Mais, non!

Pour tous ceux d’entre vous qui aimez la musique indie, la langue française, et la folie, j’ai trouvé le groupe ultime : Malajube. Ok, c’est vrai qu’ils sont québécois (mes excuses à tous les vrais français, suisses, et belges), mais c’est la première fois que j’ai trouvé une chose pareille- le style de musique que j’aime ET le français. Je voulais afficher la vidéo mais c’est vraiment un truc bizarre (que j’aime bien sûr) au sujet de la suite d’un massacre viking ou je ne sais quoi exactement. Cherchez-le sur YouTube si vous osez.

Click here to listen to a goofy French indie song.

Why do I feel so good?!?

Friends and countrymen, one of the most exciting things of the summer happened today. Maybe the most exciting of my life. Here it is below:


$77, one solid chocolate treasure box, just about every dessert from Serendipity 3 in Georgetown, 11 friends from work and the Barlow, and a shot at glory. Twenty minutes later, the end game:
I had so much sugar during that time I'm surprised I didn't become a diabetic. Maybe my body just has a natural predilection for sugar- two uncomfortable hours and a quick jog later, I feel like I could take on the whole Empire myself. Or, maybe it's just those warm fuzzies you get after doing something great. Either way, I will sleep well tonight.

Jenni, this one's for you

So, it's a little past midnight, and I was about to go to bed, when I remembered that I promised Jenni Boyle that I'd start up my blog again (yes, it was that popular). And so I stayed up for fifteen extra minutes to keep my word. In fact, I'm even going to include a picture.

This is me on top of the world. I feel great. I feel good. Jordan was an awesome, wonderful experience that taught me a lot about what this world has to offer and what this world needs. I felt what it was like to not have constant access to the internet, an iPod, a nice gym, running, running water, a toilet, or clean clothes. Lately, at BYU, in addition to the million other things that I'm doing, I've gotten involved with an internship through Students for Social Entrepreneuring where we are helping a company involved in providing loans for poor students in South America.

I've recently found out about social entrepreneurship. Basically, you use markets and basic economic principles to provide services to the poor instead of just giving them handouts. For example, Vittana, the company that I work for, connects people around the world with students needing loans on their website, www.vittana.org. People can make a loan for as little as $25, and the students get the money to finish to school and eventually pay back the loans. It's an awesome concept- using the resources of normal people to help those who are less fortunate.

I'm seriously considering a career in international development. When I was on my mission, I decided that whatever I was going to do was going to be as close to missionary work as possible. Being involved in helping overcome the problems of the world- no matter how insignificant my efforts are- is the closest thing that I've found. Life is beautiful. Profitons-en.

The End

Well, I feel that I ought to close out (this section of) my blog with some sort of grandiose, thought-provoking summary of my experience. I think I'll start off with a list of things that I missed from America (in no particular order):

1. My Pandora stations
2. Running
3. Milk and cookies
4. Normal interactions with females
5. Toilet seats
6. Things that are green
7. My family and friends

However, that being said, let me now list the things that I will miss about Jordan:

1. The falafel sandwiches from the falafel shop in Salhiyya
2. Not having to shower for several days on end
3. Mansef, Maglouba, and Kibsa (Arabic dishes)
4. The kids that I taught English to/the Egyptian bread workers
   
5. Muzzeins (the guys who do the Islamic call to prayer- it's really beautiful)
6. Working out on top of the roof at midnight and seeing the stars (I'm romantic, aren't I?)
7. Going to Church at the al-Husn branch
8. Being mistaken for John Cena

Ok, just because there are eight things in the Jordan list does not mean that I miss Jordan more than I enjoy being in America- in my opinion, the seven American things are qualitatively better than the Jordan eight. I did, however, love my time in Jordan. Despite the frustrations of trying to do an internship where there was no work to be done, I loved the culture, the people, and the food. I really think Americans could learn something from throwing time out the window from time to time and start building relationships Arab style. Hopefully I'll be able to go back sooner or later.

Maybe I'll update my blog in the future. I don't know yet. I created it for the Jordan internship, and that's over. But thanks for following me this summer.

Yeh hosers...

I haven't showered since Friday night. Cyrus hasn't showered since Friday afternoon. Robert showered on Saturday, but he rode a camel today and is therefore probably dirtier than Cyrus and I combined. So, we were all rather overjoyed to come home tonight and to (separately) take a shower. Well, I didn't really care, but Cyrus and Robert were. That was, they were overjoyed until we came home to discover this:

What is this, you might ask? An empty water tank. Water is really scarce in Jordan, so there is no underground water pipe system like the one that we have in the States. Instead, water trucks tour around the countryside and fill up the water tanks on people's roofs using some complicated system of pipes that go from the ground to the... actually, I don't know how it gets filled. I just know that every Thursday morning/afternoon, somehow our water tank on the top of the roof gets filled, and that water is supposed to last us a week. In the past, we have had problems with the water overflowing, so we've always had to go up and switch the valves off. I guess last time we forgot to turn them off, because we didn't have any water when we got home tonight. Luckily, there are four water tanks on top of the roof, and the other three--connected to other parts of the building--were somewhat full. After lugging buckets of water across the roof for about 15 minutes, we found a hose to siphon the water from one of the water tanks to the next. Robert was brave enough to climb in the tank and get the siphon going.

Our Japanese friend Sey, who works for the Japanese Peace Corps and lives in our building, came and helped us get it going. Eventually, we got it figured out and now have it siphoning... But it really does make you appreciate American plumbing. And Robert got to take his shower.

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Garbage Man

Update on the situation locked in my room: We fully dismantled the lock, and then Robert kicked in the door. I got out.

When I was little, I wanted to be a garbage man when I grew up. I don't know why exactly, but I was fascinated with the whole garbage pick-up process. I have an extremely vivid memory from when I was six or seven of setting up little garbage cans next to all the rooms in my house in Ohio and going from door to door collecting the trash. Wow, I must sound like a freak. Anyways, I've recently had the chance to put my latent childhood desires into action out here in the Badia. The trash situation out here is pretty terrible- littering is commonplace and "trash collection" consists of putting everything in a trashed dumpster and setting fire to it. So, scenes like this are not uncommon:

Unfortunately, I had succumbed to the prevailing cultural norms of the Badia; Robert, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff and decided to organize a day to clean up the area in front of our building (i.e., see picture above). Last Saturday (the 10th), we got about 40 sacks and tempted the children from the apartment complex with a soccer game and lots of American suckers and set about cleaning the area. The kids were rowdy but enthusiastic and we got the bags filled in about 40 minutes or so.

The whole process up through then had gone smoothly, but our Western-styled organization quickly broke off in the face of two of man's most primordial desires: fire and candy. As I mentioned above, real trash collection doesn't exist, so we had no choice but to haul our little pile of trash to the dumpster (not the one above) and burn it. The next morning, we found the dumpster tipped over and the trash in a half-burned, smoldering heap. The candy situation was worse- the best way to describe it is to say that I felt like a UN aid worker trying to hand out flour to a mob of starving, unruly Somalians. People came out of the woodwork to pick up the suckers and the kids claimed exorbitant amounts for their little brothers at home. Worst of all, they disposed of the wrappers in the only way they were familiar with- throwing them on the ground.

So, maybe it wasn't the most successful trash pick up, but we were able to get 25 Jordanian kids together for an hour to work on something and make them feel useful. That's a pretty big accomplishment in and of itself.

Oh I was sitting, waiting, wishing...

Everyone, I sincerely apolgize that I haven't updated my blog in a really long time. A lot of things have happened in the week and a half or so since I updated- visited Roman ruins, had a run-in with the Jordanian secret police, taught English classes, saw the baptism of a couple of Jordanians, watched a couple really good movies. I just haven't had time- until now, when I woke up in my friends apartment in Amman to discover that somehow the lock on the door had broken overnight. It got worse when I, using my John Cena-like muscles, broke the key off in the door. I took off the door handle using an extra set of keys I found in the room as a screwdriver and broke a leg off the chair to act as a hammer to knock the lock out, but unfortunately the lock is encased in steel. So, two hours and a bloodied ring finger later, I finally have the time to update my blog. Aside from the fact that I really have to go to the bathroom, that my finger hurts, and that I have nothing to do, being trapped in my room isn't too bad. My friend's wife give me some Fruity Pebbles through the bars of the window and I have my computer and a copy of V for Vendetta that I can watch if I get really bored. The only problem is that I left my camera cord in Salhiyya, so I can't put any pictures up. I'll do that when I get out.