136

Oh you know, just posing for pictures in front of the giant dinosaur on campus. What, like you don't have a two-story dinosaur at your university?

135

That's my kid Gusie on the right, and on the left is his new best friend who he met at camp. This guy was really great with my students, he helped them with all the activities, hung out with them on the breaks, tried to explain what was going on, and generally was just really nice to them. I even saw him attempting to use sign language to tell Gusie that they were friends now, like brothers. LOVE. This is all that I wanted from this camp, and it made me incredibly happy to see the boys from the youth center treating the kids from the SPED centers with such compassion and good humor. Life win.

134

This kid from Steph's SPED center LOVED the karate camp. Today he decided that he was awesome enough to join the instructors in the middle of the circle and demonstrate the moves along with them. He was so so excited to be a part of it, I honestly can't describe how awesome it was.

133

Martial arts training camp. A few PCVs put together a camp for boys to teach them some martial arts, and hopefully some self respect, discipline, and health awareness to go along with it. All week there are classes at the university and boys from the surrounding villages' youth centers and special education centers were brought in to participate. So it's martial arts fun with sneaky disability awareness and sensitivity training. I brought along two boys from my school for the deaf. That's my little guy Gusiie (pronounced goo-sigh sort of, tricky to try to spell in English) on the far right with the black socks gettin' some air.

132

mmmmmmmmmmmushawee. Some delicious firegrilled chicken to go. With bread, french fries, garlic mayo, and ketchup of course. I meant to take a picture before I started eating so it would look prettier. My whole walk home I kept telling myself, take a picture when you get home, take a picture, take a picture first, take a picture...take a....oooooo chicken yum!

131

She's a stah.

130

In Amman for the weekend! Being 'murican with pizza and beer, outdoors, in short sleeves! Look at us go, such rebels.

129

"Lemme alone, tryna sleep. Lemme alone, tryna sleep. Lemme alone....siiiigh"
(Don't think I don't know I'm the crazy cat lady. I KNOW ok? Step off.)

128

Love love. This little guy is the coolest.

127

A sheep skull on my front porch. How did it get there?

126

Day two of Brain Camp.
As a warmup the girls had to put themselves in a line based on their birthdays. They had to get in order without speaking. For all of you (Americans) who have done this activity before, I noticed something interesting about their technique. Every time I have done this before what happens is we put ourselves in some semblance of order, stand about where we think our month will be, then people kind of slot themselves in and move up or down the line to tweak exactly where they need to be. This time all of us facilitators were worried that the girls didn't understand what they needed to do, or at least were really struggling because when they had only a few seconds left they were still just gathered around in groups all over the area. Then when we were about to call time they all just ran all over and into place, exactly where they needed to be. Different strokes I guess.

125

Helped out at a "Brain Camp" in the village today; it teaches kids the importance of critical thinking and how to develop it. We ended with an old favorite: the human knot.

124

We made Rolo cookies!!! In Jordan!! Though I am convinced that my mom left out some crucial ingredient in the recipe to make sure that I remain dependent on her for the real things, which are life-changingly good.

123

Traded spiders for a lizard named Sniff. He lives in their bookcase and guarded me through the night from bugs, ghosts, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

122

My Tim Burton curl, which I apparently always have and never knew about. Why didn't anyone ever tell me I was so cool!?!

121

Ran away to Jana and Landon's house after the Mutant Spider Infestation 2011 massive fail. Spent four days watching Jana work out on Reba. She didn't appreciate the interruption.

120

All geared up for some CD-sized spider killin'. One pant leg tucked into a high sock, since only one sock was reachable from a safe radius from said spider, the other leg rolled up (to prevent something scurrying up a pant leg and causing me death by mortal fear). Rain jacket to prevent it from falling on my head when I launched a shoe at it, and to give it less purchase from scurrying up my arm (also a possible cause of panic death). Bucket to trap it if necessary, and extra strength bug spray for initial assault. Attack cat (fail, was not interested in spider). No spider was killed this day, bastard got away because I lost my nerve at a crucial moment.
Fail.

119

Looks like it's nap time. Yeah he's all cute and stuff, but just try to move him when he is all comfy and sleepy. You will get injured.

118

Tough crowd.

117

Jana and I gave a presentation on autism at Sarah's center. Two girls from the university where we had done this workshop before volunteered to come and help us translate. Twas a smashing success.

116

Appropriately showing affection is no longer a strong suit of ours. We had a pool party at the embassy to celebrate the end of our flag football season. 5th place woooo!!

115

Zats me. Just to prove I play, and apparently cheat a little on the flags. You will notice I am wearing pants. I fall down a lot. A lot. Finally it was time to admit that though frolicking in the sunshine, and wearing things that I would never get to wear in the village is a big draw, I needed to practice some kind of self-preservation.

114

Someone's about to get hurt. This is a great portrait of our team: all of us who do not have the ball are either standing, or strolling. All of the other team is running to try to kill us. We didn't win.

113

Mashallah. Look at this field. It's the field for the American school in Amman, and we have a little team that gets to play flag football here every Friday a few seasons a year. Fun fun.

112

Oh the miracles of modern technology! The cord to charge my speakers is the same as my camera cord. Win.

Out in front of what is basically the official PC hotel/hostel. Just sitting around, enjoying the weather, posing.

what up beautiful people. I left my cord that connects my camera to my computer, and thus allows me to share new, groundbreaking photography with you all, at my friend's house last week. so no new pics for a bit, sorry for the delay.

111

Today Baraha made faces. That was pretty much her goal for the day, make as many weird faces for as much of the time as possible. I feel I matched her face for face pretty well. Finally I have found someone who finds making stupid faces as entertaining as I do. We capped the day off with an extended photoshoot, most of which I failed to keep in frame, yay me.

110

Let me explain this picture.
We were looking through my camera photos, as we do almost every day, and at this point we generally look at just a few series of photos. One of those series is of me and Adam sitting in the airport overnight in Egypt. We had decided to take a picture every hour to document the 17 hour wait. We only managed to take a picture at hour 4. So there are a few pictures of him and me holding up four fingers, like the picture above.
Of course all the girls love the pictures of Adam (mashallah, he has blonde hair and blue eyes, there is nothing prettier) so this girl was like take a picture of me like your brother. She loved the pic and we moved on. A few minutes later, an older girl comes running up to me and is like 'what are you doing! Shame on you!" when I asked her what is going on, she basically said, you converted this poor girl by making her do that christian symbol, and points at this picture. I tell her the whole story, and she eventually believes me that this was not all an elaborate attempt to convert an innocent girl. The moment was not without drama, this poor girl was almost in tears because the other student had convinced her that she was now a christian and was going to hell.
Oh my.

109

Toilet paper roll braclets. Muaweya LOVED them. I don't think he took his hands down from this position for the whole day. Except when he was punching people. Apparently he felt they were more like super hero cuffs than braclets. Since I had decorated mine as Wonder Woman and Batman, we are clearly soulmates.