Big Jump

These past two months have been quite a whirlwind of change for me. I should start this entry by first announcing the most important decision I have made since I chose to join the Peace Corps.

I left.

I could go into every little detail that led me to my ultimate decision of leaving the Peace Corps after spending 13 months as a volunteer but then this entry would turn into a boring, negative, diary-like form of venting. Instead I am choosing to talk about what I've gained from this experience. Even the challenges have been an indispensable part of my journey. I am leaving a better, stronger, and more motivated and compassionate person than I was one year ago. And I am so incredibly grateful for that.

I will love this country forever. I will never forget the people here who I've come to love and who have touched my soul. I will never forget the joyful smiles on my students' faces. I will never forget the moment I began to understand and find true beauty in Islam. I will never forget the immeasurable kindness I have been treated with by the Jordanian people and others I've met from Iraq, Syria, and Egypt.

I have struggled and faced so many obstacles, I have laughed and cried, I have doubted myself and all the things I thought I knew about who I am. All of which have shaped me profoundly and I hope I will never let go of the remarkable changes that have occurred within my heart.

I was afraid that I would regret my decision because I was giving up. But I realized I wasn't giving up. I gave of myself, I took a chance, I contributed, but my time in the village was at its end. I couldn't justify staying there when there was nothing more I could do. Staying just to gain the recognition of completing the Peace Corps was not an acceptable excuse. What would that really do for me? I would spend a full year of my life doing something that would eventually make me unhappy and bitter towards a beautiful experience I've had.

It may come as a surprise that even though I left the Peace Corps I did not leave Jordan. I had my reasons for quitting the PC but I was not yet ready to leave this beautiful country.

In the end I will always follow my heart and this is where it's led me. I took a major leap of faith. I quit the PC and moved to Amman without guarantee of work, with complete chance of failure and it was one of the most exciting things I've ever done. Immediately I found a job teaching dance at a studio.

I've been living independently in Amman now for a little over a month. I love where I am living, I love my roommates, I love that I can dance again, I love speaking in arabic. I am happy here. For how long I wish to stay, I don't know. I just need to leave Jordan on my own terms and not be rushed out and practically deported with in 48 hours of my resignation like Peace Corps staff would have it. I still go back to my village to visit and I'm welcomed warmly. Volunteering will always be important to me and I'm looking forward to the next volunteer mission I can find and where it will lead me.

Since I left the PC I've been able to travel and do and see so many things in Jordan I never had the permission or time to do while being a volunteer. It feels absolutely amazing to be in control of my own life again. Another blog post to come about  my incredible adventures in Petra, Wadi Rum, Jerusalem, Bethleham and Tel Aviv.

I also got my first visitor! My friend Jana from college stopped over in Jordan while on her very own backpacking adventure. I couldn't have had a better travel buddy. 

Some pictures from this past month:

 

 Operation Smile Mission in Amman

This sweet little girl wanted her nails painted after she came out of surgery.

                                                                  Exploring Petra

 

Petra By Night

                                                                       Wadi Rum

            Road trip to the Desert Castles in the East

My little host brothers trying to give me a massage. (aka get me into a good tickling position)

Jerusalem

The spot where baby Jesus was claimed to have been born in Bethlehem (before this church was built around it of course)

Bethlehem

And more MANSAF!!

My Jordanian Family

I just spent a wonderful weekend visiting my Host Family in Mansheiya, a village near Mafraq city. It was very refreshing and exactly what I needed. My first 10 weeks in Jordan were spent living with this wonderful family. I try to visit as often as I can because they truly are my family here in Jordan. I now live alone in a village in the Irbid region and though I feel integrated and welcomed here, I don't feel a sense of family or closeness with anyone in my village like I did when I lived in Mansheiya.

My host family is made up of Ibrahiem, age 37 and Yasmeen, age 30 and their four sons; Belal, Derar, Mohammad and Obada. That is only mentioning the immediate family. In Jordan it is typical for the sons to live very close to their parents after they marry. Many sons will even build on top of their parent's homes to move upstairs with their new wife. That explains why Ibrahiem's many brothers live downstairs and on either side of him with their large families. One day Ibrahiem's sons will grow up, marry and probably build on top of their house or around it to stay near the family. The family dynamics here are like nothing I could have imagined before I was immersed into the biggest family I have ever known. Even Ibrahiem's sisters live close by with their husbands since everyone in the village is from the same tribe, carrying the same name and basically all related in some fashion.

All of the women in the family (Ibrahiem's sisters and the wives of his brothers) spend their time together chatting, drinking tea and cooking. What was once overwhelming for me to sit in a small room with 10-15 women is now very normal. And I can't forget all of these women's children who are constantly running in and out of the house. It is not unusual to count over 30 people in one room on any given day; all of the children playing and all of the women sitting on farshas, which are floor cushions that line the walls of the visiting rooms. I'm a pro at remembering names after having to learn the names of the entire Stayfat tribe in only a few days. Luckily the majority of the boys are either named Mohammad or Ahmad.

Every single person I have met in this absurdly large family has been so warm, welcoming and kind to me. Not a minute has passed that I have not felt like I'm a member of their family. They hassle me to come and visit them every single weekend as it is normal for a family member who lives and works away from the home to return every weekend.

On Friday I spent hours in the kitchen with Yasmeen learning how to make Mansaf, the national dish of Jordan and the most delicious thing I've ever had. Now I can check that off my Jordan bucket list. Mansaf is a rice dish with a salty yogurt sauce, sprinkled with toasted almonds and cilantro and served with chicken or lamb. Meals are eaten on the floor with the main dish on one large platter that everyone eats from. Drinks are always served after the meal, which I'm still not quite used to. I don't know how they don't feel thirsty while they're eating.

It is a great honor in Jordan to feed your guest so well that they gain weight so I shouldn't have been surprised that my host family weighed me when I first moved in with them and weighed me again before I left to make sure they did their job, which they did very well indeed! It is also normal to tell someone they look fat or skinny, no judgement or cruelty intended. I have heard many times that I am looking rather fat, usually accompanied with an approving look. This weekend my host family seemed very unhappy that I looked too skinny. I was forced to eat dinner twice. 

Over the weekend I also met all of Yasmeen's family. My host mother Yasmeen is from Syria and recently her entire family escaped from Syria and moved to Mansheiya with the help of Ibrahiem and his family. Her parents, her Uncles and Aunts, her cousins, her brother and 6 sister's along with their spouses and children all fled Syria to take refuge in Jordan. This large family left everything behind and they are now living in a cramped, bare house with few belongings. I could see the sadness in their eyes when they mentioned Syria but they only expressed their gratitude to God and the people in Mansheiya for delivering them to safety. I can't imagine the hardships they're experiencing but I am grateful they are with Yasmeen in Mansheiya and not trapped in the refugee camps like so many other Syrians or even worse, still trapped in Syria.

me, my blog, why peace corps?

Nearly a year ago I embarked on a grand adventure to the beautiful country of Jordan. A small country located north of Saudi Arabia, south of Syria and sandwiched between Israel and Iraq. With extremely limited knowledge about Jordan and its culture I decided to make a 2 year commitment to live and work there as a Peace Corps volunteer in about the same amount of time it takes me to pick out a brand of shampoo. Why did I decide to move to Jordan? I still have not found a definite answer to that question. Since I have moved here I have been challenged in more ways than I can even begin to describe to myself. I have also just begun to realize the profound changes this experience has ignited in me.

I intended to blog about my life in Jordan from the moment I arrived, but nearly a year later and I am now posting my very first blog entry. I think I refrained from this because until recently my life could be described as a whirlwind of inconsistent happiness, loneliness, excitement, and several other competing emotions that made me constantly ask myself, "what am I doing here?" The past 3 months of my service have been truly extraordinary and all the pieces seem to finally be falling into place. I am now more than ready and eager to share my stories and experiences with my loved ones and anyone else who dares to explore the unknown world and may learn something from my words.

I can easily say that the idea of joining the Peace Corps took root in me when I traveled to Thailand at the age of 19. A short volunteer project, which involved planting trees (lots and lots of them) and working with rescued elephants gave my life more meaning than I had ever experienced before. For the first time I actually believed that I could make a positive difference in the world, as small as it may be. Other changes also took root in me on that trip to Thailand; I went from nearly crying when I saw a tiny spider to shooing away a spider the size of my head (or killing one if it came to that), I went from fearing heights to being the first to sign up for bungy jumping in the middle of the Thai jungle. I learned so much about a culture I once knew nothing about and I wanted to know more about the world, I wanted to experience more; it became a craving that never went away. I began to challenge my own belief that a happy life was supposed to go: college, job, marriage, kids. Leaving Thailand and returning to my far too systematic and sometimes materialistic life was extremely hard for me. But I made the most important decision I could; I decided to stop fearing the world and be in it.

The title of my blog is inspired by the quote, "The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page" by Augustine of Hippo or St. Augustine. I read these words a long time ago and thought what a perfect analogy this is and how completely true. My entire life I had lived in a little bubble so utterly unaware of all that the world possesses until I began to travel. Just before I returned to Jordan from a visit back home in Oregon a very close friend of mine gave me a journal. Throughout this journal she wrote quotes about traveling and quotes that reminded her of me on the tops of the pages. I flipped to one page and found this very quote once again. The words resonated with me and I began to visualize this book. I mentally filled in the pages with my most cherished memories and most moving experiences from my travels and then I began to fill more pages with images of India and Egypt, of Hungary and Cambodia, of places I long to see. Joyously, I thought to myself, I intend to read as many pages of this World as I can.