Odd things about my new home...

I have not updated my blog in a while, so I decided to tell you some of what it is like to live in my new home.

• When the power goes out no one even blinks, and you usually still have internet.
• You sweat all day long.
• You think it is a nice day when it is only 80 in the morning.
• Your kids are freezing and you are sweating. (Miss turn off the fan!)
• You never knew you could love the little Tweety bird so much! This is a place that serves smoothies.
• The electricity can run out in your classroom while you are trying to work there on the weekend, and you have to go somewhere else. They buy electricity pre-paid.

I am not sure what else to tell you guys about my new home so you should ask me questions! More later :)

Pictures

For some reason I can not get the link between my picasa web album and my blog to work so here is the address if you want to check out some of the pictures I have been taking. http://picasaweb.google.com/jrazey Enjoy! I will work on fixing the link. If anyone has any ideas on what to do...

Wecome to 5th Grade :)

Welcome to 5th Grade!!!! This is my classroom, I forgot to take pictures before I put everything up. Just trust me it looks a lot better!


That brown box kind of thing on the wall is all the switches for the fans in my room there are 6 :)

The white box on the wall is the air cooler :) This room used to be a balcony so it gets real hot.

Back in the corner there is my desk with a brand new computer and printer!!! How awesome is that :)

My Flat :)

Welcome to my new home! Some people are asking so I thought I would show you all around.

Front door we are on the third floor.

Our dinning room and fridge, see we even have electricity :)

Living room with our computers in the middle of the room.

Kitchen with water filter and gas stove.

My bedroom I will be sharing with another teacher that will get here next Saturday. On my bed there is no bed right now, because the breaker blows if we run both air conditioners. We will get that wiring snafoo fixed up though. Until then I took my matress to go sleep in my roomates room. So instead on my bed there is a very ominous stack of papers I should be grading right now :) Any volunteers?

Welcome to my new home! I have a picture of the bathroom but it didnt upload and yes it looks very American as well :)

Oh Jordan

Ok so lets say you are in the house and you hear music coming from a vehicle outside, not like someones stereo. More like just a toy type of music, what does that make you think of? Ice cream truck? Wrong in Jordan that is the gas truck that comes around to let you know they are outside in case you need gas.

Lets say you are going to the Super Market just to get a snack, and it is something that costs maybe 50-60 cents. All you have is a 5 dollar bill. Not a problem right? Wrong! You end up in an argument about that fact that you do not have any smaller change and this is all you have and he is saying the same thing to you. Oh Ramadan when no one buys much so no one has much money.

You are going to get into a car and there is a Man that is not a part of your family driving, where do you sit? Passanger seat? Nope you sit in the back seat and you should not talk to the driver especially if it is a taxi. You should also look out the window and not make eye contact.

It is getting dark out and you want to go for a walk, so you head out of the house. Then your ten year old brother asks you where you are going, because you might get lost in the dark by yourself. Actually it is not a good idea to walk by yourself anywhere anytime of the day. Just because I am a woman.

You are at school and one of your students asks why you are wearing short sleeves and you do not have your arms covered. Yes even children understand modesty and will tell you how to dress, then you explain to them you do not have to dress like that. This however does not dissuade them from telling you how to dress the next day.

Hmm that is all the oddities I can think of right now but they are all become not so odd to me. Since I have seen most of them before.

Oh the complications...

So today I had the "joy" of extending my visa for Jordan. When you come into the country they give you a one month visa, that then you are supposed to check in with the police station before a month and they will extend your visa. However I forgot and went over a couple weeks, so I had to go and pay a fine.

So this is how it went yesterday the bus driver for the school was nice enough to come with me to attempt to renew my visa. I paid the fine and actually this very nice man put my passport on top of the stack because someone told them I had family coming into town. However then we tried to find the next office we were supposed to go to and after walking in about 5 circles. Apparently it is not easy to understand what your job is here. We finally found the right place, the man asked me about 3 questions and told me to leave because I could not prove that I had a place of residence here.

So I went back today with my host sister... we did everything they wanted and got the fingerprints, by the way Jordan now has a blood test and fingerprints from me... We got to the last step where all the man had to do was stamp my passport and he looked at the receipt that said I paid my fine yesterday, and told me I had to go pay my fine today. It has to be the same day. Well that was back on the other side of the building, and the smallest room with the most people. We asked them if I could just pay the 1 and a half JD for the day, but they wanted us to fill out another paper and wait in line for this which had about 20 people in front of us. We got really frusterated and then the man yelled at my host sister, and I was really really lost for a while until about 10 minutes later we ended up with my passport stamped and went back to see the same guy that kept refusing me and he finally finally put the stamp in my passport so that now I could stay for 3 months in Jordan.

It may not seem complicated, but we were both exausted afterwards and also very frusterated. If I could just get my visa for Sudan none of this would be a problem, but such is life :)

Ramadan Pictures

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/ramadan_2009.html