Treebeard

There's a donkey that lives outside my window in my new house in my new town in my new country of Jordan.

The dude who runs this internet cafe is named Jethro. And he was playing Bob Marley really loud until Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" just came on. Jethro's pretty dope.

Oh, and he's a wearing a poofy vest like the one Michael J. Fox got made fun of for wearing in "Back to the Future" only Jethro's is red and has a Marlboro patch on it. Not that cigarettes are so very keen but patches sure are.

What's best is I think he knows what humor looks like. This is only my second time here and when he said it was one and a half dinars for an hour I clicked my tounge in the culturally appropraite way which here means "I politely do not accept what you are saying, mister." I asked if that was the tourist price, cos as a member of the neighboring village, well, darnit, I should be treated as a local, not as one of them pale-skins visiting this Wadi Musa only cos it's a spring to Petra.

"No, that's the tourist price. I charge two dinars for the locals." Thus sayeth Jethro. Thus laugheth Jethro.

I lost. Mish mushkalem, cos it was a corrigable loss. Just go about your bidness, smile lots and try not to make the Arabic so badly stinging as to make the ears of your listeners bleed. Umm...do that and good things shall come.

Jethro just came over and offered me a part-time job teaching conversational English to a class of adults. I had to decline, cos Peace Corps stipulates that our only source of income is the Peace Corps or any account we may already have in the U.S., so as not to seem to take advantage of the locals in any way and retain the non-parasitic image of the Peace Corps. But I did offer to maybe volunteer and help out with it once I get all settled in and some sort of routine gets going.

I've been in Al Rajif for 10 days now and the stress level is ebbing. Is low tide the ebb tide? I think so. If it is, than the stress level is ebbing.

On a fundamentallevel, the new country experience is a basket-full of stressors. It sounds kinda crank and sissy to describe it this way, but holy wow, when absolutely nothing is familiar, everything moves foreignly fast and the commotion on the street makes you dizzy...see what happens to your adrenaline then.

When I first arrived, with zero command of the language and a negative three thousand command of comprehending what I saw, my adrenaline was forever going at fight or flight rate. I knew none of the honking was directly targeted at me, I knew none of the chickens in the street-side chicken shops were made of bombs or bullets and I knew I was safe and sound and just another weirdo walking around town.

Hmm. Wanted to say a lot more but time's gone and I have to catch the last bus back to my village.

.......

Letzter Funf

In pursuit of brevity. - 20.07.2007

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