Wadi Rum, Round Three

Yes, you read that right: I went to Wadi Rum again. I'm currently two months into Operation GTWREMO2014 (Go To Wadi Rum Every Month of 2014), and month three is pretty much in the bag thanks to the impending family visit. Will April happen too? It's not impossible.

If I learned anything from this weekend, it's that you can never really get too much of Wadi Rum. This was a very different trip in some logistical ways: smaller group (3 guys and 3 girls), and camping in the Actual Desert instead of outside. The place itself, though, provided all the magic and majesty it had last time, and knowing what to expect didn't diminish the feeling at all.

Want proof? Here.


We arrived in the afternoon, sun high in the sky, and were greeted by the familiar expanses of desert and towering rock structures as we sped away from the little Wadi Rum town in the bed of a pickup truck.

Lina, Mia, and Moamer exploring one of two (!) thrilling rock bridges we encountered. Check out that backdrop!

The second rock bridge. It was significantly less scary being up there, I promise.

This time, I made sure to take about eight thousand pictures of the sunset. Here's one of them; I'm pretty happy about the way my state-of-the-art iPhone camera caught the light. It was a transcendently beautiful thing to see, and I was sad that we weren't meditatively silent while it happened, but that's what next trip is for!

Our camp, the morning after. It was really freaking cold at night and Chase kept stealing the thick quilt (we were sort of sharing a bed), but there's something so comforting about sleeping in many layers of clothing and under many soft blankets. And waking up to this sight made it so, so worth it.

So a very successful trip, I'd say - our evening in the camp was a pleasant one, with a hearty dinner and tea and ghost stories and a serenade by a remarkably talented oud player and singer. I liked our guide/driver, Suleiman, and I think I'll get in touch with him about leading our March trip as well. Thanks for some beautiful memories, Wadi Rum; so glad I'll be back so soon.

Since then, a thoroughly normal week; my classes are getting pretty pumped about our politics unit, so it's been fun to jump into that together, and there are some dinners and parties later this week to keep things interesting. Most exciting of all, though, is our long weekend, because early Thursday morning, we're going to JERUSALEM!!!

I don't think I realized how exciting this was until this week. I've been here for an awful long time without crossing our western border, and it's going to be really nice to be back in the Old City to see sights and explore and even catch a Friday evening service. From everything I've heard, it's impractical to go unless you've got a long weekend on which to do it, so we jumped at the chance and I really can't wait. Two more days.

You may not hear from me before then, because this is my only Supervised Study Hall of the week (hooray!). Until next time, enjoy these pictures, and get ready for stories of what is sure to be a blast of a weekend.

It's February!

Hello from supervised study hall, everyone! I once again find myself whiling away the hours as a bunch of dejected-looking boys stare at their laptop screens and wait for the clock to strike ten. It feels like it's been a while, so I found some pictures that could help illustrate my recent Exciting Experiences.

1. Chinese/Korean/Lunar New Year/Spring Festival

No one could really figure out what to call it, so I'm gonna use every name we came up with. But this past weekend I was on duty, and glad of it too, because I got to once again experience the amazing cultural diversity of this school. We put on a hell of a weekend for our Chinese and Korean students (and everyone else as well!), centered, naturally enough, around food.

One of our teachers, a Singapore native and fellow Yale grad, literally co-opted the dining hall kitchen, and it seemed the staff were as excited as he was to be putting their skills to use on something new. But our feast was also very reliant on student helpers, who put their culinary skills to work and crafted a truly unbelievable meal. Highlights included the Korean kids' bibimbap and dukbokki (delicious rice cakes in a spicy sauce that I last had on the street in Seoul), and the dining hall's renditions of beef with broccoli and fried fish weren't half bad.

Here's my own masterpiece: Vietnamese spring rolls! I was somehow put in charge of making them, and after about a zillion tries, got pretty good at it.

I have to say, making spring rolls was definitely not on my list of expectations before coming here. But this place is full of surprises.

We finished off the evening with some hot-air balloons:

And here they are heading skyward. It was a pretty beautiful sight (23 of them in all), and a great end to a busy and thrilling and very culinarily exciting day.

2. The Khalayleh House!

Fewer pictures here, but still fun: on Saturday evening, my teacher friend Moamer invited a bunch of us young folks to his family's house, about an hour outside Amman in a town called Rusaifa. Moamer is one of 7 brothers, nearly all of whom either work at, attended, or are about to get accepted to King's. He's the physics teacher; one brother is an admissions officer; and another brother is a current junior (and Glee Club member!).

And their house was super cool. Up in the hills in a middle-of-nowhere type place, it was beautiful and nicely decorated and his parents were awesome and served us delicious food. Even better, we ended our evening by visiting the school that they founded (?) and on whose board they serve. Here's a picture of the recently-completed second floor:

Really awesome to see a slice of Jordanian life outside the King's bubble. Hope I get to go back someday.

3. The Present

What's left to say? There are some things I left out last week (eating more delicious things when we celebrated Africa Night on campus; going to an awesome concert by a super-popular Jordanian band), but those feel long ago and there are plenty of exciting things on the horizon.

This weekend, it seems I'll be making my way back down to Wadi Rum, this time with more teacher friends to spend the night under the stars. And next weekend is a long weekend, which means Jerusalem! Plenty of pictures and musings and updates certainly to come after that.

Until then, though, February moves along steadily. Pumped for the weekend tomorrow, and for some good discussions in class (we're talking about the problem of evil which is always a good conversation starter), and for the adventures yet to come. And only 40 more minutes of study hall! My, how the clock keeps ticking.

Waning Long Weekend

Hello again, world! Apologies for the two-week hiatus; frankly, not much happened last week to warrant an update, and also it was midterm week so all of my free seconds were hijacked for grading and comment-writing. But now, my comments are done (at least the drafts of them), and my grading for the weekend is done, and my lesson planning is more or less done, and here I am with some seconds to spare!

I think this job is making me more of a workaholic: in weeks like this past one, during which I had next to no free time, I actually wanted to spend what free time I did have on more work. It just felt like there was so much to do, and every minute I spent goofing off was a minute wasted on the other end of things, so my days were pretty much crammed full of typing and circling things and inputting things into Engrade, the magical online tool that calculates everything for you. It can feel kinda nice to be so jam-packed, even if the days sometimes end up being 10-12 straight hours of activity with barely a dinner break in between. Today, which was a long weekend Professional Development day, a fellow teacher made a joke about barely getting 5 hours of sleep, and I laughed collegially on the outside but my brain was saying "PLEASE DON'T LET THAT BE MY LIFE WHEN I DO THIS FULL-TIME."

Because that's the big news from the week, I suppose: I'm coming back! My contract is signed for the 2014-2015 school year and I'm getting more and more excited for what's in store. Here are some very very fuzzy details:

- I'm hoping to move into an actual dorm and be a dorm parent, partly because it'd be fun and partly because my salary would get a significant (10%-ish) boost

- I will probably rent a car from the school and share it with Chase

- I will have my own advisees! Which is a little scary, honestly, because it feels like a big responsibility to be the "here" at which the buck stops for 4-5 students. But I'm looking forward to really connecting with some kids and feeling like I have a group to call my own...

- As for the classes, I thought you'd never ask. A lot is still not set in stone: generally teachers do 4 or 5 classes each, so at least double what I'm doing now, which I think is the usual load at schools around the world. However, I have the distinct honor of inaugurating a brand-new and super-exciting King's Academy class: Big History.

Created by some kind of super-curriculum-designing-squad and funded by none other than Bill Gates, Big History is about grand designs and big-picture thinking, which when I consider it makes it sort of a meta-class. See, I'll be teaching one section of 9th graders here at King's, but only twice a week - the rest of the time, I'll be leading online seminars and discussions with students from every other school that's implementing the course - that means America, and maybe Japan, and maybe beyond!

There's a lot to learn about the course, and in order to learn it all, I'm going to be attending some PD sessions, which means travel, which is thrilling. The first is in February (which is very soon, not that I'm counting) and will be in America somewhere; location TBD so I get to be on tenterhooks for at least a few more days. The next is in August in San Rafael, CA - an excuse to spend some summer days in California? Sign me up.

And what, you may ask, will I be teaching, exactly? Well, a little of everything. The point of Big History is to start at the very, very beginning (i.e. the Big Bang) and take the students all the way up to the present day. Every lesson has been meticulously planned, down to the specific seconds at which I should pause each video to ask the predetermined discussion questions. I'm interested to see how this plays out; on the one hand, of course, it's such a relief to have all the planning taken care of, but I wonder how much it'll feel like an impediment to my autonomy in the classroom.

More than anything, though, it's a fairly wild new experience, which only makes the prospect of next year more exciting. There's plenty more to come as the next few months sort themselves out; you'll know the details just about as soon as I do.

Other than that, it was a weekend of relaxing, cooking, eating things other people had cooked, and playing board games, which seems like just the right way to unwind after a busy busy week. Four (far less hectic) school days stretch out between us and February, and I'm showing The Matrix on Tuesday and Wednesday, so let's get this party started.

Wild Wadi Weekend

Hello again from Supervised Study Hall, where it seems I'll reliably have time to blog as long as I'm not grading or forcing the children to be quiet. They seem to have gotten the hang of things by now, and I usually kinda look forward to the 2.5 hours of mandated quiet sitting time. Productivity goes through the roof when you can't really do anything or make any noise. At least it does for me; can't really speak for these layabouts.

What a weekend, though! First off, it was a surprise 3-day weekend: we were going to have class off on Monday, but they switched it to Sunday last-minute, so all of a sudden the world was our oyster and we made the most of it. In brief:

THURSDAY: A return to Burger Shack for delicious burgers in celebration of a fellow teacher's birthday. TONS of students milling around and dancing; they were super embarrassed by our presence but we mostly thought it was kinda hilarious. Then a return to King's for adult refreshments and silly card games.

FRIDAY: A trip to the brand-new Carrefour in Madaba, which is a huuuuge game-changer for the grocery fanatics among us. It's closer by a factor of 4 than any grocery store was before, and has a giant selection (including home goods and kitchen supplies and rugs and shoes) at lower prices than the other grocery stores. It was PACKED with King's people when we were there, and Yasmine and I took full advantage to host a dinner party at which we served baked ziti and Noor baked cookies and a truly delightful time was had by all. And then out to Amman to hang out with Joanna's brother, who was in town, and we got back at 1:30am which wasn't great for what ended up happening the next day.

SATURDAY: See below. Ridiculous.

SUNDAY: Relaxed, prepped for class, watched Downton Abbey, the usual. Back to Saturday.


Really this post is about Saturday, because my threshold of crazy adventures in Jordan keeps getting bumped up. Now that I've piqued your curiosity, here's the deal:

Saturday was going to be a pleasant day: Alli had planned a trip to the art gallery, and my Arabic teacher was hosting a gathering afterwards at a nearby cafe. Normal, pleasant weekend day. But Jordan had other plans: on Friday afternoon, just before the Carrefour shopping trip, Alli sent the following email:

This was somewhat surprising. Immediately I knew I was doing it, and so it was that four hours after falling asleep at 2, I was back up and ready (-ish) to hit the road. The adventure unfolded as follows:

Four teachers (Alli, Meg, Jimmy, and I) gathered at 6:30 to drive to Amman. A bizarrely thick fog had settled over the highway as we drove, and it took us a little while to make our way to the mall at which our "charter bus" planned to meet us. Said bus ended up being a rickety powder-blue affair - I wish I had a picture - whose windows kept getting jostled open, exposing us to the surprisingly cold morning air. I had a hat and a scarf and I wore them the whole bus ride, sleeping fitfully and reading my book as we bumped and screeched our 3-plus-hour way to Wadi Rum.

The only other travelers on the bus were Americans, Russell and Allie, who had gotten the same call and had similarly adventurous spirits. Around 11, the six of us arrived at our destination: Wadi Rum station, a roadside museum of sorts dedicated to a truly beautiful train:

                                      

I had been smitten by this train the last time we went to Wadi Rum, and was more or less beside myself to finally be in its presence now. (Check my Facebook profile picture for proof). Not only that, but there was a reasonably big crowd milling around, and some professional-looking equipment, and a lady who introduced herself as Diala and told us she'd be taking care of us. This seemed like enough to go on, so we went into the exhibit for respite from the cold.

Hours and hours we waited. As promised, they served us lunch, which very unexpectedly was a quite tasty chicken tikka take-away that was, even more bafflingly, still warm. How they shipped it out to our desert outpost may always be one of the mysteries of this day. We passed the rest of our time by standing, sitting, pacing, and exploring the nearby railway offerings:

                                                      

Tracks to nowhere.

The part of the train where the coal gets shoveled. Boiler? Guess Thomas the Tank Engine didn't teach me that much.

Wadi Rum, beautiful even in the clouds. If you look closely you can see Meg wandering across the lower right of the image.

But at long last, that is, at about 3:30, our time finally came. And what a time it was.

The star of the music video was Jaafar, a pop singer of apparently modest fame and allegedly nephew of the king. As far as we could tell, the gist of the video was that he was performing a concert on the flat bed of a train car, and we (along with about 30 others) were to be his audience. This involved dancing, flailing our arms, and looking extremely excited, and we were good at it.

We were so good, in fact, that we were singled out from the crowd to be focal points in almost every shot. When they shot the crowd from behind, we stood at the back. When they focused on the front row, we were the front row. When they needed to surround the lead female concert-goer with excited-looking audience members, we were the go-to gang. And so we listened to about 90 seconds of awfully catchy pop music over and over and over and over again, dancing up a storm all the while and having a blast. Jaafar proved a somewhat unpolished performer, not really heeding the director's instructions (mostly "dance!" and "energy!"), but we did a plenty good job providing our own enthusiasm.

Shooting wrapped up as the sun set, and we took a long cold sleepy rickety ride back to Amman, and cranked up the heat in the car on the way to King's. Exhausted and victorious, we arrived back in time for a full night's sleep.

I have no idea when this video will get released, but I am fairly certain that I will feature in it to some degree. Rest assured that you will know as soon as I do. Most importantly, it was every bit the adventure I hoped it would be, and I feel validated once again in the "never don't go" ethos. No regrets, as they say. 

Life goes on, though, and now it's time to wake up the sleeping girl in this study hall. Again. See you soon!

Back for 2014

I am sitting here in Supervised Study Hall, which provides all the joys it did way back in December, and thinking about how soon I'll be able to go to sleep. I got back to Jordan on Friday night and slept for eight delightful hours, but that appeared to be a fluke, as I've since woken up at 4:13 and 3:18 respectively (funny how my seriously exhausted brain chooses those kinds of specifics to remember).

But I got back to sleep last night, and I'm approaching the point of being so tired that I have no choice but to sleep through the night. I hope.

Mostly, though, it's been a couple days of reacquainting myself with the routines of life here. Classes, meals, co-curriculars, lesson plans and grades and free evenings - slowly but surely I'm sinking back in, and enjoying the little differences that have so far separated this week from three weeks ago.

First off, I'm taking tae kwon do as a co-curricular. I say "taking" because I'm not at all in charge; there's a professional instructor, the genial and surprisingly flexible Coach Mustafa, and all I have to do is take attendance and reacquaint myself with martial arts. Can't complain; with very little responsibility, I get to exercise and punch and kick three times a week, and ever since the Great Capoeira Experiment of senior year ended after one session with black blood blisters on both my big toes, I've been hankering to get back in the game in a way that doesn't leave me immobile for a week afterwards. So that's been fun.

I'm also about to start individual voice lessons with a handful of students. But I haven't yet, so that one can be a cliffhanger for now.

And of course, the new classes, with whom I had less than two weeks before the break. We're definitely still feeling each other out, but both of them have continued to be sharp, hardworking, and good-natured, and if they keep that up, I can't imagine I'll have much to complain about these winter months.

Except the cold, because it's cold. Often in the low 40s at night, and 50s during the day, which wouldn't be terrible except that they're still getting the heat worked out. So far it's been safe to assume that the outside temperature will be equal to (or sometimes even greater than) the inside temperature. I don't usually mind 42 degrees when I have a jacket and am only outside for 10 minutes, but my hands are just a tad numb as I write this, as if winter is just giving me a frosty little nudge to remind me it's there. Plenty of heat in my apartment, though, plus a new fitted sheet (cause I sure know how to treat myself), so I think I'll manage.

***

I almost published this post and then I realized I didn't really talk at all about the last three weeks. I guess most of you reading this saw me at one point or another, but in case you were wondering, it was truly a wonderful vacation. Highlights included:

- seeing family in NYC, Woodbridge, DC, and Vermont (all of these instances were largely focused on eating, except one where we watched The Hobbit)

- celebrating my first-ever Christmas at Sam's house (also almost entirely food-centric)

- taking Sam skiing for the first time, and introducing her to the crucial 2:3 ratio of skis per day:huge meals per day

- reuniting with Spizzwinks up and down the east coast. Managed to get nine of us together in Brooklyn one evening, which was an absolute joy. Can't wait for my crazy jaunt back in April

- I'll remember some other things and talk about them later maybe. It's late.

Basically, I had a blast, and the readjustment period has passed full swing but definitely isn't over. I guess I miss those folks back home, and as much fun and excitement as there is every day at King's, it's certainly impossible to jump back in as if those three weeks didn't happen. As I've reiterated countless times to myself, I should mostly feel glad to miss people because it means I'm lucky enough to have people to miss, which of course is easier to say than to actually feel but I'm doing my best. Don't cry for me, America; this place is still a lot of fun, and I can only look forward to getting back in the groove for the coming two months.

Twenty minutes until I leave this room of disgruntled teenagers, and hopefully twenty minutes after that I'll be sleeping for the next eight hours. Wish me luck. Happy New Year!

SNOW DAY.

Well, it was going to be the second-to-last day of school today. I spent the morning thinking about how I only had one more day of my normal routine, and berating myself for being so focused on the end and the vacation but generally feeling resigned to the fact that I was basically going to count down the hours until Thursday's classes were over.

Somehow, though, fate intervened. I got the news towards the end of Arabic class and whispered it to Lina, the teacher, who made the announcement. The room filled with cheers. No school tomorrow.

This is pretty ridiculous. In the middle of this desert, on exactly the day everyone wanted it the most (I'm not quite ready to say "needed"), we all got our holiday wish. Papers are graded and returned, students are leaving campus, and we are DONE.

Left on the agenda: a dinner with my classmates from Arabic; an evening of Christmas carols for those left on campus, and nearly 24 hours of completely unstructured, completely unburdened time tomorrow. I will pack, and eat, and clean, and watch Downton Abbey, and revel in the winter that managed to sneak its way into this country at just the right time.

And then I'll fly to America. See you on Friday.

Term Twos and Study Hall Blues

Hardly blue, to be honest. I'm having a great time in my biweekly prison: the kids appear to be getting things done, I just knocked out a serious amount of planning for next week, and I'm two 45-minute blocks away from the weekend. But I'm cooped up here for the next hour and a quarter, and what better way to spend it than to do a little writing?

Here we are, at long last, at the Winter Term. The day finally came - and went - where I stepped into a room full of new students and gave them the old philosophy spiel, slightly revised from August but with more or less the same gist. They're still shaking out their schedules for the term so I see a different bunch of kids every day (which is a little head-spinning if you want to actually get anything done), but so far it's going quite well.

Some things about my two new classes:

- they're small. Even after all the adds and drops, it's looking like I'll have one class of twelvish and one class of nine. That's barely more than half the size of my classes last semester. Will it take some reworking of the lessons? We'll see.

- they're old. Lots of seniors and juniors, and even the sophomores feel more mature than they did in my last classes. Maybe that's just the work of a few months at King's - if we're actually getting them to improve and be better thinkers, more power to us.

- they're smart. Wow. We're having big discussions already, or at least starting to, and they're raising their hands and participating and moving at quite a clip. I really may have to pick up the pace, but it looks like it's going to be a fun term.


Time to go bother a girl who decided she could use Supervised Study Hall time to take a nap at her table. Uh-uh.


Now she's diligently putting together her diary entry from the point of view of an African slave in the 1800s. Don't they understand that we give them interesting homework?

Obviously not, because they're in high school.

Anyway, it's been a pretty solid week with the new kids. I'm enjoying revamping my lessons and taking my own advice from months back. Makes things easier to plan as well. I have to say that I was hit by my first wave of real nostalgia earlier this week, when I took out my old lesson plans and prepared to start things from scratch once again. Just a feeling in the pit of my stomach, looking at those old print-outs and scribbles and thinking of where I was, and who I was, as August turned to September and these uniform-clad ragamuffins showed up to try to learn. I suppose a lot has changed since then.

All 8 Teaching Fellows got letters of intent last week; they like us and they want us back! One or two have turned in a definitive yes, the same a definitive no, and about half of us (I haven't asked everyone) are in the "maybe" column. A lot to think about before I commit in either direction, but I'm grateful for the time I've had here so far. I met with a student today who told me her friend convinced her to take my class by saying it "changed her life." Did I do that? Can I keep doing that? Can't deny that it feels pretty good to know that I caused someone to say that about a high school class. Let's hope we can make it happen again with a new batch.

In the meantime, the weekend approaches. Next week is Spirit Week, which promises to be a whirlwind of activities (most of which I haven't even heard about yet), and before we know it I'll be on a plane to the homeland. Time is a tricky thing; let's keep it moving, term 2.