Reasons to Write - Part 2

When I started this blog exactly one year ago (almost), my first post was titled "Reasons to Write." And one year ago, I said that I wanted this blog to be a way for me to remember things - the little stories.

Well, I broke 4,000 pageviews yesterday, and realized that the things I had been writing were different. I was no longer writing things for myself to remember - I'd started trying to figure out what people interested in exchange would want to read, and I'd write about that.

To be honest, it didn't work out very well. So, this is a throwback post to some "little stories" of Jordan. Soon enough, I'll have new little stories of Swaziland and other adventures soon, but for now, enjoy.

When we arrived in Jordan, they gave us cell phones. Nothing fancy - they weren't even flip phones, but I was so excited because there was Arabic on the keys, along with English. Now, there are a few stories about this phone. 

First, keep in mind how terrible I am at phones and texting and all that. So, I learned to text in Jordan - on this phone. The funny part is that the very first day, I didn't really know how to work it, so I had our assistant resident director activate the phone, and copy down the number to give to the director. Apparently, he gave her the wrong number, because four weeks later, I realized that she'd been trying to text me the entire time, and I never got any of them. Oh my..

Second after we had been in school for maybe three or four weeks, my Arabic ego had starting swelling, and I thought it'd be a good idea to set my phone to be all in Arabic - for practice, you know? I had no problems setting the phone to be in Arabic, and so I stuck it back in my pocket thinking I was hot stuff. About an hour later, I got a text, grabbed the phone, and realized I had no idea how to work it when it was set in Arabic. I had to go find my host sister and hold the phone out to her, saying "Inglizi, losamati," English, please. It took her a second to figure out what I had done, and then she just laughed at me. Silly American...

Okay, one last story about the phone. Amman is a very mountainous city, so a lot of the time it's like the houses are on top of each other. Okay, so the houses are on top of each other. Anyways, my host aunt and uncle and their four daughters lived right above and next door to us, depending on how you described it, and there was another exchange student living with them. One morning, I get a text as I'm getting dressed and getting my books into my bag. It's a really, really, frantic text from the other student, saying that she needs my help RIGHT AWAY or something. So, I head over to their house, open the door, and  see my friend with a horrified look on her face. I ask what's wrong, and she says that there's a cockroach in the shower. That's what she texted me about at six in the morning, before anyone else in the neighborhood was awake? Yes.

Here's the second thing - the sulhafa, simply meaning "turtle." The sulhafa was my host cousin's pet, all the way from Saudi Arabia, where they found it outside their house. My cousin was a really smart, creative kid, and he had built all sorts of things for the sulhafa - a car made of popsicle sticks, a whole farm scene where it could sit, and a house. And so, sulhafa became one of the first words I learned beyond simple conversations. 

One day, in class, we did an activity where we were in groups of two or three, and we all had to write a line of a story. Then we'd pass the story to the next group, and write the next line, and keep passing until the story was finished.The catch? It all had to be in Arabic. To make a long story short, our group added a turtle army, a "jaesh sulhafa," to each and every story, much to our amusement, and the aggravation of the other groups. Our teacher just laughed at our spelling of sulhafa, because we'd only ever heard it around the house, and essentially made up the spelling.

Finally, there are the doorknobs. Now, I hate to say that the apartments we moved into were in disrepair, but they were. The shower heads were hanging off the walls, the couches had nails sticking out of them, and would often collapse when someone sat down on them, and finally, the doorknobs kept falling out. We had four doors in our apartment, and it was so normal that the handles would fall off that if it happened, we'd just toss them by the door to reattach later. On this particular day, three of the four handles had fallen off. We didn't think it was annoying though - it was hilarious.

Anyways, those are some stories that I hope in 50 years I'll be able to get a laugh out of, or that someone else can appreciate. Thank you all for reading this blog, it's amazing that people have read it 4,000 times! I'm excited to see what borders I can cross next!