Happy New Year!

It's 5:15 in the morning, Mosque prayers have nearly finished, and I feel incredibly blessed.

Chinese food

tastes better in Jordan.

My stomach seems to be getting back to some semblance of normality and I enjoyed a really fabulous Chinese dinner out with Fadi and Munia. We went out around 10, and when we returned home at 11:30 or so, we made a sweet dish for tomorrow's New Year's festivities. It involved pineapple, pistachios, and and fresh cream. I'm in!

I practiced tonight. Hallelujah!

Life is so different for me than it was just one year ago. I think about how I was spending my days during this week last year... it's bizarre. Today, I've been amazed with the continuous stream of "Wow. I'm really appreciating my time in Jordan" that I've been feeling.

Happy New Year!

December 29th

9 PM.

Today was lazy (not much of a change, I know), but really enjoyable. I woke up around 9:30, got ready, and went with Fadi, Munia, and Munia's mom to take Munia's sister Seja to a school exam. After dropping her off, we drove to Fadi's hometown of Fahaz to visit his mother. I was so tired for some reason, and the conversation was entirely in Arabic. Normally this is fine, but it's been happening with such frequency lately (Arabic conversation) that I just start to zone out and think about something totally unrelated to the current situation rather than listening for words that I'm familiar with. Today I was thinking how the house in which Fadi grew up reminded me of my Aunt Charlene's house in Owego, NY. A strange connection considering I found myself today in the middle of small-town Jordan. During our visit, a vegetable truck drove by (yalla bandora! yalla khyar! yalla batata!) and we bought tomatoes and cucumbers. Welcome to my life. :)

After returning home (yes I really feel like I've moved in here), Fadi and I played with Munia's sister Jude while Munia prepared lunch: scrambled eggs, olives, lunch meat, several kinds of cheese, this garlic/pickled eggplant dish, apricot jam, and tuna with lemon - all eaten with this delicious pita bread.

I'm playing a gig for the Swiss ambassador on January 2nd with Fadi, Taraq, Laith, and Osstaz Mohammed, and we rehearsed for about an hour tonight. It was the first time I played since I became ill on the 17th. Yuck. I feel like I've been smoking a pack a day for the past month - really I couldn't breathe. I'm hoping this improves sometime in the next few days :)

It's in the 50's outside and it feels like winter. Really winter. What a change from Ithaca.

I've been terrible about updating this thing

So Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas.

I could back-track, but I think it might be best for me to go from this point forward and just give you the bullet points of the past month or so:

- American-style Thanksgiving with 2 turkeys, green bean casserole (with home-made french-fried onions!), stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn bread, blueberry muffins, deviled eggs, dressing... the list goes on. Plus some really delicious wine and fantastic dessert. Maryellen made us all write down things that we were thankful for about another person in the room. We topped off the evening with American-style coffee. It was really lovely to share this with my Jordanian friends.

My plate:

- Trip to Cairo two days later. Totally insane and so much fun. Where Maryellen and I earned our "joined-at-the-hip" status. Highlights included eating stuffed pigeon, going on a Nile River cruise, seeing the Pyramids of Giza on horseback, going to the National Museum (and seeing mummies and all of the King Tut exhibition), shopping in downtown Cairo, visiting the Al-Hussein Mosque, eating, eating, and more eating, a day trip to Alexandria and seeing the fantastic library (a building that I swear is straight out of The Fountainhead - I think the most aesthetically pleasing and functional piece of architecture I've ever witnessed), a delicious fish lunch and putting my feet in the Mediterranean, traveling back to Cairo and watching terrible Egyptian films, going to a Cairo Symphony rehearsal, and finally flying back to Amman. My landing in Amman was the strangest sensation - sitting between Ostaz Mohammad and Zainab and feeling totally comfortable and like I was really coming home. This feeling was so different from the anxiety, the fear, and the uncertainty I felt the first time I landed in Amman only three months earlier. Amman is my home.

On horseback with pyramid:

- The Nutcracker and my ameba friend. Several rehearsals and many, many stomach-aches later.... The Amman production of the Nutcracker reminded me of the movie Best in Show. A mock-u-mentary of the Nutcracker. The dancers were pretty terrible. And the music was not much better. And ohh my stomach. Sometime while in Egypt I contracted an ameba friend. But no one here could figure out that it was an ameba friend... fifteen pounds, three and a half weeks later, two trips to the hospital (with really fantastic care) and finally a third visit (that included the most pain I've ever experienced) (and a partridge in a pear tree?), I was finally diagnosed with a bacterial infection. With Maryellen in Israel and Art and Allyss in Lebanon, Fadi and Munia agreed to take care of me during this time. I am so thankful because I really don't think I could have taken care of myself. Now, two days after Christmas, I'm eating and finally feeling like a human being again.

- Christmas in Amman. Mostly spent sleeping and healing. But one really wild experience was on Christmas morning here at Fadi and Munia's home in Jabal-Al-Wehbde, church bells were wildly ringing as Mass let out while simultaneously, Friday morning prayers began over the mosque's loud-speaker. What a confusing audio anomaly! This night Mohannad decided that he was just going to let me eat and see what happened. It was so painful but SO delicious! My first real meal in over a week!

-post-Christmas in Amman - a very lazy time indeed. I'm so grateful for this break from teaching so that I can actually sleep and feel better. Much-needed and well-deserved resting time.

And now I will attempt to update this blog on a more regular basis.