Official Update

Wow. The month has flown by. There is so much to catch you guys up on I think I will try to do an overview and then maybe we can come back to go more in depth. For starter, I’m Kelley! I’m from the Austin, Minneapolis, & St. Paul, Minnesota congregations. (Yeh I just can’t pick) but originally grew up in the Austin one with Steve Myers as the minister. I graduated from college (in Minneapolis) last December with a B.A. in studio art, concentrating on Graphic Design.

Here in Jordan I am working at the YMWA, also referred at the Bunyat School. This is the school for the mentally challenged. Jamie is also at the school with me. We have been waking up at about 5:30 a.m. and taking an 1 ½ hour school bus in the morning for transportation. Our school has 3 sections. A pre-school, a school (k-4^th grade), and vocational section (age 18+). This month I have been working in the school section in art class. Art is a nice thing to help with because none of the student speak English so it is nice to have something to do with our hands that we can communicate to them with. Other than that we smile a lot of wave and say hi, how are you, since that’s the most Arabic we know so far and the most English they know.

Me with kids @ school

Some of the teachers speak English and the art teacher I have been with does well so I have really enjoyed getting to know her. Rumor has it that we will be switching this next week to another part of the school until we have tried them all and then we will decide were we/they think we fit best.

Other than school our days have been filled with Ramadan, Iftars, trips to places like Mt. Nebo, the Dead Sea, Jerash, Petra, Wadi Rum & having visitors. I will briefly go into these and then hopefully someone else can expand!

Ramadan was all last month and just ended. This is when they fast during the daylight hours. The iftars are the dinners that they have after sundown during Ramadan. We have been to 2 iftars, one having Price Hassan (the late King's brother) and his wife Princess Sarvath, and the other just Princess Sarvath.

On weekends we have taken a couple trips, Mt. Nebo is a view in which the bible describes Moses was on, the Dead Sea, where we floated in the salty sea as well as had full body mud masks, and the Wadi Rum desert where we went camping and toured the place on a jeep. Mr. Horchak (minister from Dallas and our project coordinator) came for a week to visit as well as Mr. Clay Thorton & Clint Porter, who are the video guys at the home office that followed us around for a week and will later produce a video about this Youth Corps project. With them we visited Jerash & Petra.

Okay so I think without any details and being completely boring you are all now caught up! We will be traveling to Bangkok, Thailand for the feast and leave Thursday. We are all very excited about that.

Mt. Nebo

Petra

Dead Sea

Jerash

Wadi Rum

Here is a short video tour of our apartment here in Jordan.

Kelley

Clarity

I have begun my time here in Amman, Jordan volunteering as a teacher at Amman Baccalaureate School. I have been assigned as the KG Media Specialist (teaching ICT skills and helping in the library), but was asked to serve in a different role for the first few days because one of the classroom teachers was on maternity leave; instead of beginning in the library I helped in an Arabic Kindergarten classroom. The head of the KG said that I was needed mostly for crowd control. I wanted to be of help in any way I could. The other teacher gave all the directions in Arabic and would occasionally reference my name; I felt inadequate because even after asking I felt like I could not completely understand what she was asking of me. The first day I was very overwhelmed and knew I would have to approach it a little differently to give my best and get the most out of it. After thinking on it I realized how much I rely on having clarity to take any steps forward in life. I was relying on knowing exactly what the other teacher was saying in Arabic to be of any help. Even though I've been told time and again and understood to a certain extent that life and situations in it are not always black and white, this experience helped me to think about that in a different way. Instead of letting lack of clarity overwhelm me to the point of inaction I needed to search through the circumstance for any thing I could possibly understand to be of service. I know this year is just beginning and there will be lots of unknowns, but it will be much more valuable for all involved to approach it with a constant seeking attitude and not neglecting to do whatever I know is important and is needful. I've been in and out of a few of the classrooms now and teaching my own ICT lessons in the library. My role definitely has definition but the clarity is not always there especially since it's new to me. As I've approached it doing the best I can with what I understand, not letting the unknowns push me to inaction the days have been much more rewarding. I've even learned how to count to ten in Arabic from one of the Kindergarten students. :)

~Audry~

Interesting Facts

-Independence from Britain in 1946
-Current King: Abdullah 2 Bin Al Hussein (since 1999)
-Shares boarder with Syria, Iraq, Palestine, & Israel
-92,300 sq. kilometers
-Jordan’s population 5.7 million Amman’s population 2 million
-Language: Arabic
-Religion: 95% of the population are Sunni Muslim (Islam official religion)
-Ramadan: Holy month of fasting from sunrise to sunset. No food, drink, or smoke while sun is up. No alcohol sold all month. (2009 Ramadan is from 8/21 to 9/19)
-Currency is Jordanian Dinar (JD) Right now 1JD=1.41USD
-Our transportation: taxis & buses
-Work week: Sunday-Thursday (Friday & Saturday=weekend)