Coming Home

I'm coming home. Tomorrow morning at 4:30 in the morning, I will wake up and go to the airport and actually be coming home. I can't believe it.

What's funny is saying goodbye to everyone, and saying goodbye to a place I never thought I'd go, a place I still don't understand why I came to, really.

I get attached to places more easily thank I thought I did and it terrifies me a little. I love the little things, like when I would come home here every night after a day at school, and the moon was in Jordan at night, looking out of my cab window and following it all the way home and then as I walked up the steps of my building taking on deep breath, tilting my head to the right a bit and seeing the rabbit in the moon. I'll miss feeling the limestone of the building with my left hand on the wall as I walked to my front door. I'll miss the kitchen at school where I would go to boil a cup of tea to procrastinate work just a little bit more. I'll miss the comfortable smells of all the the places here that I have grown accustomed to.

But more than everything I'll miss the people. And saying goodbye just felt so insufficient and weird and informal and tragically not what it should have been. I'm terrible, terrible at goodbyes.

And really, I just can't believe it's over. It doesn't feel like I've been here at all really and now I'm going home. And I still have no idea why I decided to study abroad randomly and why I just randomly found Jordan. I thought by the end of the program I would be more sure about these things but nope, still just giggling about it all really. What a trip, in so many ways.

I'm so interested to see how I'll feel about everything a year from now, or five.

Coming home is going to be so good and so stressful. But really, coming home is stressful, being here is stressful, going away is freeing but stressful. Maybe it's not these things, maybe life is just stressful and I need to just be okay with that really.

Well, I'm sure I'll post something more notable soon but this is just a little half goodbye to start. I've made my going home playlist (with help from Paul's CD he made everyone) to listen to on the plane. It's so funny to be going back. It's so funny that I was even here.
See everyone soon.

Are you done with me yet Jordan?

What to even blog about, I just don't know. I was planning on blogging about my trip to Jerash/Heaven with some friends. I was going to blog about almost being home. I was intending on blogging about my final presentation of my ISP. Alas, none of this will be blogged about, at least not right now. Why is that? Because I got sick. I KNOW. If you know me well enough at all, you know that I do not get sick, I simply am temporarily disappointed in my immune system and refuse to acknowledge said weakness. Here is my story...

It was the night of mother's day and I was fine, perfectly happy, in fact because i had just been on a trip to the most beautiful place in the world and was just feeling pretty great. Until I wasn't. Being sick in America sucks, being sick in Jordan, sucks even more.

My host family posited that it was because I kick the covers off of me at night (wrong, in fact, I just hate heavy comforters). In fact, I had amoeba eggs.
Here's the best part. I HATE absolutely ABHOR taking medicine. Much less antibiotics/antiparasitics/whatever the heck I got prescribed (metronidazole, if you're curious). And dear doctor, thanks for checking me out and stuff, but maybe next time you could NOT be smoking while I'm in the office telling you I haven't eaten in 24 hours and I'm miserable.

Also, I realized on this night of terror and unfortunate things that the only person you will EVER want to be around when you're sick is your mother. I mean really. Throwing up sucks no matter where or who you're with but I just want my mom dammit.

This brings me to my main point tonight.

Dear Jordan,
You're great and all, I've tried really hard to be pretty positive in this country/might have at least succeeded a little in that endeavor but really, can we be done yet? I mean really, I think I've had enough. You killed my apple tree I planted in the garden outside of school, sexual assault, 2am police statements, creepy courtroom, amoebas, antibiotics, utter failure at learning arabic, ISP anthropology fail (not nearly as good as I wanted it to be/ugh), smoke filled indoor areas, and far more tragic things I'm forgetting about now because of my memory or self-preservation, we'll never know. I know you mean well and everything and that I'm personifying an entire country here and being pretty anthropologically unfair, but really, can we be done?
I've had a lot of good experiences here, I know, I'm not trying to be mean or anything and I think I'm still happy I came here. Of course, had I not, there would be no metronidazole in my body right now, nor would there be a copy of my passport and statement in a courtroom somewhere in downtown Amman. Really, I'm just being whiny right now. But honestly, after everything, I thought it couldn't get worse and now I'm sick, can barely stand up without feeling weak, and just want to come home. I want my mom to make me vegetable soup and to take a shower in my shower and sleep in my bed and not take weird medicine (I HATE MEDICINE) and not have amoeba eggs (I mean, really, what the hell?)
Yeah, that's about all I have left to say on the topic.
With as much love as I have left in me,
Sarah.

Anyway, that's my tragically short, not really informative update of today/this is really just getting funny it's so ridiculous.

love you all. Hopefully, I'll come back in one piece, at this rate, I just am not so certain anymore that that's a feasible possibility. 

WHAT?

I come home in nine days, officially. This cannot be.

Dearest readers,
I know I've been full of complaints/anthropological rants/general anxiousness to return to my lovely state alas, at the prospect of returning so soon, I can only think of one word to describe how I feel: terrified.

Have I been taking full advantage of being here? Have I been appreciating everything as much as possible?  Have I learned anything? Am I ready to return to a culture of college parties, resume building, hyper-thin societal body image ideal, constant text-messaging connection to the world, general responsibility for that scary "future" thing I should be thinking about, and (foot in mouth) short shorts?!?!

There are so many things I've been struggling with in this country and so many annoyances encountered, so many anthropological issues arisen but put into the perspective of "you have to go home soon Sarah" all of the sudden I'm granted sight to things that, though previously unnoticed, I've actually really loved about Jordan.

-I love that there's no pressure to drink here because it's not religiously practiced and people know how to have a sober ridiculously good time.
-I love that my host dad has been on a one-man mission to "fatten me up" before I go back to the U.S. because he thinks I'm ridiculously undernourished.
-I love that I'm not constantly expected to be by my phone and available to people to talk. I have loved lacking phone communication.
-I love that here I finally received a break from the ever-present issue of my future life plans. I wasn't asked what I'm going to do after I graduate, I wasn't expected to have a job, I wasn't pressured to be on a certain path that was more legitimate (I'm looking at you Pre-Med people, you make everything I do in school seem like I've dropped out to live on a corner making art with thrown out newspaper to sell for a dime).
-I love the huge amounts of coffee and tea always available to me.
-I love my taxi rides home.
-I still hate eating meat and will never eat meat again upon my return.
-I love the amazing conversations I've had with SITers and being around a concentrated group of terrifyingly smart people.
-I love that my hair has finally grown out more (I will never cut it short again, what was I thinking/this is a little bit of a vain bullet on the list, ignore if you like)

That's just a bit of what I've been freaking out over. But really, am I ready to come home? I mean, yes. Definitely. But am I fully prepared to leave? Not really.

I've also been having fun putting things into an even larger perspective and imagining what freshman year Sarah would say about all of this. Because I'm fairly certain she was content with not studying abroad and should it have occurred, she was set on going to France or China. And now, I will repeat the question that I stated in my first few posts: Why, oh why did I come to Jordan? What was I thinking?

In retrospect i think i was curious and tempted and stubborn. I wanted to see what it was all about, I had no idea and felt like in order to really get any sort of picture, I would just have to come over here instead of sitting on the sidelines reading some books. I was tempted in the utter foreign-ness I associated with Jordan. I could do a pretty good job accurately picturing China, France and other areas in my head, but I had no conceptual image of what here was like and needed to know. I'm stubborn because there was a part of me that was just so sick of and fed up with all of the generalizations/misconceptions/confusing statements made about Islam and the Middle East and Middle Easterners and everything in between. There was a large part of me that wanted to come here to be able to come home and defend people here. Not that they can't do it themselves but I just felt the need to join the forces, you know? Be one less silly American who made generalizations about a place they knew nothing about (and there I  go generalizing about Americans, I really am just terrible).

That being said, I still feel as if I know nothing. I'll still hold my tongue before I say much about people here or Islam or anything else really, because honestly, what can I really know? Not a whole lot. For one, there are SITers here who are extremely well-versed in political systems, religious studies, and the like and they are the ones who need to be here and need to be doing things like this for the rest of their lives because they can make a difference. Which leads me to this tragic little question: What am i taking away really?

I randomly decided to come here and will probably not ever do much with the little Arabic I've learned or the small amount of knowledge gained because unlike some people here (ahem, Megan...), I'm not a Middle Eastern studies major or on any sort of track to be working here or in a related field really (there's that future freak out thing again...). But you get my point, this whole thing can't all just boil down to random moments of advocacy when others randomly decide to be intolerant or ignorant about issues involved with this area? Can it? Mumkin it does and that's just that.

Well, I started this post last night and left it unpublished and now, this morning, I've lost all of my train of thought and really can't think of anything else to add to what I've already written. Suffice it to say, I'm excited as ever to get home and see everyone. I miss my family, i want my sisters back in my life. But I'm also scared out of my mind at the prospect of leaving such and interesting, nice little hiatus from my real world. That and my host family here is beautiful. I will definitely miss them.
Well, must get back to work really, ISP presentations are coming up and that powerpoint isn't going to make itself unfortunately.

Love you all. 

bathing...same thing as near death experience, yeah?

I have never felt closer to death in a place that was supposed to be relaxing than I did today.

In a "hey we're almost done with everything yay!" moment, some of the SIT gals decided to go to a turkish bath: a place where calm goes to die.

Everything was well and good as we stripped into our "bathing suits"/sports bra and underwear for lazy people (like yours truly, same thing, right?) and we were ushered into a dank fairly dark room with some sweet mood lighting and asian-esque ambiance music by a women who does not speak english at all. I'm feelin' great (minus the crocs they made me put on for the bathhouse, barefoot would have been germier, but preferred).

This is where I enter the first circle of hell. We are ushered into a steam room in which I am told we must sit for fifteen minutes. I nonchalantly walk in, have trouble seeing (in said sweet, but unhelpful mood lighting) and get told by a friend above the ruckus of slight squeals around me that if I keep walking there are stairs to go up. I do the stingray shuffle, find said stairs, and climb all two of them until I feel like I'm dying. I could not breath. At all. You think I'm kidding, I know but I felt like I was breathing wet fire and droplets of condensed burning water kept falling onto my bare skin. TORTURE CHAMBER. We figure out collectively, one must stay low in order to survive and utilize hand towel as pseudo-mask in order to prevent imminent cooking of lung tissue. I sit here, contemplating my death feeling the sting and burn of drops of water.

We then are taken into a hot tub where I swear you could have poached an egg it was so hot. Alas, we get in muttering to ourselves it's not so bad if you just commit to it. As we swap first kiss stories and best kiss stories to distract ourselves from the pain, I feel my hands and feet continue to tingle in protest and my head get so light I swear I will fall over. Practicing some good old Bikram Yoga breathing (if you haven't tried it, go now! It's amazing), I regain my ability to process oxygen and leave the group as two by two we are called away to be exfoliated and massaged.

How many layers of skin does a person have? Today I think I had like two of them scrubbed off. Mish mushkilah, everything was peachy.

MASSAGE- happiness, worth all of the tragic terrible-ness of almost dying in a 2x3 foot steam room and a boiling vat of water.

I swore thousands of times I'd never do it again because it advertises loveliness but inflicts SO MUCH PAIN (and I'm sorry but people just can't massage my feet without me giggling, it's impossible). Alas, I'd go again tomorrow if I didn't have work to do. I FEEL SO HAPPY and CLEAN. It's great. If you ever have the excuse to go to a turkish bath, do so and you will only regret (and forget) half of it. ;)

Love from afar and home so soon!

Short Shorts

Well Osama Bin Laden is dead. But something about Obama's speech is just a little disturbing. He pulled out some very odd "prosperity" connotations saying things like, "we [Americans] can do anything we set our minds to"....like going on a killing spree for ten years until we find this guy?

Here's the transcription of the speech as well as a video so you can watch if you missed it for some reason: Obama Speech.

I mean I'm not trying to be anti-American here or anything and maybe I just didn't understand why we cared about one guy so much anyway, but it just felt a little weird to hear Obama parading his death and using it to reaffirm all of these Norman Rockwellian cute little American values. My feelings about it might also be tempered by being here... The BBC put out a quotation from a senior Afghan counter terrorism official who said, "This would have been more significant in 2004, 5, or 6, now it's too late. There is a Bin Laden on every street today". I like this. I think it reflects a little bit why I'm not the enthused flag waving American right now. I mean, before I even heard about this news this morning by opening up my computer I was reading the newspaper in the kitchen while I made some tea  and read about Syria issues and settlement arguments about Israel and Palestine and generally a whole bunch of more relevant news. And then I hear online that Bin Laden's dead and Americans are on the streets partying and I'm just a little put off by the way Obama spun everything to sound so "OMG America's the |3E$T!!!"

Megan and I are actually discussing this currently and she just said something that I think reflects why I'm just so bleh about it all: "I mean, I'm glad he's not a main military priority anymore so we can maybe focus on something else..." Agree. And now I'll actually talk about my more insignificant random doings in Jordan because that's what I was going tow rite about to begin with and then people died. Geez, How inconvenient (SARCASM).

So SIT had it's last "group" trip and we went to a Wadi with the Jordanian Jiu Jitsu team from the gym we all go to. We biked the same road that we ran the half marathon on and then hiked and clambered our way into a beautiful waterfall area. This is where I was called an "animal rights person" by a Jiu Jitsu member who saw me free a crab from a man who was going to take it home and put it in his aquarium. He ended up putting two other in a water bottle and I didn't have a chance to free them but I just got so sad about it for some reason. I mean, that crab LIVES there! And if I were a crab I would much rather chill in my awesome waterfall outdoors home than in some stupid small aquarium of the guy who won't really know what food I eat and then will probably stop caring about me in a while because I lose the sensationalism of being new to the house. I mean I own pets and all, but they were all captive bred (I'm talking about the snake here. awww, I miss him) so they didn't have an awesome waterfall home.

Well of course, there's a flaw there because technically, if there weren't a market for captive bred snakes and circumstances had arisen that Isak (my specific snake) was born out of captivity anyway then he would have a really sweet rainforest home. So did I take him away from his awesome home too? Sort of... I guess. Ugh, can't win. Needless to say I was quite annoyed that he was taking these crabs home and wanted to make some sort of far removed analogy about Palestine and Israel to him so he could maybe understand that THE CRAB LIVED THERE. But Megan told em this would not be an analogy received well and told em to shut my mouth basically. But really, I think it would have driven the point home. Anyway, so while you're all celebrating the death of some guy, I am mourning the loss of two crabs' independence and freedom to just chill in their awesome Wadi house. Alas, I did end up saving one. Meager success.

Anyway, other than the animal rights infringement and sad contemplation of the lives of animals removed from their natural homes, the Wadi trip was great fun. Especially because I just got so sick of heckling coming from the cars of men on our bike ride up that in my 13.1 mile redo with the sun shining down quite fervently, I just started making some not so nice hand gestures at the more annoying, kiss blowing, whistling cars. This was not very appropriate and did nothing to forward the image of Americans to Arab people. I make no apologies though. It was satisfying and even though they actually use a different hand gesture here to mean something similar they definitely understood what I was going for. I just want to be able to wear shorts in this country without feeling like I'm walking around naked dammit.

I was discussing this with some fellow SITer women upon return from Wadi and something just hit me about the whole thing. First of all, you just don't realize you've been following the rules sometimes until you break them and suffer the consequences. By wearing shorts (and I could count the times I've done this on one hand here), I break the rules and suffer for it. But the thing is, it shouldn't be a thing I don't think. Women should be able to just wear whatever they want and not feel pressured to not wear something because stupid guys can't grow the hell up and realize EVERY HUMAN BEING HAS LEGS. And in summer, women get hot too when wearing pants. It's like we're sort of the same or something, I know, I know it's crazy but it's true I swear. Then I was thinking to myself, well this is just the straw that broke the camel's back, you know? If I wasn't annoyed yet, now I'm just done, done even trying. But then I think, well, I can't really, be done. Because patience is something that is a naturally renewing resource, right? I hope so. In any case, I feel it necessary to write another letter to the men of Jordan because that always calms me a little so here we go:

Dearest Men of Jordan,
You're great, you really are. I'm trying very hard not to judge a book by it's cover, walk a mile in your shoes, and all that other junk. But you could try a little harder too. You could stop making generalizations about American women (or Americans in general). Relationships are give and take you know and I'm trying really hard here to not make generalizations and try and understand you and empathize with you and be nice and generally see your humanity and awesomeness that I just know you've got in ya. Human beings are pretty great right? But really, hop onto the nice train with em maybe? Walk a mile (or 13.1) in my shoes (bike, run, whatever). Realize that not all American women are the same just like I realize not all Arab men are the same. Realize that I'm not a slut (and to your surprise, and my host sisters, I'm a non-religious 21-year-old virgin. I know it's crazy that I'm not doing it for God and that unlike what you think, and I quote, "all american girls your age have sex", I'm not!). Realize that my legs deserve to see the light of day without having to be subjected to stares and hollers. Realize that I should be allowed to jog on the street without you staring at my ass. Realize that it is not your god-given right to stare at any woman who walks past you. It's just not. And I've decided in a  couple years if for some reason I end up back in Jordan, I'm gonna give you guys a nice Lady Godiva moment. Because really, it's enough. Grow up, be adults, make a few less generalizations about Americans, and learn that my name is Sarah and that if you stare at me, even though I know it's culturally inappropriate I will stare right back at you like a cat with a really mean look until you break eye contact first BECAUSE I CAN. And because so far, it's the only appropriate way I've discovered to subvert YOUR stares.
With Sincerity and some Good Anthropological love,
Sarah

that felt so good. even knowing that no one will read it who should. Don't care. Maybe someday they will.

Moving on then, yesterday was Zeta Chi Senior wills and because of my awesome, amazing, astounding friends, I was able to be skyped in on a phone (thank you technology!) and could watch my big sister, Katie will away her ZX stash. And here's my official blog shout out to home much I love you guys and everyone. Y'all are amazing and such wonderful women and I can't wait to be home and hanging out with every single one of you.

Alas, I must get off to doing some work! ISP due in five days!! Love to you all back home and everywhere else. Thanks for reading. It's nice to talk it out sometimes. Here are some photos if you like!

ridin' in my short shorts. Whatcha gonna do about it? 

Assault Cake

There were some things that I had been thinking about blogging yesterday that were about how I only have three weeks left here and I feel as if I haven't been here at all, or about how differently I think about hijab now and generally more academic, more calm topics. However, all of these topics are dwarfed by what happened on this very innocuous morning in Jordan.

Started out like every morning. I had anticipated showing up to SIT, making myself some coffee and honey and sitting down to blow off some time before I actually needed to do work. And by that I mean, I should have been doing work from the beginning but alas, like most college students StumbleUpon and Facebook called me away and it's almost as if my brain refuses to write papers without them these days.

I come in and megan is watching a bootlegged copy of The Fountain, a movie I have always hated (even though Hugh Jackman is beautiful, well when he doesn't look sickly and has hair but, you know). So I finish up watching the tragic movie with her and we are called in to speak with our director who informs us that the case (from Petra, if for some reason you wouldn't  know what "case" I'm referring to) has come to Amman and that the head magistrate of the criminal court needs me to come in and tell my story all over again. wonderful. Megan and I hop skip over there with a lovely staff member and we walk through some grungy hallways that no description could do justice. Random people sitting, walking into offices. To me it looks all like chaos but we find whatever office we were supposed to visit and are ushered in.

Now readers, I watch my fair share of Law and Order, CSI, Bones, Criminal Minds and the like but after our translator had sworn to the truth on the Qu'ran, I was told simply to say that i would swear to tell the truth in the usual way, you know, no big. Well, I'm blaming the stress of being in a room with a stenographer, 2 random folks sitting behind me, and a judge (and they've freshly expunged Megan into the hallway becasue she can't hear my statement!). I forget how to swear myself in! I KNOW! Instead of the usual "I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me god", I spurt out a very nervous, "I swear to god to tell the truth". How unfortunate. My one chance to be so legit and I fail miserably. Alas, as an agnostic, it's not like it meant much anyway (I promise I tell the truth though!!).

So, just for anyone who isn't on board with what went down, when it comes to sexual assault, the brain tends to forget little details like time and place and other random things that weren't 'oh god, what's going on' worthy. Megan really took care of that in the original report I gave. so her in the hallway created some problems. Also, I still don't understand why he needed me to go through the whole thing again when my statement from that night nicely translated into arabic is sitting right in front of him in a pink folder (it figures that my case folder would be my least favorite color). Anyway, we go through the whole thing again and I realize I am the only one in the room willing to say penis. I mean, it's a medical word! But I truly felt bad for my translator and the man behind the desk. I mean, I felt awkward and tragic but I'm sure it didn't help that I was just being so non-arab in my lack of hesitation or skirting around the word.

So after about a half hour my story is once again told, freshly remembered and it's Megan's turn to be my witness. Readers, have you ever had those moments in your life where you're just so struck by everything going on, you sort of want to giggle, and you know you'll never forget it? I cannot tell you how sublimely odd it felt to watch the stenographer typing away in Arabic when I entered that office and then, before my statement got underway, to watch him stumble over typing in English and take very long minutes typing out my full name. In a sea of Arabic in a random court office in the middle of the Middle East, there's my name. Right there. That was a moment that won't be long forgotten. How strange things all turn out, really.

Anyway, Megan gives her statement in a much shorter time after having suffered her own interesting half hour in the hallway (read her blog for her story) and we're off after I mutter what feels like a very misplaced 'shukran' to the judge. And there it is, man in jail, Sarah on her way back to figuring out how she's going to finish writing this research paper.

On our way back our translator and wonderful staff member says to me as we leave the office, 'mabrook'. I do suppose it would be a moment to say congratulations, it just felt a little funny. Anyhow, before we get back to school she stops in a cake shop and comes back, gives megan a white box and tells her it's for me and her becasue we've had a hard hour (though I would protest much longer time period) and that we should celebrate our experiences. God bless her awesome-ness. I'm sitting her blogging and finishing up what I have decided to call our Assault Cakes. It doesn't really make anything go away and it doesn't change anything that happened but it is indeed hard to cry while you're munching on cake so I feel like it's serving it's purpose.

I can honestly say though that I feel better that it didn't just end in Petra because something felt unfinished. I know he's in jail, I feel a little more responsible for it. It feels good knowing that it's official. I spoke with a judge, there was a stenographer. It's hard to get that sort of closure in this country because things just don't work the same as in the U.S. so everything just feels sort of up in the air and frustratingly wasta-based and not legitimate. But I've got it. Cake Closure. Feels nice even if it doesn't make everything better.

To continue, I did want to at least touch on something I thought about yesterday because I felt it was pretty significant. When I went to Dominica before I went to college I wrote myself a letter at the end of my stay there that was sent to me around 5 months after I had been back in the country. The main gist of the letter that 18-year-old Sarah wrote was: "Oh hey older version of me, feel like you still don't know what you're doing with your life or what you want to do and feeling a little out of sorts? Go abroad! Pick up a random plane ticket to anywhere and get out because then you at least won't be static." Well, it looks like I followed my advice and it really is one of the larger reasons I went abroad to probably the most random place I could have chosen (because let's face it, I still don't know why I came to Jordan of all places).
Of course, the other day at my realization that I"m leaving in three weeks, I started to freak out becasue I felt like I hadn't really accomplished what 18-year-old Sarah wanted. And now I had only three weeks to do whatever it was! Crap.

Then it dawned on me, what that younger version of me had wanted is impossible here. Because the younger version of me wanted me to go abroad, figure out who I was (please don't judge for the annoying prosaic-ness of that question, you know you've asked yourself at least a couple times too) and get my life together you know? And I came to Jordan where I couldn't really do that, because here I suppress myself, I've tried to fit in, to absorb a culture I didn't understand and didn't know if I was comfortable with. This isn't a bad thing. In fact, I feel like I've grown intellectually by coming here (even if growth really just means being more unsure of everything). So while I could sit here and chastise myself for not "studying abroad" and being able to come back a more calm, together person, instead I shouldn't freak out these last three weeks that I missed something because I didn't actually follow the advice I gave myself three years ago. If I had wanted to follow that advice I would have had to go to a place where I could have been me. And let's be real, I can't really be me in Jordan for lots of reasons.

I suppose my reason for saying all of that is that I am trying to reassure myself to not freak out because I'm still out of sorts (maybe that's just an eternal thing for me) because I didn't actually "study abroad". But whatever it is I did do, I'm glad I did it.

Also, I'm getting a kitten when I get back to the U.S.
Sorry, I just had to tack that on to the end, this blog felt a little too crazy without it.
KITTEN!
love you all.

Wishes

SO lately I've been in this "wishing" stint of deciding to list in my brain all the things I've ever wanted. I shall list them here. not because they relate to Jordan (well not all of them anyway) but because i just decided listing them would be fun. Also, i'm feeling sort of sassy. be warned.

1. I want a horse. But while I'm going I might as well go big. I want a ranch and some of my own cattle, a chicken coop, and more than one horse.

2. I would love it if Jordan all of the sudden decided to celebrate Easter so that I could have a proper excuse to gorge myself on chocolate and high fructose "but do you really care just this once" corn syrup candy corn things that are refurbished from the Halloween ones and made in pastel colors so they're all jesus-appropriate and stuff. Alas, there's this other prophet who's so much cooler over here and is preventing this from being a possible future reality.

3. I wish there was a calorie-less, fat-less, wonderful creamy delicious ice cream that just generally didn't count. For that matter (feel free to roll your eyes, I do not care about your judgment) I just generally wish I could be magically skinny like all of those indie-girls who can somehow pull off high waisted jean shorts that I thought were only cool...oh, never. But they make them look so GOOD. Teach me your magical ways oh indie-hippy-newyorker-hipster-americanapparel women. HOW? (also, excuse the mad, utterly, un-anthropological generalizations just made).

4. I wish i could pause the Arab world for a minute and just give a quick lesson on waste management. Not that I know much about waste management, but I know what a trash can looks like and I know sort of how to use one and it would be pretty sweet if you know, nature reserves or natural parks here weren't so counterintuitively...trashy.

5. I all of the sudden have this giant urge to be the crazy high school english teacher that everyone loved when they were in high school when I grow up (and no, I'm NOT grown up yet, in case you weren't sure). I wish this will be a reality. I will make my students read things that aren't required technically but they will be all the better for. I will make them read The Metamorphosis and we can have a class period where we just laugh at it becasue I hate it (but I'll give the chillins a chance to express their opinions before I make them all cynics with mine, don't worry). I will bring my cat to class sometimes BECAUSE I CAN and it's cute and you know if your teacher brought a cat to class you would love her so much more.

6. I wish in the future I will live near an ocean. Not on one because sand is just annoying when it is everywhere (especially when it's in a piece of food you knew got nowhere near the ocean and you're left wondering. how? what? GO AWAY QUARTZ just go away!) But I need to be able to swim in a large body of water somehow. A kiddie pool/candlelit bathtub will do until I have money. But with Number 5, that whole money thing might not be a viable possibility... a girl can dream.

7. I wish i could live in the south without being sufferingly hot all summer.

8. It's sad that I only thought of this at number eight. But: world peace. I mean, despite all of the cliche miss america stuff that goes along with it, i want everyone to be happy, OKAY?! I don't think this is asking a lot. I'm not saying I know how to fix any of this but I know people who know people and I could get it done. Maybe.

9. This goes along with number eight. I want gay people, slash whatever kind of people want to, to be able to get married. like REALLY married. None of this civil union crap. What is that anyway, I DON'T KNOW.

10. I wish that I knew better what exactly my heart was saying (don't judge, you know you wish you could get all Disney movie too and know exactly what you wanted just like Pocahontas/know so well you can break out into a rhymed song about it) and what exactly my brain was saying. I am not good at distinguishing these two things at all. And then there's that thing called estrogen that gets thrown into the mix every once in a while that I hear guys complain about a bit... I don't know. It'd just be nice to be able to tell them apart so that I could know to always follow my brain. Except when my heart feels like traveling, doing art, writing, or any other general sappy stuff (minus love because that should be a brain decision too folks, if we're being serious here).

11. I wish i were better at interviewing Jordanians for my research. I'm bad at interviews in general but give me a language barrier, throw in some cultural norms I don't know about and my excessive awkwardness and, oh my god, so much fun.

12. I wish i would never get invited to another 'please take my survey for class/i lost all my numbers' facebook event. ever.

13. I wish, back in sophomore year when everyone else seemed to do it and I was still rebelling with leg warmers, that I had solidified a "style". So that I didn't run around like a chicken with my head cut off in Forever 21 wondering what cut of shirt looks best on me or if I could pull off a graphic tee. And then I just end up at Goodwill or Value Village and feel far more at home searching around for whatever strikes my fancy and will look equally as terrible as that cute little tee shirt with cap sleeves that i just know would not have worked out.

14. I wish I was a smarter person. This is a very lazy statement to make because really, if I wanted to be smarter I could just apply myself (to steal everyone's parents favorite catch word) and learn everything I wanted to know. Do I? Nope. I watch stupid movies and stumble around on the internet trying to find an internet meme I haven't seen yet that will make me internally giggle a bit. So really I could scratch this number and just person-up (to use a more p.c. version of the turn-of-phrase "man-up") and work harder but I'd much rather move on to number 15 because if I think about it too long I'll just not be a happy camper (even though I would just love to go camping right now).

15. I wish I were better at 'living in the moment' like all of these fun new-agey blogs I follow tell em to do. But every time I remember to 'live in the moment' I get stressed because I wonder "oh my god, have I not been doing this all along, WHEN HAVE I BEEN LIVING THEN?! when?!?!?!" And then I stress more because I'm trying to overload my brain with visual, auditory, sensory stimuli and remember all of it while also appearing aloof and carefree (becasue that's what living in the moment is, yeahhh?). I just wish I could pull that off better.

I wish lots of other things but that's all for tonight. Hopefully my mascara that I put on today (gasp! I know, first time in-country mascara application) will smudge itself just right while I slumber so that I look all 'post sleep, messy hair, Anne Hathaway, smudgy but perfectly applied mascara' in the morning. Probs not, but I have high hopes.
Goodnight from Jordan, and happy secular easter to all of you people who get to enjoy the cadbury deliciousness that will ensue.