Hey everyone, I hope that you are all doing well and enjoying the winter that is taking hold. I personally went and played soccer in shorts and a tee shirt yesterday and it was glorious. This will be my last email because I am heading back to New York this Friday after my final exam on Thursday. I haven't done anything outside of Amman since I last wrote, so I thought that I would just give you some parting stories and a reflection. I want to start with a couple of things that I have learned after talking with some of [View Full Entry]

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Hey all, I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoyed my last entry. I am slowly winding down my time here and will probably only post one or two more times before I head back to the States. My studies are going well and I feel like I am really advancing in the language both in the Jordanian dialect and the Modern standard and apparently look confident enough wandering around on the street that I was asked for directions which was awesome. One of the main events that happened recently must have been a first in the history of Amman. [View Full Entry]

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope that you all had a great holiday and spent time with those you care about. Because I was unable to go home, I ate dinner at the house of a Lt. Col. in the Air force and it was amazing. I met him at the U.S. Embassy and asked him if he could help me talk to some people who work in the State Department and yesterday I got a call inviting me to Thanksgiving at his house. I had a great time with loads of food and the company was great. I was also able [View Full Entry]

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Marhaba kulukum! I hope that everyone is doing well and that your lives are fulfilling whatever you are doing. Mine is certainly feeling that way of late, a feeling which has definitely grown after I visited Petra this Thursday. Without further ado let me tell you about it. Petra was recently named one of the 7 wonders of the world on a new list that has been put out recently and before I came to Jordan it was the one place that I truly wanted to see. This was probably from my love of the movie "The Last Crusade" where one [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone, it has been a little while since I last posted because I thought I would give your eyes a break after writing a book about my Eid trip. Everything has been going well here and I just finished my midterm which only took a measly 3 and 1/2 hours to complete. Classes are going well and I feel like I am really getting a grasp on the language. I was in the French Cultural Center (where I take Amiyya classes) talking to one of my friends in Arabic and a group of Jordanians interrupted us to say that we [View Full Entry]

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Al-Salam alaykum (peace be upon you)! I hope that you all enjoyed my last entries even though I could compile them and make a novel they were so long. I am both trying to be informative and detail my journey so that is why I am going into detail on many of my experiences here. I hope that you are learning from the entries and feel free to email me about them, or you, it is hard to keep up with people when I am on the other side of the world. This entry is going to be a bit on [View Full Entry]

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I hope that everyone enjoyed the last two entries, or at least managed to get half-way through the first one which is a feat within itself. This section should shock and amazing you with the camels and snorkeling and Bedouin! Here it goes... Aqaba After we spent Tuesday night in Damascus Roger and I caught a bus back to Amman where we had a frustratingly easy time getting back into Jordan. We only spend 2 hours in Amman before leaving, just enough time to go home take a shower, send some emails, repack, and cook lunch (which I carried out with [View Full Entry]

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I hope that the last entry was informative and engaging. I just realized when I was looking at it that the entry itself is over 3,000 words which is something like 12 pages of double-spaced text but I just had a lot to talk about. This installment is going to be the shortest of the three because it is only dealing with my one day and night in Aleppo. Without further ado let us begin. After lying in bed sick for a day Roger and I decided that we experienced enough of that, willed ourselves better and set off the next [View Full Entry]

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This is the first and will be the longest section of a three-part section covering the Eid Break that I just got back from yesterday. This post will be on Damascus, the next one will be a short section on Aleppo and the final part is going to detail my trip to Aqaba and Wadi Rum. This is going to be a long entry because this was a packed trip and I don't have this amount of free time again so we went all out. Read it in segments or just look at the pictures, but enjoy. So now, onto Damascus...sort [View Full Entry]

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I am sending this out a bit early because I am about to go on my Eid break at the end of Ramadan and do some great traveling. I have about 7 days off so I am hopefully going to spend some time in Damascus and then either travel around the region there or come back and visit Petra and maybe Wadi Rum. This is going to be the special Islam edition of my blog entries, if you have no interest in Islam, sacred sites, or think "those people are devil worshipers!" (high pitched old lady voice) then this entry is [View Full Entry]

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