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.