Cloud 9

David's old friend from high school - an exchange student from England named Stewart - was coming to Lebanon for a holiday, and we convinced him to pop over to Jordan for a couple of days with his wife Raina. Both of them make films for a living, and Stewart works full time now as a film producer for Save the Children UK. Their visit just happened to coincide with the first day of the youth training for documentary film-making, so Stu and Raina came. Stu showed some of his work and answered questions from the participants. Stu and Raina were really inspirational, and they were impressed with Mohammad Hushki, the director/trainer. I was on cloud 9 seeing everything come together. These 20-somethings are all Iraqi refugees, a few years into their life-on-hold here in Jordan where they can't really work. They can't go back home, and many are waiting to be re-located to a third country. So here they are learning from pros about film-making: producing, sound, lighting, camera use... Yesterday they were already putting up sets around the office and practice interviewing people. Next week, we're heading out to capture the story of a friend of one of the kids, a 16-year-old who lives and works at a plastics factory and supports his family who are stuck in Syria.

Having an idea, finding support, coordinating with various people, and then being there to actually see it happen...all within a few months...it's so much more exciting than sitting behind a desk writing reports :)

Shout Out to the Hubby

This weekend D was a star. He spent most of his weekend day/night shopping for and cooking up a multi-course meal for my birthday that wasn't easy. Martha Stewart style...heavy on the effort...like 50 fresh ingredients just for the soup. He let me sleep in both mornings...til 11 today! He played scientist with the kids, catching a caterpillar and setting up a jar/terrarium for it, as well as maintaining the three tri-ops aquariums. Examining them all under the digital microscope camera on the t.v. Both the kids were thrilled. The night before, he had them also kicking around a soccer ball and playing baseball in the garden. Then tonight at a farewell dinner for his boss, the esteemed Middle East regional director, D gave an impressive speech that made his boss tear-up, as well as others in the audience, and made me very proud. And he hadn't prepared for it at all.

Needless to say, I've been feeling like one lucky girl.

Birthday Reflections

Only three years ago I was hugely pregnant and waiting for my husband to leave Sudan to meet me in Chattanooga so we could have this baby. I think D & I were separated then for almost two months. He sent me flowers for my birthday.

I was going to write that it sure doesn't seem like three years since we left Sudan, but it hasn't been...(hello, memory). After Eliza was born, we moved back to Khartoum after Christmas to spend another year...well, 8 months. We came back for Sara & Brandon's wedding in September and stayed until Christmas again. After New Year, we moved to Jordan. And before we reach Christmas this year, we'll have moved on again, this time to Zimbabwe.

So that's life at 38.

Jordan went by very quickly. But it still will have been two full years, complete with visits from family who we've never had visit us abroad before. And that was a real treat.

There are many wonderful things about our coming life in Harare that we're anticipating. So I am excited about it and looking forward to it. It's the distance and potentially greater disconnect that are my only concerns. Flights there will be longer and more expensive. The internet connection will be slower. But we will (hopefully) have a house that is inviting and comfortable for guests, and I dream of hosting month-long visits from family and friends. That's really what I want from this life - to be able to share it.

Our remaining two months in Jordan will be busy with work at SC and preparing for our move that will be around the second week in December. In a week, ten Iraqi youth will start a training on making documentary fillms. This is a project that a few others and I created out of thin air over the summer, and it is exciting to think it will actually happen (cross your fingers). They will work with a director to make a short documentary about the lives of a few Iraqi kids and their experiences living as refugees in Jordan (and hopefully we'll have stories of kids in Lebanon, too). Then there's a workshop I'm organizing between SC staff in Lebanon and Jordan that will be a chance for "internal learning"...swapping their stories from the field, what their various educational programs have done well, "lessons learned," what they can borrow from each other, how they can coordinate programs better in the future, etc. That'll be in a month. I like the work. It's the best work I've had in a while, and I'm thankful (if a bit more stressed).

In the immediate future, we have a whole week off (Eid Holiday), then I have Eliza's third birthday to prepare for, then David will be gone for two weeks back to the States (in Chatt for 2 nights and one day to supervise the shipment). When he gets back, it'll be our first farewell party: Ben & Caroline are leaving. And that's when the good-byes start up again.

Jetlag

Another aspect of living on the other side of the world is readjusting to the time difference. Usually it's worse leaving the states to fly east. I struggle with sleep for at least a week. Amman is 7 hours ahead of the east coast. Most times I am wide awake at 4 a.m. and then crash hard in the afternoon. But jetlag is unpredictable, like this time, arriving at night after sleeping off and on for the whole 10 hour flight, getting to Amman late afternoon, falling asleep at 11 p.m. and waking at 2 a.m. (with the kids!), then sleeping from 8-3 in the afternoon.

I had more regular hours for a few days, helped by the need to go to work and take the kids to school. But I still felt sickly tired in the afternoons and would be energized by a second-wind late night. Then nearly a week after arriving in Amman, I fell asleep for a couple of hours putting the kids to sleep, woke up at 11 p.m. and then couldn't sleep all night. ALL night. This is extremely unusual for me. I read. I lay in bed thinking. I read. I lay in bed thinking. I felt completely awake, not tired at all. I took the kids to school then came home and slept all day, waking at 4:30 p.m. When I tried to wake at 12:30 and 1:30 and 2:30 that afternoon, it was almost nauseating. I felt like I was drugged. My whole body was heavy and tingling numb. Lying back down was exstacy. And I am a sucker for that feeling of lying back down and satisfying the need to sleep more.

After that binge nap, I still was exhausted and went to sleep at 11 that night and was up at 5:30 a.m. for a few quiet hours before the kids woke up. Yet I still feel kind of shaky, slightly nauseated, and light-headed, chilled, weak. My theory is that my usual ability to fall asleep or get back to sleep easily backfires with jetlag. It's like my sleep-o-meter is so strongly set that it rebels if I mess with it.

Exhaustion is like hunger: a sickening, disorienting, undeniable, primal urge. And here we are in the midst of Ramadan, the month of fasting. I feel like I can somewhat relate.

Actually New Furniture

I came across the furniture store Qerat (his name Tareq backwards) in the early days of being here, but it was obscenely expensive. Then last week they had a huge sale just before renovating their store! It's apparently his original design and made here in Jordan.

Lamp, side table and cube.Heavy-ass chair

Confused stool (legs go in on one side and out on the other - it's totally steady though. I love it!

Trip to Nazareth

It was my third time to Israel, first time alone. I took a nice comfortable greyhound-like mammoth thing. It was cheap and quick and easy. I settled in and watched the hills and valleys of northern Jordan roll by as I listened to my weekly podcasts (New Yorker fiction, Savage Love, and This American Life).

The plan was to not mention my Palestinian friend at the border but to say I was meeting my German friend (which was also true). But I didn't think through the whole 2-passport arrangement beforehand. I bought a second passport in Jordan just for traveling into Israel because if you get an Israeli stamp in your passport you can't get into countries like Syria or Lebanon, not easily anyway.

The first time I used the blank passport, I had no problem with the Israelis, but the Jordanians were miffed... Why didn't I have a visa from their country since I was in it? So this time I brought them both, just in case. And when the 20-year-old Israeli soldier behind the glass started asking me about where I'm from and what I do and why I'm in Jordan and why I'm going to Israel and if I've ever traveled to another Muslim country and if I have a second passport, and if she could see it...well, I just wasn't prepared to lie. I showed her my 10-year-old, packed full with additional pages passport, and it was another 30 minutes of questions and flipping through the passport and more questions.

The bus was kind enough to wait a very long time for me. The hall was empty except for me and another couple of unfortunates. From across the room, the driver gave me the twisty-wrist Arabic gesture for what's the deal? I gave him the open raised hands for what can a person do?

There was this other odd twist to the story. I had a bottle of Chivas Regal that I'd agreed to carry through customs for an old man who'd been sitting with his wife in front of me on the bus. I didn't understand but went with it. I imagined he was probably some regular closet-drinking Muslim fearing the questions they'd lay on him about the alcohol, and I'd watched him buy it right in front of me at the duty free shop...so what the hey.

The bus had to leave me after all since the Israelis decided your truly looked suspicious enough to warrant a few hours of running me through the security check. (What is your father's full name? What is your father's father's full name? What is your friend's phone number? What is your address and phone number in the USA? What's your email address? What kinds of children does Save the Children help? Arabic children?)

It would make a much better story if I got that big bottle of booze for my trouble, but alas. I gave the bus driver my friend's phone number to give to the old man so he could look me up once I got there (which he promptly did).

Destination: Nazareth, the most important city in Israel for Arabs who make up the majority of its population. My friend Falastin was born and raised there, and she was spending some time there before relocating to Copenhagen. It's also where Mary is believed to have gotten knocked up by the Holy Spirit, and thus where Jesus grew up. So it was cool to see my friend's roots, as well as this very old little city nestled in a small valley.

Ah, going to bed without managing my children's night-time routine, uninterrupted sleep all night, and rolling out of bed at 10 a.m.

Falastin, her girls and I walked down from her parent's house where she grew up (mother's domain: freshly clean and spare) to her late grandmother's house where her father holds court under his pomelo trees all day and night for "the gentlemen of Nazareth." The house is actually under massive renovations in the style of the region: straight up a few floors to accommodate the next generation of families (for Falastin and her brothers). The back yard was chocked full of fruit trees and rows of veggies. Her father had a shack set up with his mini bar and tools. It all reminded me very much of my late grandfather's domain in Florida. We ate cherry tomatoes and cumbers off the vine and still warm baked flatbread rubbed with thyme and olive oil from the bakery around the corner.

Late that afternoon I had a few hours to just stroll around the city - its old market is like a mini version of Jerusalem's old city market. I sat in a hip cafe with its ancient vaulted ceilings, drank a completely drinkable gimlet (gamely attempted by the bartender for the first time), and I wrote in my journal. I was, if only for a day, that reflective, roaming young woman of my 20s.

Falastin and her mother

Andrea with Kathi and Jacob (talk about heroic traveling!)

The Cafe

Scenes from Mary's Church of the Annunciation. This is Mary reeling from the news that a) she's pregnant and b) that her explanation for not being a virgin on her wedding night is that it was all God's doing.

What Mary and Jesus look like to Asians:

China

Korea

India

Indonesia

Some major events

Last month, David and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary which felt just as momentous as Miles's 5th birthday. (That sounds odd. They were momentous in their own ways.) I know I'm getting old, but there's still a short list of things that have lasted in my life for 5 solid years. Next year will mark 10 years that David and I have been together(!). We had a busy weekend, but the surprise night out together was back to the bathhouse for the coed hours.

Then there's the going back to work. I'm happy to be back with SC, this time as a consultant for the action learning component of the World Bank funded regional education initiative in Lebanon and Jordan that includes various programs from building and fully furnishing kindergartens to child-led activism projects that demand less violence in schools to uniforms and schools supplies, to parenting classes and teacher training on everything. And lots more. It's huge. The money comes from aid to displaced Iraqis but reaches even more Jordanian kids. I'm coordinating the collection of key lessons learned from all these programs to present them to a larger audience and hopefully influence regional policies and future directions of funding. I'm out in December, so we're planning on a first draft package by October and a mini-conference in November.

That's the other big news that most everyone knows now but that we haven't officially announced: our move to Harare, Zimbabwe in December. We are planning to move into the existing country director's house which is lovely, but we will need to furnish it, something we haven't had to do as a family abroad yet. I kind of insisted. The house is great, and I'm looking forward to having more control over how our house feels and looks, but it is going to be an investment on all fronts. Ah, the logistics of moving. If only I'd had my job the last six months and were off these months to prepare for the big move!

Next in the news is our trip to the States in less than three weeks. It looks packed and wild and crazy, but there are 5 or so days blocked off for the beach and another 5 or so days in the mountains, all catch up time with the family. This should have been a longer trip home, but alas --it coincides with my being newly employed, and the kids will need to get back to school. Do I sound stressed? Perhaps I should do my next blog while on the beach.