How Many People Can Say That They Have a Wonder of the World in Their Backyard?

Hey!!!!!!!!!

It's my birthday! And as luck would have it, I get to check my email, which is what i really wanted =]

Unfortunately, it's taking FOREVER to upload photos..... So that may have to wait a bit...



Here's my updates for the few days:

Friday, 2 May 2008 11:12 Jordan time (Ten hours ahead of Cali)

Right now I’m driving through Jordan on the way to Petra. Jordan reminds me somewhat of Mexico—Dry, dusty, and abandoned buildings with graffiti. The only difference is that everything is in Arabic instead of Spanish. People just walk along or on the main highway. You have to wonder where they’re going or where they came from or how they ended up there, especially when they’re just standing there, far from any village. There are also a lot of shepherds that we’ve seen out on the land along the highway, strolling with a herd of little brown and black goats. I also saw someone driving a herd of camels. I found that intensely amusing =]

The landscape here is basically flat and brown, with a scatterings of scrub bush. Around villages there are usually trees that have been planted. It kinda looks like Nevada, actually. Everything is built out of cinderblock and cement and there are the occasional buildings that are painted in very bright greens, blues, and pink. But mostly everything is whitewashed, which has faded to grey or brown or yellow and looks like it’s in serious need of a new paint job. Half-collapsed walls mark some property. Stores had open fronts and hand painted signs above the enterance. We saw the butchered bodies of sheep hung out front, wrapped in plastic bags. Laundry strung out on lines behind the buildings. Every village we drove by had at least one mosque, sometimes two or three. Small square buildings with the minerat from where the call to prayer is issued, and the little alcove that juts out on the exterior that points the direction to Meccca so they know which direction to pray.

The sky is blue and absolutely cloudless, though there is a haze that dulls the color somewhat. The weather is surprisingly cool, only about 65 or 70 degrees. Inshallah, it will stay that way for awhile.

A couple of the guys bought kaffiyahs (traditional Jordanian headdress) from the gift store in the hotel. They look awesome. I’m going to get one, though women don’t wear them. I think it’d just be fun to have.

We stopped at this little rest stop place, and I went in with a few other people. I came out of the bathroom and walked over to the little store. One of TA’s, Scott (who I went on survey with up in Idaho last year) came over and stood by me. "You were being followed, so I decided to follow you so they wouldn’t" he told me. Then he added that the whole room just focused on me when I came over. "It was really interesting" he commented. It would have happened to any American women, but I know I get especially weird looks for being so tall. I definitely did in India.

We just got off the main highway, and we’re driving along a road that’s a bit more windy. The area is a lot more hilly. Right now we’re passing through a fairly large town. It’s actually fairly pretty and green, especially compared to what we’ve been driving through. There are actual stores and lots of houses. The Jordanian flag is everywhere. Black, white and green stripes with a red triangle piercing them from the side. And there are seriously goats everywhere. We passed an old crumbling building that was missing it’s roof, and it was being used as a goat pen. And camels. And the occasional donkey or two.

Apperantly we’re in the Petra area…. It sure doesn’t look like it—It’s too green. But what would I know? It’s not like I’ve ever been here. And the only pictures I’ve seen of Petra have been of the actual city, not the area surrounding it.

Okay, we just summited the hills, and it’s definitely desert on the other side. We’re on an impossibly curvy and steep road… In a huge bus… with no seatbelts. Makes me slightly nervous, but I’m going to trust that the driver has done this many times… Kinda like how I just trusted the drivers in India to not kill us…
Okay, I’m done for now. More later!


Later (Fri. 02 May 2008)—8:45 PM
We arrived safe and sound at our house! It’s seriously HUGE—Three stories, and like 7 bedrooms on each floor. We take up the top two floors, while the host family lives on the first. Most the girls are on the third floor, but me and three other lucky girls have one of the bedrooms here on the second floor with all the guys. Ours is right off the main area. There are four single beds and a tiny little locker closet thing. We’re just going to use it to store our valubles and toiletry stuff, since there’s not room for much else. The main area is a big room with a kitchen and a huge long table where we eat. Earlier this afternoon, right before lunch, we were all playing card games like Phase Ten and Skip-Bo and Egyptian Ratscrew. Super fun =]

Lunch was absolutely AMAZING!!!! It was chicken mixed in this huge thing of yellow rice and califlower, eggplant, green peppers and potatoes. It was seriously some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. It also helped that we were all starving. We didn’t realize we’d be on our own for about 24 hours when it came to food, and that we wouldn’t really have a grocery store to go to. So most of us had had a granola bar for breakfast, on top of the granola bar we had for dinner the night before. I gave in and bought a KitKat, even though it was ridiculously expensive ($JD 1). So we all ate our share and more when lunch came around. There were stll leftovers though—in keeping with Middle Eastern tradition, our cooks made more food than we could eat.

Speaking of whom, our cooks are absolutely wonderful. They are the daughters of the guy who owns the house. Their names are Badhri, Fatima, and Farah. Badhri and Fatima are hilarious. I told them I could speak Arabic and they were absolutely delighted! And they both speak and understand the Egyptian dialect (which is what we learned in school… The people in Amman had a hard time understanding me). It was funny, when they first realized I could speak Egyptian, they both yelled "Izzayik!!" Which is "how are you". In Jordanian, they say "Kaif halik". Then they started laughing. Badhri was cracking jokes right and left. They both teased the three boys endlessly when they couldn’t open the door to the roof, and Fatima, who is probably just over 5 feet and fairly slender, opened it with one hand. It was hilarious. But it was really fun speaking to them.

I’m surprised how not nervous I am to speak to them, because I know last year I would have been too shy and unconfident. But I was trying to say everything I could in Arabic, and they would offer helpful tips or correct me with conjugations. I know to be fluent in a language, you have to know the proper grammar, but I really think that what you need to do is learn the basic grammar, and then just a ton of vocab, because once you start talking to people, you figure out the grammar more. It’s just like how little babies learn English. They learn words and then hear other people using them and figure out from example what’s proper and what’s not. So I really need to brush up on my vocab so I can talk to them more. I’m really excited to improve my Arabic =]

After lunch, a few of us took a little stroll up the street into the village. We definitely got stared at. All the little kids like to wave at us and say "Hello! Hello! What’s your name?". They always look really surprised and suddenly shy when I speak to them in Arabic. We saw this donkey just suddenly take off across the street, braying loudly. We joked that it was his signal for "Donkey crossing!" And he really trotted! It was absolutely hilarious because it was way random.
When we got back, we all just laid down on our beds… And we were all asleep within minutes. I was planning on reading or something, but I guess my body had other ideas. I kept drifting in and out because of the unfamiliar sounds like kids yelling and donkeys braying and people working in the kitchen.

We were awoken for dinner, which was really just pita and things to put on it, like hummus and falafel (which I LOVE!). It was honestly the best falafel I’ve ever had… Probably because it was real falafel, not the Pita Pit type. But I was still full from lunch, so I didn’t have that much. A lot of people didn’t really like the falafel, so they gave me theirs. I was happy to receive them =]
And now we’re all basically chillin. Some girls are watching a movie, I think I’m going to unpack a bit and read.

Oh, I went up on the roof just after dinner. You can see the stars soooo well out here. And Wadi Musa up on the hill away from us looked so pretty with all its lights. When it gets slightly warmer we want to sleep up there (Yes, believe it or not, it’s actually chilly. I had my sweatshirt on tonight).

I really like it here. I feel very comfortable, probably because everyone is so friendly. It’s dusty and everything looks like it’s still under construction, but it’s not bad at all. It reminds me of a mix between Indian and Mexico, except cleaner than both.

Tomorrow we’re setting up the labs here and maybe going down to the sight. We’re probably going to start digging on Monday because Dr. Johnson has to go back up to the airport on Sunday to get a bunch of equipment that customs confiscated, saying they had to register it. Inshallah, they’ll get it, because we can’t dig without it. But until then, we basically have free time here. Hopefully we’ll get up to town to internet soon. I guess you’ll all know when I do, because this will be filled with a week’s worth of posts. I promise I won’t make them all this long… There’s just so much that I’m seeing and want to share! I guess you don’t have to read it all if you don’t want to… but I hope you do =]


Sat. 03 May 2008—8:21 pm
Today was quite the exciting, and long, day. We were up at 5:30, even though breakfast wasn’t until 7. Stupid jetlag. After breakfast, we hauled up a bunch of gear out of the "cave", as the underground storage unit is called, and semi set up our lab upstairs. Then we had a bit of free time, during which time I read a bit a bit. At 10:30 we had some fun with rocks, and trying to find faces etched into them (All part of Dr. Johnson’s kinda wacky research….). Then we had more free time until lunch at 1:30, so I went up on the roof to do my readings for this class. I got a wee bit pink from being out in the sun for almost an hour with no sunscreen… But it felt so nice. The weather here is absolutely gorgeous right now.

After lunch, Katie, Krystyna, Jessica and I explored the village a bit more. Katie and I had fun talking to all the little kids (since we both speak Arabic). We got a little lost and wound up on a dead end across the gully from our house. The man who lived in the house right there invited us in for tea, but we told him "Manashrubish shai besubbub deenna" (We don’t drink tea because of our religion). But he insisted we come in and have a drink anyway. He was there with his wife and two little kids and spoke very good English… So we did. It’s an Arabic custom to greet guests of any type with a drink and to sit and chat a bit, and it’s fairly rude to refuse. We ended up sitting out of his front porch (which was very pretty) sipping Pepsi while he drank his coffee and we talked about what we were doing in Petra and his little two year old daughter shyly looked at us from behind her father. It was a fun cultural experience, I must say. We left and crossed the gully to our house. We started talking to three little girls out in front—Nikra, Rasul, and Raha—and found out they’re members of the family who we’re renting the house from, and live on the first floor. They were absolutely darling, and didn’t speak any English. But they were really easy to understand! And we just chatted away for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

At 3:30 we hiked down to look at the site…. Except that Johnson forgot where it was, exactly. So we ended up just exploring the wadi and playing in all these amazing little tombs that no tourist would ever see. While hiking down there, we ran into some Bedouin boys on their donkeys, and they gave a few of us a ride. But mostly we passed the time going from tomb to tomb and climbing all up and down the rock face while Johnson looked for the tomb. He ended up finding it, but we didn’t go look at it. Instead we went to this really large tomb up on the top of the hill. The area out in front is the second site we’re going to excavate. Then we hiked home… Ugh. I didn’t realize how far down the mountain we had come until we hiked straight back up it. And it’s not like we were on a path. It very much reminded me of surveying up in Idaho, where we would just hike off into the wilderness, forging our own paths.

When I got back to the house, three other little girls came over to talk to me. They told me and Courtney (who was with me) that we were very pretty =] We talked about our names, our ages, where we lived and where they went to school, how pretty her hijab was, where I could buy one ("2 dinar!"), and how tired I was. We said good bye and began walking away, and they ran back over to ask me something. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand what they were saying. I think they were asking me to have tea with them…. But I just told them "Mafahimish, esif!" (I don’t understand, sorry!). They tried again and again, with many a hand gesture, but to no avail. They looked slightly disappointed, but I told them "Hashufkum!" (I’ll see you!).

I took off my boots, changed into clean clothes, and just laid on my bed until dinner (which I ate very fast). Then I took my first shower here…

We have no hot water… And the shower is basically a heavy drizzle. But it’s better than nothing! I was shivering the entire time, and I still kinda smell like donkey and goat crap. But at least I feel clean =]

Brittany, Dr. Neilson (Glenna), and I are going to the store with Badhria soon. Then it’s definitely bedtime.

Tomorrow we aren’t doing anything because Johnson and the TA’s are going back up to Amman to try and get some lost luggage and the confiscated equipment. It’s also my birthday. We’ll see if anything cool ends up happening. Maybe I’ll walk into town and use the internet =]





And as you can see, I did get to use the internet! I hope you all are doing well. Send me an email! ashley.wilk@yahoo.com