عجلون

So, you hop on a bus an hour after class on Thursday. In order to get on the bus you wait outside with families, students, and suckling infants at an airport like bus station for the bus to “Ajloun” to arrive. As soon as the words “اربد” and “عجلون” appear on the side of a bus, the crowd runs to it, bags and babies in tow. You miss that one. You weren’t ready for a Beatlemania rush like that. You are ready now to run and push. The next bus pulls in quickly after the first one. Jogging to the side doors you knock over a woman’s suitcase. Who cares. You jump in the first open seat along with half of your group. The other half didn’t make it. There is a direct contrast of the peace filled bus to the pandemonium outside. Once each seat is filled the remaining mob files sadly out, defeated. Forty-five minutes to Ajloun, home of one of the most well-preserved Classical Arab castles in the world, the birthplace of Elijah, and a wildlife reserve complete with hyenas, foxes, wolves, jackals, and your bed: in a treehouse. 

“Success,” you think, upon getting out of the bus in Ajloun, on a crowded street, next to a classical outdoor fruit market complete with beggars and hagglers. You unfortunately do not take advantage of the extremely photogenic subjects in and around the colorful market. Oh well. You can see the castle on top of the hill above the market. This is your focus, your mission, to get there. You hail a taxi. The driver is named Fakhri, he speaks very little English, but you miraculously understand most of his colloquial Arabic. He takes you to the castle for 2 JD, which (at the time) seemed like a fair price. Upon arrival to the castle, he leaves his phone number for you, because he knows the exact location of the nature preserve. The castle is beautiful, 0.25 JD for entrance fees and the ability to explore at your own leisure. You tour the castle, stopping to take a few self portraits. Time is up, the rest of the group has found you and it is time for dinner. Fakhri recommends a local joint that isn’t bad, although perhaps a bit overpriced. 

After dinner, Fakhri drives you to the wildlife preserve where, to your dismay, all of the beds have been booked. No hyenas/wolves/foxes for you. The owner calls a friend who has several tents “for cheaper”. The taxis take you there. This is the definition of rural. The taxis’ tires slip on the dirt on the uphill climb to the camp. A man in white robes and a foot long beard greets the taxis. The sunset behind him outlines his chubby figure. You walk with him as he shows you the camp on the summit of the hill. You can see “Palestine” along the sunset, and Syria to the north of that. Maybe this is better than the nature preserve. Then you see the tents, large and white with three mattresses on the inside. Like a mixture of Philmont and the United Arab Emirates. You sit with the rest of the group drinking minty tea on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Jordan River Valley in the distance and a small town below you. 

You and the seven others from your group sit with one of the sons of the owner. There are nine of you. Like the Fellowship of the Ring. So, naturally you choose from among yourselves who is who from the story. You are Boromir, Gideon is Gimli, Chase is Gandalf, Peyton is Aragorn, the silent Arab kid is Legolas, and the other four are the hobbits. 

You set your alarm for 5 am. You are not going to miss the sunrise in the morning. You talk to some Syrians at the camp from Daraa. Difficult. You wake up, wide awake, after a night of little sleep thanks to the gunshots and barking dogs. You go to the other side of the mountain and film your own version of Sunrise Earth, except in rural Jordan. Sweet vid. 

You get a chance to go off alone and sit on top of a cliff and look over the valley. Just miles from this place, within sight, you realize, was where God chose to walk the earth. He came to experience our hardship so that we could relate to him. He didn’t choose the soft soil of Ireland, or the temperate forests of North America. He chose the land that is harsh, difficult, dusty, thorny and filled with flies. He didn’t come to lead a cushy life. He was poor and walked in the time before paved roads and comforts. The ground, you notice, is covered with rocks. The dirt in between the rocks gives way to thorny plants and sharp grass. Everything is dry. Everything is hilly, there is barely any flat land. If sin was translated to earth, this would almost be it.  

You eat a breakfast of bread, honey, tea, and coffee. Fakhri takes you back to the bus station, that is empty on Fridays. Convenient for Fakhri, who now gets to take you all the way back to Irbid for 20 JD. Back in Irbid, you type a second-person, present tense narrative about your past 24 hours.

Sometimes you just gotta take your camera everywhere...

... like when the call to prayer goes off and all of the soccer players stop to pray in the middle of the field at sunset while a father teaches his daughter to ride a bike for the first time in the foreground...

...or when the child at the next table over sticks a french fry in their nose and sticks their tongue out at you...

...and during the noontime prayer on Friday when everyone leaves their car with the keys still in the ignition in the middle of the road to walk to the nearest mosque...

...to the many schwarma restaurants with the towers of wet meat slowly spinning vertically in front of an open flame...

...to the countryside with wild hyenas and scorpions and deserts...

...especially when the rare covered girl smiles at you or greets you in English...

...and always when the little Malaysian girl who runs around with ice cream residue permanently stuck on her face runs up to you, says, "Hellohowareyouwhatsyourname," and runs away, probably to eat more ice cream...


I wish I had taken a photo of every one of these occurrences to illustrate this post, but then this post wouldn't really exist then, would it?

شيء مختلف

So there comes a certain point in every last minute adventure where that particular adventure becomes too overbearing and pushing the abort button becomes necessary. That point for us is when three Arab men we don't know are attempting to squeeze five Americans + one Arab driver into a compact car by putting two Americans in the front seat and forcing the door closed while one of the Americans' leg is still outside of the vehicle. Meanwhile, one of my friends attempted to get out of the backseat because he was done, and one of the men locked the door. When my friend tried to unlock it, the man slapped his hand and relocked it.


Yeah that was just a little too much. Next time we go on a spur of the moment adventure, we will go with a more organized group. A group that doesn't appear to be trying to abduct us.


Gideon (right) haggling with the men who we eventually had to walk away from:

Good news though, after that extremely stressful experience, Gideon decided that it would be best if we went to the liquor store. We did and noticed this beautiful sunflower field next to it:

Brightened up our day significantly.

Scenes from a Jordanian Apartment

God’s Word, in Arabic. A great way to study the two most important things in my life right now.

Did you think Heineken was expensive in The United States? Try Jordan.

We are switching to all plastic ware, doing dishes manually sucks.

I brush my teeth everyday, with a contaminated water source.

We finally have hot water, cold showers in the morning were getting old fast.

Our apartment isn’t the cleanest, but it sure does the job.

Passport? Check. Money? Check. A working proficiency in Arabic? Not so much.

كرة القدم في الأردن

So Peyton met these kids the other day who wanted to play soccer with him because he had a ball. So he kicks around with them for a bit, and then the next day I am with him and Byron and Gideon and we see these kids again. They want to play some more, we oblige and the game is on, in the street. I feel like I could hang with them in small spaces. We got to know them a bit, they are all 16 or 17 and a couple speak really good English. Haitham, Mardini, and Ahmed are the ones I remember, also A’arum. Since then we have played soccer everyday and we have moved up a level. Now we play on the concrete court next to our apartments. These kids are really good in space. It’s amazing to see them move so fluidly and naturally with a ball at their feet. They have been playing since they were 6 or 7 years old. Well anyways, I took some pictures when we played yesterday

بعد أربعة أيام... الحالة

So there are certain things you learn about a place after spending two months there. Especially in a place as small as Irbid. I haven't spent two months here, but thanks to the class who spent last summer here, I know a few ins and outs of this not-so-magical city.

I know:

1) The location of the only alcohol store

2) The Egyptian who screams at Americans near the alcohol store

3) Not to buy life insurance from him

4) Where to buy rip off DVD's (good quality) for 1JD apiece (the entire Sopranos series is 24 JD, or about 32 dollars)

5) The best schwarma in Irbid

6) The second best schwarma in Irbid (also the cheapest, .60 JD for one)

7) To write off covered women, as I have a 0% chance, and to write off uncovered women, as I have a 1% chance.

Just got back from the DVD store, bought The King's Speech, Pride and Prejudice, Indiana Jones, Inception, and some others. I was in heaven (sort of)

أخيرا، نحن في اربد

In Irbid, my home for the next two months. Yarmouk University is huge population wise, but the campus is small. The people are all very friendly. They love nice Americans, i.e. me.

Using Arabis has not been too much of a challenge so far. After we got situated and slept in Amman, we explored the city and had awesome conversations in Arabic with several Jordanians (although they were, admittedly former Palestinians). Yusef our first cab driver for the day was from Bethlehem originally and spoke to us in his kind, slow Arabic that we could all understand with ease. Zayed, a man we met on the street showed us around, and his Arabic was strange but we were able to communicate. And a tour guide on the top of Jebel Amman gave us the tour in Arabic at our request. I understood 70-75% of it.

From Jebel Amman

We arrived in Irbid at 2am last night and got situated in our apartments. My roommate is Mr. Chase Pinson (formerly single). He is okay. The apartment is way sweeter than I was expecting with a kitchen, fridge, washer/dryer combo, internet, a roomy bathroom, fans, and two pallets that serve as beds. Not bad eh? Eh? Eh?

We have approximately 300 channels on the tv. Most have the name Al-Nafa or Ar-Riyada or Al-Mesjid. They all are portrait shots of Arabs reading from papers or a teleprompter. It is quite entertaining.

أهلا إلى الأردن

Welcome to Jordan, where the weather is perfect, where my skin color will never allow me to fit in, where I can't understand their Arabic or their English, where they can't understand my Arabic or English, where the women are beautiful, where our first warning from a local was "don't mess with women", where not messing with women is more important that not messing with drugs, where half the people smile and welcome you to their country, where the other half ignore you like the new kid in school, where the televisions are nice but the programs are not, where the tea is delicious and the coffee is not (yet), where the mosques are huge and the Christian churches are not, in which qurans and prayer mats adorn each hotel room.

Welcome to the battlefront: spiritually, socially, politically, and linguistically.

Pretty cool place huh?

So... we went to this Souq (from my hotel window) last night to check out the local nightlife.

It was a local market alright, all locals. Haggling over clothing, purses, and ripoff DVDs. We were out of place for sure. We tried Arabic, but were denied. Imagine a group of three young Arabs in traditional dress going to Meadowbrook barbershop, or Bob's fish market, or Kroger. And keep in mind they barely speak English. That was us, just the opposite.

Today? Late checkout at 2, explore Amman till about 8, catch a bus to Irbid at 930 and BOOM. We will be in our home for the next two months. I still have yet to get used to that idea. Two months, here? Whatever, one day at a time.

As for the boss? He showed me some stuff on the plane here to Amman. I am about to call him up for some advice. His wisdom grounds me no matter my questions. That thing he said to Jeremiah just popped into my head, (thats him speaking).


For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (29:11)

Blues Festival in Aliceville

I went to a Blues Festival in Aliceville, Alabama yesterday with my second family, the Mullins. Peter played some keyboard whilst Phillip, Andy, and I enjoyed the music under soft shade during a humid day. There was fabulous food, including Polish sausage smothered in grilled onions and peppers that was mighty good. Not much else to say, except I leave for Jordan on Wednesday, the 8th. After that, this will become a travel blog to cover my experiences there.

Here are some pictures and clips from the festival: