Week Fifteen:

These past two weeks have been busy with work on papers and tests as I also prepared for and then went on Eid holidays.

Eid al-AdHa, the feast or festival of the sacrifice, is an Islamic celebration that is conducted in the middle of Dhu li-Hajj, the last month of the Islamic calendar. The feast itself is meant to commemorate and honor Abraham’s act of faith in being willing to sacrifice his son at God’s command. As I’ve noted in past blogs, Islam sees itself as a continuation of the message of God from Judaism and Christianity, and thus shares many of the stories and prophets of both religions. The difference in the story of Abraham between Islam and the older two religions is that Islam teaches that Ishmael (Ismail, in Arabic) was the son to be sacrificed. The celebration involves sacrificing a sheep and then sharing the meat with family, relatives, and the poor. Similar to Eid al-Fitr, as I talked about in a previous post, the three days of Eid involve a lot of time with family and relatives (which, in the view of some of my Jordanian Muslim friends, can be a mixed blessing). Dhu li-Hajj is, as noted above, the last month of the Islamic calendar and the month in which pilgrims conduct the Greater Pilgrimage to Mecca, taking part in a three day long ceremony which involves rituals and prayer. This year’s Hajj involved upwards of two million people.

For my part, we had a week off from University, and they decided to cancel our Sunday classes at the last minute, and shift them all to the following Saturday (which is usually the second day of the weekend).To be honest it was a little frustrating getting that news the day before (I would have shown up to class and wondered why no one was around) because I could have made plans earlier; but then I guess that’s kind of how things run at the University sometimes (kind of like the admission process I spoke of in an earlier post). Also, the research center where I’ve been staying was more or less closed for the Eid holidays and pretty much everyone left to travel. Since I didn’t have plans for the first day of the break and since there were still a few people around we decided to have an ACOR dinner party, and I ended up making four pizzas for seven people (different tastes make it tough to accomodate sometimes, but I enjoyed making them anyway).

Quick side note, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned before how much I like cooking. Thanks mostly to watching my mom in the kitchen for years, I’ve kind of started to pick up a number of dishes, mostly Italian, that I enjoy sharing with my fellow residents. I also stole my mom’s cookie recipe (please don’t tell her!) and made those as well, though we had a funny incident where someone passing through the residence thought they were up for grabs (despite clear marking indicating otherwise) and took five or six, so we were almost short for the dinner party.

So the rest of Eid I spent traveling around; I went and saw some sites up north that I hadn’t yet had a chance to visit and that many people have told me I have to see. Once again, Rotary connections helped out and I was able to stay with a friend from the Rotary orientation last December; she and her friends, who are studying Arabic, had an extra couch that worked great as a temporary bed. It was great to get a change of scenery and to meet new people, as well as to experience a slightly different culture from Amman. I also got to meet a number of students traveling from Cairo, visiting their friends. It’s fascinating how small the expat student community is here in the Middle East; some of the students from Cairo also happened to know a fellow resident of ACOR in Amman. It always surprises me how small the world gets when you travel around.

The people up north were fun. Their accent was really interesting to listen to, and while I understood most of what was said, it would take me just a split second longer to process it. In general the accent sounded like there was a little bit more air in their mouths and, in all honesty, it was a little bit more effeminate, which tends to be the case in the Syrian- Lebanese dialect as well as the Ammani female dialect (yep, there are male and female dialects here in Amman). I also discovered in myself a sense of pride in my own area’s culture and dialect, which is harsher and tends to be a little more masculine, due to the specifically Bedouin influence. While wandering around with my friend (Noorjahan), we decided to jump on a bus end explore some places that neither of us had been. Unfortunately, most everything was closed due to Eid, but I did get to have an hour long conversation with a ten year old boy on the bus, who liked talking about sports and musicians (particularly one Lebanese-Canadian singer stage-named Massari or "Money"). It reminded me of a similar conversation I had with a ten year old Colombian boy on the plane back from Spain, after graduating from high school (except the Colombian boy was interested in Shakira).



That’s it for this update. Thank you very much for your interest and I hope you enjoyed!

Respectfully,

Brennan

Week Thirteen:

Once again I skipped a week of posting, and unfortunately I have no excuse except that I let the time get away from me. It seems a little odd that I am on week thirteen of my time here; it doesn’t seem so long. I certainly had enough to write about last week as I had gone out and about with a group of archeologists to a Hellenistic palace, and I did have pictures as each of those archeologists had a camera and kindly shared their photos with me.

The people who have been around ACOR, the archeological research center that is my home for this year, for the past few weeks and months are just an incredible group. To be honest, it doesn’t do much for my work as a graduate student, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to spend time with such interesting and broadly experienced people. The group is pretty mixed, as far as nationality goess too. There are some Americans doing research for their PhDs. One gentleman was an ordained minister who became interested in the archeology of the region and went back to school; he is now is working night and day on his thesis, waiting for the appearance of “the thesis fairy” to help him in the final stages. There is also a young lady from Maine doing her work on Iron Age glassblowing in the region, and it is fascinating to hear about ancient techniques and how trade, resources, and technology affected the art of glassblowing during that time period. There is a large group of Australians, so many in fact that we joke about the name of the center changing from the American to the Australian Center for Oriental Research. They are a really fun group, with a slightly different perspective on the world. It’s cool to be able to have intelligent conversations about everything from military issues and world politics to generational music and whose generation has the best love songs, all the while joking and laughing. We’re actually planning to grill out (or as someone who likes to give me a hard time for my Americanisms would say, “We’re planning a Barbecue”) sometime this week in celebration of the upcoming ‘Eid al-Adha; I’ll be in charge of the grill.

So I’ve finally found a consistent place to volunteer for a while. I just sort of fell into it, actually through a young (Australian) lady named Rose here at the center who is doing research for her Masters on nationality and women in Jordan. So now I will be helping to teach English on Thursday evenings to three groups of Iraqis, for about an hour for each group. I’m not entirely sure how it all worked out, it kind of happened quickly and without a plan. My friend Rose asked me if I could help put together a lesson plan. Then she asked if I’d like to come along to class and I decided it would be good, seeing it as an opportunity to help out for a class and maybe even give a quick presentation about Rotary. During the first class, I really only served as a back-up, walking around and helping to clarify difficult concepts for people, but I was able to introduce myself, talk about Rotary, and explain Rotary International’s mission of spreading goodwill and understanding. During the second class, I took the content part of the lesson and had a blast going over words and phrases (focusing on political vocabulary and election vocabulary because of the upcoming elections here in Jordan). Finally, during the third period, which was full of older professionals from Iraq, I took the beginning part of the lesson which was actually tougher and made me more nervous than the content part of the lesson. Somewhere in the whirlwind mix class and talking to people, the director of the school came in to check on progress and talk to Rose and she asked if I would be interested in taking Thursday evenings every week. So I agreed and there we go. Now I have a weekly class, just three to four hours a week and I’m teaching English. It should be a lot of fun.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s update! Thank you for your interest.

Respectfully,
Brennan Roorda