Week Eight:

This past week was full of firsts.
I had my first Master’s degree class on Sunday evening, beginning at 5 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m. It’s a long three hours for one class, though the professor did show up about 25 or 30 minutes late, so it actually didn’t start until 5:30. It was encouraging that the professor did have a written syllabus for us, along with required textbooks and useful websites. That said, I believe academic standards and endeavors here will be a little different from my previous experience.
On Monday afternoon, I had my first official Rotary club presentation. I presented along with two other Rotary Ambassadorial scholars here in Jordan to the Amman West club, which meets for lunch on Monday afternoons. It was an awesome experience and all of the members were very welcoming, very talkative, and very interested in each of our stories.
An unexpected side benefit of presenting with other scholars was that it was also very interesting to learn about each of them. One, Laura Kalb, is from a club in the East Phoenix Rotary region (yes, apparently the eastern half of Phoenix, Arizona, has its own entire region). She grew up in Maryland, graduated from a small undergraduate university in Pennsylvania, and then spent six years working for a non-governmental organization in Phoenix, helping primarily with refugees from Somalia. She is here in Jordan also for a year and is studying in the Conflict Resolution program at the University, actually in a couple of my classes as well. My other colleague, Ben Woodman, is from Kentucky. Ben got his undergrad degree from a small school in Kentucky but then went on to get a Master’s degree from Princeton. He also did a year abroad, studying at the American University in Cairo. Along with his studies, he has also spent quite a bit of time working for the Department of Defense as a Middle East political analyst. He was here representing a club from Washington D.C., where he had been living, but unfortunately and to my dismay, he’s had to cut short his scholarship and return to the U.S. to take up a job with the Treasury department, working in their Middle East division on finances and particularly Extremist Islamist financing (he hopes). For my presentation, I focused pretty heavily on our region of East Tennessee, the City of Oak Ridge, and on the Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club, including information and pictures regarding the club’s major projects and programs.














Another first was the first rain of the season. It seemed really strange and out of place to find the day overcast and drizzly. It was kind of a nice break to see some variety in the weather, but it also added a new aspect to driving conditions, which are hazardous enough as it is, to say the least. That said, apparently the fact that we have had only one rain so far, this late into September, is odd. Following along on the weather line, I experienced my first (and second) dust storm. Dust storms, or tozz (with a short “o”), are pretty uncommon for this time of year in Jordan. This one rolled in similar to a khamsiiniat (“50’s”) wind, which is a period of roughly fifty days in late Spring and early Summer where the winds bring up dust from the South. The experience was not what I had imagined off a dust storm. I had a mental image of high winds and blowing sand; rather, this was similar to fog but with a brownish-yellowish hue, and it smelled like a construction site where someone has been cutting tile. Unfortunately, the storm drifted in while I was in class and I had decided to walk to school that night, so I got to see the various shades of brownish-yellow for a mile and a half walk back to ACOR (where I’m staying).
Other adventures for the week included meeting and debating with a Danish professor (whose lectures I got to attend in place of two separate classes, for the same professor). It was fascinating being able to hear his lectures, which were about the European Union and its relationship with the Mediterranean (such as Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, etc.). I also spent time with one of his students, a Bosnian-Danish guy, who was very cool to talk to and a lot of fun to hang out with, particularly because he had experience in the Danish military. And finally, I got to hang out with my friend Khalid once again; as always that was enlightening and an excellent opportunity to practice my Arabic.
This coming week, I’m looking to start on a number of different projects, including research for classes, research for my thesis, and possibly getting involved in a regular volunteering project. So insha’ Allah khair!
I hope you enjoyed the update and, as always, thank you for your interest!

Respectfully,

Brennan Roorda