So I wanted to talk about a couple of different subjects in this post, but they should eventually become somewhat related subjects. First off for those of you who do not know Jordan is considered a desert. No, big deal because the fact that I have lived in the desert within Arizona. One big difference here in Jordan is the water issue. Rain and natural water such as rivers is not really heard of in Jordan. Unlike in Arizona how we have the Colorado River to support the people with the water issues. In fact water here is portioned out amongst the neighboorhoods. So how it works is that one day of the week water is delivered to your particular neigboorhood. To keep that water each house has a water container that is usually kept on the roof. So this water needs to last the whole entire week until the new delivery happens at the same day on the next week. This is the water used for everything in the house to include cleaning, cooking, bathing, etc. So since this water needs to last Jordaninas do not shower every day. Yep, if they were to shower every day than by the end of their week they would not have any water to cook with or for anything else. The amount of showers depends on how big the family is for each household. So when walking around campus and smelling a bunch of perfume or cologne it is the simple fact that showers don't happen everyday. So for the Americans who come to study in Jordan and realize that you can't shower everyday is somewhat of a shock. One simple way to shower everyday is to join a local gym. Yep a gym is a place to work out here but also to take daily showers. This realization came quick and now it seems like everybody has a gym membership. Plus washing of clothes does not happen as often here as in the United States. Washing of clothes does use up a lot of water and it is more important to be able to eat everyday than to have clean clothes everyday.
Next topic I wanted to talk about was the community service event that I went on Saturday. Each semester the study abroad program picks some sort of service project to be apart of and this year it is helping to fix a school. This school is located in the town of Aljoun which is North of Amman in the mountains. For fixing the school over the semester we are cleaning, painting, and making the place a better place to learn. The school is an all boys school (all schools here are segregrated by gender) with about three levels on the building itself. I believe this school teaches all the way up to the ninth or tenth grade. So this Satuday our duty to start the project was to move the furniture out, clean the walls and floors, and than move the furniture back into the classrooms. The walls themselves probably have never been cleaned and we were cleaning to eventually paint in the next visit out there. Our cleaning supplies consisted of one bucket of water, dish washer soap, two sponges, a broom, and a squegie(each class had one set of these supplies). Only students that we there to help us were four tenth grade boys while the rest were locked outside of the school because they would just cause trouble. Will give updates of how this project turns out as I plan to go a couple more times throughout the semester. Once done we walked down the street where all 35 of us had lunch at someones house. A lot of food even with all of us there. Than went to a soap house where they make organic soap to be sold. This part of the day was the cultural activitiy that will change each time the school event happens. A neat thing about the soap house was that one of the princesses showed up to talk to us (Jordan is run by a King). She was one of the nieces of the King and she supports activities such as rebuilding the schools and she wanted to personally thanks us for helping. Before leaving Aljoun to head back home to Amman it started to rain. Not just drops but a good amount of rain. Like I said earlier rain is not common, and the two local Jordanians (our leaders for the study abroad program) were out in the raining playing like they were little kids again. Water in some places is not something that needs to be measured or worried about on a daily basis but, for Jordanians and for me while I am here, water is a big issue.
Will eventually download more pictures to post that includes my host family and some of the food that I have been eating. Food will be a topic for an upcoming post as I feel like I have eaten a lot of types of food to accurately describe. By the way sorry to my CA friends, but it looks like the best team has prevailed in the West. Go D'Backs! Kind of funny how when I am not in the Phoenix area they decide to make it to the playoffs. I guess I should leave more often. Need to go study for another Arabic quiz for my second Arabic class. Will write later. In sh’Allah. ( إن شاء الله
No comments:
Post a Comment