Right at Home

Marhaba! Hola a todos! Hello to everyone. My name is Eduardo Elizondo. My wife Stephanie and I are on the Jordan project this year and we are very happy to be here serving, learning and experiencing new things. I am an accountant by trade and here in Jordan I have been working with the Amman Baccalaureate School (ABS) in the finance department. I have also been coaching soccer in the afternoons. We are going to have our first tournament this weekend! Both opportunities to serve here have been very rewarding so far.

Since today is my first time posting to the blog, I wanted to talk a little bit about Jordan in general from my perspective. Jordan is a great country. Since our arrival here, I have felt at home. Being originally from Mexico, I have found many similarities between the two countries. The first thing that reminded me of the place where I grew up in central Mexico is the weather. It is hot and dry here in Jordan and I love it! Another similarity that I found is that the food is great! Mexican and Jordanian cuisine are definitely different, but they both have a lot of flavor and variety. Actually, if you think about it, they are the same but different: Mexico has tortillas, Jordan has pita bread, mexico has refried beans, Jordan has hummus made of chickpeas, Mexico has salsa, in Jordan there is Turkish salad, Mexico has tacos al pastor (which I don't eat because its pork) but it looks exactly like the shawerma in Jordan! (except I can eat shawerma because its chicken or lamb/beef). Other minor similarities would be that people love football here (soccer of course), and that I have seen a lot of donkeys around, just like back home (hence the pictures above).

However, the similarity that I have been most happy about is that the people are friendly, like in my native Mexico. People here say hi to you all the time and smile. Even if they do not know English, they still talk to you, smile, and try to make contact with you. People are really welcoming and it has been very refreshing to be in a culture that is so relationship based like it is in my country (more on relationship based cultures in my next post).

All these similarities have made me feel right at home from the beginning...now I just need to pick up the language. Jordan has a lot to offer and we are certainly very blessed to be here serving and getting to know the people and the culture.

Expecting the UNEXPECTED

Hello to everyone out there! I hope everyone had a wonderful FOT, I think I can speak for all of us and say that we had a very nice time in Bangkok. Now, since I am speaking for everyone I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Jamie Franks and I have lived most of my life somewhere in Texas, although over the last few years I have been in the Cincinnati area. During my stay here in Jordan I have been and will be working at the YMWA center for special education along with Kelley Schreiber. Most recently I have been assisting in music class and will soon be starting to teach first aid classes as well as English.

So far everything about this experience has been amazing and I will probably be attempting to put it in to words for years to come. However, I would like to share something that I personally enjoy about traveling and living in another country. It is something that has an impact on all five of us daily, and could at times if you let it become a negative experience. This thing is to always try to be ready for and anticipate the unexpected. Some days it seems as though we can not "assume" that we know anything for certain. For instance, one might assume that because I am helping out in music class that I am talented in this area. Your assumption would not be correct. I had no idea this is the area I would be initially helping in, but I have had the opportunity to work with an excellent teacher and along the way have learned to play a pretty mean tambourine. Another example happened just the other day. I was sitting in my classroom playing with the students when someone came to the door and asked me to follow them somewhere. She only spoke a little english so I was not sure where we were headed. Due to my lack of arabic following others without knowing where I am going has become a common practice for me here. Anyways, as we are walking she does manage to tell me, "you teach english now." This is something that I was NOT EXPECTING. There had been some talk of one of us possibly teaching English in the future, but the who, what and where were still in question to my knowledge. I began to panic a little during our short walk to the classroom. My mind began to race with possible lesson plans. You must also keep in mind that by trade I am not a teacher, so the list of lesson plans running through my head were very short. Ahhh, but then it hit me! I suddenly realized that my English had to be far better than my tambourine playing and that I should be fine with winging it for just one day. In the end everything worked out fine, and I am very excited about spending time this week planning for class next week.



This is just one example of some of the unexpected things that go on daily in our lives. I personally really do find it exciting to not know for certain what might happen from day to day. We are constantly thrown into situations that are outside of our comfort zones which can be frustrating and intimidating at times, but it makes for one more thing that we can cross off our list of things accomplished or at least attempted in life. All the situations usually have happy endings, and they make for great stories and dinner conversations. Life continues to be exciting here in Jordan!

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)

Al Bedaya

The beginning...

We have been in the lovely country of Jordan for two weeks now. We have been settling into our flats and getting acquainted with the various projects we will be working on. The city of Amman has offered us many new experiences in the way of people, sights, food: we have watched beautiful sunsets, practised our Arabic in the plethora of yellow taxis, climbed some of the ruins of Jerash, eaten the best falafel we’ve ever had and basked in the warm sun on our rooftop pinching ourselves to remind us that this is not a dream. It is the beginning of the wonderful opportunity we have to live in Amman, Jordan for the next 10 months. It will be a journey…a journey with ups and downs, joys and challenges. We look forward to sharing the journey with you.

We want to thank those who have come before us. You have set the bar high and paved the way. We have been warmly received at our various projects in large part because of the example you set, the relationships you built and the mark that you left at ABS, YMWA and the RHSC. Shukran!

-Jamie, Kelley, Audry, Stephanie and Eduardo