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.

Two weeks away

(Two weeks away was really yesterday. Pretend that I posted this then. I wrote it while on a bus to/from Aqaba, but because the bus didn't get in until 2 AM, this hasn't gotten up until now.)

So here I am again, two weeks away - in the other direction. I'm two weeks away from the US. Crazy, right?

It's hard for me to believe that it's coming so close, and so quickly. Days are flying past me. I'm already completely done with one of my classes (three to go). Last week, I had my colloquial oral/presentation/skit exam on Monday, and colloquial written exam on Wednesday. Bam! Done. Also on Wednesday, my formal Arabic listening exam, followed by a Thursday oral presentation. All that's left in the written exam for formal Arabic on Sunday, and then my Arabic is DONE for the semester. Well, classroom Arabic. I'll still keep using my spoken Arabic until I step off my Royal Jordanian flight in Heathrow.

From Arabic on out, my schedule gets pretty blank. My Area Studies classes that week are cancelled on account of teacher absence. Remaining obligations: farewell dinner Wednesday evening. Cultural re-entry training Sunday (the 16th) morning. Arabic post-test Sunday afternoon. Area Studies finals Monday and Wednesday afternoons, and... khallas. Done. I fly out Friday around noon and I get back to the US very very very late on Friday.

Wow.

But beyond the dates and the exams, what does "two weeks away" really mean?

It means I need to pack. There was some free space in my suitcases on the way over here, but I may need to do some serious maneuvering to fit everything in for the way back. Gifts take up space. (After purchasing gifts for no less than twenty people/couples/families yesterday, I know this to be a fact.) (And no, that was neither the beginning nor the end of my gift shopping.) Fortunately, CIEE runs a clothing drive at the end of the semester for just this reason. Also because most detergents here contain bleach and tear up clothes, but, anyway. It's a good thing all around. The clothing we donate goes to local refugee camps. And when I need to buy new clothes in the US, my consumption will stimulate the economy. Zing!

Two weeks away also means that I need to shift my cultural mindset, and quickly. I guess this is why we have re-entry training next week. Some of my friends are extremely worried about what returning to the US will be like. Some aren't worried at all. I'm in the "wait and see" camp - assuming that the adjustment will be big, but not stressing myself out over what form it will take.

And what else? Two weeks away means that I need to start saying goodbye to things here. Maybe exiting will be harder than re-entering; I don't know. Maybe it won't be too hard to go back to my American life, but I'm sure that it will be hard to leave my Jordanian one. I'll keep you updated on these last two bits as they develop. Because from here, I can't foresee at all how they're going to turn out.

We'll see in two weeks.

Wadi Rum, part three: camels

Camels!

We got up the next morning, ate breakfast, and packed our stuff. It was a miracle! The camels had multiplied in the night, from three to ninety-ish! Wow! The buses were outside waiting for us, so we loaded all our backpacks onto the buses and loaded ourselves onto the camels. Okay, really, other people (read: people who know what they're doing around camels) loaded us onto the animals.

How to get on a camel:

1. Select an appropriately-sized camel. Well, okay, they're all huge, so just pick one that looks about right for you. As we were all milling about post-bus, post-sunscreen, pre-camel, one of the herders came up and directed us to our camels. He pulled Lauren, Kim, and me over to a three-camel train, and organized us in height order.

2. Swing leg over camel's back - the camels in our part of the world are the one-hump kind - and try to situate yourself over the saddle in what you can only hope is a graceful manner.

3. Hold on to the saddle in front of you.

4. Up. If you're lucky, you've already been expecting it. If you're not, well, there's a little bit of awkward flailing, but it's all good.

We started out as pack leaders, and I remembered the previous day's race. Let me just say: atop a camel, I had absolutely none of the same "c'mon let's pass 'em, whoooooo boy!" feelings from the day before. But more on that later.

This was at the very beginning of the ride. Note the horizon? It's REALLY hard to take photographs from a camel. We didn't have to worry about holding reins because our camels were linked together and a guide was leading the front camel. But still - the camel is a lot for two hands to manage. I had my cell phone in my right back pocket, my camera in my left back pocket - not a really secure place, but the best I had - and they had given us water bottles right before we left. So to summarize... right hand occasionally checking cell phone pocket. Left hand frequently checking camera pocket. Both hands awkwardly hugging water bottle and saddle at the same time, although I would have preferred to have both hands free to embrace the saddle. As big and secure as the camels look, it feels pretty precarious from the top.

Omnomnom. Our camels had the munchies. Lauren's camel, being the lead, got to eat all the scrubby bushes that he wanted. The other two camels were a little jealous. Because of the way that they were roped together, once Camel #1 decided he was done eating, the whole group had to move on, and Camels #2 and #3 could only hope to get a passing munch. Poor things.

I wish I had a photo that showed the full size of our group - it was pretty dang impressive.

More munchies. The guy in that photo is our guide. He led the camels at first, but eventually decided to give the rein (singular, yes, it was really just a rope) to Lauren, and he walked by our side. By the third leg of the journey, some of the students had abdicated their camels, so he hopped up on one of the spare camels. It was probably a lot more pleasant for him that way.

This is a photo from our first stop. We got tea! In case it wasn't evident from my other posts this semester, tea is a huge cultural thing. We got it at the bottom of waterfall #11 in Wadi Feid and upon reaching the truck. We were given tea partway through the 4x4 tour. There's a lot of tea. And even though it was warm out, the only tea they ever serve is piping hot, like oh-man-I-can't-hold-the-glass hot. Yet somehow it's still refreshing. Magical.

One other thing about this photo: yes, that is a hitching post. Wild West?

A photo from the second stop. (I like the little local boy resting in the shade of the camel, completely unfazed by the fact that it could smush him at any moment.) You'll note that I abandoned my efforts at taking photographs from on top of the camel. As the day wore on, either our camels or our guide decided they would like to trot, thank you very much, and proceeded to do just that.

Ow.

Not fun times. Not fun times at all. This would be why I didn't want to race. The next day (or two) (or three) we all looked pretty pathetic around campus. There was a very classy moment when I almost fell down after trying to stand up from the table in the cafeteria. It huuuurts. Camel #3 was worse than Camel #2. How do I know? We rotated for the second leg of the trip. Kim wanted to steer the camels, so we shuffled. While trotting, thinking about how I was about to fall out of my saddle because Camel #3 had such a skinny back, I could see Lauren in front of me on Camel #2 and felt very jealous of his wide, comfortable-looking back. Besides that, I already considered Camel #2 to be my camel.

I was happy when we switched back for the third leg. Let's just say that if Goldilocks were in Wadi Rum, she would have picked Camel #2. We later found out that his name is Feynan. I forgot the other two camels' names, because obviously they were of no importance compared to Feynan. He's my bud. Trotting still wasn't a blast, but at least I felt a little safer on his back.

And the very end of our ride. How to get off a camel:

1. Enjoy the fact that you're not on the first camel. They go down in order.

2. Hold on, it could happen at any moment.

3. Drop, thump.

4. No, not yet.

5. Drop, thump, again. It's a two-part thing. Beware of the camel that decides, halfway down, that it doesn't want to be down. Tricksy.

6. Swing leg over and get off, much in the same manner as getting done. Success!

I was trying to take a very covert and sneaky photograph of our guide as he was walking away at the end. Too bad he noticed. (I still like the picture.) After this, we went into the Wadi Rum Visitors Center to watch a short film about Wadi Rum and eat lunch. I really don't know where the camels or the guides went, but when I came out after lunch to fill a bottle with sand, they were gone. We trudged back to the buses in complete exhaustion, and I can hardly remember most of the ride home.

Overall? Such a wonderful weekend. If you ever get a chance to ride a camel, and I mean really ride, not just a petting zoo or a state fair kind of thing, go for it. They're really quite sweet - and fluffy on top.

Wadi Rum, part two: camp

I left off at sunset. After watching the sky dim and noting our hunger, we headed over to our camp. "Captain's Desert Camp." Seafaring vessel not included.

I definitely had some middle-school youth group retreat flashbacks. Once we all got into the camp, Ahmed (CIEE employee) had us gather in a big group, and he stood at the front with a sheet of paper in his hands, explaining that we were to sleep two to a tent, girls in these tents, guys in those tents, et cetera, et cetera. My friend Katy and I went and grabbed tent 15, put our stuff down, and got ready for dinner.

Mmm. Dinner. It was a fairly simple buffet deal. But tasty. I'm going to miss kebab when I go back to the States... among a whole list of other delicious foods. But I digress. My friends and I hung around that area for a few more hours, chatting on the low couches and looking over at the fire. We spent a long time trading riddles and trying to figure them out together.

(A man walks into a restaurant and orders albatross soup. He tastes one spoonful, gets up, leaves, and kills himself. What happened?)

After staying up and hanging out for a few more hours, most of my friends went to bed. I did not - for a variety of reasons. The biggest, stars. I grew up in the suburbs, I go to college in a city, and I live right now in an even bigger city. I miss stars. Thinking about my trip to Wadi Rum, one of the parts that I most looked forward to was seeing stars in a completely dark place. How wonderful would that be?

Well. I forgot about clouds. Of which there were a few. And the moon, which is surprisingly bright. I guess the city lights dim that out, too. More than that, though, was the fact that we weren't staying in the sort of "camp" that I expected. Our tents had beds in them. With pillows and sheets. There were bathrooms, including showers, and the fact that there were bathrooms necessitated that there be lights outside to lead one toward the bathrooms. Even in what you think might be the middle of nowhere, there are still so many lights.

I did end up lying in the sand for a little while in the middle of an open space in the camp area. There were a few other people who had the same intentions as me, and we spent a while wandering around the camp or just sitting by the fire. The fire was probably the second most interesting part of the evening in the camp. It was very quiet, very warm, and very peaceful. Only a few other people were there - an American classmate and a few local Arabs. We didn't really speak to one another. We just... sat. Or watched. Or something. I don't think I would be able to recognize them, by day or by night, but it seemed like they belonged where they were, exactly where they were, sitting by the edge of that fire. Maybe they were the proprietors of the hotel, or night watchmen of sorts - I don't know. But they belonged, as if they were the essence of Wadi Rum, and I felt privileged to be an observer.

Hoping that there would be more starshine outside the camp, I wandered out. Just a hundred feet, maybe, to see if it would make a difference. (Some, but not enough.) As I was standing at the sign outside the camp and thinking of going back, a figure walked toward me. Good/bad? I don't know. Tense. He had very broken English, and I of course had very broken Arabic, but we managed to communicate that he was a local camel herder hanging out for the night before our group's ride the next day. He led me over to where three camels were sitting, awake. (I have something in common with camels.) This was without a doubt the most interesting part of the night.

Although I was hesitant at first, he showed me how to introduce myself to the camel and how to pet it. I know I've heard that camels can bite and spit and do spiteful things, but they were just so sweet. My herder friend had me put my hand at its mouth, an action that was returned with what I can only describe as nuzzling. After that, I petted their noses and the tops of their heads. (Surprisingly fluffy.) It was so, so, so amazing. I got to pet all three of the camels that he had out there, and when I left to go back to camp, he shook my hand and said that his name was Ibrahim.

Weird. Just a few minutes before, I had thinking about how he looked like a picture-Bible Abraham. Long robe, long hair, crooked teeth, camels. How cool is that? After hanging with Ibrahim and his camels, I decided to turn in for the night. The camels were surprisingly soft, the beds were surprisingly warm, and I slept well.

Coming up in part three: camel ride.