Day 39

Listening to this song called "Beautiful" by Eminem on the bus yesterday as I drove through Amman and around the mosques. I know, it's Eminem, but it made me breathe a bit more deeply. I think it speaks for itself; it struck a bit of a chord while I was listening...


Cause where you see it from where your sittin its probably 110% different
I guess we would have to walk a mile in eachothers shoes at least
What size you wear?
I wear tens
Lets see if you can fit your feet
In my shoes, just to see
What its like, to be me
Ill be you, lets trade shoes
Just to see what itd be like
To feel your pain, you feel mine
Go inside eachothers minds
Just to see what we'd find
Look at life through eachothers eyes


If I didn't love psychology so much, particularly clinical, particularly exactly what I know I want to do, I would pursue something related to understanding cultural differences sociologically, perhaps gender differences. The past couple days have been intellectually satisfying for me. Educationally, I feel I have made strides past where I began on this journey. Hopefully by the end I will have exceeded four-fold.

My past couple of days have cumulated into a great amalgamation of renewed interests. Primarily, there was another conversation regarding social issues with the peer tutor (the student with whom we discussed sexuality not long ago). We had a couple more questions which she graciously answered. After that, I will tell you the story of our field trip.

There were a couple questions which plagued us still, the first was on their knowledge of anatomy and the male perspective on virginity in Jordan (as if there were one).

She was asked if she did not use tampons for fear of breaking her hymen and she had no idea, even when looking at a picture or using the dictionary what that was. Subsequently, when asked "but what about sports or athletics? You know it can break that way?" "She said " Sport, like karate?" With a nod in response, she continued...


If you take a sport (like karate) as a woman, you must go to the manager of the course and recieve a note. This is a note you will carry around with you for life and show it to your husband, or fiance to explain why you do not bleed. If you ride a camel, you go to the manager and ask the same thing.


If a woman has no such note and still doesn't bleed, she goes with her husband to the doctor for an exam "together" and the doctor "can explain" if her hymen broke from sex or sports or other... Everything I learned in Middle School was very clear on the fact that a doctor could not tell the difference between these forms of breaks. Apparently here they can... (My theory is that bribery or relationships play a role, but that is just my theory).

Otherwise, the "picture" phenomenon is becoming larger than we had originally anticipated. The peer tutor explained that sometimes men will marry you if they have sex with you because they "love you"...but it is never clear if they love you so therein lies the problem when the day comes. Other times, if he quite clearly DOESN'T love you, he will take a nude or semi-nude picture of the girl in question and use it as leverage. If she doesn't continue to have sex with him, then he will forward it to the whole community (school, neighborhood, etc). This will ruin a girl and she will resort to suicide, social hibernation or will flee.

It is known here that a woman is most likely not be a 'virgin' because she somehow broke her hymen in life (a good thing to understand, but virgin in terms of intact hymen) but a note is crucial for proof.


I don't want to overload with you information on this issue, but these points remained quite salient with me over the course of the past few days and I thought I would share them with you.

Otherwise, yesterday was our field trip for my Contemporary Islamic Thought class. The course I am taking essentially traces Islamic theorists throughout the past century and we explore how they have influenced what has become of Islam in different regions (anything from social relations to those who influenced Al Qaeda)

We were told that we were going to visit a mosque or two but were not given much more information than that. We were also told that it would take the class period (approx. 2 hours) for the trip.

We left around three and drove to the downtown. The downtown is where the souks are located and it is incessantly a madhouse. I love the downtown, but a tour group of twenty American kids at a mosque in the downtown is a suicide mission. We were told to cover our heads with our scarves and started to walk towards the mosque right at the end of the call to prayer (the same one at which I found myself not long ago on a Friday). This mosque was "exclusively" for men, other than a small closed room to the left for a dozen or so women. My friends and I were feeling extraordinarily insensitive and tried to distance ourselves from the target that was a mass of white students in the entryway of a male dominated mosque at the call to prayer. Needless to say, we were offensive and asked to leave (at least the women). We were not feeling good about this decision to go on our fieldtrip and being a half dinar cab ride away from home, were considering calling it quits.


We stayed on, and hopped back in the bus in order to visit our second mosque. A couple of my friends and I had been to this one before in our attempt to visit the citadel back in the first couple days of being here. It is an enormous blue mosque quite near our home and we were excited to see the inside. It is not exactly the easiest thing to access the inside of a mosque, particularly when you are not Muslim or a non-Muslim woman. Since our professor is Muslim and she had organized this with an educational caveat, we were permitted to enter (during a time that was NOT the call to prayer....jeez). We felt slightly more comfortable not being accosted by men trying to have a moment of peace. I also noticed at this point the six Mercedes outside. The only cars. Hm.


We were told that in order to enter we would have to be fully covered. I had a white scarf with me, but none of us carry around jilbabs on a regular basis. We were given full black robes to wear and with my white scarf underneath was taunted regarding my resemblance to Julie Andrews re: Sound of Music. Sweet... The men wore, clearly, nothing but their regular clothes and being in full garb quite clearly puts some things into perspective. Nothing is a picnic in the states regarding subjugation, and being any sort of minority implies that you are not equal to the norm (even if the norm is actually not a numerical majority). I believe in the theory of the importance of women here. Women are the absolute cornerstone of life and progress. They are protected to sustain the family, the most important part of life. How it is implemented, however, is of great concern to me. On the other hand, both the fundemental capitalistic nature AND how it is exercised in the U.S. is of great concern to me, so I don't know where to find a medium. What country has this medium? Can you put the family first and sustain an economically successful country?



We entered the mosque, more specifically the area of prayer for men and were taken aback by the vast open space before us. It was a lovely mosque and we crossed the corridor to visit the space dedicated to women's prayer. Men were not really supposed to enter so the man who was giving us our tour had not seen the stickers and decorations the women had put up and around the alter facing the Kabaa (the black stone in Mecca). He was not happy and started pulling them down. I saw women peering in from behind a corner. I couldn't help but think that they must have felt such resentment towards us at that moment. What were we doing there anyways?


We returned our coverings and hopped on the bus around sunset to visit our third and last mosque. We were late, but the humble men let us in regardless. The Hussein bin-Talal mosque was astounding in magnitude and reverence. I had never felt so at peace. I felt as though the way the wind blew through the corridors and the birds sang on the olive trees inside that perhaps I too would believe in God. There were four minarets posted at each corner that were square in the shape of Ummayyad ornamentation. This was a gift from the King in 2006 to the people of Jordan. This is also where he prays (usually he comes on Fridays). We were shown the area relagated for women's prayer. They were in a box looking down through a screen at the men's prayer area. Even here.

We were shown the entrance the King uses and the washrooms, and were astounded by the 2,000s.meters of serenity. I have posted pictures below.

On our way home, I listened to our professor explain that she wanted to show us three different levels of education and reactions to our presence. The first in the market was the least educated and most resentful while the second was increasingly educated and open to our being there under certain conditions and the third welcomed us with open arms.

What a difference education makes. It was a phenomenal experience to stand under the minaret of the King's mosque at the call to prayer at sunset and soak in the realities of life here.

It was also humbling. Sometimes in the U.S., you forget you are a small part of a big community. It is not that the community is in place to accomodate you, although sometimes it might appear that way. I have found no intelligent answer to reconcile all our relative differences in the U.S. to make life elsewhere appear less marginalizing. But when you are living in a community of minarets, it is almost impossible to imagine ego-centricity. You forget that there are arguments claiming a universal human psychology, that we all are fundementally the same. I have no idea what to say to make sense of either the worlds to which I am privy. I think what I have decided is that education is paramount. Cultural and scholastic education in tandem will make for a much more tolerant global system. Step 1: Be informed.

Pictures from the Mosque Trip

Us at the second mosque with our full coverings...cute.

Zach allowing us to show a bit of a contast.

The prayer room.


The Mercedes.

The King's mosque.



All the same day, different lighting.

Inside of the men's prayer room.

Day 35

"What does she do on her off time?"

It’s Sunday night (your Monday night). I thought I would give you a little overview of a weekend in the life of Alex and company. This was one of our first weekends back in Amman without a trip through the program or a vacation in another country. Thursday night begins the weekend here and a couple of us decide to be bold and brave the club scene. After an inspiring day talking about hymen, as I’m sure you recall, we decided to look appropriately classy and see what night life was like. Looking flashy, and after seeing the first airing of my friend’s documentary on Al-Arabiya (crazy cool), we took a cab to Cube- a relatively well reputed lounge we were told had dancing. We arrived early, around 11pm, and saw approximately three people inside the establishment at which point we decided this scene was most likely not going to work for us. We wait around as this is the meeting place for the rest of the group. Once congregated, a few of us decide to trek over to Rainbow Street where we then hear that Angelina and Brad had visited our local ice cream store while we were across the street at the bar. Hells yes.

Our bar around Jabal Amman is called La Calle. We were treated very kindly (the bartender was rather generous forwards us- I got us a free round for being feisty, thank you very much) and the atmosphere was lovely. We were encased by glass walls with big comfy couches, sunset lighting and good music. There was a porch directly behind us with the bar which overlooked Amman and Orion’s Belt. No matter where I’ve been in the world, he always seems to find his way to me. There were lit up minarets and we were a few hours past the last call to prayer. We met the manager of the lounge. KK is an Ammani local with ties to no place who has traveled globally as a photographer. He has definitely found his way into our social circle. Rounds for the table!

After the lounge closed around 1am, KK invited all of us to a club at the third circle right where my home is. I have been complaining of a lack of dancing (especially dancing to hip hop) so KK promised us some good music tonight. We went to the club and came in on an especially good beat of a contemporary song perfect for sexualizing women a bit more. Free drinks on the house, free entry to the club; go KK. We had a blast and ended up leaving around 3:30am to pray for a long night sleep. Not 6 hours later does my unrested body decides to rise bright and early to visit the souk in Abdali- promised to be a good find. My friends had assured me they would come, but judging from their unmoving corpses and unresponsive vocals the following morning, I realized this would be a lone adventure.

Arriving to Al-Abdali market early in the morning was just that… I had anticipated a souk like the stereotypical souks to which I had been accustomed, but much to my dismay, this souk bore a striking resemblance to TJ Maxx sprawled out under a tarp. There were Adidas shirts, Nike pants, sweats, and cotton t-shits with “Princess of the World” scrolled on them. It was quite disheartening. Too stubborn to pay a cab driver to take me to the downtown and rather unsure of my whereabouts, I decide to venture to the real souks by myself. Wise choice, Alex. Surprisingly, I do not get too lost, but walking around with an unsure face is never a good idea in a new city. A man came up behind me and almost made me jump out of my skin. He clicked at me. It is a phenomenon I have yet to entirely unveil. It is a sound of the tongue as if you were luring a horse. Men click sometimes because they are aroused. This man on the other hand was offended. I wore jeans, a tank top and a long flowy shirt that happened to fall off my shoulder while he walked behind me. He tugged on it to show me how to wear my clothes. I wanted to slap him. So I hopped in a cab just to drive me 500 feet away from him.

When I arrived downtown, the store owners were so gracious, kind and welcoming “Welcome! Ahlan wa salan! Come in!” I loved being so welcomed all the time, I felt comfortable. One of the warnings on our programs was to at all costs avoid being in front of a mosque on a Friday around the call to prayer because this is where a lot of anti-American protests occur. Of course at noon on a Friday the earth shakes when I am directly under the speaker of the minaret and I freeze. Allah. What am I going to do?

Of course the men on their way to the mosque smile at me and say Ahlan wa Salan. There are no protests, another exaggeration. I continue on my way wary that someone will stand on a milk carton and point to me and yell “American ahead” where I’ll be tied by a keffiyeh. No running men, no yelling, I go to my shops and haggle for hours, certainly one of my guiltiest pleasures. I buy things very selectively, only once I know they are either made by the person I am talking to, or that the origin is known. I buy only from people who are not into tricking me, and who are warm with a sense of humor. I’m very selective, so I tend to come out with very few things. At least I have a story for every object that I bought. Can’t wait to tell you.

I walked a bit further at which point I saw little bunnies and baby chicks. There were mother chickens pigeons and guinea pigs so obviously I started petting the bunnies. They were gray and cotton-tailed. Precious. I was squatting reveling in the idea of playing with animals again when a small man came up with some spices and said “How many? What you make for dinner?” I was suddenly overcome with an enormous wave of nauseous and was afraid that I would vomit on his livestock so I fled the scene. I turned down a back alley at full force only to find that the chickens in the little boxes on the streets were being wrung and splattered on the wall. Oh. My. Gosh. In all my outward bound-like experiences in life, I was disgusted by this image. Meat sautéed in mushrooms and wine sauce is phenomenal. Little bunnies with cottontails go through a certain process so that it is invisible to me. Ignorance is bliss. Little Peter Cottontails…

I returned home for a 4 hour nap and prepared for another night on the town. Both my friend and I were struggling with romantic issues and decided, much against our will, to get up off our self-pitying behinds to meet up with a couple others on Rainbow Street. We returned to La Calle wherein I downed my quickest vodka cranberry on record. That was a good start. We start to forget any prior problems when a boy we had met the night before calls us and asks us to come to his house party. We decide to not follow the lead of those who go home to sleep and around midnight we venture to 3rd circle. The house was hidden away and reminded me of a commune. We arrived there to find a slew of American faces. COMFORT! We arrive and see that we are three of perhaps five women in an entirely male dominated scenario. To put it diplomatically, I don’t think any of us were particularly resentful of the attention we were getting. We found that the majority of them were from West Point, which offered a nice starting point of conversation being from Sarah Lawrence not 45 minutes from West Point, NY. It is rumored that Sarah Lawrence girls were bred to be the spouses of West Point boys. ;-)

We ended up attempting climbing up a rock-climbing wall built on the side of the house (of course) and having dance parties to preposterous music genres (at one point I believe we had the Dixie Chicks on). We walked to the second circle to a shawarma place (as previously mentioned, an Arab hoagie). This place is consistently packed, even at 1am and almost always male dominated. But at 3:30am, there was no soul there, and it was exceptional. Shawarma is a certain love of my mine. We hung out at the circle with the cats eating our shawarma and being hysterical messes. By the time I returned to my apartment I was mystified by the first call to prayer outside as I sank into my bed. The next morning I woke and put life into perspective.

Who knows what really matters in life, but conversations about revolutionaries, a hip-hop-country music fusion and just being silly with some friends can be some of the most stress-reducing experiences. What I love about here is that the people with whom I associate never cease to make me laugh and smile. The adventures we go on and scenarios we find ourselves in will continuously be “bloggable moments”. Remember to laugh a little. It can really make all the difference.

Day 32: It is all because of the hymen

Disclaimer: I apologize for the potential ‘vulgarity’ or touchiness that comes with talking about women and sexuality in advance, but I don’t believe in holding back on issues that need to be in the light. You can turn away now, but if you don’t, please go in with an open mind. Be critical, but be open.

My friend and I went to a film festival the other night to see a documentary. There were two playing but the one which stole my heart was the one on the topic of women (particularly in Egypt). Egypt borders Jordan at the very, very southern tip of the country, so it feels pretty close to home. The film depicted the current realities of the sociological roles of men and women and the stigma against the latter. We’ve all heard of the “subjugation of women in the Middle East” and I’ve never been convinced it was at it has been portrayed in the US, now I know why. I came to Jordan to answer many questions for myself because it is hard for me to “take your word for it”. Instead, what I’ve found are not answers but simply more questions, specifically regarding the topics touched upon in this movie. The narrator was too afraid to show her own face in the making of the movie for fear of negative familial backlash.

The film was a series of questions asked to ordinary Egyptians on the streets to find out what the realities for women regarding their sexuality are. She asked:

“If you found out your daughter had slept with a boy before marriage, how would you react?” It was the same answer over and over.

“Well of course, I’d kill her.” I wasn’t sure if I was more disturbed by the clapping and laughing in the local audience or the constant repetition of this statement in the film “How would you kill her?” ..Poison, strangulation, beating, stoning…

“If you loved your girlfriend very much and you found out she had slept with someone else before you, would there be hope for the relationship?”…

“If I loved her very much? Mmmm..sorry, no, there’s just no way.”

They showed how in Egypt the situation in the family regarding girls is that (obviously they would rather have boys) and that girls are often treated in an emotionally detached, cold and unloving way. As a result, the necessity for attention and love is filled when a boy tells her she is beautiful and loves her. She falls; she’ll do anything, even sleep with him. Then he will dump her for being a slut and her family will kill her for fulfilling her need for attention.

It all sounds barbaric, and before it gets any better, it gets much worse. Realities in Egypt are that anywhere from 78-97% of women are circumcised. Every statistic you look up will reaffirm this fact. There are three types of circumcision and the most brutal is the kind where you are entirely sewn up so that you cannot let out urine or blood. If this occurs, it will build up in the stomach and you will drown in your own fluids. This is not a rare occurrence. The documentary visited a hospital where the nurse being interviewed explained that a father in a city in rural Egypt saw that his daughter’s belly was growing and he was going to kill her. She had never even had her period. She swore and swore she had done nothing wrong, and wasn’t pregnant so he took her to the hospital just to see if her hymen was in place. They told him that due to the shape of hymen she had in fact had her period, multiple times, but that she had not been able to bleed through. They said all they would need to do is make a little incision to save her life and it would be all over. The father asked, would you be able to restore the hymen after? The doctors said they could not. He said, she will not have the surgery then. The doctors said she will die. The father said “She will die with pride and honor.” That is exactly what she did in the room of the ER not long after.

In case you never had Sex ED, the hymen is just a translucent film part of female genitalia that is easily broken through physical or other activity such bike riding, horseback riding, walking etc without even knowing. The unfortunate thing is this is the only part of the body which matters for a girl in Egypt. If you do not bleed on your wedding day, you are dead. Literally. You can bet that day is not the happiest of your life.

Men, of course, have no way of proving whether they are virgins or not, so they fully take advantage of the system and when the narrator asked “What defines a man’s honor?” The boys being interviewed laughed and said “What defines a man’s hon- HA!! Nothin’!” And the men in my audience cracked up, clapped… I was not amused. The hymen is God’s Seal on a woman. Burst that seal early and you’ve defiled God. This is the logic I do not understand. You have no place defiling God’s prize. If you are going to enforce it when you are fathers of daughters, you have to enforce it when you are the fathers of boyfriends, or else it just does not work.

Of course I did not live this experience, so I cannot confirm anything with my own two eyes. What I can confirm on the other hand is a conversation between my friend here, and a ‘peer language tutor’ we are all assigned (if we want). We are supposed to use these local students at our university to help us with our language skills, but it seems to (for some of us) turn into a cultural peer tutor instead. From the conversation, there were so many questions I had answered about the realities here, in Jordan, in her eyes.

I will not use her name, nor quote her word for word, but will give you the gist of the conversation. It was also held which much more finesse and delicacy, but to get the point across, I have simply outlined the questions asked.

“What is going on with the full veil? Why do some women cover themselves head to toe with or without an eye slit?”

First, those are called niqabs. The niqab is worn by women for a couple of reasons. It can be because her father is a Sheik or someone higher up in the Islamic community and then it is just a given she will be covered when she reaches University age and from then on. Otherwise, there are two reasons which I find most intriguing. The peer tutor said, sometimes, if she is too beautiful, deemed so by the father, so she must cover. Otherwise, if she has scars on her face or is ugly, she will cover for herself.

“How do you recognize someone in a niqab?”

She wasn’t sure, she never had a friend with one, but she would imagine that it is from her accessories, bags, eyes (potentially), walk and “body shape”.

“Why do you cover?” (She wore a hijab, headscarf and relatively tight clothing)

She chose to veil on her own, her family is liberal and she is the only one who covers. She took a class on Islam in college and when she found Islam, she felt so much safer. She said she covers to protect herself from the harassment of men (I can empathize), but also as a sort of personal pact with God. She also has a boyfriend. She said her boyfriend is not in college so her father said they can never marry, even in her liberal family.

“Do you and your boyfriend kiss?”

Yes, they kiss, and sometimes they “touch”, but never sex. Sex is sort of taboo in Jordan. It’s sort of okay to do maybe if you aren’t married, but you’ll have to be liberal and have a liberal boyfriend who won’t dump you after. Hymen reconstructive surgery is VERY popular in Jordan; only for the purpose of bringing honor to her husband should the day arrive. She once dated an American who said for the relationship to continue, they would have to be more intimate and possibly have sex, she couldn’t believe it. We will come to this later.

“Regarding your style, we notice a lot of different one’s here. One such as the Jilbab, why do you not wear that and wear modern clothes etc?”

A couple reasons, the jilbab (the trench coat dress of sorts I referred to earlier) is hot. And it’s hot in Jordan. (Okay, so what about in the winter time?). Well the thing is, once you wear a Jilbab, you are making a pact with God. You can’t wear it once, twice or three times and then decide you aren’t going to wear it anymore. It’s a lifetime thing, and if you take it off, people will talk about you and be very put off. She might wear one when she’s older, but not yet.
The fathers control a lot of the affairs, so do the mothers, but especially the father. We asked about the reasons that we see some girls in tight, tight clothes and a hijab. She laughed and said that usually it is a symbol the father wants the daughter to wear, and so long as she is wearing the hijab to cover the hair (the symbol of beauty?) he doesn’t really care about anything else. This is usually a moderately liberal father. What interested me about this point was that obviously the father doesn’t really care what the daughter is wearing, because she is still revealing her body shape. It can then be concluded that he is only enforcing it because he is afraid of the judgment of others for letting his daughter run around without one. Preserving family honor here is crucial. Number 1. This is an amazing cycle. We will return to this in a bit.
We asked her if she had any questions regarding the U.S.

Her first question was “Well, I watch a lot of American movies and t.v. shows, listen to music etc, why is it not okay for a girl to be a virgin?”

If you were asked this question based on the semi-accurate portrayal of college life in movies such as American Pie, what would you say? “No it is… um… it’s just nobody happens to be a virgin before marriage?” The answer given by my friend was that America is obsessed with sex and sexuality. That’s our culture, it is embarrassing, but even kids on our program are complaining because “oh my god, I have to wait 4 months before I get laid!” Can you imagine…?

We live in two very different worlds. Our prizes in the U.S. need to be instantaneous. We need pleasure and gratification now. This is because it is not a country predominantly ruled by religious abstractions and thus we live for the now, not the tomorrow. My friends and I were discussing Max Weber’s the Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism. The idea in this work (inspired by Calvinist thoughts) claims that the Protestant ethic (which predominates in the US) views material and economic success as a sort of gift to God, a promise of salvation. We view the now as important because we are doing God a favor by being economically successful. Otherwise, we are atheists and view the now as important because there is no tomorrow.

Here, Islam is quite strongly concerned with the afterlife, and thus honor today will result in all the riches in the world tomorrow. We are being successful today in a different way, by preserving honor, not making money. We want to do right and be rewarded for it, and dishonoring the family is all it takes to throw off that balance. Women understand this, want to do right by God, and most are willing to give up the pleasures of sex with random men to preserve their and their family’s honor. And keep in mind that women are not killed the way they are in Egypt here, nor are they circumcised, but they still will not use tampons for fear of breaking their hymen (explains a lot about the lack of them in this country- a realization that recently blew my mind).

Killing women for this “crime” is entirely unjustifiable, of course, to us, and I will not be defending it. But the rationale is that it will do the woman better to be dead than to live eternally with the shame, and no one will marry her, her family will disown her and she will have no friends. This is not so much in Jordan, once again, but in Egypt, the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, this is actually quite commonplace. On the other hand, many Jordanian girls are more than willing to make this sacrifice. “Why is it so strange for women to be virgins in the US?”

Why? We are denying freedoms of sexuality? Women here are protecting their bodies, they say. One day they will be mothers because they believe that is important. It is looked down upon for a woman to smoke here because they want to be healthy; they want to be a safe space for their children to grow. That doesn’t mean women are relegated to the home. Many women are successful here. They just want to be healthy and STD-free when the day comes.

Keeping in mind that death for betraying the pride of the family is limited to only a very small percentage of Muslim countries (still with many women put to death falsely because no one understands anatomy and the obsession with seeing the blood at breakage point is crucial) we have to think in the shoes of a Muslim. It is not easy if you are not thinking this way, and you need to in order to not sit wherever you are with a stern face and shake your head.

In America, we use women as symbols of sex to sell things. We dress as women in a certain way for a certain purpose. Don’t think we put on makeup only because it makes us feel better. If we had no one to attract, if we weren’t constantly doing a mating ritual dance through the clubs and streets of New York, we would not wear thigh length dresses out. It is not okay to be a virgin in high school today, or expect to be one without being ridiculed. Women are prude if they don’t and sluts if they do. Music videos do not depict business women arguing in a board meeting with her Gap pants on. They show her shaking everything she is worth in a Miami club, showing her lips, her boobs, her butt and her sexy heels. She will give you pleasure now. Girls have eating disorders (at least five million of them, which is two million more than the country in second place) at a rate unheard of in other countries because they have to sell themselves to you. Are we much better? We destroy women emotionally, physically, and if you’ve ever worked in the adolescent unit of a psychiatric hospital, you know the pressure can break them down to the point where they down half a bottle of Clorox to call it a day.

We are not so superior and it is destructive to our community. You cannot compare, you cannot claim one is worse, one is better. Our societies differ in their need for integrity, versus the need to be financially successful. Our two cultures are collectivism and individualism personified. You see it walking down the street. It comes down to family or business. Family matters more than anything here. Keeping it strong, keeping it together, keeping it proud.

As a result, my friends and I have come up with a simple plan for the Middle East and especially North African countries whose women may suffer. Sex education. It seems ridiculously simple but honestly, my friends and I just spent the better part of an hour figuring out on Google what exactly the hymen was, where it was, what it did, if it could be repaired, and what can break it because we had no idea. We were all educated in western countries and go to top liberal arts and Ivy League schools in the US. But we didn’t freaking know about our own anatomy. It is embarrassing, you might be embarrassed that I’m even bringing it up, but that is half the problem. We are so worried about the thoughts of others and personal embarrassment of discussion that we fail to educate.

If we mandated a sexual education course, especially for the men, it would change everything. They would understand from an early age the consequences of destroying something scared in this society. Let it be sacred, let them be safe and abstinent, we aren’t trying to revolutionize the world. Lack of freedom for you is just common sense for them. If we told men that this part of the body can break at any point, and that the women might not bleed on their wedding night, a lot of lives would be spared. Women may think they’ve done something wrong because they don’t know either. Show them how different women are shaped differently and show them the effects of female circumcision so they won’t force it upon their daughters. It is banned in Egypt, actually. So people resort to friends without anesthetic and sanitary anythings to mutilate their daughters’ genitals. No one understands that if you have anal sex (because it’s not “real sex”) that it can spread disease ( isn’t it ironic that AIDS is such a big deal in Africa when circumcision is prominent in just about every single African country ((check a map if you don’t believe me)) Is that coincidence?).

Just a little piece of translucent film. Look at all the fuss it causes. A little education on the realities of anatomy would make a world of difference. I am so appreciative that our peer tutor was able to be so frank and open about the realities for girls here. I am embarrassed for my country on the other hand, when the cab driver tries to teach me the word black and says “like Nigger!” and when I say it’s not okay to say that, he says “but you say it in all the movies! Like Will Smith and Bad Boys!” or when people ask me if I party like in American Pie 2. These are representation of our country, and if you live there, you will know they aren’t false. We are hyper-sexualized and materialistic. Who is in the right? Who is in the wrong? Are you right because you believe in an ultimate freedom of everything controlled by nobody because here that is seen as primitive. That is seen as barbaric because you are degrading your own people, you are using your women as material things, they are slaves to you and your culture.

Things look a little different on the other side of the hill.

Day 30: Feedback!

Social commentary:

Our Arabic class is actually quite inspiring, but three hours can be long. I like to watch my teacher because she and my other female teacher are always donned in a similar outfit. There is a style here which is to wear a long dress covered by a sort of ankle length trench coat. They are a little bit fitted at the waist and come in a variety of exciting colors with ornate buttons and pockets to give it an edge. It may potentially be called a Jilbab, but when I googled this, it did not give the image I see here. She looks very put together every day, always has her headscarf and follows the image (to me) of modesty. If there would be an image in the dictionary of the modern Muslim woman keeping true to the whole conservative deal (without going crazy, and while still looking progressive) it would be Dr. Muna.

When we were starting to doze off, Dr. Muna deemed a ten minute break necessary. A couple of us decided to go on an adventure to find out where the bathrooms were because why would there be one in the same (entire...) building as our classroom?…not one. We walked to the neighboring building and climbed a flight of stairs to find one hole in the ground and a real toilet with no flusher or toilet paper. All our adventures appear to revolve around the bathroom, but I swear it isn’t really like that. Since there were three of us, we took turns with the toilet-de-luxe. While one of us went in, Elspeth and I stood outside the stall trying to form the first two positions in line to give the idea that we were waiting as there were other girls present (lines do not exist in Jordan, you may have thought they were “bad” in Europe, but there is no such thing here…at all… just a semi-circled clump). During our logistical nightmare of competing for this stall, we watched. For some reason we were absolutely perplexed by the site in front of us. In any American bathroom setting, you will find women, or adolescent girls in particular applying makeup and fixing their hair. But in this bathroom, the women were not fixing their hair, but instead combing through their headscarf and rearranging it the way we would with our locks. It was such a sight to see the same motions, the flipping, the curling, the pinning, the tying, going into a piece of fabric.

Good fashion is of upmost priority here (even if that means Diesel jeans with an “Orgasm Donor” t-shirt). We often see girls wandering the campus or the streets in a headscarf with skinny jeans, skin tight shirts, and always with fancy shoes. Rumor has is that Saudi women are so into their sexy lingerie that they have underwear parties of sorts in their homes with their girlfriends. The words that I’m embarrassed to say came out of my mouth when we were out of earshot were “If you’re going to do it, do it right!” The image in my head was of Dr. Muna. If you are trying to be modest, why don’t you look like her? Why are you wearing the tightest shirt Allah ever made with a headscarf? I have made a sort of inductive decision about a possibility regarding this phenomenon. I hypothesized that perhaps the way Americans see the curves of the body, that is how some Jordanians or some Muslims see hair. It appears that hair is a sex symbol, or at least a symbol of sexuality and flaunting it is flaunting your goods. Since Islam is not static is any way shape or form, and since no two people really appear to follow it the same way, I supposed that maybe “modesty” means two different things to two different people if that is even what you are going for, but maybe hair is a potential constant.

It is amazing what faith does for the masses. I mean MASSES. I feel sometimes like shouting “What if it’s all a hoax and you’re all falling for it!?” But what do I know. I guess if it keeps the blood pressure down to have a constant invisible support system, what right do I have to say anything. What are your thoughts? Should modesty be an integral part of the value system? Are there universal wells and evils in western society? Does this way of life make sense to you?

Day 28: Wrong

First day of school, at least for all the local students of UJ. My hope was to come home from Lebanon and see that all the female students would tear off their headscarf in a grand riot of “enough is enough” and wear miniskirts, be loud and boisterous and receive no unwanted attention from males because the stigma of Ramadan wore off.

Wrong.

Instead of seeing the occasional student on campus, potentially with a headscarf or veil, long skirts and shirts, there are 30,000 such beings around me. There are benefits of course. It is much easier to just be one of the crowd, small with no one caring about you. On the other hand, there are detriments. You are one of the crowd, small with no one caring about you.
It is an interesting change of events, (albeit it has been but one day) whereas my threat emotionally was once men glaring and smirking on campus, it is now women whispering, pointing and giggling. I keep thinking there is something on my face and then I remember, oh yeah, I’m white.

I wore a skirt today, it comes below my knees by maybe an inch or two and is high waisted. I always think I look professional in this skirt. It is black, elegant, pencil-shaped. I wore it with a nice white shirt tucked in and a shawl over top. The cab drivers seemed to get a big kick out of my New York look today. “Amrikia, eh, de New York?” “La, (no), 3la toul! (drive on)!”
I hate it when I speak “Arabic” ( I use the term loosely because I realize how I must sound) and people respond to me in English. I’m making an effort here people, come now. Luckily, I’ve come across more and more people who “No speak englisi” so that makes life easier for me when I’m in a butchering mood.

Classes are different now after Ramadan (mainly longer). My 5-time weekly Arabic class that was once an hour or so is now three. Three hours of anything is a long time...especially a language. Rote memorization is annoying as all hell, but unfortunately it’s something I am good at. I feel myself picking a lot of colloquialisms and standard phrases up, and quickly. I secretly hope to be able to continue Arabic in South Africa next spring (did I tell you that was my next stop after this semester in Jordan?) If I had to memorize facts this way for the rest of my academic career, I would become a nanny. Yesterday.

I stopped to get a bowl of hummus (judge me) and a fattouch (salad of sorts) for lunch on my way to the gym. Can we talk a little bit about how excited I get when I have “real” food to eat? It’s like I just made my first potholder in day camp. Mom, look what I did! But stuffing hummus and fattouch in a gym locker for an hour, waiting 20 minutes in the midday sun for a cab, taking the cab and coming home to eat said feast was a letdown. I have hummusy radishes in front of me as I write this blog to you and a killer headache from trying to tame cab drivers and running my brains out on the treadmill.

At first I thought I was cool with my little gym routine. I’m so grown up going to the gym, bringing my clothes and soap to school (never forgetting underwear) to go workout and shower at my little gym.

Wrong again.

Hassle is an understatement. Most everything that is easy in the U.S. is such a production here. Showering is annoying because if you forget your waterproof flipflips you will most certainly get gangrene and die. If you don’t bring a hairbrush you will walk out of the gym with a rat’s nest on your head, if you don’t properly close the shampoo it spills on your homework, you must walk a substantial distance from the gate of the gym to the gym proper (a workout on its own!) and to get home you can’t just hop a subway or your vehicle, no. You must wait, sopping wet hair and wet fattouch and all to wait again on a highway street corner for a cab that is

1) That IS

2) That is free

3) That is not skeevy.

Bonne chance. You must also pay cab driver and pray he doesn’t choose some route you don’t know because he is probably ripping you off. Waiting is a learned skill, I have discovered. Not my forte yet.

I just put a load of wash in and I did it now because by dinner time in six hours it should be ready to hang outside to dry.

My roommate just went to Carrefour to follow my lead from yesterday for her groceries which was an event consuming the better part of three hours from cab rides to maneuvering the mall to haggling for spices to checking out with a dysfunctional credit card to catch a cab that is going to rip you off to take you down a back road you don’t know to make five trips up three flights of stairs with 70 bags of groceries that you will have to do all over again in a week.

Ah romance!

I sense a trend on day 28…that is of being wrong. I’m a stubborn person by nature (genetic trait) but it has been surprisingly easy for me to laugh at myself for thinking life without someone watching over me would be easy. I suppose I never really thought “easy”, but when you are thinking about “what ifs” in life the last thing you think about is how radishes will leak onto your newly printed homework , or the potential of a washing machine so outdated that it leaks onto and rusts the floor of your oven. You certainly never think of gangrene feet. At least I never did.

What I enjoy most about the mess that is my current reality is that with my Excedrin bottles on hand and friends who don’t take themselves seriously I am learning my different thresholds for nuisances and my potential for independence. In the words of the great Jay-Z, I am able to go and brush my shoulders off. I can laugh at myself a little for thinking how worldly and wonderful I thought I was. I like to see how far I can push myself before I have to pack it up and head home, I’m always up for a little challenge, even if that involves pushing down the hygiene standards to utterly unacceptable levels. I am here!

Days 18-26

Lebanon. The most unique and familiar place I have been. I felt both so at home and yet so ostracized. Where do I begin with my week in Lebanon?

We prepared to leave after class on Thursday afternoon of last week. We all decided upon a meeting spot from which to begin the journey. For the sake of ease while writing this blog summarizing so much activity, and so you do not get too lost, four of us went to Beirut together, Elspeth, Zach, Simon and I. My roommate Victoria often made an appearance since she would be spending the week with her family in Lebanon also. Being responsible travelers, we decided it would be wise to bring along some Lebanese currency (they use both the lire and the US dollar). Elspeth goes to exchange money as the rest of us reclaim our passports from the program head. Please keep in mind the conversion rate from JD to Dollars is .7 to 1.

Elspeth: “Oh my God, okay, so I went downstairs and I gave them 100 JD…I got back 140 US dollars, they totally screwed up, it’s .7 to 1, so I should have gotten like 70 dollars…!! “
Simon :“DANG! You made BANK!”
Me: “Are you serious?? You just made a killing!”

Elated regarding our friends newly found fortune, we decide to push the limits to see if he can give us the same deal. I must admit that guilt ensues slightly as Elspeth urges “Go to the guy in the middle! He’s the one that did it!” Regardless, making double on my money sounds nice, so I nervously go to the “guy in the middle” to see if he’ll make the same mistake twice…I hand him 100JD…AMAZING, he gives me 140 US dollars back! Serious moral dilemma but I am so high on adrenaline I forget anything but the fact that this man did it AGAIN! We tell the others…Victoria my roommate and Simon decide to try their luck as well.

Elspeth and I at this point run upstairs to wait for the others in the computer lab, trying to kill some time. We are rolling around in giddiness. She gets up when she sees her roommate to tell her about the amazing idiocracies of the money men downstairs

“..and he gave us 140US DOLLARS!!!” Blank stare.
“Yeah?”

Elspeth convincingly tells the story again and pauses. She comes over to me… we sit, we think, we use an online calculator… we burst out in laughter. 100JD=140USD. The others are elated that the man made the same mistake…and then they too are told the realities… we are idiots. What a fabulous foot upon which to start.

We hop in a cab to the airport where Simon decides to get himself detained for a few minutes when his ticket wouldn’t print, giving us a minor gulp in our throats. We take off and land 45 minutes later in Beirut with my roommate whose family graciously had their driver pick us up and bring us three platters of delicious foods. They driver took the four of us to our hostel. We drove up at dusk and the humidity was oppressive. We noticed the huge body of water behind which the sun was setting. We noticed the dilapidated housing and the clean highways, we saw the street signs in French and Arabic, we noticed that perhaps the drivers in Beirut were more tame than in Amman. We pull into an area that is known as Gemmayzeh, also the area where we will be staying. There is the most awesome mosque any of us have ever seen. This will be our reference point.

After searching the streets for a little while in search of our hostel, we suddenly pull into a back alley off a highway. There are electrical cords hanging down from the building that is chipping white paint with rickety stairs that were maybe once marble...not to mention that this is a shady dark back alley. One of us sees the sign “Talal New Hotel”. Gulp. The thought in my head? “Oh shit.”

Laughing at myself for believing that paying 7 dollars a night for a place to stay would be a good idea, we walk up the stairs to a kindly man that we decide to nickname Talal (secretly) offering us tea, coffee, (hookah?) and giving us the key to what would come to be known as “the bomb shelter” (disclaimer: there were no bombs, but had there been, we would have been okay).

We open our door and see three and a half beds pressed against eachother with pretty pink Princess sheets. We do notice the functioning AC that was certainly a blessing. We have no windows. We look at the bathroom we share as a floor and notice there is no separation between where you poop and where you bathe. The shower head pops out of the wall and you must squeegee the bathroom floor after you shower so that the unassuming bloke who finds it in himself to pee in the middle of the night does not bust open his skull on the same floor that you washed yourself. You bathe in the toilet. Since I am the shortest I offer to take the half a bed snuggled between the two boys. We pull out a bottle of Jameson and get to know eachother.

We meet up with my roommate who offers to take us to a trendy restaurant on the roof of an old building. It is too expensive so we down some appetizers and head to our local taste of Lebanon “Le Chef”.

Our host welcomes us…over and over...“WAYLCOME! WAYLCOME LAIBNON!” over and over to the point of uncontainable laughter for us. Some jokster customer had apparently realized the trend too and made a plaque on the well giving him the Trademark Department's award for the word "Welcome".

We have the “local dishes” every time which can be a crap shoot, but mostly, for the price, unbeatable. Beirut is not an inexpensive city we quickly find. We have not really explored the Gemmayzeh area yet, but we can tell. We also find that if Arabic fails, French will prevail. It was lovely to be able to pull out French every time we were confused, lost, or flirting for free drinks. Thank you parents, the skills that serve me well… Simon and I go back to the bombshelter to sleep while the others explore Gemmayzeh at which point we quickly find that under our flat is a booming nightclub. Oh joy. Night One in Beirut.

We awaken the next morning at around noon and wander over to a delicious and extraordinarily overpriced French breakfast where I order my first Chevre Chaud. AH. Life. French permeates the air, everywhere. If you wish to learn Arabic, and happen to speak French, I urge you to stay away from Lebanon. It is just too easy. We decide to spend this day wandering the city and seeing what we see. What we do see is rather difficult to describe. If I had one sentence with which to convey Beirut to you, it would be a fusion of New Orleansand Paris, with palm trees, by the Med, just recently blown up. Does that help? You forget you’re in the Middle East until you hear the call to prayer.

We walk the streets with mosques and churches across from eachother, statues with bullet holes, cobble stone streets lined with Parisian lamp posts, jasmine, palm trees and pine and gargantuan modern glass apartment buildings. We go down streets so exclusive and pristine that the “Hawks” (social police of sorts) and men in full military uniform with AK47s approach us and ask us to please put away our cameras and hurry along to the next neighborhood. We turn the corner to find crumbling housing projects with striped curtains on the outside, chipping paint and bullet holes tattooing the sides of the New Orleans style architecture. We see a park that has appeared to become a senior psychiatric unit, and turn down roads where the natural earth tones painted on the ornate upscale apartments with perfect brown shutters make us feel so insignificant we turn away.

The environmental differences also offer us a nice break from Amman. We orient ourselves with reference points such as the water, and the mountains, which is a nice break from “oh it’s by the other white house on the corner with a… I donno hospital”

After a day of exploring our surroundings and of figuring out what Beirut is by day, we return to the apartment to prepare for Beirut by night. The four of us get ready in our 10x10 bombshelter consumed by small beds and luggage, tripping over eachother and everything, giving up on the possibility of order. Changing in the bathroom is simply impossible since if the floor is not wet, and if it does not smell like warmed up feces, then the light is out. We quickly discovered that electricity is not what it is in Amman. Three hours a day (at least) the electricity goes off and you deal. If that happened when you were the in the shower, that just sucks for you.

Our second night, we had dinner at Le Chef where we were “welcome, welcomeeeed!” to Lebanon followed by a bit of bar hopping. On night two, we came upon what was to become our favorite hangout spot- Torino. Scantily clad compared to our customs in Amman, we sat down in the back of this tiny bar and ordered our first drinks. The waiter (surprisingly….) spoke French. I don’t really drink, and it took me the better part of an hour to get half way through a vodka cranberry. The waiter asked me what was going on and I told him there was not enough cranberry. He smirked and he mocked me and I responded shamelessly and he brought us innumerable free drinks, all the time mocking my inability to handle the taste of what may as well be toilet bowl cleaner. Jager shots are not something I am particularly proud of downing, but I was able to make my table happy by keeping the overall bill low…all that matters when you are twenty.

Eve turned out to be a great friend to us throughout our stay in Beirut; he took good care of us.

After Torino, we stumbled to the nightclub under our hostel and invaded a VIP section when Simon drunkenly made friends with whomever it was that had reserved the section and let us dance on their couches and drink their Almaza. The thing about Beirut which I never was able to resolve was my need for dancing. You drink, you socialize, you laugh, but you don’t dance. I would from time to time make my own dance floor, but I have vowed that first thing I do when I get back to New York is to head down to a club and let loose. Less drinking, more dancing = happy Alex. I can’t say I wasn’t happy of course, we had a blast. The night life in Beirut was a Godsend compared to Amman. But I am spoiled by bad music and great dance floors. Soon enough! The other thing about Beirut is that while the night life puts the rest of the Middle East to shame, it is very exclusive. You must know people that know people, or pretend to, certainly make reservations and you must always look your best. Stumbling into places is not exactly the way it is done; that sometimes got a bit old.

We returned again to our snuggly nook and spent a second smelly day without braving the squeegee shower. Victoria by this point was probably getting sick of smelling us and invited us to swim in her family’s pool up in the mountains of Beirut. We were overjoyed and were even picked up by their driver. Arriving at the home was both overwhelming and relieving for us. It was the most beautiful home we had seen with a view of the entirety of Beirut (and the whole airport). They graciously offered us an enormous spread for lunch and (we can take a hint) showers. We were certainly spoiled, but also most grateful. We spent the afternoon lounging before heading out for a night of barhopping. We keep it classy.

In the morning, we uncovered an amazing little breakfast place “Dani Bakery” where a man we decided to (between us) call Dani and his (potential?) family made us amazing breakfast sandwiches on a sort of salted pita with cheese and an egg and tomatoes. It was phenomenal. Our second morning at Dani’s we are sitting around waiting for our brickoven toasted yummies when a young girl with a sharp black bob hair cut, dark eye makeup and stern tattoos lights up a cigarette and sits down next to us. “You guys look like such tourists” were the first words out of her mouth. Unsure whether to laugh our scowl, we uncomfortably sit and let Simon take over the conversation. “You’re all so blonde and whatever”….ok? ….“Where are you guys from?” – New York, she acts surprised. We ask her what she is doing in Beirut, she doesn’t seem to know. She’s American, “but Palestinian”… What are we doing in Beirut “are you doing like, tourist things?”… confusion ensues, (obviously we are doing tourist things, remember, we are tourists). We tell her we are students at the University of Jordan “Oh my god, have you ever, like, BEEN to Jordan?” (no dumbass, we just happen to STUDY THERE).. “why yes, we have, why?”… she continues “OH MY GOD, I DESPISE Jordan, it’s just so flat, and dull and (here’s the kicker) silly”… I felt a heat boil up in me I had never felt before. How dare someone talk about Jordan that way! We grab our sandwiches just in time to get the hell out of there. I was furious and we were laughing so hard at the fact someone just called a country “silly”. We run to meet Victoria; I realize that I am getting defensive about Jordan.

Victoria’s family had arranged for a car to take us around other parts of Beirut to see the ruins, the teleferique, and the famous stalactites at the Grotto etc. for the following day. It was certainly an experience to see these parts of Lebanon. We had beautiful views, absolutely stunning ruins and more importantly, turtle sex. When we arrived at the Jeita Grotto for the stalactites, we came across a small zoo of sorts with animals such as guinea pigs, chickens, ducks and porcupines on display. It was a rather strange spread of animal cages but the one we were most taken by were the small turtles. We were intrigued when we noticed the little turtles fervently head butting the large one and we wondered out loud what she had done to make them so angry. Shortly thereafter, we realized they the little turtles were not so much angry as horny. The little turtle subsequently mounted the larger one “turtle style” while we perversely watched it strain its neck and stick out its tongue in ecstasy. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t aware that turtles even had tongues. Watching a turtle’s neck vein reach near explosion point, and sticking a little red tongue out of the side of its mouth is an image I will be using whenever I have a bad day. I apologize if that is perverted, but it is possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen. Oh gosh… compose yourself, Alex. Okay.

After turtle sex and pretty rocks, our driver took us to Byblos to see the ruins and more importantly have lunch. Our restaurant was perfectly situated on the water overlooking the mountains and the beautiful Byblos ruins. We were very excited when we saw the view and we saw that the prices were reasonable for once. We sat down and waited. And waited. And waited.

After a good amount of time being passive, those of us with shorter fuses (who knew that would ever be me) rose to ask for menus. After we ordered, we waited. And waited. And waited. On the first day of orientation to this program, our director said a slogan which we commonly use (mostly in mockery). She said “YOU ARE HERE! Not there, you are really, truly, here!” ‘Here’ is the Middle East, ‘there’ is the U.S. and we are to remember that when we are waiting 30 minutes for a café latte at Starbucks. After that joke got old, we complained and received our food (which probably had spit on it due to the bitching). I was so excited about ordering seafood since in Amman it’s 17 dollars a shrimp.

When I received my Crevettes Provencale, the table looked at me and the 6 mini-shrimp half the size of my pinky and burst out laughing. It became less funny for everyone when they received crab cakes the size of an eyeball and when we subsequently waited another half hour for a fish surprise platter that ended up looking like little fish penises which tasted a bit like lamb. We are here! Not there.

We drove back to the refuge Victoria’s family provided for us, ordered Pizza Hut, and watched the Chappelle Show, damnit.

We spent the night at her house, which was an amazing break from the bomb shelter and took showers for a good solid half hour (shh). In the morning we were made lunch spreads and offered a ride back to the hostel. Today we were upgrading rooms since another bunch of backpackers had booked our cozy compound for the rest of the week. We were now paying 10 dollars a night AND had out own bathroom (WHAT!). It was amazing. We even had a window! I slept on the floor with my princess sheets, no one else got the princess sheets this time (I think they were a little upset about that).

We spent the following days exploring Beirut some more on the Hamra side by the Corniche and the American University. I know that means a lot to you, but I figured I throw it out there. We walked along the pathway by the water which looked so much like Nice it was eerie. We went up to a region in Lebanon called Bekaa Valley which is home to the Baalbek ruins and vineyards. The ruins were some of the most stunning I had seen (Parthenon included) and we hired a tour guide who reminded me of a detective from a Jules Verne book. Other than the beautiful ruins, one of the most exciting parts about going to Bekaa Valley (at least for Elspeth and myself, the boys were less than thrilled) was that we were in the Hezbollah administrative headquarters (I got the t-shirt). We subsequently ate our first shawarma which is like an Arabic hoagie and headed down to Ksara to do a little wine tasting. We took a tour of a stunning vineyard and were taken upstairs to taste five or six glasses of dry and fruity deliciousness.

That night, we drove home, and gussied up to brave Sky Bar. There is a club in Beirut that is world famous for being one of the longest and most prestigious bars in the world. Of course we had to check it out. But since we are nobodies, we went at 9:30pm to get in without a reservation. If you remember being young, 9:30pm is a joke anywhere you go. So we waited around 9:30 on a Tuesday in the most upscale bar in the region and were kicked off every table we squatted because they were all “reserved”. The bartenders were not flirty, and the music was eh… When we tired of this scene, Victoria called her cousin who left her group of friends, picked us up in her car and drove us to somewhere fun. And it certainly was fun. We went to Myu on Gemmayzeh where we lived. We were certainly in the middle of the life of the city. Why we ever left Gemmayzeh was a mystery to us all.

We spent our last two days exploring and lounging in luxury at the hostel and at our friend’s pool and we even joined a beach club for the day. We ate amazing food (as a connaisseur of chocolate and chocolate cake, I am making a bold statement, going out on a limb and stating that I have had the best flourless, brownie melty chocolate cake I have ever had in my life, here, in Beirut, at Casablanca restaurant, please go, just do it). We joined the beach club, paid obscene amounts of money for everything and had the absolute time of our lives. Taking a plane from Beirut to Amman was amazing to me. I am actually here, I am actually doing this. I am traveling throughout the Middle East. It was just so surreal. Triple metaphor but reality hit when we hit the run way and an eager Arab man opened up the overhead to get out his stuff and dropped his bag on my head while the plane was in full motion.

Welcome home.

The drive from the airport made me happy, nostalgic, amazed, antsy; it made me proud.

Coming back to Amman was certainly a nice relief from the claustrophobia that was our living situation, and taking a shower probably felt to me like life felt to that turtle not long ago. I am certainly glad to be back, but I will certainly miss Beirut.