A Rainy Day

With just 10 days remaining until I return to the States for the holidays, my life has become very, very busy. Yesterday was probably the last real quiet day I'll get until I get to Florida. And it was wonderful. I slept in. Then brewed some coffee, cleaned up the kitchen, baked blueberry muffins and made cheesy scrambled eggs for breakfast. I may or may not have consumed the majority of the muffins. I spent the rest of the relaxing with a book, watched a tv episode, then headed off for choir rehearsal. Afterwards, I watched some football (and kept track of the Eagles game, which wasn't being shown, but they won!!!!) and saw the Dolphins beat the Patriots. Whodathunk?

Anyways, the concert starts on Wednesday. As in, the day after tomorrow. And I have no clue how it got to be December 7th. Where did the days go? It promises to be a long week, with more rehearsal tonight, tomorrow night, then 3 concerts in a row. We're also preparing for Bethany to leave (she leaves the day after I do), but because she's not coming back next semester, there are all these people she has to see and things she has to do before she leaves. We're doing a dinner with a bunch of the usual football crowd on Sunday, learning to make some Chinese food with some classmates on Wednesday (yes, right before the concert), visiting other classmates... Somewhere in there is school, eating, packing, and sleep, if we're lucky.

Today, however, looked like it wouldn't be too busy, so Bethany and I took the opportunity to get some shopping done. So we went off to the mall, through rain, got ripped off by the cab driver (he rigged his meter), then enjoyed a hot chai tea latte from Caribou. Ok, so I splurged a little. But it's a yucky day, and I rarely go to the mall, and I needed something hot and delicious. Turned out to be a great decision, because we spent close to an hour walking all over the mall, back and forth, looking for this store with a particular gift I had seen earlier for one of my sisters. We finally found it, thanks to Bethany, and then went to Al-Afgani, THE tourist shop. They've got all sorts of cool stuff. I somehow managed to avoid many tempting purchases, and only bought the gift I intended to buy. Pretty good for me. We rounded the evening off with fried chicken sandwiches from KFC, then got in a cab to go home.

About this cab. I have heaps upon heaps of creepy cab driver stories. I've been locked in cars, asked all sorts of inappropriate questions, had several proposals (including one guy that said "I have Jordan passport, you have US passport, our children will have US passport too! It's perfect!). So I'm used to sleazy guys. Our cab driver was pretty sleazy. He claimed to have 2 wives, in 2 different countries, one in France (apparently a drunk with a crazy mother), and an Arab wife here. He kept trying to ask our ages. I had a feeling he would ask about our marital statuses next, but we got out just in time. Far enough from our apartment that he couldn't possibly follow us home. The stories you hear in cabs these days...

Needless to say, it was a successful day. Now I get to go pick the local shop owner's brain about local idioms and sayings, and go sing for another couple hours. I quite enjoyed one of the sayings we learned in class today (literally, it means "the monkey, in the eye of his mother, is a gazelle.") :

القرد في عين أمه غزال

And I shall leave you with that.

Two Turkeys and a Wadi

A little over a year ago, I was invited to watch my neighbors kill a sheep and clean it out, in preparation for the Eid al-Adha. It's one of the most important holidays for Muslims, and it involves slaughtering sheep, goats, or camels to commemorate Allah providing a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his son. I was slightly traumatized by that experience, but luckily did not have to repeat it this year. Instead, we celebrated Eid al'shukur (holiday of thanks) - Thanksgiving.

This year, I had two Thanksgivings, both with turkey! (Last year, no turkey. It was too expensive.) The first, on Thursday afternoon, Bethany, Julia, and I went to the Haddad's, a large family Bethany knows partly from the States. They own some pretty big companies. There was a ton of amazing food, wine, and lots of really friendly people. We got all dressed up for the occasion - heels, nice clothes, make up, hair down... basically everything I avoid because of the extra attention it gets me. Thankfully, not a lot of people were out, being the first day of the Eid. There was some drooling though, to my amusement. Afterwards, Bethany and Julia went for another large meal with one of their teachers, and I went to see some German friends of mine.

Thanksgiving #2 (Friday) - a more relaxed occasion at the Schupp's house, where we go for football on Sunday nights. Julia, Bethany, and I were all supposed to bring a dish. Julia cooked hers earlier, but Bethany and I had to cook ours the morning of, in our ridiculously small kitchen. Turns out that having both of us in there trying to cook is really, really difficult. There's nowhere near enough room. I ended up mashing my potatoes on the floor in the hallway. Bethany made stuffing from scratch, I made sweet potatoes (with marshmallows!) from scratch, both recipes from the Pioneer Woman. I could hardly wait to eat those sweet potatoes... We decided it would be fun to dress up again, so Bethany

played with my hair a bit, we threw on some nicer clothes, then loaded all of our dishes into my laundry basket wrapped in towels and sweatshirts, and headed over to the Schupp's. There, we ate. A lot. There was turkey, salad, aubergine curry, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, rolls, green beans (also a Pioneer Woman recipe, made by Julia), and more. Oh, and homemade apple cider. Yum! We dove in like the starving students we are. The food was good, the company awesome. We had a quiz on how much we knew about the first Thanksgiving, most of us failed. Angie got the most correct, but handed the win to Julia, seeing as she was the hostess. I won't tell you what I got. We played Scattergories, I correctly identified the part of speech for "making" - it's a gerund, which was super exciting for me. I do not like grammar. Arabic grammar especially. But I guess it's paying off. (I also passed my final book test on Arabic grammar) Then there was more eating, dessert, and some super competitive Dutch blitz. The kids chose to watch Elf, and then I made my exit.

Friday night - my small group girls and myself came over to Janelle's (my co-leader) for a girl's night in. We talked, had some awesome taco soup and garlic bread, watched BBC's Persuasion (the actor who plays Captain Wentworth was pretty good-looking!), then threw a bunch of mattresses on the floor and went to bed. The next morning, we had pancakes. They were delicious. That afternoon, I went to a friend's house and helped them paint their apartment. I got lots of paint on me. It's unavoidable. I spent a couple hours on a rickety ladder edging the ceiling, had a couple scary moments where I was convinced I would fall off and die, and introduced my friends to some cool new music. And there were brownies.

We slept in on Sunday. I did homework. We cooked 3 full meals that day. This is a huge accomplishment for us. I made scrambled eggs with real bacon bits for breakfast. Uh-may-zing. Bethany and I shopped around for fresh produce for lunch, failed miserably, then made bruscetta from canned whole tomatoes, fresh basil, and italian bread, with a little melted cheese on top. It wasn't bad. Bethany made fajitas for dinner, also delicious. We went to football at the Schupp's, but left earlier than usual, because we had adventures planned for the next day.

Bethany, having never been to Petra before, finally got to go to Petra, as a day trip with Julia. They left around 6ish in the morning to catch a bus going down. From what I've heard, they really enjoyed it, except for the sore muscles and tired feet. They got back around 7 that night. I, on the other hand, had plans to go hiking in a wadi near the Dead Sea with Janelle, some classmates from Kelsey, and the youth pastor from church. We got pulled over 5 times by the police, 3 times on the way down, twice on the way back. And no, I wasn't driving. No tickets though, so no problem.

It was a 6 hour hike, and it was awesome. We climbed rocks and jumped off rocks, jumped back and forth over the creek, slid down hillsides, got wedged in between rocks, left a nice bit on skin on the rocks, and for some reason the boys really enjoyed throwing rocks at each other. There was a waterfall, and green growing things, and a somewhat hazy view of the Dead Sea and the hills on the other side. Today, I'm sore. My joints hurt. But it was totally worth it.

Coming up: another final, only 9 days of school left!, more choir rehearsals, a Christmas party, lots more homework, Christmas shopping, and getting ready to leave for winter break.

Click here for more photos from the weekend.