Taxi drivers are not helping my passive-aggressive nature

Hm, it's been a while.

I have to start out by saying that I feel a lot better now than I have over the past week. I think if I were given the option to get on a plane home, I would have seriously considered it. There are times when Amman just gets to me. Things I would take for granted, like getting home, just seem so much more difficult here. And I'm getting quite fed up with taxis.

On Mondays I have choir practice at 7:30 and by then it's dark here, of course. And as the sun goes down, the taxi drivers feel the need to become more irritating. The driver who drove me to choir kept trying to convince me to take my friends out to dinner at a restaurant by his house where he used to work and that we could come over to his house afterwards and get Arabic lessons and etc, etc, etc. The thing is, I don't talk to the drivers! I don't know why they feel the need to talk to me and tell me I must speak to people and practice colloquial and YADDA YADDA YADDA. Do they think I don't know this? Am I stupid to think I'll learn Arabic by talking to myself? I just don't want to speak with frikken creepy taxi drivers! I can't explain how much I appreciate a taxi driver that doesn't say this to me!

Well, I called my friend Katherine and talked to her on the phone for a while after texting her to say the driver was annoying and creepy. It helped a bit, although as soon as I got off the phone he asked if my friend was taking me out to dinner. Before I got out he said: "Are you sure you don't want to go to the restaurant?" I slammed the door.

The taxi coming home wasn't too bad, although I had the sneaking suspicion that he was trying to get more money out of me than he should have. The first taxi I had actually gotten in before that wasn't even using his meter and said he'd take me home for four dinars. I got out of that one pretty quickly! But the second driver kept asking me for directions, which at night is a bit difficult for me to give landmarks. I told him to turn right on a certain street that would take us straight to the Israeli embassy, but he missed it and turned right on the next street. He kept saying: "Oh, well, I can turn around if you want." But by then I'd had had enough and decided to get out at the main street that's down the hill from my house. Me, with my super sense of direction, figured I'd be able to get back to a road I knew and walk to my house from there. And I had the direction right! But every time I turned down a road that I hoped to connect me to something familiar, it was a dead end or a circle or it veered off in the wrong direction.

Needless to say, after half an hour, I was pretty spent and little nervous, since I was very obviously a girl and foreign and lost. My saviors, as always, were the guards at the Israeli embassy, who had a checkpoint near where I was lost, even though its actually quite far from the embassy as well as my house. Laughing, as usual, one of them hailed a taxi and gave him directions to my house and it was all downhill from there. I really don't know what I'd do without those guards!

The taxi to the gym the next day was a little better. I actually wove a story about how I was from the Philippines but I left to go study in the States. Now I was a senior and married to an American man and that we were going to have children in a couple years. The driver wasn't too bad, especially after he asked me if I was married and I said yes. He just gave me the spiel about learning colloquial and talking to native speakers, although it wasn't too obnoxious. The rest of his questions were very tame. He asked me if I was Christian and I said yes and he was actually very kind about it. He said he reads the Bible in addition to the Quran and basically any other book he can find. He was even curious about what it was like in the Philippines, which I didn't mind telling him about. He empathized with the Filipinos because they don't have many job opportunies within their country. He said I was smart for studying hard and coming to the States! As I left, he said I seemed very shy, but he hoped me and my "husband" a good life together with lots of children. Hahahahaha!

Well, of course not all taxi rides have been positive. I've only now cooled down about this enough to write about it, but I had just one of those taxi rides that actually made me want to gouge out the drivers eyes. I caught a taxi home from the gym and I asked the driver why he had not reset his meter when I got in. When I asked, he turned it completely off and said: "Ar-Rabia? Ill take you there for two dinars."

This is already exorbitant, because I live five minutes away from the gym and a taxi should cost about 0.75 JD. I told him no, I'd pay him a dinar. I should have gotten out, but we were driving through a tunnel and then a busy street, which he wouldn't have been able to pull over and let me out. By then, though, I was halfway to my house, and I thought I'd stick it out.

But it just so happened that I only had a five dinar bill on me. And, of course, he didn't have much change, only around 2.25 JD. Yes, this is when Vanessa does not hand over the five dinar bill, but I felt like I could not not pay. Needless to say, I called him a liar and a cheat, in both Arabic and Filipino. He was able to guess my ethnicity pretty easily. I hate that because I'm foreign people think I'm an idiot, because I'm Filipino I'm an idiot. He kept trying to tell me it was a good price. I should have just gotten out and not paid him. He deserves getting ripped off for wanting to take advantage of me. I hate people like that. A lot.

Well, it was an understatement to say I was angry. I was surprised the guards by the embassy did not stop me from the ruckus I was making. I sufficiently made my roommates jump as I slammed every door possible when I got inside.

I was not happy.

Anyways, I'm over it at least a little more than I was a few days ago. I heard from some people at home too which was enough to put a smile on my face. Little things that remind me that I'm not forgotten make it easier to get through everything here.

And tonight, I got my first taste of a real host family experience. My friend Maura who also goes to Georgetown lives with a Jordanian family. Her father is the coach for the Palestinian/Jordanian national soccer team. He had the air of knowing he was a hot-shot. For those of you who have seen "The Mummy," he looks ridiculously like Imhotep! His wife was very cute and soft-spoken and was busy with housework. They have a teeny tiny one-and-a-half-year-old who I think was premature and had other complications. She still fits in an infant baby-carrier!

Maura and I prepared our oral midterm for our media Arabic class which is coming up this week, which of course we only did for about forty-five minutes. Maura has told us stories that her host dad takes her studies very seriously, maybe more so than her! He was very curious about what we were planning to do and he helped us figure out what some words were in Arabic. Maura seemed so comfortable and part of the family. Her mom asked me why I asked to be put in an apartment. "Aren't you lonely?" she asked. I answered her that I was sometimes and she said next semester to be sure to live with a family. "You won't worry about everything in America anymore!" she said.

Mauras host parents don't speak English and they all talked in colloquial. It was awesome. And they were so in-tuned to each other and not at all awkward like I had though it would be. I have to admit I was a bit jealous.

Anyways, Maura and I came back to her house after a trip to the gym and her mother offered me a huge bowl of rice, a piece of pita bread and a sort of red soup with meat and potatoes and string beans. Ironically the whole thing is called fasooliya, which only means string beans. It was delicious. She tried to make me finish the whole portion she gave me but it was impossible. And afterwards, they loaded us into the car and drove really close to my house to get kunafa, which is gooey cheese under sweet, honeyed crumbs of bread and pistachios. It was also very delicious. And now I'm so full. Looool! They also drove me home too, which I appreciated immensely. One less taxi ride in my life!

The thing is my housing coordinator at CIEE told me that since I'm staying here for the year, I have the ability to choose which host family I want to live with next semester (I was already planning on living with a family). I feel an enormous amount of pressure to meet host families, but for the most part I only have the ability to meet families that host my friends. I hope somehow I'll be able to find the right family before my coordinator forces me to make a decision. I just don't like not having things settled for next semester yet.

That's all for now. Things are just... slow. They're getting better though.


Salaam,
Van

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Part of trip: Jordan: Take One

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