In 352 hours I will be on a plane to Washington, DC.
In 408 hours I will be on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany.
In 431 hours I will be on a plane to Amman, Jordan.
Or at least that's what I figure, without figuring out the time zone changes on my schedule, and by ignoring the inevitable flight delays. It's probably not exactly accurate, but nothing ever is.
And as the countdown to take-off has shifted from months, to weeks, to days, to hours, the frequency of my Google searching "Jordan," increases. I've tapped everything from "Jordanian amiya" to "public restrooms in Amman" into that search bar. I've read pages and pages of internet posts about anything and everything in Jordan, from greetings, to food, to the language. Lots and lots about the language. I read about it incessantly, usually while I should be doing something else, seeing as how I still have two finals looming over me.
And yet all the advice that is available seems to come in detached, impersonal form. The only signal I have that some of the forums I've read were written by humans, not by some travelling robots, is the occasional misspelling. Sometimes I'll flip through pages and pages of general tidbits before I can finally find a story, some sort of an anecdote to learn something about what it's like there. Obviously, a few tales can't sum up a country, a city, or even a neighborhood, but they do a much better job than the generalizations out there, so vague that they describe regions and continents, if not the whole world.
I always seem to find the best stories on blogs, travel blogs specifically. And as I read through the posts, it occurs to me that I need to write one. A travel blog, about my time in Jordan. I need somewhere to spill all this excitement beforehand, because randomly messaging my friends with my latest discovery about Jordan is probably not their idea of a good idea. Especially at 2 am. So, for the next two weeks, this blog becomes the dumping ground for everything that goes through my head about this trip. Be warned, but don't worry. It's just for two weeks.
And while I'm positive that free time is going to be scarce when I'm there, sometime between homework and meals and exploring, I figure I should find time to post. I need to keep my mother calm somehow, because if the only thing she can read about what's going on in Jordan while I'm gone is the news headlines, she'll go mad.
And once I'm home, an idea that seems so far off in the future I can't even fathom it, I figure I'll want to remember. I'm going to take pictures - ridiculous amounts of pictures - but that only does so much. If writing can help me remember the little stories, the day-to-day things that made me laugh, or one of what I assume to be many cases of language screw-ups, then it's worth it. And maybe, once I've written everything I could write about my time in Jordan, someone else will stumble upon it, and appreciate the fact that there are indeed stories out there on the internet, not just vague generalizations.
-Diana
In 408 hours I will be on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany.
In 431 hours I will be on a plane to Amman, Jordan.
Or at least that's what I figure, without figuring out the time zone changes on my schedule, and by ignoring the inevitable flight delays. It's probably not exactly accurate, but nothing ever is.
And as the countdown to take-off has shifted from months, to weeks, to days, to hours, the frequency of my Google searching "Jordan," increases. I've tapped everything from "Jordanian amiya" to "public restrooms in Amman" into that search bar. I've read pages and pages of internet posts about anything and everything in Jordan, from greetings, to food, to the language. Lots and lots about the language. I read about it incessantly, usually while I should be doing something else, seeing as how I still have two finals looming over me.
And yet all the advice that is available seems to come in detached, impersonal form. The only signal I have that some of the forums I've read were written by humans, not by some travelling robots, is the occasional misspelling. Sometimes I'll flip through pages and pages of general tidbits before I can finally find a story, some sort of an anecdote to learn something about what it's like there. Obviously, a few tales can't sum up a country, a city, or even a neighborhood, but they do a much better job than the generalizations out there, so vague that they describe regions and continents, if not the whole world.
I always seem to find the best stories on blogs, travel blogs specifically. And as I read through the posts, it occurs to me that I need to write one. A travel blog, about my time in Jordan. I need somewhere to spill all this excitement beforehand, because randomly messaging my friends with my latest discovery about Jordan is probably not their idea of a good idea. Especially at 2 am. So, for the next two weeks, this blog becomes the dumping ground for everything that goes through my head about this trip. Be warned, but don't worry. It's just for two weeks.
And while I'm positive that free time is going to be scarce when I'm there, sometime between homework and meals and exploring, I figure I should find time to post. I need to keep my mother calm somehow, because if the only thing she can read about what's going on in Jordan while I'm gone is the news headlines, she'll go mad.
And once I'm home, an idea that seems so far off in the future I can't even fathom it, I figure I'll want to remember. I'm going to take pictures - ridiculous amounts of pictures - but that only does so much. If writing can help me remember the little stories, the day-to-day things that made me laugh, or one of what I assume to be many cases of language screw-ups, then it's worth it. And maybe, once I've written everything I could write about my time in Jordan, someone else will stumble upon it, and appreciate the fact that there are indeed stories out there on the internet, not just vague generalizations.
-Diana
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