August 1st 2010 sitting in Qasid Building in Study Area:

Class finished so I'm sitting here writing about my weekend and possibly the week? This is why it is important to write daily and often so I can recollect eerything that has happened. Instead, I am left re-calling everything I remember. Luckily enough, I have a pretty good memory. This past weekend was alot of fun, Cameron and I went to... wait... Ok I'm going to start with this past week, because some memories have flooded my brain. Ok, last week was Cameron's birthday and also revolved around us trying to finalize the Saudi Visa. On his birthday we went and ate at an American Style Diner (like Johnny Rockets) and had a couple of Barbeque burgers. I bought a bottle of Arak at the local liquor store (which was surprisingly cheaper than the alcohol we saw at the Duty Free Shop at the Aqaba Port). Arak is a cleaer liquor made from fermented grapes and Anisse. It is basically like Absynth without the wormwood. The interesting thing about Arak is that it turns white when you add ice or water to it. It is the "official" alcoholic drink of Jordan and they call it the milk of the lions, haha. Now this is not surprising because, even though it was packaged in a beautiful blue bottle with gold foil labels, it tasted absolutely disgusting, haha. If you like liquorish then you might like it, but the taste was so strong I ended up just mixing it with Mountain Dew in the end... Ok I'm not proud of it. Anywho, it was a cultural experience and I can say I've tried it. I also got Cameron this pretty cool lighter made by Zippo that has a stricker (like a match) with a wick, and a magnesium strip on the side of it. You just strike it like a match, and you can use it multiple times. I thought it was pretty cool. They engraved his nickname "The Lion" in Arabic on ther side, and put the date. We also used some of the extra zippo lighter fluid and made fireballs that you can hold in your hand! I saw it on a youtube video a while back and wanted to try it, haha. Needless to say it worked just like the video and you can actually hold fire without getting seriously burned or injured. The only down side was that most of the hair on my knuckles were singed off, but that happens everytime we try to light the oven anyway. Ok, now I can continue with discussion about the weekend. Cameron and I took a taxi to Abdali Station and took a bus from there to Madaba for .75 Kirsh. The ride was only 30-45 minutes and when we arrived in Madaba there were cabs waiting as always. We took the cab to Mount Nebo and bought a water before entering the site. It was funny because there were these 2 guys selling water to Japanese tourists getting off of tour buses and they said "Water one dollar". I asked Cameron whether he thought it was one dinar or an actual dollar? We decided since he said dollar we would play up that we were going to pay him in dollars, but actually give him the equivalent in Kirsh, haha. This equates to about .75 Kirsh which was still more than back in town. Anyway, I said "one dollar?" in English and he said "yes" and then I switched to Arabic and said "this is the same as 75 kirsh" and handed him the coins. He was just surprised enough that we were able to take the water and make our way through the entrance before he could argue, haha. Mount Nebo was nice, we saw teh view points from the top, checked out some mosaics and pottery and had fun translating the Arabic because it was easier to figure out than the Latin enscryptions. The cab driver (Jacob) that took us to the top of the mountain gave us his phone number so that we could call him when we wanted to leave. However, Cameron's phone didn't work for some reason so we had to bum a ride from another taxi that was still waiting for some people at the top. We made it back to Amman easily enough. OH! I completely forgot a really funny story from before we boarded the bus back to Amman. So much for my memory this time around, haha. Anyway, the cab pulls up to the bus we need and we hop out and ask the driver when it was leaving. He said 5 minutes so we just hungout outside while we waited and spoke with some guys from Syria that were friendly enough. After a couple of minutes I was kind of hot so I went ahead and boarded the bus to get some shade. Cameron kept talking with them and he told me when we started going to Amman that the man had asked if he was "Jesus" meaning if he was with Jesus or a Christian. Cameron said he didn't use the Arabic word for Jesus. Oddly enough the word for spy is Jasoos in Arabic and Cameron thought they were asking if he was a spy, haha. Cameron of course assured him that he was nothing of the sort and didn't figure out until the guy made the sign of the cross what exactly he meant, haha. They were all laughing about it and I thought it was worth mentioning. According to my teacher it is a common stereotype that all American males in the Middle East are CIA. I think it is kind of the same way in America, except the opposite using the terrorist stereotype. This stems from the Media and Films and the only way these can be broken down are by communication, which can hopefully lead to understanding. However, even with all of that there are still crazies in the world and there is just not logical reasoning or rationalization with them. Anyway, after we returned to Amman we took a cab to Wasat al Ballad since we were kind of close anyway. We walked ALL over and probably saw every square inch of it. We went to the Roman Amphitheater and got in for free because there was a concert about to start and we climbed to the very top. Talk about a hike! My quads are still feeling it, haha. I studied pretty hard on Saturday since I had 2 quizzes today. Overall a really good week and weekend. I had some really good Lamb Mansaf and some fresh ground sugarcane juice. I got some compliments on my Arabic and had a great time. This week we'll find out for sure about Saudi Arabia, I'll try and find a place to mail stuff, and eat cheaply to stay on budget!