192

The cold has come, this is how we do.

Fancy new art kit, Raged's most treasured possession.

 Demonstrating how to use the new whiteboard, documented for posterity on my last day of work.

So cute, I'm going to miss my little men.

Farah and my mudeera (director of the center). They are pretty much the same height.

Farah's I fucking love coloring!!!!!!!!!!!!! moment.

Ahhh my heart is breaking. So obsessed with this guy.

 Snuggled up by the soba.

Being a monster from the fire. Duh. 

Penultimate meal at the family's house. Kusa and malfoof (stuffed zucchini and cabbage). Nishmee is trying to hide on the left there, because he was bitten. On the FACE. By another boy while fighting. No big deal, that's how they fight; don't mess with a Jordanian.

Nishmee's artsy photo of the inside of a water bottle. He was very proud of it.

191

I don't get dubstep. But this video, and the song by extension, is one of the more interesting things I have seen in a long time.

190

Eid Eid Eid! Yay Eid. Here's how the day goes:

Meat. This Eid is (partly) in celebration of when Abraham was supposed to sacrifice his son, but got to kill a sheep instead, so everyone sacrifices a sheep. I was woken up in the morning by the wonderful sounds of sheep screams. My immediate neighbors must have been killing one, because I have never heard it before. Depending on the wealth of the family, you share the sheep amongst as many people as you need to. This particular sheep was brought back to Abu Nishmee's house for parceling out into grocery bags to be delivered to family around town. House smelled like meat.

Then we had a delicious breakfast of meat hunks, with bread and yogurt for dipping. Gross, one should not a whole plate of chunks of fatty sheep meat at 9 in the morning.

Aside from having meat, the most important thing about Eid is having new clothes. Everyone gets a new outfit. Yet another opportunity to get a picture of my camera-shy friend.

Fierce pose to optimally exhibit new clothes. Unfortunately, her best item, her light up shoes, can't be worn in the house.

Tamer, Ya Tamer. Visited my favorite little guy for the first time in a month or so. I'm sorry to say, his haircut, clothing, and general demeanor have taken a turn for the worse since his dad came home from studying in Holland. Not sure why.

 I'm here too. And available for photoshoots.

 Everyone visits all of their family on Eid. The added bonus is that all the men have to give the women in their family money, and everyone has to give the kids money. I've never seen these kids beat feet so fast. The more houses you hit, the more money you get. It's good form to only ask money of family, but when the entire village is somehow related, the opportunities are almost endless.

189

This little pile of crazy showed up at my door today to escort me to their house for lunch. Balloon and all. Looking like a homeless person that just came from a party. I realized that I only have a few more weeks of this and was slightly devastated.

Cannot get this song out of my head, don't even know if I really like it, give it a try: On to the Next One Mr. Jay-Z

188

Trying to train my cat to be a strong, independent outdoor feline beast before I leave him. He is resisting. After 10 minutes of him clawing at the window glass and meowing pitifully I let him in. He did climb a tree to get to the window though, so... +2 points?

Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis

187

Fall Foliage? What's left of my grape vines that make up the roof of my front porch.

The catchiest song about abuse ever made, I actually love it: Your Southern Can is Mine by Ze White Stripeses

186

Breakfast in bed, Jordan style. Magdoos. Pickled eggplant stuffed with peppers, walnuts, and other stuff, in olive oil, eaten with some nice fresh pita and some Miranda (orange drink=orange juice right?)

Groove Baby: Moneygrabber by Fitz and the Tantrums

185

Mansef delivery. With my very own water bottle full of homemade goat yogurt liquid stuff! I got it as a consolation prize because I was supposed to go to the family's for lunch, but they were busy and cancelled on me. So they showed up that night with mansef from their grandparents'. Love them.

184

Ahlan Wasahlan. Welcome.

Downfall - Matchbox Twenty, epic, stick with it for the choir

183

Ibraheim. Pure Sweetness. I freaking love this kid.

182

The new teacher in action! She is totally the best, and she is deaf so (novel idea) she uses sign language with the deaf kids! I completely love her, and so do the kids.

Instant Pleasure - Rufus Wainwright

181

Still loving the swings. Just wanted to draw attention to his shirt. Got to love the English on the shirts here. At least this one pretty much makes sense, in a nonsensical kind of way.
It reads:

Motocross rider.
JENS TIME
Never heard of it

Forgetful Heart - Bob Dylan

180

Ok so these pictures have a backstory. This is the wall outside my friend's Special Education center. Her director asked her to paint the number for the center on the outer wall (the yellow pages isn't exactly a thing here) and asked us to make it pretty while we were out there. So here we are, day one, painting the number and the outlines for all the cute little illustrations we did the rest of the way down the wall. All is good and cute and fun.

Here we are halfway through day two. Notice anything strange? We had to paint a nice fluffy cloud over the number for the center. Why would you do that? I hear you asking. Wasn't that the point in the first place? Well after the first day, my friend's director recieved some phone calls from the men in her family demanding that she remove the number from the wall, or they would come over and remove it for her.
Their reason for this? Though this is not the director's personal number, when someone calls the center, it will be her who picks up, and therefore it is her number. And a lady doesn't advertise her number on the side of walls.
A little extreme perhaps? Here's the backstory...
A week or so before we began this little project, there was an honor killing in the village next door (the director's home village). The event that led to the honor killing was that a woman's husband took a video of her while she was cleaning (or doing some other menial house chore) in her own home. This video then somehow got around to most of the men in that and the surrounding villages. The husband then told the wife's family that she was soiled and no longer wanted her. In order to cleanse themselves of having such a shameful daughter, her uncle and brother killed her. Now all the men are cracking down on the women to make sure they are all in line.

Now I don't like to post things like this, it's not pretty, and it is not representative of every Jordanian. Arguably it is not even representative of most Jordanians. It is however very real, and incredibly sickening.

Ok whoops. Been out of the house for a week, did so many things, and didn't take a single picture. Such is life. Tomorrow is another day.

Can't Get It Right Today - Joe Purdy

179

The Event of the Day. Drinking a dark beer. A dark beer, in Jordan. My very first since I've been here. It was like drinking liquified heaven. I had gotten it in Amman a little while ago and was squirreling it away to use as an incentive to do some crappy task. It was supposed to be my reward for doing laundry today. Laundry required too much effort, so it became my reward for...being so awesome all the time.

soft, pretty, calming (in short the opposite of everything that I like right now, but I still liked it) :The Middle East - Blood

178

Went on a wonderful sunset rehla (picnicish) with my neighbor's oldest kids and their friend. Of course, what is a rehla without a fire? So we made some delicious baked potatoes in this natural fire-pit rock. Here are the boys handling the fire beautifully. It was a great time full of dancing, potato eating, cookie eating, chip eating, pepsi drinking, and everything else that is good. There was even some stripping involved as we had forgotten to bring tissues (edit: the tissues were burned in the fire as I see by this very picture), and so Nishmee took off his undershirt for us to use as a towel. Because one cannot walk around at a picnic with dirty fingers, everyone knows that.

Here Comes Your Man - Meaghan Smith

177

It happened! A playground! I wrote a grant for the center to get us money for a playground, and, to everyone's surprise ended up building a real live playground. We still need to put sand under the whole thing, but it is being well enjoyed in the meantime.

Seriously, this kid has the best poses. And this is truly a pose, I have five other pictures taken in slightly different locations of him doing this exact same pose. He is truly an artist. See how perfectly it captures the emotions of 'oh how I love, my new playground!', 'oh my god I'm having my picture taken!', and 'tyra taught me good, broken doll pose is SO hot right now.'

She knows how to do a swing right.

Look at that excitement for the swings. Also he is very impressed by what an awesome swinger I am. I was SO HIGH! You all should be impressed as well.

What better time or place to burn the brush and trash from the center than ten yards from the kids playing on the playground? Then you can carefully monitor both for safety while napping in the shade on the high ground.

The Black Keys' grandfathers: Shot Down by the Sonics

oh wooow

ok.
EPIC fail.
I've only been gone a month, but if feels like longer don't it? I know, it hurts me too.
So tomorrow, we are starting again.
Forgive and forget.
Love.

176

Wedding day. The little girls get a liiiitle dressed up. They go to salons, get updo's covered in glitter, get their makeup and nails did, and buy mini bridesmaids dresses.

175

Road Trip!!!



Piled in the van borrowed from the neighbors, looking forward to the good times ahead.

Bored of the trip already, documenting how very beautiful and black Shahed's new jewelry is.

Post chicken feast narghila and coffee for the man.

On the road again, destination unknown.

Turns out the destination was a woman's house somewhere in the middle of nowhere to buy clothes, and of course visit for a bit. Had some delicious homemade date-filled cookies.

Final stop (around 11pm) the mall. One of the more hellish mall trips of my life, on par with Black Friday. It was all the intensity, pushing, and crowdedness of Black Friday, but with no goal. Apparently normal, but it made me glad that I never get to go anywhere after dark when everyone else is out. We did, however get to see a breakdancing crew. They had no music, but they did their thing anyway.


Today was a Lil Wayne day: Mrs. Officer All of the Lights (remix)

174

Eid!!!!! Which means....new clothes! And a rare opportunity to take a picture of Shahed. Though I see her pretty much every day, and photos of the rest of her family fill my camera, she has deleted almost every one I have taken of her. On this occasion, however, she made me take a whole series of her in her favorite outfit ever. Mostly because I was the only one who liked her outfit. Everyone else said she looked like a man. I said she looked like an American. Guess who was her best friend for the day?

173

Gutiyef. The nastiest most delicious desserts this side of Ramadan. They are little sweet, and slightly anise-y, pancakes, folded around either smooshed dates, or cream, or sugar and walnuts, then deep-fried, then soaked in a simple syrup for a few minutes. The result is a completely delicious treat that actually drips a mix of oil and sugar when you bite into it. I can usually stomach about 4 before I feel like I will explode; your entire body starts to feel thick. Nasty. Delicious.

Meh still on The Clarks. Watch while they fool you with a happy beat then smack you with Brucie's depressing-as-hell lyrics: The River.

172

Oh Ramadan, so exciting. Typical day: wake up at noon (edit:wake up at 9, reconsider, wake up again at 10, pull tshirt over my face to block out the sun, wake up again after noon and figure that's about all I can justify), roll over and watch whatever happens to be in my disc drive (30 min), make coffee (10 min), drink coffee(ongoing), stare at wall (time unknown), eat leftovers from break fast the night before (20 minutes), complete movie I started so that I can eat without just staring at a wall while doing so (2 hours), press random keys and watch what comes up on the internet (30 min?), read (2 hours), watch Futurama while playing online backgammon (2 hours), go down the street to get fed and interact with humans (3-5 hours), return home and eat ice cream or other chocolately treat picked up at the ducan on the walk home (30 min), watch something on the computer, forget that I was watching something then suddenly close the browser window and find that I have missed the last hour of a movie, try really hard to remember what I was looking at online, fail, sit and ponder the uselessness of it all, come back to awareness playing online backgammon (1-3 hours), read (30 min), put on movie and wrap my head in a tshirt twisted around like a turban to keep my hair from blowing in my face all night and giving me dreams about spiders/waking up and slapping my own face hoping to kill a mosquito that is in fact my hair, brush teeth, plug in fan, stare at movie until I fall asleep around 5 am.
Repeat EVERY DAY for a month.

The Clarks are calling me home Highwire and Hell on Wheels

171

For your viewing pleasure: a series of photos of the cutest child alive.
Just waking up, straight into mugging for the camera.

170

Just laying around, stealing my heart. A common saying here, when you are trying to convince someone to do something, is "(because) you love Allah," when the family wants me to do something they say "because you love Tamer." I'm in negotiations with his mom to let me take him back to America with me.

169

His cousin Hamudeh was doing headstands and everyone seemed impressed, so Tamer demonstrated his prowess.