At the request of numerous family members, I'm restarting the blog to document our adventures abroad. So for the few who don't know, I received the Boren Fellowship and will be studying in Jordan for 10 months. Yay! It's a rather prestigious fellowship and one that I've applied to --unsuccessfully-- before. It's an exciting opportunity that allows me to postpone graduation (even though I've passed my comprehensive oral exam for my degree and passed the Arabic oral proficiency) and can postpone my dreaded grammar exam until May 1, 2017! However, this provides me the opportunity to really immerse myself in the arabic language and be able to live in Jordan for almost an entire year. Having never served a mission, I've really felt that I missed out on that part of the experience of language immersion and by the time I'm done living in Jordan this time, with the time I've lived here previously, I'll have been here for a total of 18 months-so like a mission!
In addition to my language learning, I'm trying to find an internship in the development sector. I've previously worked with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Save the Children, and Plan International. Jordan is teeming with a variety of refugee-related issues, and I'd like to gain some practical experience and knowledge while I am here. Through my studies at Georgetown, I've come to realize that within the world of international development, I'd love to work in particular in the child protection sector. I'm looking at UNICEF, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and Middle East Children's Institute (MECI). Overall, the search continues, but I do have a few contacts that might be able to put me in touch with the right people.
So we have been in Jordan for a few months now, but here's a few throwback pictures to show you what's happened on our journey so far. The trip over was a bit brutal with a full 20 hours of travel time from when we left Atlanta, to a layover in Paris, to Amman, Jordan.
Drew zonked out in Paris
Kirby was SO happy that I let him out in Paris that he didn't even protest the doggie diaper.
Once we got here things took a bit of adjusting. Moving across the world is a bit harder when you don't have a company/government paying for you to do so. It's also hard when you're moving with a pet. Although it was funny coming to Jordan since the customs guys were like, oh, he's so cute! Ha, Kirby for the win. So we get to our apartment, and it's rather nice. The landlords are WONDERFUL. The mother of our landlord is always bringing us leftover food. She's so nice and she's great to practice my (and Drew's) arabic. We have a one bedroom apartment with a kitchen, living room, and bathroom off the main bedroom. It's small, but not tiny, and with the big shared patio we have outside it's been great.
This summer has been great because so many of my Georgetown friends come to Jordan to study arabic at Qasid as well. Charles (one of my best friends--he's from Scotland!), Madison, and Haydn all shared an apartment and Nick and Skylar lived in various parts of the city. Madison found a kitten and rescued her. Oh Aya, she was SO tiny when they first got her.
Making Charles seem like an animal person
So this next picture has a funny story. Our apartment doesn't have air conditioning so a fan is pretty essential. It was one of the first things we bought and after a long (frustrating) day of shopping, Drew tried to set it up. He got all the way to the end and realized he couldn't find the screws for the base to hold it up. We were so frustrated! He looked everywhere, I looked everywhere, I even felt in the box and nothing. So we finally took the fan apart, and went to return it to the store for a new one with screws. Before we enter the store, the service guys (they are separate from the actual store, but are general service/need help setting up for a few stores in the mall) asked us why we were carrying a fan. We told them what happened and they were like, well, let's try one last time. At this point we didn't care so we said go ahead. He found the screws in like 2 seconds!!! Apparently they were stuck in a corner of the box and despite shaking the box and feeling the corners, we had both missed it. Maybe all of our trouble loosened it up ;). Drew and I just laughed and the guy went ahead and set up the fan (to make sure the poor blind Americans had their working fan) and we just went up to the food court for dinner. It was pretty funny seeing Drew lug around the fan so I took a picture.
Kirby approves of our couches in the living room
My little garden-- too bad only the basil plant is really alive still of these three particular plants
On July 1, we had a really neat opportunity for dinner. We got to Jordan in the middle of Ramadan (holiest month of the year for Muslims and when they fast from sunrise to sunset-- to experience what it's like to be poor to better empathize with them) and were invited to Iftar by a member of our church. The LDS world is so small, especially when you take into consideration other factors such as language specialties, etc. We met a guy, Tobias, who is the son of Drew's former arabic teacher at BYU. The funny thing is that Tobias never learned arabic growing up (despite spending his high school years in Cairo), but as he's the Consular Affairs Officer for the Department of State, he finally had to learn when he was posted here. Anywho, Tobias invited us over to an Iftar (breaking of the fast during Ramadan) with Salma, who is Jordan's correspondent/representative to NASA. She works with the US on a variety of science education projects such as instituting programs in schools to take atmospheric recordings, set up science fairs, and encourage more students into the sciences. It was a perfect opportunity to practice my arabic (that I hadn't used in a while) and it was such a lovely dinner. She and her family were SO wonderful and it was so refreshing to realize that I understood what was going on, and could contribute occasionally. Oh man, and she made the BEST Mansaf I've ever eaten. It was delicious.
Mansaf-one of the national dishes of Jordan. Made with lamb (as in this case) or chicken and poured over rice with toasted almonds. Then drenched in jameed (sauce seen below)
Nuts, pickles, jameed and sambosas
I was so sad my picture didn't turn out, but she also made qatayef- a pancake like pastry that is the filled with nuts, cheese, or chocolate. They were SO good. They're by far my favorite arab sweet and only available during Ramadan. She was a WONDERFUL cook and absolutely wonderful hostess. It was such a lovely evening talking about various projects, life in general and meeting with her family.
Her son and daughter in law (not pictured her ADORABLE 3 month old grandson), Tobias, Salma, myself and Drew.
Aaand after that picture is when tragedy struck. The curbs here in Jordan are quite frankly crazy and completely uneven. Some are the normal 4 inches or so off the road, while most are in between 6 and 2 feet. Well, near Salma's house, the curbs were 2 feet high. As I was getting into Tobias's car, I misjudged (there are no street lamps either) and my foot completely twisted and I hit the curb with my foot and it really hurt. At first I thought that I had just really sprained my ankle. But after an hour my foot was swelling rather badly, wasn't reacting to pain meds and was turning a lovely black color. So despite it being rather late (around 12:00/12:30 am-hey it's Ramadan, everyone's awake) we decided to go to the local hospital. Luckily I literally live next to one! Unfortunately the emergency side of it is on the complete opposite end from me. So our landlord Anas drove us there while on his way to get someone from the airport.
After getting lovely x-rays (and trying to use my arabic--however they all spoke english and told me to just use that) and waiting a bit I got the bad news: it was broken. Worse, it was a really bad break and would need surgery to fix it. Apparently the 5th metatarsal is one of the most commonly broken bones, but normally it's just a minor fracture. I did a spiral fracture (well-break really) all through the bone. Normally when that happens two bones (at least) are broken and you need a more intensive surgery to fix the foot. So I was lucky in that I only broke the one bone, but incredibly unlucky in that I tripped and broke the bone bad enough for surgery. So...boo. Luckily they put me in a cast that night and told me to call the next day at the orthopedist's office to schedule surgery. What a fun way to be back in Jordan!
In the cast...booooooo
And the x-ray of the broken foot
More to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment