the word for blind is….

So this week has been pretty hectic because it’s time for midterms. Yesterday I had an Arabic test, today I had my midterm in Development Economics and tomorrow I have a presentation in my Arabic dialect class. Basically, there’s been a lot of studying or a lot of thinking about how I should be studying. Anyway, Arabic tests are always the most stressful for me because when it comes down to it, you either know it or you don’t. So the night before an Arabic test, you can always find me studying like a crazy person.

Tuesday morning I woke up early to keep studying (we had A LOT of words to memorize!) and on the way to the Institute of Diplomacy, my roommates and I all had our vocabulary lists out. We didn’t have a normal cab driver though, this cab driver decided that it was his duty to help us study for our exam so he took my friend Katie’s notes out of her hands and started reading them. While he was driving. When he realized we were studying the parts of the body, he started pointing at his different body parts and making us guess them. And then he started quizzing us on colors. And THEN he started quizzing us on physical characteristics. All of this was really cool until he wanted us to guess the word for blind and he decided to demonstrate his blindness by driving the taxi with his eyes closed…

Anyway, it was a really cool experience and I survived the taxi ride (and the test). It was a really funny experience and small experiences like this are  why I wanted to come to Jordan in the first place. It’s so hard to practice Arabic outside of class in the US because no one has any idea what you’re saying and there aren’t an abundance of Arabic-speakers hanging out in Westminster. Mostly, I’m just happy that I’m here and happy to have this opportunity!

Anyway, for those of you keeping track, today marks the end of my second month. I’ll be home in less than 2 months!

yella. wake up. you have to run.

This weekend was probably the most challenging adventure I’ve had so far in Jordan: The Dead2Red Relay Marathon. To give you a little introduction to the race, Dead2Red is a race from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea (Aqaba). That’s 242 kilometers, which is about 150-ish miles. Since no normal person can run 242 kilometers by themselves, you assemble a team of ten people and each person takes turns running until the team gets to Aqaba. If the distance wasn’t a big enough problem, the other challenging part about this race is making it to Aqaba in time. In order to get there before the end of the race, everyone has to run shorter distances so that they can run faster. The fastest teams get to Aqaba by running sprints for eleven hours straight, but that was not happening, so my team decided that each person would run 2 kilometers at a time.

About three weeks ago, five people in my program (including me) decided that we wanted to do Dead2Red. I joined a gym when I got to Jordan and so I’d been running on a pretty regular basis, but the real attraction was the idea of having a free weekend in Aqaba. They also told us that it was mostly downhill. I should’ve realized that wasn’t true, but I got my seas mixed up and thought that the Red Sea was the lowest point on Earth, when it’s actually the Dead Sea. And when the starting point is the lowest point on Earth, well, you can only go up from there. And in the case of (me) running, that’s not a good thing.

But before I get ahead of myself, the real adventure started on Wednesday night, when it started to snow in Amman. There have been a couple times so far this semester that it has snowed a little bit, but it hasn’t been anything serious. So when everyone was telling me that it was going to snow, I didn’t really take them seriously. This time was no joke though. It snowed and it snowed a lot. It snowed so much that we got a snow day on Thursday! So instead of heading to my conversational Arabic class on Thursday, I got to sleep in and prepped for the race.

Snow day in Amman! The view from my front balcony.

Luckily, when we got to the Dead Sea it wasn’t snowing there, it was only raining a little bit. It was really cool though, because the Dead Sea divides the West Bank and Jordan, so I could see the West Bank! What was more interesting was that it wasn’t raining on the other side of the sea, but it was really cloudy and stormy-looking on our side. I just wanted to run over there!

The team by the Dead Sea! You can see where the clouds begin, right over the Dead Sea. The other side is the West Bank!

The actual race was a lot of run, but it was definitely challenging. The first couple times I ran, I was fine, but then it started to get dark and then it started to get a lot harder. It was really tough to run, stop running and fall asleep and then have to wake back up and run more. Around midnight, the driver of the car knew that I was exhausted, so he started yelling out the window “yella yella! Bisoora bisoora!” (translation: go go! Quickly quickly!) Then, to motivate me even more, he started laying on his car horn. Apparently I still wasn’t running fast enough after that (completely unsurprising) so he started counting in Arabic “wahid, ithnain, thalatha…” so I thought that when he got to ten, I’d be done running. Not the case. He just started back at one. To top it all off, the driver then decided that all of that wasn’t making me go fast enough, so he got out of the car and started running with me. And counting. And that was when I knew it was going to be a long night.

Soon enough though, it started to get light outside and it was so much easier to run. I knew it was going to be tough to run in the dark, but I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be. The desert was pitch black and I couldn’t see where I was going except for the five feet in front of me. So when the sun started coming up, I was pretty happy. We were in the valley, with mountains on both sides and the sun peaking through the clouds. And that was when I was a. really glad that I got this experience because it was absolutely beautiful and b. super excited that we were almost to Aqaba.

The sun peaking through the clouds in the morning.

The really fun part started when we were getting close to Aqaba. The whole way there, there were signs along the way. The only problem was that each of the signs said something different. So we had a rough idea of how much farther it was, but not an exact idea. So our driver, Rami, came up to us and suggested that we run 200 meter sprints for the last 17 kilometers so that we would get there faster. After some deliberation, we decided it was a good idea. So Rami turned up the music, we opened the side door of the van, and got pumped for sprints. They were actually a ton of fun, but really painful! We ran for awhile and then we started asking Rami how much longer we had to run and he would go.. “yaaaaneee 5k?” (translation: like… 5k?). It was not 5k. But it was okay because we were all happy that we were almost there.

Sprinting. If you could call it that. I was really excited we were almost to Aqaba!

Probably the best moment of my life was when they told us all to get out of the van and start running. We were finally at the finish line! I’m so glad that I decided to do Dead2Red because the memories will definitely last a lifetime (although I hope that I never EVER have to hear someone say “yella. wake up. you have to run” ever again.)

The team at the finish line!