Volunteering in Iraq Al-Ameer painting a boys school

Mensaf, the traditional Jordanian dish

Sarah, my host sister

What my host sister and I do at night...

After eating the best Indian food ever at Cashmere

Sweet shop downtown

Ali! Our favorite waiter at a sketchy, all men cafe.

Painting at Iraq Al-Ameer

Playing dress up...Arab style.

Souk in Al-Salt

Fruit stand in Al-Salt

Wadi Donna

Chillin at the hotel in Donna drinking tea with the locals

Dead Sea

King Hussein Mosque

Since I have nothing to better to do right now because of my horribly crappy day, I thought I would tell you about my horribly crappy day. Now that I'm done with school, everyone is already off traveling, and i'm literally the only American left in Amman, my days of being an only child and entertaining myself for hours are paying off. Today's big excursion consisted of going to the gym (which, if you read my "brown goop" blog post, is quite a great experience). My luck started going downhill when I was changing in the locker room after my glorious shower and accidentally sprayed perfume in the Jordanian woman next to me's eyes. You can only imagine the dramatic, over-kill reaction when the woman began pacing the locker room while 20 Arab woman gathered around her as she said "the foreigner sprayed me" in Arabic...cue all faces turning and looking at me like I killed their first son. Sorry for the lack of precise aim from YOUR Jordanian perfume made from YOUR Jordanian workers using YOUR wide angle Jordanian sprayer which clearly was made to spray a windshield wiper instead of your wrist. After drama queen calmed down and realized that she wasn't in fact going to die from a slight misting of perfume on the face, I got shwarama to take to ACOR to take an Arabic placement test for next semester. If I haven't mentioned ACOR in a previous post, it's a research center where Americans take advantage of a quiet library and free, unlimited coffee. The only downside to ACOR is that it's located in the top of a freakin mountain, so you can either hike up (it's literally a hike, half of it is a dirt road) or you can try to persuade a taxi driver to drive up there. Seeing as how my day was going, I wasn't about to hike up a dirt road. The taxi driver dropped me off right infront of ACOR when the security guard was saying something to me I didnt understand. I nodded my head like an idiot (yes is the right answer 50% of the time even if you have no idea what they're saying), and went up to the door. Of course, ACOR happens to be closed 2 days (today included) for the 5 freckin Christians in Amman. Of course at this point the taxi was long gone down the mountain and I'm standing there on a dirt road, 50 pound backpack, stranded, like a scene in Breaking Bad, while the security guard is chillin in his stand laughing. So here I go, making my way down the dirt road, wearing black leather boots with the traction of a banana peel. You can probably imagine what happens next: Proud of my achievements of making it down the mountain, I'm almost to the road, pass a cafe with a group of men outside...while my boots fail me and I slip and eat shit. Wonderful. Used to my bad luck at this point, I wave down a taxi, preparing myself to get an asshole taxi driver who thinks i'm a tourist and tries to rip me off until he realizes I speak Arabic. I get in a taxi and make my way to a cafe, thinking of my limited options due to the fact that my computer charger is on the brink of death, and only works in certain outlets, with a sweatshirt piled under it to prop it up. I decide on one which I remember has more outlets than a Best Buy...the odds are in my favor, right? No, indeed they're not. I spend a half hour playing Cranium with my sweatshirt, trying to mold it into different shapes and trying every damn plug in the cafe. Just as I was about to chuck my computer out of the window, the technology gods blessed me and the guy sitting next to me offered me his plug to use. First good thing that happened today. I decided to start my test, which like I said, is an eighty minute, intense Arabic writing exam. 40 minutes in, the internet in the cafe cuts out and I lose everything. I'm too used to my bad luck at this point to emphasize how pissed I was by using caps lock, or exclamation points. Not only did I spend 40 minutes writing about how to exercise (something I wouldn't even be able to explain using English), but everything was lost, and it's a one-time-only test. At this point, i'm going to go home, eat some chocolate, and watch some Homeland...because those two things can make any horribly crappy day significantly less horribly crappy.