in line on this one, and listened to Hakim's instructions and encouragement to the people in front of me. To one of my friends, he paraphrased Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the best-selling book in the universe, due largely to the fact that it has two words printed on its cover: DON'T PANIC. I laughed at hearing that. And really, I tried. I tried my best not to panic. Honestly, it's hard for me to remember that first rappel. I remember awkwardly walking off the edge, not wanting to put my weight on the rope, not wanting to move my body away from the wall, relying on my friend on the ground to tell me where to put each foot, making my surely ungraceful dismount. I don't have a photograph from this one. Or, more accurately, I have a photograph, and it's very blurry.

This rappel was followed immediately by two more, each probably under ten meters high. I swear, in the moment, they seemed huge. The waterfalls after that run together. Each came with a few tears, and each was a little bit larger than the last. The next one that I remember clearly, well... that's the second snapshot.

Photograph: blood.

Most everybody else is waiting at the bottom of the waterfall, Hakim included. Lauren, Liz, Ibrahim (our second guide who mysteriously appeared halfway through the hike), and I are at the top. Liz begins to descend, but slips just a few feet down. Slips hard. She hits her head, and Ibrahim starts frantically pulling her back up. She looks like she's in shock, blood running down the back of her neck. Vivid. We use a lot of the bottled water cleaning her up, and Lauren and I descend, shaken. My least favorite waterfall.

(Liz is fine. The cut turned out to be quite minor. She and Ibrahim descended by a side trail instead of going down the rope, and we all continued on bravely. Liz got extra care throughout the rest of the trip, and she's completely okay now.)

Next waterfall... again, losing track. We spent a lot of time at the top of this one, due mainly to the fact that it was fifty meters tall. It takes a long time for a beginner to get down fifty meters of rock face. All of us had worst-case scenarios running through our heads all day - earthquakes, injuries, cliff slips, medical helicopters hovering over to airlift us out... it was bad. Even after I made my way to the bottom of the waterfall, sniffling and crying and panicking the whole way down, I found myself fantasizing about those helicopters, wondering whether I would leave if a way out were offered to me. Let's call that the second big "What am I doing?!?" moment.

We continued. By this point, the guides had realized that I was the fraidy-cat. They started sending Liz and me down first on the waterfalls, so that we could relax at the bottom instead of freaking out at the top. There was a thirty-meter fall that Hakim sent me down first - he was belaying at the bottom. The next waterfall, he set up the ropes and belayed from above... and let me find my own route down. This particular waterfall is a little bit of a rogue. It starts falling on the right side of the rock face, pools a little, runs down a channel/ledge across the cliff, and finishes its plunge on the left. The best path we could find consisted of a fairly straight drop down the rock face, a graceful hop over the stream, a landing on a second piece of rock below the stream's cut-through, and a rappel into a pool of water below. "Graceful hop." At least others were graceful. I lost my footing, swung on the rope, crashed into the waterfall itself, and screamed at the top of my lungs. After said crash, the first thing I remember shouting up to the people at the top of the cliff is, "I'm alive!" The minor slip behind me, I continued down.

We came, soon enough, to the big one. The sixty-

meter sheer drop. It's the third "WHAT am I doing?!" moment. Hanne's mom went down first, and despite any of my protestations, Hakim sent me down second. I'm grateful. Standing at the top of that waterfall was a horrible feeling. Every instinct I have compels me to NOT do things like that. But I did. And I'm proud of it. Realizing that talking to people helps them relax on the way down, we struck up a conversation about basketball. I have to admit that I was concentrating so hard on the wall that I spaced on quite a bit of the conversation, and by the time he was quoting an interview between Ali G and some NBA player, I was out of earshot. The waterfall had three main stages, and I was entering the second: silence. I was too far down to hear the people at the top, and too far up to hear the people at the bottom. I was, to put it in a single word, alone. Just me and the rocks, the rope that held me up, the song stuck in my head. ("I Believe I Can Fly" - so radically inappropriate in the moment. Flying is exactly what I don't want.) It's hard to say whether the silent stage was the worst or the best. It was difficult - but perhaps the part where I learned the most. The last stage was when I could hear the voices from the bottom, the words of encouragement, the realization that I was so close to being done, to having accomplished something on that wall.

So, snapshot: tea and fear.

Ibrahim's cousin had somehow appeared out of nowhere and started a fire at the bottom of the falls, heating a small kettle and brewing tea for everybody who came down. Such a classic Jordanian thing, this tea. So there I was, shaking from my descent, more from my nervousness than any physical strain, holding my hot tea and watching the next girl come down. She's a tiny dot on a huge flat rock wall. I imagine what I must have looked like, floundering down the wall, stopping partway through to cling to the rope and sob. I realize my legs want to give out and sit on the shore of the pool, watching the climbers descend, shouting the best words I can think of. It feels so good.

The next waterfall was even larger than that one, but broken into two pieces. Hakim told us that it was a forty-meter section followed by a twenty, but he was lying. The second part was at least thirty, although I'm glad I didn't know that before I went down. By this point, I wasn't crying at the top. I could do it, I had done it, I knew that I could do it. We all just wanted to be done and out of the canyon, we were so tired. I went down second, after Liz. We finally ate our sandwiches at the bottom - starving, it was at least 5:30 in the evening by this point.

Oh, yes. The time. Our original schedule had us leaving the wadi at 4:00 and being back in Amman by 8:00. But. Hakim apparently didn't know that we were beginners. Oops. And there were seven of us. So we didn't even all get down the last waterfall until close to six. It was perfect timing - had we been even half an hour later, I'm afraid some of our group might have had to spend the night at the top of the falls. We set out to finish the hike in complete darkness. For some reason, I had assumed that the canyon would end at the bottom of the twelfth waterfall, that we would be done and hop into the truck right there. But no. Hakim said that it was a one-hour hike out of the wadi in daylight and hurrying. We had five flashlights for ten or eleven people, and it was quite impossible to hurry. Yesterday we realized that it took us two and a half hours to get out of that canyon.

Photograph: black.

I'm sure the canyon is beautiful below the waterfall. But I couldn't describe it to you. We dodged under trees and branches, we climbed along the edges of boulders, we hopped across the stream. Swinging the headlamp around, it was at some points impossible to see the bottom of whatever drop lay on one side, and to tell the truth, I think that I'm grateful for this. Who knows where we were? I'm just glad Ibrahim knows his way around so well. That man must have night vision. As we rose out of the canyon, we could see dots of light on the horizon. The Jordanians told us that it was Palestine. So small and so dark. When we stopped for a break partway through the trek back (we were giving up hope, we were going to have to sleep in the canyon), I turned off my headlamp and looked up. Stars. So many stars. I'll be going on an overnight trip to Wadi Rum next month, and I can't wait to see all the stars. I can't remember what the sky looks like without light pollution - maybe I've never seen it that way. It'll be beautiful.

We finally made it up to the truck where - you guessed it - the driver was making us tea over a tiny campfire. We rested. All of our water was gone, and most of the sandwiches, but we drank our tea and were grateful. We were given an opportunity to change into dry/clean clothes and repack our bags. Realizing that it was 8:30 and we said we'd be home at 8:00, we all checked our phones. My count? Nine missed calls. My family called me. Rasha called everyone on the trip. Rasha called a CIEE employee, who in turn called everyone on the trip. And everybody was relieved to find out, at last, that we were okay.

The last "What am I doing?!" moment, which is really more of a "What did I DO?" I did that. I started at the top of a huge canyon and ended at its bottom. I got up at 4:30 in the morning for one of the craziest days of my life. I lowered myself down huge cliffs with completely literal blood, sweat, and tears, and I feel so great about it. Even now, I'm not sure whether I enjoyed rappelling. I know that I enjoyed the day - but for the sake of clambering down cliffs? Or did I just enjoy the prideful sensation of knowing this: I. Did. It. I achieved something that I would have never gotten myself into willingly. My stubbornness backed me into that trip, and it got me all the way through it to the end.

And one last snapshot: grime.

We didn't get back to Amman until after 1:30 in the morning. I took off my shoes, which at that point were still so gross that they probably shouldn't have been allowed in the house. I took off my shorts and eased on pajama sweats - because no matter how soft they were, my legs were still tender. I look gross. I have scrapes and bruises from my knees down to my ankles. Some of them turned a little bit yellow, which is just a smidge disconcerting. I had dirt caked in a rim around my ankles at my sock line. There are bruises on my hips from the harness and a sore spot in the middle of my back that I honestly can't explain. I love it all. I love seeing those scrapes and feeling those bruises and knowing that I accomplished something.

Really, there's one more snapshot. But this one is a real one.

Lauren found this somewhere online. It's the sixty-meter single drop waterfall. Tiny thing near the top of the photo is a person rappelling down - and please take note that you can't see the bottom of the falls. It's big. And I did that. A better way to phrase it: WE did it. I may never rappel again in my life, but I'm so glad that I did it this once.

Hey, hey, hey!

I watched Fat Albert yesterday afternoon - the 2004 film version. For those of you who haven't seen it, you haven't missed much of anything at all. It's simple and silly and unrealistic; it portrays American culture in a very artificial way. Which is what I found most interesting about it. I couldn't quit laughing - not because it was funny, but because I was looking at it from a new vantage point: that of a foreigner trying to understand American culture. Look at anything in the entertainment media. It's hilarious.

This started a few weeks ago when my host family asked what kind of house I lived in. We live here in the bottom floor of a building that has several families in it. I described the North Carolinian suburbs, with green lawns (okay, ours is mostly brown now, but that's irrelevant) and concrete curbs, two-car garages and wood siding. Their question, after this description: So do you live in a house like Desperate Housewives?

Well, not quite. But if those are the American houses that you've seen, then those are the houses you think Americans live in. Likewise, when Fat Albert and his friends tried to find friends for the protagonist, Doris, they approached the most popular girls in school - the evil, class-prejudiced cheerleaders. And Rasha asked me, "Are all cheerleaders really mean?" Some yes, some no. There are also nice marching band members and mean marching band members, nice Brain Game contestants and mean ones. Cheerleaders aren't innately rude, inherently beautiful, or infallibly popular. And they don't wear their uniforms 24/7. And as for that classroom: no, American high schools do not have Macbooks on every desk. Sorry. There's a wheeled cart that has a dozen old Lenovos, and teachers can rent it out for a day. Have fun.

All this made me think about Middle Eastern culture from the American perspective. What have we seen, and how much of it is true? Let's start with the rather obvious: it doesn't look like Aladdin. I'm sorry to dash some childhood dreams there. Yes, my family has a lamp that looks like Genie's, but it burns incense and refuses to produce genies. Likewise, the carpets in my house do not fly, and I have yet to see a sultan or a vizier, let alone a monkey in a fez.

What else? What else characterizes the Western picture of the Middle East?

Bedouins: Yes, we have them, but no, I haven't seen them. Stay tuned in late April for more on that subject.

Turbans: I think I've seen one, maybe. Once.

Shoes that point up at the ends: Actually, a lot of the shoes here do curve up a bit in the toe. Not nearly as much as the shoes that my Jasmine Barbie had, but a little something.

Dust: Yes.

Men with big fat bellies lying around and doing nothing: Much less so than in America.

Women belly-dancing in sheer garments: Never. Fashion trends here include the hijab (headscarf) and jelbab (floor-length long-sleeved dress). Jasmine Barbie would be so haram (taboo).

Camels: Stay tuned for late April. I did see some being herded across the desert today, but that's another story.

Dirty dusty roads: At least in Amman, it's asphalt all the way, with the notable exception of the cobblestones on Rainbow Street.

Narrow streets: They're a sometimes thing. Queen Rania Street? I'd call it six lanes, but it might actually only be marked for four, and I've definitely seen it used for closer to eight. Similar notes for Gardens Street and others. But that's West Amman. Get to the older parts of downtown and you'll definitely see the winding streets and hole-in-the-wall shops.

No trees: This is completely what I thought before coming here, too. Yes and no. If you take a gander at the Googlemaps satellite image of Amman, two greenish spots might stand out to you: Raghadan Palace and the University of Jordan. The rest is pretty much treeless.

Danger: Another big yes and no. Really big.

American movies and television have criminals and gangsters and gunshots and murders all over the place. But that's not what America is like. Mostly. There are still criminals and gangsters and gunshots and murders - but less than television might believe you to think. Likewise with violence in the Middle East. Jordan hasn't had a significant bombing since 2005. The Jordanian government works incredibly hard to keep things peaceful. There are soldiers and tourist police everywhere, more as a deterrent than anything else. I feel safe here. Whenever shopkeepers or taxi drivers find out that my classmates and I are Americans, the reaction is invariably somewhere between warm and ecstatic. Those who pursue the conversation into the realm of American politics might have a few sharp words about some past presidents... or president... but they're friendly to individual Americans. I know it's not what you might expect.

Sometimes you see men wearing long white robes and red-and-white keffiyehs, and sometimes you see them wearing suits.

Sometimes the ground is covered in scrub brush, and sometimes it's covered in trees, and sometimes it's covered in asphalt and concrete.

Some cheerleaders are mean, and some cheerleaders are nice.

There's always a little bit more to see, and a little bit deeper to look.

Oxen gone, and dysentery can't be far behind

I realize that humming "rain, rain, go away" around town may be an insensitive thing to do in one of the most water-starved nations in the world, but yesterday it was perfectly appropriate. Today was nice in comparison - cloudy, damp, chilly, and puddly. It was raining constantly from last Thursday until last night.

Thursday: the beginning of dreary weather made for a lazy night.

Friday: rain crushed some potential camping plans.

Saturday: I felt inspired to not leave the house all day.

Sunday: was such a wet and watery adventure that I just had to write about it.

It was raining when I woke up Sunday morning, which might explain a large part of the trouble I had waking up. In fact, it was raining hard enough that Farah canceled our peer tutoring session. When Rasha and I left the house, it was cloudy, but dry... for a while. And by "a while," I mean "under half a minute." Then the hail started. Oh, yes. Hail. The drive to the university was clogged, maybe a little bit more than usual, but it was rush hour. Rain, hail, okay. After parking, Rasha went to class and I went to TAGKS. This entails walking a little ways down the side of the university, going down some stairs into a pedestrian tunnel underpass, going up the stairs on the other side, walking past the University Bookstore, Star Donuts, and Lebnani Snack, which have roofs over their sidewalks, and past Burger King, McDonald's, The Pizza Place, and Things & Wings, which don't. Into Khalifeh Plaza, to the back of the building, and up the stairs to the fourth floor. Everything outside was soppy and gross, with fairly constant rain. 9:30 AM.

Cut to 12:30 PM. New scene. Down the stairs - the first floor was growing a puddle that was spilling into the staircase - to the ground floor, with its lake. Apparently the windows in that part of the building aren't watertight. I walked out to the sidewalk and found... well, let's just say that if I were playing Oregon Trail, I would have lost all my oxen fording that river. And the next river. And the one after that. Strangely both a blessing and a curse, the sidewalks in Jordan are all about a foot and a half tall. (Why, you ask? To keep the cars from parking on the sidewalks, of course.) That meant that the sidewalks stayed fairly river-free during the storms, with only an inch or two of water. But the high curbs also make for deeper rivers in the streets.

You know those bits the Weather Channel does on the dangers of driving in a flood? Videos of vehicles in a foot of water being swept away by its power? Well, yes. That's what Queen Rania Street looked like yesterday. The Jordanian stormwater drainage system is just like Jordanian copyright laws - that is to say, nonexistent. Seriously. Somebody had the foresight to put drains at the bottoms of tunneled underpasses, but that's about it. There are no sewer grates cut into the curbs. There are no sprawling grassy areas to soak up the rainwater. All we have are concrete-banked channels with asphalt bottom. And when the rain comes (oh, did it come), the streets turn to rivers.

I have to admit that I laughed to myself a little when my host mom expressed apprehensions about my going out in the rain on Friday. "What? Rain? Pshaw." But then I found out why she was afraid. Because rain is one thing, and lakes are another. Nothing is boring here in Jordan - not even water falling from the sky.