Day 55- Halfway

“I know it isn't easy, but it's all about how you move in your space...” A quote from my mother on Skype. It’s true, at the end of the day it’s like a dance here, use your time and space wisely and watch your step.

It’s been a while, but when you begin to feel as though you belong in a space, it is hard to remove yourself and look objectively on your context (hence my slacking on the blogs). I can move through the motions of the day now without much forethought. My weeks are packed with intensive and (usually) stimulating learning material (if you find it in yourself to care). My weekends are a total decompression with an amazing group of people who are able to move in their space with ease as well. We are a group of people who laughs when frustration ensues, who smiles when thinking of the challenge before us and who is able to brush off the nonsense when it seems overwhelming.

It’s also the halfway mark. I don’t know if I should think of it as a repeat of what I’ve just done, as “only” a month and a half left, or as “still the second half of the semester to go”. I know what I feel, and that is that I’m going to have a hard time leaving this place. It is around now that they warn you of this study abroad “curve”. It is an emotional chart in the shape of a U with a starting point and finishing point at much higher emotional happiness points than the middle. It is now when people are to start marking their calendars to count down, or to wonder why four months sounded like a good idea in the first place.

This is not how I feel. I feel as though if I had control of the sun, I would keep it stagnant for the majority of the week until I felt as though I would collapse. I don’t like that the days pass here at incredible speeds. I never thought I would be this comfortable with life outside of what I know, but this is life now; this is what I know. I wonder how long it takes for a tourist to come to Jordan and decide that this is great “for a vacation” and be glad to have a set plane ticket home shortly, and when it is that that person decides that this isn’t so bad, that maybe they could be here a while.

Life is slow in Amman, and it is fast too. There is little social unrest, and people are peaceful, paisible, pleasant, life is مش مشكالة , no problems. Emotionally, it is fast paced and hard to keep up. The reality of my social situation here in Jordan is laughable. I feel as though the way your muscles break down after strength training only to build themselves up slightly larger with scar tissue, that’s what is happening to my psyche. Every time you get torn down you feel sore. Luckily, the body has its own physical and emotional defense mechanisms to help you bounce back. This trip has helped me take those times in my life when I’ve been torn down to shreds to start picking them up once again. I’ve sewn them into a person with a direction and past.

I’m not just a bundle of shreds of past tumbles anticipating the next blow with a shield up.

In terms of daily life, other than the times of my class and the gym a few times a week, nothing in my routine is stagnant. My hatred for mid-terms is pretty unchanging. Where I go to school back home, we don’t have tests or midterms. Rote memorization and studying is relatively unheard of. Researching and reading/writing until my brain bursts is without question more my style. This is most likely the most torturous part of the experience- the schooling. I’ve never been so unmotivated to work and more motivated to explore.

It is unrealistic to expect to come here and not devote an amazing amount of time to talk to and about locals. On the other hand, this is not like anything I could hope to learn at school in the states. Learning about people, learning how to talk with them (instead of to them), giving and taking advice, learning to exchange perspectives gently, diplomatically, this is what I want to do with my life. I love listening to people convey things which turn everything I thought I knew on its head. I’m always being blown away with what someone’s “space” looks like through other occipital lobes.

Like Hamlet, I’ve come to believe more and more that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. Very little is intrinsically right or wrong or better or worse than whatever you are comparing it to objectively. Things simply “are” and as such we are able to cast our opinions upon them from only our individual contexts and experiences as reference points. More importantly than casting our own opinions, however, is being able to consider another.

I’ve had countless conversations with locals and peers regarding social norms, gender norms, women’s clothing, women’s place, men’s place, rationality versus faith, religion’s ultimate place, the role of politics etc. to only come to find myself in a vortex of more questions. On the other hand, when you only talk and do not listen or when you cloud your thinking with only a few similar sources of information, you are going to be part of a system that does not understand and thus cannot adequately act.

I would love to dispel the images that you see of the Middle East being portrayed as “Iran, Israel and Afghanistan” because while none of these are even Arab countries (and it is the Arab stereotype that gets the wrap), everything you see is unlike anything I see. But realistically I know I could write 800 blogs about this topic and you will still watch and internalize CNN first.
Instead, I will continue to try to give you history lessons on the countries of this region because I know that if I did not learn anything about them in my high school, neither did you.

If I were not in the middle of studying for midterms, I would outline a long detailed posting regarding the Armistice of 1949, the Suez Canal Crisis, the war of ’67, and Camp David ‘79 but I would either explode from the greed of what I’m reading or explode from overheating from memorizing so many freaking dates. If you have any questions about why the Middle East is politically the way it is now, I’d be glad to answer in painstaking detail. It is painted so beautifully in Main Line high schools of Pennsylvania, with simple outlines of the Geneva Accords and the kindly gestures of Super Nations offering the oppressed holocaust survivors a home. The complexities beyond this are innumerable, but when your frame of reference is a cropped picture from a much greater lens, you have no reason to dispute. I’m here to give you reason to dispute.

Also, I am learning Arabic in case you forgot. I'm living in a country where the majority of people speak little English. The signs on the streets are in Arabic, all the fastfood chains are in Arabic, I gather you would figure this, but when you can't read "Pharmacy", it strikes you a bit harder. Fortunately, my brain has been dunked and inundated with two dialects of Arabic in an intensive course that I'm proud to say has allowed me to read every sign and understand every fourth sign. I can carry on a pseudo-conversation and know (because of my MIDTERM!) well over 600 vocabularly words (most of which we were tested on, and were even asked to write a short story on our exam). My story was along the lines of the nice boys sitting in the class with the nice teacher in the pretty room writing long papers on the brown tables by the big windows that the nice teacher opened on the pretty day. But I was damn proud of it.

So there is the halfway mark in a page. In a word: captivating. I’ve made it this far, I never had too many doubts but huge shout out to the family for giving me coping mechanisms early in life for adaption purposes. The forecast for today is 68 and “Widespread Dust”. A few days ago it was 90 and “Smoky”. Mostly its 80 and “Haze”. When I go home it will be 28 and Snowy. I sometimes can’t believe the reality of my own life. I’m consumed by what is here and forget to communicate to the outside world (in truth, I often forget there is more to my world). Know that if I’m not writing, I’m absorbing, and I cannot wait to return with my mind laden with perspective. Also know that I am happy. I am really, truly happy.