Tawjihi Results Keeping You Up At Night?

Jordanian authorities confiscate hundreds of driving licences

The celebration was so raucous, Bob could hear it all the way from Washington DC! (Well, only because he streams Jordanian radio at work!)

Like the Germans, Swiss, Chinese and many others, Jordanians (and Saudis, Egyptians and most other Arabs) take a comprehensive school-leaving exam called the Tawjihi. Like A-levels or SAT subject tests, they take an exam in every school subject: English, Math, Geography, Religion, Chemistry, Computer Science, etc. The results not only determine whether a student can study at university, they also determine what subjects they're permitted to study. The exams were mid-June, and students have been waiting on pins and needles ever since to get their results, which were announced on national television Wednesday and Thursday nights. Wednesday night the general scores were released, and Thursday the detailed subject scores.

As a result, there were fireworks on every side of my house, cars circling the neighborhood honking repeatedly, and shouting in the street. It was so loud that I kept having to pause my DVD because I couldn't hear the TV over the neighbors' celebrations.

On the other hand, I have to say that fireworks are an improvement over the previously preferred method of celebration. I heard recently that fireworks were legalized about a decade ago in Jordan in an attempt to reduce the use of celebratory gunshots at weddings and other gatherings. Fireworks seem far safer!

Walk Jordan, Clean Orjan

or, Was She Just Speaking Arabic?

Orjan, Ajlun, Jordan

Two days ago, I was in a terrible quandry. I had paid my money to go with my supervisor Nina on an overnight trip to Dana Nature Preserve with the Friends Of Archaeology and Heritage (FOAH); it's a trip I was really excited about, because it's complicated to get to Dana without having your own car and camping gear. Then I found out that Walking Jordan was going to the Orjan Soap House, which I've been wanting to see since Tareef's trip to Wadi Feynan Eco Lodge, and even moreso after reading in the Jordan Times last Friday about the new Calligraphy Centre and the Orjan Soap House. So I wavered between pleased and disappointed when the FOAH trip was cancelled, and I was able to go on the Ajlun hike with Walk Jordan. I even talked Jad into going along and taking fabulous pictures (even if I tried to make him think it was his idea...)!

From Orjan Soap House

I've been to Orjan before. My friend Betsy was a Peace Corps Volunteer there, and I went and visited her one weekend. I have very fond memories of the visit. We were invited to dinner at her colleague's house, a geography teacher from the Haddad family, where I had the best, moistest, most tender chicken of my Peace Corps days. We also visited her neighbor, and I distinctly remember her daughter, who was mentally and/or emotionally handicapped and is usually terrified of strangers, but came right into the sitting room and sat down beside me almost as soon as I arrived. (Perhaps, as Karla did years ago, she took one look at me and thought, Now, there's someone who won't reject me!) Her brother absolutely adored Betsy, and brought us the geography book Betsy had brought him from America to show us what he had learned.

From Orjan Soap House

On this trip, we started at the Orjan Soap House, which has a gorgeous collection of olive oil soaps made from all local products. Then Dr. Ramzi handed out black plastic trashbags and plastic gloves, and we set off down the trail. We filled at least two dozen trash bags with bottles, tissues, potato chip bags and other trash, and that was just what was lying right along the roadside! It's a terrible shame, really. Orjan is a beautiful little valley, full of figs, plums, apples, almonds, and fat, gnarled olive trees known locally as "Roman olives," dating back to Byzantine days and before. When my students in the village asked me, as they often did, "Is Jordan beautiful?" I would say wholeheartedly yes. But when my students would finish their potato chips and throw the bag on the ground, I would say, "How is Jordan beautiful when the whole country is one big trash can?" It was amazing to find that, even after we had collected all that trash, we stopped to rest under an enormous old tree, and when we got up to go to lunch in local homes, members of our own group left soda cans and candy wrappers right there on the ground behind them. Oh, Jordan! Sometimes you frustrate me!

From Orjan Soap House

Where are you from?

About half the people on this trip were old friends from Tareef - Bassem, Ahmed and his kids, Salah, Rasha, Moayad and Taymour whose photos I'm constantly stealing, Nara who will soon be my roommate, etc - but there were also many people I'd never seen before. There was a predictable mix of English and Arabic, however, and I was no exception. Jad is, by his own admission, selfishly determined to practice his English with me, and I understand the urge to take advantage of a native speaking friend ... plus, it's just easier for me. Rasha would walk past us and, as usual, look me right in the eye and demand, "3arabi! 3arabi! [Arabic! Arabic!]" which never fails to delight me. And, as usual, I got the chance to eavesdrop on plenty of Arabic conversations, which is a treat for me, as I am usually surrounded by English. And several people got the story, from me or one of my Tareef friends, of how I had come to Jordan, how I'd acquired my Arabic, and what I'm doing here now. One such explanation was particularly fun:

I was making arrangements with Nara to come and see the apartment before she moves in on the 1st, and because she'd been insisting all day on speaking Arabic and not English (and her Arabic is amazingly improved since we first met!), I also spoke to her in Arabic. And as we were making our arrangements, I heard a voice behind my shoulder say (in Arabic), "Is she speaking Arabic?"
I smiled as Rasha replied for me, "Of course! She speaks Arabic very well!"
"But, she speaks English, so I thought-"
Now I interjected, with a grin to soften the sarcasm, "So everyone who speaks English doesn't speak Arabic?"
"No, but your accent.... Where are you from?"
And before I could respond, Jad jumped in. "She's from Bleela! She's a real Jordanian! Her mother's American, right, Maryah? But she's Jordanian." And for a few minutes, this poor guy at my shoulder couldn't figure out whether to believe Jad or not. I just grinned, wondering where this would go. After all, Jad hadn't said anything untrue about my parentage; it was merely misleading. (When I was in Egypt, I did manage to convince some people that my father was Jordanian and I was a native speaker of Arabic, so I wondered if it would work in Jordan proper.)
But Rasha took pity on the poor guy and explained that I was not Jordanian at all, I'd just lived here for awhile.

From Orjan Soap House

Keri, the Dead Sea, and good ole Mohammad Naser

Dead Sea Panorama, Jordan

From Keri Goes Biking

This afternoon, my roommate from last summer, Keri, joined Tareef for a Panorama Sunset Ride from Madaba towards the Dead Sea. She's a much better cyclist than I, especially since I had the flu this week, but I was pretty pleased with how well I did. This was my second time on this route since my month in Budapest, and the last time I did this route was disastrous. I even had to resort to the bus! But this time I walked less than on any of my half dozen trips down this road.

It was also wonderful to watch the sun set and chat with Keri, about what we're both doing with our lives, reminiscing about Peace Corps, and dreaming about the future. Not to mention catching up on the life of one Mohammad Naser. One day last summer, it occurred to me that I knew someone other than Keri at the University of Arizona - Tucson. My Peace Corps TEFL trainer, Mohammad Naser, had gotten a Fulbright to study there mid-way through my time in Peace Corps. I mentioned him to Keri, but she didn't know him. Since then, however, she's taken 3ammiyya classes with him, and it was interesting to hear what he's been doing. He's married with a very small child, still working on his PhD, and was recently given an award by the university for his workshops on non-violence. I think that's the kind of role that would really suit him. I dredged up some of my most memorable stories of Mohammad, and it was fascinating to think back to how lost and timid I was then, compared to being Kitty's "Jordan guru" now!

The Amman Party Circuit

It's been a rash of parties around here.

From Sam and Ester's Wedding

Thursday night, a couple friends of mine got married in a fascinatingly multi-cultural wedding. Ester is Czechoslovakian (literally ... one parent Czech, the other Slovak!), currently lives in Switzerland with her mother and her mother's partner and his son, and has also lived in Germany. Her friends and family came from all those countries. Sameh is Palestinian-Jordanian, but he and his brother lived in Canada for years, so his brother and a bunch of their friends came from Canada. And I've known them both for almost a year, and know a lot of his cousins and aunts and uncles, so it was a fun gathering. I also met Ester's mother and her partner at Sam and Ester's engagement party, and it was great to see them again ... and to practice my German! As I told Koni, aside from a little bit in Hungary, I think the last time I really spoke German was at that engagement party. Now I not only had Koni, his sons, the girlfriend of one of them, and Ester's mom to speak High German to, but also some other Swiss women who got a real kick out of my Baernduutsch and spoke Swiss German with me. That was a rare treat, indeed!

Friday night I had a very nice birthday party at my place - equally multicultural, with Heba bringing along her UN friends, my roommate Keri from last summer who had a great time practicing her Azeri with Darius from the UN, the French girl who's subletting from us this summer, some Jordanian friends, some American friends, my Scottish co-worker and her Jordanian boyfriend.... And a number of those people also went to dinner with me last night for a nice, juicy, fat USDA steak.... Yum! If only there'd been pie....

Then there was a party on Saturday night at Sameh's cousin's new husband's house that I wasn't going to go to, until I found out that one of my Peace Corps friends was going to be there. (He's also basically my cousin, since he lived with and was adopted by the same Bani Hassan tribe that I did.) Andy's teaching Arab kids in Nazareth in Israel, and I've been trying to catch him in Amman every time he's been here recently, with no luck until this past evening. But at this point, he'll be in Jordan pretty much until his school year starts in Israel, so I should be seeing a lot more of him. In fact, he converted to Islam and got married this week to a Jordanian girl he started dating in Peace Corps. Anyway, it was great fun to catch up with him, and watch him quizzing all his Peace Corps Language and Culture Facilitators (or LCFs for short) on just what he was supposed to do the next day to get married.... I'm looking forward to meeting his beautiful wife this weekend! Andy is an amazing photographer, and his pictures of Noureen are just incredible!

I don't know how I ended up, for once in my life, in the in-crowd, but it's quite fun!

A New Friday Ritual

Amman, Jordan

As the summer heats up, I find it harder and harder to see myself on a bike in the late morning sun. I'm not alone, it seems, as Tareef has begun offering more sunset bike rides, departing at 3pm as the day is beginning to cool off. This leaves my Friday mornings free, and the timing couldn't be better, because the summer brings a dramatic rise in Friday morning offerings.

I could go to the Friday morning flea market in Abdali, and that's on the agenda for next week, as I'd love to have some new clothes for summer but can't bear to spend much money.

From Fridays

There's always Friday breakfast at Wild Jordan and Books@Cafe, though, and now I'm free to indulge in three courses of breakfast deliciousness, sweetened with the delightful company of my best girlfriends (last Friday Emily, this Friday Heba, and maybe Keri next Friday). Not to mention, of course, that the views of East Amman are hard to beat. While Amman is quite gritty at the street level, from above it can be quite a stunning landscape of pueblo-like tiers of block houses, and occasional bursts of green like the Darat al-Funuun garden.

From Fridays

Then there's Suq Jara, where I spent far too much money this last Friday buying handmade goods at the booths of local artists. A creation of the neighboring Jordan River Foundation, Suq Jara is open every Friday all summer, offering not only art, crafts and jewelry galore, but musical and theatre performances, hookah smoking, and carnival-type food. Heba and I had the most delicious watermelon slushies on Friday.

I'm looking forward to more Fridays like this as the summer goes on!

Money, Money, Money!

Marj al-Hamam, Jordan

The Managing Director has been fretting and fussing over money and clients. Just as world economies were tanking, we were trying to open a new business. As the daughter of not one but two small business owners, it has been fascinating for me to watch this big business unfold. I know that a huge amount of money must be poured into a new business: investment in overhead, staff, marketing and training. In opening a school, you must also invest in a lot of "disposable" assets like books, paper and other materials for students.

We're very fortunate that the CEO knows this about business, is convinced of both the need and the market for what Bell can offer, and is willing and able to invest a great deal without much return. In fact, as I was discussing with colleagues recently, I don't think his businesses are really about money at all. Of course profit is a motivator, but I think he has a very strong, progressive vision about the future of Jordan and the role progressive ideas of education have to play in that future. Despite the many bumps and growing pains we continue to encounter, I believe that we're off to a promising start on a bright future.

Nevertheless, at present we are hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, and the CFO is frantic. It's his job to be frantic, of course. He's supposed to make the books balance, and Bell is seriously upsetting that balance. For us, it means we're tightening our belts everywhere, and the strain is starting to show on the staff. I know I'm feeling it!

Still, things are looking up. Our Young Learners program has been a huge success, with about 4 times as many students as our maximum projections. I spent most of the first day of the program calling every English teacher I know in Amman (which is many, fortunately!), and having them call all their friends, to find 7 more teachers for the second day of classes. We are also beginning to sign more big corporate clients, and there's beginning to be talk of making a million by New Years ... talk that doesn't seem too terribly over-optimistic! The students we have keep re-enrolling, and say very complimentary things about us when they do. I'm becoming quite fond of our corporate students, even when their companies can make our administrative duties frustrating, because corporate students have such a dedication to really learning. They need English, now more than ever to keep their nice corporate jobs, and for the most part they're willing to do almost any silly game or activity I've asked them to do in the classroom.

It's been incredibly exciting to see this place open and grow, even as it's been frustrating in other ways.