Hey Cari, How's Jordan?

My Lady Syria

2009-10-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

Last month I took advantage of a week-long holiday by hopping the border over to Syria. I had been looking forward to this trip ever since I first decided to return to Jordan and was pleasantly surprised that I was able to visit so soon.

I learned a lot about the country while I was there, but for the sake of brevity I'll list a few interesting things:

1. Everyone I met was extremely hospitable and friendly. No Anti-Americanism to be found, aside from the obligatory criticisms of Bush.

2. They love their President.

3. The internet is harshly censored. Websites like facebook, yahoo, and amazon.com are blocked, but people can usually access them using a proxy server. Hosting random foreigners (i.e. couchsurfing) is illegal, but a few people do it anyway. I'm grateful to the Syrians who gave me a place to stay, showed me around, shared their stories, and went out of their way to ensure that I had a wonderful time in their country.

Step aboard and come along with me on a picture tour of my amazing adventure!

Your tour guide, at the Citadel in Aleppo:

The Citadel, which served as a power base for the Muslims during the 12th-century Crusades.

View of Aleppo:

The souk (market) in Aleppo, arguably the best in all the Middle East

Danish Denniz, Syrian Adam, and Polish Tim chatting outside of Adam's cafe, where we all CouchSurfed. For more information on CouchSurfing see: www.couchsurfing.org.

Adam's beautiful cafe:

My new best friend (she didn't even have a name when we met!):

So tiny!

At man-made Lake Al-Assad. We camped there the previous night and withstood an intense downpour. The facilities were inadequate to handle that kind of rain, so every tent, backpack, and sleeping bag was soaked. No one could sleep so we stayed up all night having soggy, silly, fun.

We went to checkout a nearby fortress and ran into a wedding party! They insisted we join their dance circle and pose for pictures with all the guests. This is typical Syrian hospitality. Their fascination with foreigners feels awkward at first, but is ultimately very endearing. I hope they're enjoying their wedding photos of us dirty backpackers.

Onward to Hama, a nice stopover town full of 13th-century norias (water wheels)

How great is this building?

The popular President Bashar al-Assad, whose image is ubiquitous. In case you can't tell, this is a hologram on the rear window of a car. What a cool cat.

How many pictures of Bashar can you find?

The window display of a photo shop. My Polish friends and I laughed until we cried at the blatant creepiness of this. A great gift for the pedophile in your life.

Hitching a ride, and of course stopping to let a herd of sheep cross the road.

Crac Des Chevaliers (or Qala'at Al-Hosn if you prefer Arabic), an incredible fortress built in 1031 by a Syrian emir and then expanded by the Crusaders in the 12th-century.

Damsel in Distress

The Deir Mar-Musa, or Monastery of Saint Moses, where travelers could stay for free so long as they did their share to help prepare meals, perform daily chores, and clean up after themselves.

Unfortunately this picture doesn't capture the dramatic, yet serene, desert mountains in which the monastery sits.

The ruins at Palmyra, magical at night (and completely open to be explored).

I woke up at the crack of dawn the next day in order to have the place all to myself.

This is, like, soooo Roman:

I loved every single second of this morning. These pictures don't even come close to capturing the magnificence of the place. I've seen my share of ruins, but there is something really special about Palmyra (Tadmoor in Arabic, in case you were wondering).

Men playing Backgammon on a side street in Damascus. Classic Syria.

Damascus at night:

This old chap recites classic Arabic stories at a cafe in Damascus...and I actually understood a few things!

Hey, does anybody know where I can go to put on some special clothes?

(Outside of the Ummayad Mosque they provide robes to wear before entering.)

Courtyard of the Ummayad Mosque:

And then inside...

Islam.

Thanks for taking part in my journey through Syria. I hope you found it enjoyable. :)

I'll leave you with this final image of a floating hijab (headscarf) cube that I stumbled upon in random Damascus street.

Because you never know what's just around the corner...

Settlin' In...

2009-10-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

This past month has been a whirlwind. I spent my first week in Amman settling into my new apartment (re: scrubbing away the filth from all surfaces). I’m thrilled with where I’m living—it’s spacious and situated at the end of a quiet street in a central part of town.

The building is full of young, active Jordanians. I live with two guys, an American and a Brit, who are also studying the language. My daily trip to school is a little bit out of the way, but luckily cabs are cheap and soon I'll have the public bus system figured out, Insha'allah (hopefully/God willing).

I’ve become good friend with my neighbor Hakim who runs his own tour company, Tropical Desert Trips, that leads excursions throughout Jordan. He’s an avid rock climber and has even installed a climbing wall on the side of our building. In addition to mastering Arabic, I’ll hopefully develop some climbing skills by the time I leave Jordan.

Hakim’s apartment is a popular hangout spot, and I’ve made countless new friends just going over there to say hi. The best times are when his Jordanian friends are visiting and they speak exclusively in Arabic. I’m not yet at the point where I comfortable joining in to their conversation, but it’s exciting to discover how quickly my listening comprehension is improving.

The Arabic that I study in my classes is the formal Modern Standard Arabic, also called fus-ha (meaning 'eloquent'). This Arabic is used in the media, academia, and in business settings. It is understood across the region by Arabic speakers from different countries. On the street, however, the locals of each country speak their particular dialect, or ammiya (meaning 'public'). To make a crude linguistic comparison, ammiya is to fus-ha what Ebonics is to proper English. In order to really understand what is going on around me and communicate with facility, I need to know ammiya. The good news is that with a foundation is fus-ha, ammiya is relatively easy. The vocabulary is limited and the grammar is very straightforward. Towards this effort, I am taking a two hour ammiya conversation class one evening a week. Once I have learned the basic grammar structures and learn the ammiya equivalents of my fus-ha vocublary, I should be on my way.

Wadi Rum

2009-09-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went to the world famous Wadi Rum in the south of Jordan. I visited this incredible valley (language note: wadi = valley) on a group trip last year, but I felt unsatisfied being shuffled from site to site with thirty other students. This time around I was invited by my neighbor Hakim to partake in an easy-going weekend of camping, rock climbing, and overall reverence for the beauty of the desert.

First Field Trip

2009-09-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went on an excursion to Wadi Ibn Hammad with

my neighbor Rami and his friend Brittany. We had an amazing time splashing through this gorgeous

valley.

The Desert Calls...

2009-08-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Once upon a Hokie Saturday, nearly three years ago, I sat in bed contemplating my upcoming graduation. Leaving Blacksburg was momentous, but up until that point I had never put any brain power towards actually figuring out what I wanted to do. Suddenly, a mischievous thrill shot through my body. Poof! Like the genie emerging from Aladdin's lamp, my thoughts transported me to the middle of an Arab bazaar, surrounded by veiled women and swarthy men. I imbibed the rich scent of exotic spices and the languid rhythms of sitar music. Wouldn't it be just great... I thought ... to live in the Middle East and learn how to speak Arabic?

My interest in the Arab world was first sparked by the events of September 11. Over the following years, I felt increasingly frustrated and indignant over the mischaracterization of Muslims as violent religious fanatics. These myths attempted to seal Americans off from the rest of the world by creating enmity out of misunderstanding. I wanted to bust through this wall and see the humanity on the other side. Surely not every one of the world’s one billion Muslims is a terrorist. Surely not every part of the region was tumultuous and violently oppressive. No amount of reading could give me the perspective I sought. I wanted to stand on the ground of my own experience to use myself as a human bridge between two disparate worlds.

My first encounter with the Arabic language was during the 1994 World Cup when I caught a few minutes of a Saudi Arabia match. I remember noticing the country’s bright green flag with its indecipherable script and sword. I was baffled that anyone could actually understand those slashes and curly-cues. I mean, come on, where were the letters? A decade later, I wanted that magical power myself. I didn't have patience to sit in some classroom twice a week copying down a new alphabet, memorizing a few vocab words, and reading the culture section at the end of a chapter. I wanted to be inside of it myself. I wanted to be bombarded with the language from all directions, forced to make myself understand and be understood. I didn't want to "Pretend you and your friend Mohammad are at an Arabic restaurant. How will you ask the waiter for a cup of coffee?" I wanted to be in that Arabic restaurant. I wanted a real friend named Mohammad! Scholarships abounded, but all required a minimum of two years language study. So for a year I lived at home, worked round the clock, and hoarded all my money in order to send myself to the sand dunes of Jordan.

And then I was there. Once the initial excitement wore off, I found myself confronted with a nagging question. Cari! What the heck are you doing here?!? Arabic is read from right to left, and I often felt that life in Jordan was similarly backwards. As a woman, living in the Middle East requires a few adjustments from the easy going freedom of the West. Appropriate dressing means ankle-length skirts and pants, covered arms and high necklines (although it is common to see something as racey as a T-shirt). I had to be cautious about the way I interacted with men and even encountered some of the uber-traditional sort who would not even shake my hand. Strolling down the street in the evening, I was often the only female to be seen. This would cause a scandal if I was local. Most of the restrictions put on Muslim girls are based around their family's sense of honor. Therefore, as a free-wheelin' American, no one was affected by my lack of impropriety. Nonetheless, I was constantly concerned about sending the wrong message or offending anyone. (I should also note that as far as the whole region goes, Jordan is on the liberal side of scale.)

As anyone who has been abroad knows, it’s exhausting and isolating to live in a place where a foreign language is spoken. And by the way, Arabic is freakin’ hard. Like a naive fool, I thought I could master it in a couple of years. On the first of class you learn three letters. Goodness gracious, there are two different "S" sounds, three different "H" sounds, and about four or five noises that do not exist in English (unless you are coughing). An Australian polyglot friend reports: If the average person (whoever that is) wanted to learn Spanish from scratch and took private lessons with a tutor for four hours a day and then studied on her own for four hours, she would reach fluency after six months. If this same average language learner wanted to speak Arabic she would have to do the same thing...for FIVE YEARS. Now, I don't know where he got this equation, and clearly there are all sorts of mitigating factors, but hearing this was enough for me collapse on a couch. It is overwhelming to think about how much work it will take for me to reach proficiency.

Despite the linguistic and cultural challenges, I survived four months in Jordan and made a vow to return. I knew I had just scratched the surface of understanding everything. And so, a year later, I'm on my way. The truth is, I'm probably more riddled with doubt that I am confident. What is the point of this? Left up to my own devices, I may not be so self-conscious, but two years of having to formulate an answer to “Why would you want to learn Arabic? What do you want to do with it?” I still feel like I’m grasping to find the right answer. Sure, the practical aspects are accurate: Arabic is a high demand language and speaking it will hopefully make me competitive in the job market. But my real mental process is based on something much less definable and much more senseless.

I’m doing this because it’s there. Because it’s crazy and fascinating and unique. And because I can. Perhaps in doing so, I am making larger statement about my life. I’m ignoring convention and thinking outside the box. Despite all the steady jobs, long term commitments, and strategic plans, aren’t we all just drifters? Devastating tragedy and glorious good fortune can pop up in an instant, and experience has shown me that it’s the former which has the greater power to shape the course of our lives. When an exciting opportunity presents itself, the only time is seize it is now. Maybe I will never learn to speak the language, never really penetrate the mystery of Islam or wrap my mind around Middle East politics. But who cares. I’m giving myself permission to follow the elusive spirit of possibility and trusting every message, lesson, and experience that comes my way. Cheers to the adventure.

And by the way, I have five friends named Mohammad now.