"Oh, the Places You'll Go!": A Post after a long Absence

Hello All,

Sorry I have been absent for awhile now. I needed to get my courses straight in addition to my living situation. I hope that I will post on a more regular basis from this point on, but the truth is that I enjoy hanging out with Mayas, Mayada and Lizz so much, that all my free time goes towards hanging out with them.

With regards to my classes, I have switched from my Modern Standard Arabic class to a Classical Arabic class, which has been more challenging. We are currently reading Ghalazi, which is a very difficult religious text. We also read the Quran as well as different sources about Islam and religion. This has been interesting as I am currently reading about what to do about anger as well as the manifestations of anger and its sources.

On Thursday, I skipped my second class to buy groceries, shower, cook lunch, and prepare for a trip to Mufraq with Mayada and crew. The streets are so crowded that it takes me an hour to get home from school so it is difficult to run errands during the day. Mayada is from Mufraq, a town that is 10km away from the Syrian border. I had so much fun in Mufraq with Mayada's family and enjoyed talking with them and eating Iftar with them. After the Iftar dinner, Mayada took me to her brother's house where he has beautiful grape trees that cover the ceiling of one of the rooms. This sight was simply magical. I was given a few grapes to try, but they were not yet ripe and were a tad bit sour. I was told that if you dip sour grapes in salt, this rids grapes of some of the sour flavor. This actually works, but you have to make sure that your grape does not become too salty. I enjoyed talking with Ibrahim's family as they have three young boys with a lot of energy. We all laughed so hard and it was a pleasant evening.

On Friday, I went with Mayas to a funeral for the mother of a girl in Mayas' class. The girl is 16 and has lost both parents this year. This is certainly sad, and is unfortunately something I can relate too. The girl and her parents are from Iraq, so I was told that this was an Iraqi funeral. We went to essentially a hall that houses funerals and there was a room for the women to gather and a separate room for the men to gather. Everyone was talking, drinking coffee, and eating dates with Quranic verses were being recited. Mayada told me that at a Jordanian funeral, it is customary for a friend of the family to buy Mansef, a traditional Jordanian dish, for everyone and it is served for both main meals for three days. It is during these three days that people come to visit the family of the deceased without an appointment, but after these three days, it is expected that you will call to set up a time to visit and dropping by is not appropriate. The thing that shocked me most about the funeral was how the women were dressed. Everyone was wearing high end designer clothing, and had visited the MAC counter as well as the hair salon. I felt like a hick from the hills. This also very much upset me. This girl had lost so much this year, and yet everyone came dressed as if they were going to a party, but were wearing black. Mayada told me that Iraqi funerals must be different as this is not typical in Jordan. Also, the family was wealthy, which was evident that the location of the meeting was near the royal palaces. This was a good experience to go to.

Today, Mayada hosted a grand Iftar dinner at her house for staff at SIT, the program I studied with two years ago. I am glad that I went shopping after class for a nice shirt as the men showed up with blazers. It was nice to see and talk with my old professors again and it was like old time. I could describe the dinner, but I think I will just post pictures. I am very much behind in posting, but it is very late here (about 1:30am). Ibahim was at the dinner and we were joking around playing a game where he was throwing knives while I was against the wall. It was funny, but scary initially as I could not tell if he was exactly joking about whether or not he would actually throw the knives. He was also nice and brought me some grapes from his house. That was very sweet of him and I like how he remembers how much I enjoyed seeing the grape trees. One of my professors invited me to tag along to go to the Zatari refugee camp on Tuesday for Iftar. I am planning on going and helping out.

Fun facts:

Mayada and Ibrahim were telling me about how cheap everything was in Syria before the war as Syria did not import things and everything was made in Syria. The furniture below, which is made so artistically, is not incredibly expensive. I was shocked as it looks so artistic and intricate to me.

Ibrahim told a joke: Why was a Christian buried in the middle of a Muslim cemetery? Because the muslims were too shy and sent him out to get them food and things. This is because Christians are buried with clothing and perfume, while Muslims are not.