Sheep's Heads and Salty Water

Sorry for the lack of posting! I have been diligently working on securing and internship and then on organizing housing and funding. This is all beside my regular load of homework and hanging out with friends - so I have been quite busy!

Here is an overview of the main things I have done over the past two weeks, one of them being an amazing trip to the Dead Sea!!

We got to go to one of the private beaches so it was less crowed and attached to a gorgeous hotel. So after eating a beyond-filling feast inside, we all ran out to the beach.


Our professor from the university (Doctor Muhammad) brought his son Salahh who was adorable. It was also cute to see Doctor Muhammad interact with him. Here the children call their Dad "Baba" and Mom "Mama" and they Dad's call their children "Baba" and the Mom's call them "Mama"! While Doctor Muhammad lived in the US for 6 years, he was still shocked to hear that we don't do the same in the US - it would be like my Mom calling me "Mom" and my Dad calling me "Dad."
The Dead Sea (as you may already know) has so much salt in it because it doesn't drain out to an ocean like other bodies of water. So the salt has been accumulating for thousands of years - so you float! You can't even sink if you tried to. Also the bottom of the sea has this dark clay material that you are supposed to spread on yourself and let dry in order to soften your skin (Hence why we have mud on ourselves).


The next week after class on Wednesday, we went to meet the "Sheikh" of the Clan "Benni Hussan" in Jordan. It is the largest and arguably the most important clan in Jordan - which is very important for a country that basis a lot of its politics on the Tribe/Clan system.

The Sheikh is a part of an ancestral line that has been leading the clan for hundreds of years. He basically mediates all problems related to the clan - no courts necessary. So if two members of a clan have a problem, they come to the Sheikh's house and talk about the problem. Then once the two men drink coffee from the cup, the problem is considered solved. If one of the parties does not want to solve the problem, they stand up and throw the coffee on the floor (very disrespectful).

Here is me with the Sheikh and his wife (may I reiterate how important he is in Jordan...)

So we spoke with the Sheikh for some time and afterwards we moved to the other room for lunch. I will classify this moment as I walked into the room for lunch as one of the most horrifying moments of my life. At first glace, it was just three platters of Mensef (the traditional Jordanian dish). Now in general I think Mensef is delicious, but this Mensef was just a little too realistic for me.

You may now be able to guess why this Mensef was not so appetizing. That's right, that is the head of a dead sheep right in the center of the platter--teeth, eyes and all.

Needless to say, I lost my appetite entirely, so I maybe ate two scoops of rice - I wasn't able to eat the sheep meat. Here is everyone eating together.


Some of the boys (like Ghawwar) were brave enough to eat the food, even traditionally with their hands. I was not so strong.But other than the food - the trip was great! Here is all the girls with the Sheikh, his wife and two daughters.

After the "meeting" we took a short trip to a part of their land in Mufruk and explored the oldest church in the world, according to what they said. There wasn't too much left of the church, but the mosaic on the ground was pretty interesting.Here I am being the first one to discover the mosaic (everything was covered with sand in order to protect it).

On Thursday we had a break from classes and took a trip together to Jerash, Abdoun, and Irbid. In Jerash there are gigantic ruins which are pretty impressive. Unfortunately, it was a popular class trip day so we were harassed by waves of loud children. Here they are... At one point I told one my name, and after that about 15 boys somehow knew it too and would rotate coming up to me and saying "Hi Yasmine!!"


Me and my new best friends:
While I don't have many pictures of the castle in Abdoun, we did have quite a bit of fun so Ill mention it anyway. We were all feeling a little sick of looking at ruins, so we played Sardines instead. And let me just say, playing sardines in a castle is AWESOME. This is me finding everyone last. Typical.
Afterwards we went to Irbid to go to one of Doctor Muhammad's friend's houses. There we saw a woman making fresh and homeade "khubez taboun" aka delicious huge bread. She made it individually in an oven in the ground set up in a shed outside their house.

Afterwards we sat down for a huge meal that they had prepared for us. It was a little odd since we barely spoke to them and didn't eat with them, I would have preferred just to talk to them. Oh well. Regardless, the food was incredible. Look!

Yacoub and Jafar smiling!
Oh! And I promised to show you a picture of Mazin, the one who we hang out with a lot and worked at the school where we teach English. Here we are below!

That's all for now! There are two weeks left of school so I am freaking out! Afterwards I have about three weeks to travel and relax but I am not positive what my plan is exactly. But I'll figure it out soon!

A little slice of Iraq

Wow its been a while! I guess life has just been pressing along here as usual. So since there hasn't been anything that stands out exactly, I shall finally address what I have been doing every week without ever writing about it. That's right, I've been teaching English.

Oh, the shame. I promised myself I would avoid English at all costs! But this situation is a bit different. Early on in the semester Yacoub contacted one of the Arabic professors at Cornell and asked him if he knew about any volunteer work in Jordan. He put Yacoub in touch with his friend Michael who told Yacoub about a school he taught English at in Hashemi Shemali, not too far from our apartment.

In the beginning, just Yacoub and Jafar were teaching, then slowly everyone seemed to try it for a day. About 2 or 3 weeks after they started, I finally decided it wouldn't hurt just to try teaching, even though I have no experience. Turns out it was a blast. And now I've been doing it at least once a week. Sometimes up to 4 times a week!

So let me try and explain this. There is this wonderful Japanese woman, Foseio, who worked with an organization "Women's Federation for World Peace" in Japan. Then around 12 years ago she came to Jordan to start a branch of the organization and ended up staying for 12 years. Yep, she is that dedicated to the schools here, visiting her husband and children only twice a year in Japan.

The program in Jordan has at least three schools. The schools teach English as well as Arabic literacy. Most of the students in the school are Iraqi refugees, although I believe there are a few Jordanians who take primarily the Arabic literacy classes as well. These English classes, some of which I help teach, are free for the Iraqi refugees as living in Jordan is a constant struggle for them. As life wasn't hard enough as a refugee, Jordan denies all Iraqi refugees from working. Period. Up until about three years ago, children were also barred from attending Jordanian schools. For the small percentage of those who receive help from the UNHCR, their salaries are only about 75 dinars (about $100) per month (with incremental increases depending on the number of children in the family). This is barely enough to feed a family, let alone pay for electricity and water.

Needless to say, working with Iraqi refugees has become quite an interest of mine. Through taking English classes, they can increase their chances of success if they are lucky enough to gain entrance into the US, Australia, or elsewhere. The main class that I teach, sometimes on my own and sometimes with Sarah, is a group of mostly older women. They are very good at picking up the language although it is like pulling teeth to get them to come to the front of the room to practice dialogs with me. Before the first time I taught I was a little afraid to be honest. About four women in the class wear the niqab, which covers their entire body with the exception of their eyes in black. Without ever speaking to women wearing the niqab in my life, the idea was a little daunting. That fear went away after about ten minutes. They are all so wonderful! What is nice too is that they take off the part of their niqab that covers the rest of their face when Sarah and I teach the class since there are only women. Normally, or when we are not there, there is a man who teaches the class which prevents them from showing their faces at all. Plus, I can tell they like us.

I also have taught at the school in Sahab, another town a bit farther away. This school is all kids, ranging between the ages of 5 and 8, and then about 4 men. In the beginning I didn't teach there because the supervisor thought it was better if just guys from our group taught there since there were a few men in the class. Then when the other guys were traveling and they needed teachers, Jafar and I taught together and there was no problem. I have taught there a few times since and it is so much fun to teach all the kids! Plus, I use Arabic quite a bit when I talk to them (yell at them - they are noisy!) since they do not know as much English as the women in the other school. Here are some pictures!



This is Kareem being weird as usual. He is the one that is in charge of holding a stick and yelling at the kids when they get out of hand. He is hilarious.

I don't have any pictures of me teaching quite yet, but this is a picture of Khalid and Yacoub teaching.



My favorite part about this school is how much the girls who sit in the front love me. Why? Not sure. After class they just pull me down by my hand and kiss me. That was a surprise the first time that happened! Then Mazin just laughs in the background of course. Speaking of someone I have yet to mention yet... Mazin is probably 50% or more of the reason I love teaching at the school. In fact I think we (mostly Yacoub, Khalid and I) have started to split our time between teaching and just general hang-out-with-Mazin time. Mazin was the previous supervisor at the schools. He acted, and still often does, as Foseio's right hand man. They share a car, have apartments next to each other, and organize everything about the schools.

Mazin may be one of the nicest, most genuine, and open person I have met in Jordan. He often plans fun things for us to do together with him and some of his Iraqi friends. Last weekend we went to a park and barbecued and danced debka together. So much fun. The sad part is he will be leaving us soon. The good news is, he got a visa to America! We plan on putting some money together to fly him from Colorado to Cornell next semester. So now he is quickly working on his English, which he can conveniently practice with us. For anyone else I would say that is not okay since I came here to learn Arabic, but for Mazin? No problem. He speaks English to us, and we speak Arabic to him. Then from his Iraqi friends who don't speak English, we can pick up the Iraqi dialect.

One more unique opportunity I have had is visiting the houses of Iraqis in Jordan with Mazin. It is one thing to read about the situation of refugees in Jordan and quite another to go to their homes and speak to them. Probably my most valued experiences yet. The stories are terribly difficult to hear. But that is the reality of their lives. For this reason I am doing my project on Iraqi refugees in Jordan for one my classes at the university. Furthermore I am seriously thinking about making work with refugees a career choice for the near future.

I don't have any pictures of Mazin with us now, but Mazin has a bunch so once I get them from him I will post them right away!

Back to learning Arabic...

Ana bamoot Sureea! (I am OBSESSED with Syria!)

What an incredible Spring Break! Five of us wanted to go to Syria... so we did! (How cool is that?!) The most incredible week of my life includes traveling to four major cities in Syria with the most flexible, positive and fun traveling buddies I could have ever asked for (thanks guys!).

Since I have spent hours uploading and organizing a million pictures from Syria I will try to keep the stories short! Also most of them are only funny in Arabic anyway.

So four of us (Yacoub, Hanan, Reem and I) took a taxi to the border and then a bus to Damascus. We decided to head out to Latakia (a northern city on the Mediterranean) first and then we would make our way down to Damascus throughout the week since Damascus is closest to Jordan. While waiting for the bus to Latakia we bought some sweets (a bad start to a whirlwind of binge-eating sweets and hummus-related dishes). I just love Emily's excitement in this picture as it adequately describes how we all were feeling!



LATAKIA.

The bus to Latakia was wonderful. For 3 dollars we got a movie, water, coffee, chocolate and more sweets. Nice. And as usual, Yacoub sat next to a random Arab guy and spoke to him the entire three hour ride. As soon as the bus arrived in Latakia, Yacoub informed us that we would be eating at his house as he graciously invited us. Why not? (Soon to be a theme of the trip.)

So we met Ala (our host) who is a third year college student at Tashreen University in Latakia. He lives in an apartment with two roomates so we hung out with all of them and cooked dinner together. That consisted of Ala cooking what looked to me like a bag full of two animals (boiled then fried) and me cooking eggs for the vegetarians (Yacoub and Hanan).

From the left: Ala, Reem, me, Hanan and Ala's roomate (names aren't my strong-point).

Speaking Arabic with Ala and his roomate for a few hours was actually quite beneficial in the long run because the accent is quite different in Syria in comparison to Jordan. After that we seemed to be able to understand everyone quite easily.

After literally begging us to stay at his house for the night, we escaped to go to our hotel reservations right by the harbor in Latakia. Here were are with the hotel-owner Muhammad (nicest guy ever) who is slightly obsessed with "Tin Tin" a French cartoon character, who he cut out pictures of a placed him on every poster of Syria he had. (Syria was once a French colony so some people speak French as well.)
In the morning we ate breakfast with a Canadian guy who had been traveling for 8 years and had been bumming around in Latakia for the past two weeks. This was our first experience with Syrian food and man oh man was it amazing. (Better than Jordanian food!)

We all tried Fetta (a mix of Tahini, hummus, chick peas and fried bread on the bottom) - INCREDIBLE. See below:
Note Reem's face in this next picture... she must have known how much we would be eating in the future. So delicious and worth it though!

He then gave us a tour of the "American Quarter" which is just a nice strip of restaurants and shops in town. After we said our goodbye's, we wandered around the town for a bit. After wandering down one of the many alleyway's, we met Abdullah who then became our tour guide of the area. He took us through this incredibly old part of town.


After he gave us advise on the best beach to go to, we agreed to meet up with him again tomorrow to eat at the restaurant "Abu Sways" which was very popular place for your everyday working Syrian to eat in the area. Off to the beach! First time in the Mediterranean and it was stunning. We went to the beach with black sand too... you know, trying to be unique and all.
Before we went out to dinner we watched the sunset from our apartment mezzanine.


In the morning we headed back to the restaurant Abu Sways and ate the most delicious hummus variations I have eaten in my life. And believe you me, I have eaten my fair share of hummus in Jordan. They mixed them all in these huge vats in the front of the restaurant.

After breakfast we grabbed a taxi to head right outside the city to the Citadel at Salah ad-Din. It really was incredible. The castle was perched on top of a heavily wooded ridge that was surrounded by deep ravines. In fact, however, part of this canyon was man-made! A canyon! It was created by the Crusaders in the latter part of the 10th century. The history goes that only after a siege of two days, the armies of Saladin breached the walls and took over the stronghold.



ALEPPO

In the afternoon we were off to Aleppo where we planned to meet Ata at our hotel at night. Luckily we had no problems there - it was a joyous reunion at the hotel which was followed by a delicious dinner nearby.

After dinner we bonded with our hotel owner, Ahmed, who was hilarious. We actually hung out with him again the next night and I wouldn't mind hanging out with him again - really fun guy!


The following day was jam-packed with everything one should do when in Aleppo. For breakfast we heard about an amazing "foul" place (a well-known bean dish that is very affordable). Here is "Abu Foul"! (The most adorable man ever!)


After breakfast, we bought soap! Aleppo is known for its pistachios and olive oil soap. Needless to say, we also bought a ton of sweets with pistachios in all of them and snacked on them for the rest of the trip.
Then in addition to exploring the city we stopped and checked out the Great Mosque. Since we are women and don't wear the hijab, we all had to wear Harry Potter cloaks. No complaints here.


We also talked to a group of kids for a while which was fun! I was lucky enough to capture this adorable moment with this little boy and Ata.
For lunch we sat at an outdoor cafe right outside a gigantic citadel. Talk about a great view! At the restaurant we tried "Fatoush" which now is my favorite Middle East dish. It is a delicious salad with pita chips on top - I realize this may sound simple, but you have to taste it! Here are some photos of us at the Citadel.


The view:
We also quickly found out that if we go up to any food vendor on the street, point at something and then innocently ask "What is the name of that?!" in Arabic - we get free food! This is literally fool-proof. Amazing. Here is me eating this weird sweet that was covered in flour.

While Aleppo was beyond amazing - we had to press on! After reading a bit about the history of Hama, a smaller city in Syria, we decided we wanted to make a quick two hour stop in Hama on our way to Damascus.

HAMA

There was a massacre in Hama in 1982 and stains Syrian history as one of its darkest moments. Without going too much into detail, I will try to explain the situation. Beginning in 1970, Syria was ruled by the Ba'ath Party (the secular political party that also ruled under Saddam in Iraq) under the presidency of Hafez Al-Assad. The Al-Assad family are the religion Allawite, which is a sect or branch of Shiite Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, gaining much strength at that time, were opposed to the ruling of an Allawite, being from the Shiite side of Islam and not Sunni like the Brothers. In 1980 the Brotherhood attempted to assasinate Hafez Al-Assad. After the failed attempt, the government passed a law making membership to the Muslim Brotherhood punishable by death. Then in 1982 the Brotherhood declared Hama a "liberated city" after removing a few government and party related people from their homes. The Al-Asad government response to this was to shell the entire city and warn that anyone left in the city would be declared a rebel. It is uncertain how many people died, but the numbers range from 10,000 to 25,000 - and the city was essentially leveled.

So on the bus to Hama, Ata sat next to another random Arab man and you guessed it, we were invited to his house! It was excellent. The house was incredibly nice, we talked and ate for 5 hours, and Muhammad's (the man Ata sat next to) mother stuffed us with a gigantic lunch, a round of tea, a round of coffee and topped it off with a round of fruit. I also think I may have eaten an entire chicken (yet again) considering I had to pick of the slack of everyone else (Yacoub, Hanan and Ata are all vegetarians and Reem was feeling sick). And I really did need to pick up the slack - Arab mothers yell at you when you don't eat their food!

Here is the family! (Love them!)


After we ate and chat, Muhammad, his brother and his sister took us for a tour of Hama. We saw a bunch of the waterwheels that Hama is famous for as well.


A portrait of Bashir Al-Asad (the current president and son of Hafez).

After barely escaping yet again (they insisted we spend the night) and far surpassing our 2 hours in Hama original plan, we headed to Damascus at 8 PM.

DAMASCUS

...is amazing, incredible, and everything an old city should be! This is a picture of the indoor market:

We saw this banner a lot. In the center is Bashir Al-Asad (the current President), on the left is Ahmadinejad (President of Iran who is quite notorious for his comments relating to Israel and the US) and on the right is Hassan Nasrallah (the current leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon). It is essentially a huge love-fest of anti-Americanism. Jolly good. This may be a good time to note that there is absolutely nothing from America in Syria due to the bilateral sanctions. Although it was refreshing not to see a McDonalds.
One of the most amazing and history-filled places we went was the Umayyad Mosque. Hanan (the Religious Studies major) knew much more about it than me but I learned quite a bit about it from her. It is said to have the tombs of both Hussein (son of Ali, very famous in Islam especially to Shiites) and the head of John the Baptist.


Tomb for the head of John the Baptist:


After exploring Syria for quite some time (man, did my feet hurt by the end) we ate the world-famous ice-cream from Damascus! It was thicker than normal ice cream and by far much more delicious! Not to mention that it was rolled in pistachios and cashews!


More walking through cobblestone streets...That night we went out to eat with one of Hanan's friends she knew from a program in Michigan. He took us to this great restaurant that was perched on a hill that overlooked all of Damascus. Truly incredible. (Sorry! No picture can do that one justice!)

In the morning I bought more sweets with pistachios...
Then we went to a brand new Shitte mosque , Sayyida Ruqayya Mosque. In 1985 Iranians began the construction of this mosque as Ruqayya is a saint in Shiite Islam. The mosque was brand new, sparkling with mirror mosaics and packed with more Iranians than I have ever seen in my life. You may be able to imagine the confusion when we would go to ask someone a question in Arabic and get a blank stare, not realizing they were Iranian and only speak Farsi. And this worked the other way as well as we were approached by many Iranians interested in us and at first we thought we just didn't understand the Arabic until we realized it was a different language. Phew.

The tomb of Ruqayya. Many women were crying.


We also checked out some of the Old Damascus Houses:

Unfortunately (we assume from the Foul) Ata was sick the second day in Damascus. Conveniently, that was also his 21st birthday. He came out with us later in the day after sleeping through the morning and early afternoon to see the last storyteller in all of Syria. About half way through the reading he ran out of the cafe and puked outside, steps away from the Umayyad Mosque (one of the most holy mosques in Islam). We like to say that although he may not have drank on his 21st birthday, he did continue the tradition of throwing up.

The storyteller! (He liked to slam his stick a lot).

We also had met up with one of our friends, Majdi, from our university in Jordan. So we went to get ice-cream again under the pretext that Majdi never tried it yet. Really we just wanted it again.


And ended it with a lovely dinner at a restaurant with a gorgeous indoor courtyard! This is Majdi, Hanan and Yacoub at the restaurant.

The Dream Team!
And believe me... this is really a short version of all the excitement we had! I think I want to study or live in Syria now after I graduate - Inshallah!

Where next... Egypt?