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