For those of you that don’t know, ever since I was fifteen I have rejected the notion of a God as established religions have identified. However, the older I get the more spiritual I have become as well. Some might call it ironically, but the more and more I learn about science the more spiritual I become. I won’t go into this to deeply here but the more I learn about advanced physics the more I reaffirm to myself that there is no God as past religions have identified him/it/her, [...]

For those that are anxious for new blogs from the happening place of Jordan, fret no more! For this weekend marked the end of empty weekends. Friday started out at the time every day should, 11:30am. Upon waking up I decided that the day should be holy and have no Arabic in it, as such I spent the entire day smoking argeela and planning my Eid trip. For those of you who don’t know Eid is a Muslim holiday which results in many Arabs having off that entire week, ergo [...]

First off I apologize to my avid blog readers (aka mostly Mom, Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa) for not posting in a while. School is definitely picking up so I’ll try and recap the past few weeks. As I put in mentioned before I went up to northern Jordan to visit the eco park my internship will be working with for two days and so missed school. Then that Wednesday Amman experienced one of the Middle East’s great pleasures… a sand storm. It wasn’t windy so I guess it wasn’t [...]

This last weekend was AMAZING!!!! We went to Dana Nature Reserve, Wadi Rum where I got to ride camels, ride in a jeep, flip down sand hills, eat with the Bedouin, attend a fake Bedouin wedding, climb a cliff, then climb it again at 5am to get to the very top and watch the sunrise. Then we went to Petra where I rode donkeys, saw the sand building that is famous from Indiana Jones, and saw many other buildings. On a more serious note the more and more I experience [...]

I write to you now not from my apartment or the University but from a cabin in NW Jordan. Yesterday I went in for my first day at my internship and received a last minute invite to the Eco Park I will be focusing on. So early this morning I headed north. On the way Abdel (my supervisor) pointed out two Palestinian refugee camps. Overcrowded, crumbling, and little to no economic sustainability or eco-sustainability I am reminded of the urgency of resolving this conflict. Our first stop was at a [...]

Arabic. I seriously believe it might be the death of me one day. This weekend concludes my first full week of classes, and I am very much looking forward to the break. Every day I have Arabic for 2 hours and then another hour of Ameea (what the Jordanian dialect is called), however in order to be prepared for class I have to spend about 4 hours a day prepping. That is a lot of Arabic, alas it is what I came here for. My other class, the Environment and [...]

I am struggling to keep my eyes open so bear with me on this post. Today we woke up and had to be at our CIEE office by 8am. There we met up with about 20 other CIEE students and took buses to… the Dead Sea. On our way there our bus driver played a love song CD which all of us in the bus (all guys) found amusing. The CD started right as we were outside of Amman at the top of a hill with “Once… more… you OPENED [...]

I never thought I would say this but I really want school to start. I have been here now for almost two weeks and we are just starting Arabic class tomorrow and I’ve had two other classes so far. Two days ago was my Arabic placement test though and we got the results today. My test score was not as high as I wanted so in order to be placed in the class I would like I have to retake the test. I will say this Arabic program and many [...]

I love coffee. Anyone who knows my daily routines know me and caffeine are a great combination that do not do well when parted. So naturally I was a bit worried when I came to the middle east, and I will admit I am having some issues. The coffee they drink here almost always comes in a tiny cup and is the equivalent of espresso. Now while I love caffeine I am NOT able to ingest it like that. For those of you that have lived with me or seen [...]

After a pathetically hard time with no internet for a few days we finally got the internet set up in our apartment in Shmeisani, Amman. I’ll upload some photos soon but the apartment is magnificent. We have in an open area a dining room, living room, tv room with a patio attached. There are three of us here, and each have our own room. One has two full beds pushed together and his own bathroom, I have two twins pushed together and a patio (although I can’t go out onto [...]

Ok so the taxi cab driver didn’t say that to us right away like all the guides say they will but after we asked him how he was doing in Arabic he said Ahlan wa sahlan to us and was very friendly. My plane ended up being about 4 hours late but on the ride I did meet 5 other CIEE students. We all hitched a bus to our hotel and crashed in two rooms (which by the way were very expensive. American hotels in Jordan are not cheap apparently). [...]