Friday, September 25, 2009

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-4th 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

1 comment:

  1. Hey Kelley and crew, great entry. You guys have had a swell start to your adventure. I am so proud of all of you! Tine.

    ReplyDelete