Good company

Years and years ago, before there was a Alexander or Zoë or Benjamin or Miriam, or even a Rachel, Andrew and I went to Jordan for a summer to study Arabic. Technically Andrew was studying and I was simply a "trailing spouse" but I consider it "our" study abroad (just like I consider his PhD "ours"; I get that it's not but it certainly feels like I put in enough work to earn an honorary one).

It was a wonderful newly-wed adventure, but I probably would have gone completely stir-crazy had we not happened upon the most wonderful of flat-mates, another young couple and their super adorable two-year-old son. 

Crystal became one of my best friends that summer. We somehow managed to go from strangers to confidants in a matter of weeks (days?). We shared a bathroom, a washing machine, a kitchen, a house—all without driving each other too terribly crazy (at least, I hope not). Crystal taught me a lot about how to be a good wife and mother and friend. 

And then study abroad ended and we found ourselves back in the States, separated by thousands of miles. Harsh. So we've been stuck blogging (and instant messaging) to keep in contact.

At least we're both Mormons, so, naturally, have ties continuously pulling us back to Utah (though neither of us grew up there). We've met up in Utah several times over the past eleven years. The most recent time was just a few days ago (lucky us)! Her family was down visiting their extended family for Thanksgiving so they took some time to come visit us. 

We let our ten children play together:

Petra (August 26)

Almost immediately after arriving in Eilat I looked with longing across the tiny Gulf of Aqaba to the gigantic Great Arab Revolt flag over in Jordanian Aqaba. Only a mile or two away from our hostel lay the great country of Jordan—my first Middle Eastern experience. When we were in Aqaba over three years ago I looked over to the glitzy lights of the Eilat resorts wondering what Israel was like, but because of the tense political situation (resulting in war a week later), we couldn’t ever make it across the Jordan river to Israel/Palestine.

Cairo to Taba to Eilat

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning to catch our 6:00 AM bus to Taba. Andrew updated his Twitter status to complain about how early we had to get up. Not long after, several of his Egyptian friends responded saying that the night was still young—they were still up celebrating Ramadan, right until the first call of the prayer of the day, which happens to be at 4:15 AM.

Our bus left right on time and, gratefully, was rather empty so we were able to spread out a little bit. Rachel sat beside me for a while and I tried to get her to go to sleep, but I failed. She decided to go up and sit with Andrew and was asleep in his lap within five minutes. She was Daddy’s Girl for the rest of the day, which was nice because it meant that I got some much needed sleep.

The moral of this story is:

a) I’m way too exciting.
b) Andrew’s amazing.
c) All of the above.

The bus ride is about six hours long and we had one actual pit-stop. The bathrooms were too disgusting for Rachel’s taste and so she refused to go, which meant that she had to hold it until we got to Taba. She did it, but I’m pretty sure she was in agony.

We stopped several other times along the way, of course, at checkpoints. I’m pretty sure the police out in the middle of the desert are bored out of their minds and like to pull buses over just to have something to do every once in a while.

They asked for our passports once or twice and questioned us about our nationality and why we were in Egypt and where we were going. Our answers were always the same: American, study, Taba.

It isn’t wise to admit to be traveling to Israel, even though Israel and Egypt are technically at peace they seem to officially unofficially not be. They guard their deserts quite seriously on either side of the border and there is not a whole lot out there to guard. Trust me.

Saying you’re going to Taba is code for saying that you’re going to Israel and everyone knows it, but since you didn’t say it out loud it’s like it isn’t really happening. Or something.

The only other foreigner on our bus was reading a Jerusalem guidebook the whole bus ride. He also answered that he was going to Taba. Clearly he wasn’t.

We got dropped off at Taba, though, since that was the end-destination printed on our bus tickets, and walked from the bus station to the border carrying all our luggage. This wouldn’t have been too bad except that children complicate things. There was once a time when Andrew and I could pack for a ten day trip in one carry-on size suitcase. Now? It would be impossible. What with the books and coloring supplies and favorite blankets and the whole kitchen sink that we have to pack to satiate Rachel’s needs, it was the longest 600 meters of my life.

And once we got to the border, things were…complicated. I’ll let Andrew write about that since he did most of the talking. I mostly tugged Rachel around, looking for places to sit down. I tried to be helpful, but all I really did was sit down, fill out forms, and watch the luggage/Rachel while Andrew shepherded Patrick and Joseph around trying to get them a multiple entry extension on their visas.

That took a while. And then we had to avoid getting exit stamps in our passports.

I don’t even know how long we took just leaving Egypt; we still had to get into Israel, which was tricky. Things would have worked out relatively smoothly, I think, except that Andrew packed a Qur’an in his backpack.

We ended up getting detained while Andrew was cross-examined by a curt and unfriendly female guard. Most of the guards are female. Not all of them are curt and unfriendly. I think he’s planning on expounding upon the details of his interrogation. It was pretty awful, and all over a book. I hate to imagine what happens to anyone caught with anything that’s actually illegal…

At least we made it through alright in the end.

And the moral of this story is:

a) Don’t try to take a Qur’an across the Israeli border.
b) Don’t try to take a Qur’an across the Israeli border.
c) Don’t try to take a Qur’an across the Israeli border.

The passport-stamper-lady accidentally stamped Rachel’s passport, but it was completely accidental and she was very apologetic about it. So far mine and Andrew’s passports have no evidence of our trip, and we hope to keep it that way. Who knows where we’ll end up studying down the road; I’d much prefer to not shell out money for a new passport in case we end up needing to go to Syria or something.

Our first impressions of Israel were not very positive in light of our border experience. There were some things we noticed, and enjoyed, right away—like the drinking fountain just after passport control, and sidewalks, and garbage cans, and traffic laws, and a few things like that. Mostly, though, we were all pretty grumpy and noticed negative things—like how clothes seemed to be optional, and the electrical sockets were funny, and how Israel has an odd fascination with barbed wire, and how taxi drivers are prone to rip you off.

We got to our hostel, walked into our room, dropped our luggage to the floor, and collapsed on the spot. Andrew flicked on the television and found a children’s station (Rachel seemed to be the only one with any energy; isn’t that always how it goes?) that was playing Dora the Explorer. She was immediately captivated, as were we all.

It’s amazing what some good ol’ television will do to a child. Rachel was bouncing around, fiddling with this and that, showing us how to wear a hijab, and being over-hyper. Dora came on and she stopped jumping around, which was wonderful.

This Dora show was in Hebrew and English; we suddenly felt very sympathetic for Spanish viewers of the English-Spanish Dora shows. Wow. The English they were teaching was lame-o and when Dora spoke English she spoke with an absurdly foreign accent.

We sat there mesmerized until the show ended and Andrew thought to turn off the TV.

“We’re going to the beach!” he announced.

So off we trudged, out of our hotel room, past the bomb shelter, down several sets of stairs, and to the beach.

Eilat is really quite small so it was basically across the street. We played there for a while, but mostly we were too worn out to really enjoy ourselves. I got all the way in, even though the water was much colder than I would have preferred. Andrew and Rachel played around for a while until Rachel decided she wanted me. And then Rachel and I played around in the water or a while. Patrick, on the other hand, plopped down in a beach chair and let it come to him.

Lucky for him the tide was coming in, otherwise he might never have touched the Red Sea.

The beach wasn’t great, but it was free (unlike Aqaba’s beaches) and provided chairs and umbrellas so I guess we can’t complain too much. You’d think with the beach being free and all that people could afford to wear clothes, but they can’t. I saw more skin in the hour we were at the beach than I’ve seen in the last year, probably. It was quite shocking.

It didn’t take us long to decide that we were all tired out, so we decided to call it day and find something to eat.

We ended up eating at a falafel place that was amazing. Truly. I haven’t had such wonderful falafel and shwerma in such a long time! Egyptian ta’amiya isn’t what I would describe as “great;” I’ve missed authentic Levantine food. Dinner was good. So was sleeping. We were all in bed before 10 PM. We were wiped out.

We still are. We’ve been going non-stop!

Tune in next time to hear Andrew’s tale(s) of border-crossing, or about the boys’ trip to Petra, or about the day Rachel and I spent in Eilat by ourselves while the boys went to Petra, or about getting to Jerusalem and spending our first day here. Clearly we have a lot to catch up on.

(I’m only slightly jealous that Andrew got to go back to Jordan and I didn’t. He keeps telling me about how wonderful it was and how different it is from Egypt and how familiar everything felt. It was our first Middle Eastern home. Still, I’m like 31 weeks pregnant. I barely survived walking around the Old City—we’re in Jerusalem now—today. Petra would have killed me, I’m sure. Maybe next time.)

Grad School and Visa Pictures

Tonight we finished up Andrew's application for The American University in Cairo. I say "we" because really, once you're a couple, there is no "I" anymore. He'll be doing all the studying, it's true but Rachel and I will be going along with him, wherever he ends up going, so it definitely involves "us."

I took his visa pictures (because we're too cheap to get them done professionally). I proofread his essays (over and over and over again). I wrote on his application so that it would be legible (his hand writing is so bad that he really should consider becoming a doctor). He did everything else: Wrote the essays, revised the essays, told me what to write on the application, got letters of recommendation and transcripts, got an HIV test, etc., etc., etc.

There are actually a lot of hoops to jump through in order to apply for grad school, especially if you're going foreign. But we're finally ready to send it off through the trusty USPS (Andrew's going to mail it tomorrow morning).

Now all we have to do is anxiously await our letter, which will hopefully be one of acceptance. We really hope to get in even though we have no idea how we're going to pay for this whole adventure. We applied for three scholarships and will probably have to take out a Stafford Loan--anyone who has any experience with such things (loans) is welcome to share because we have no clue what we're doing!

We're just due for an adventure, I think. We haven't used our passports in quite a while and they keep calling out to me. Since we'll have to get Rachel a passport we tried taking some passport pictures of her after we took Andrew's visa pictures. Have you ever tried to get a six month old baby to sit still and look directly into the camera without shoving her hands in her mouth? It's pretty tricky, let me tell you, but I think that a few of them turned out alright.

Looking at our passports and thinking about visas reminded me of some experiences we had getting ID and visa pictures abroad.

When I lived in Russia we had to renew our visas at the embassy in Latvia. Since we (all the girls traveling with me) had used our remaining passport pictures for the student IDs issued at the university sponsoring us we had to get new pictures taken for our visa applications. We went in small groups to a studio and took turns having our pictures taken with a rather forward photographer. He only promised to take mine and Emily's pictures if we gave him Esther's phone number. I don't actually remember if we gave him the real number or if we thought to give him a fake number (did he ever call you, Es?).

Our photographer kept prompting us to "look normal," which we kept insisting we did. Finally he asked us to look a little more sad. Apparently you aren't supposed to look happy that your visa is getting renewed or something.

Anyway, when we got our pictures back they looked pretty dreadful--airbrushed and saturated and gross. The black and white one on the left is my visa picture from Russia.

(L to R: Nancy's Russia visa, Andrew's Jordan ID, Andrew's Egypt visa, Nancy's passport, Nancy's Jordan ID, Rachel's passport)

The ones in the middle were the pictures we had taken for our student ID cards at the University of Jordan. The photographers treated us like artwork and kept asking us to tilt our heads up, down, left, right; step forward, step back, smile a little more, a little less, a little more, perfect... I think they took a little more time composing my shot. And you will notice that, while Andrew's picture looks like a mere snapshot, mine is softened and all my blemishes have disappeared. If I'm not mistaken my cheeks are even a little rosier than usual. They gave me twice as many wallet-size photos as Andrew, as well as a bigger one in a cute little cardboard frame--for the same price that Andrew got four pictures. I'm not sure that either of my foreign pictures would be accepted in the United States as a passport photo.

I am hoping, however, that they accept Rachel's passport photo. It's always a gamble, taking the picture by yourself, and I'm worried that the dimensions aren't right because her head is so big compared to the rest of her body that it seemed more difficult to achieve the same result than when working with an adult subject. She squirmed more, she looked everywhere but at the camera, she kept trying to eat her hands, and her smile was either too big or non-existent. I think that she turned out looking really cute, though!

Empty Nester's Home Evening

This is only going to be half a post because as we were getting ready to head out the door I made a mental note of things to include in this post. Apparently I forgot that I'm pregnant and should not make mental lists anymore. My lists need to be very, very tangible. They need to be on the white board by our front door or on my Google calendar so that I can't lose them (like I can paper lists).

So, my mental note which I am quite sure included 3 or 4 things has since dwindled to 1--and I only remembered that thing because I was wearing it.

Andrew and I entered the world of "empty nesters" today for a while. We went and gave an FHE lesson about the Middle East to some of the more elderly sisters in the ward. In fact, we almost thought about counting it as home teaching since all three of the sisters we home teach were there (we made appointments instead though).

We talked about Islam and their basic beliefs and the similarities there are between Islam and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We talked about certain cultural interpretations of the Qur'an and why they do some of the things they do. One of the hottest topics of course, was women's issues.

I went dressed in my hijab. I was pretty excited to have an excuse to put it on again, but when I pulled it out there were horrible chalk stains all over it. I thought back and remembered that I had lent it to Josie to use for an activity and she had returned it all chalky. I had forgotten to wash it. With only 15 minutes before we had to be there, I tried everything I could to get the chalk out.

First I tried brushing it off, but that didn't work very well. Next I broke out the vacuum to see if any of it was still flaky enough to suck off--a little bit came off, but not much.

I sat there dismally trying to think of anything to do. I had already tried a cloth and that didn't really work well, either.

Then I remembered one day my mom and I had gone shopping for a dress for me to wear on my first date with Andrew (sigh). I found a dress that I really liked, but there was some makeup on the collar. We took it to the counter explaining that there was only one dress that color in that size, but it had makeup on it. The girl at the counter whipped out some baby wipes, dabbed at the collar and, presto! The dress came out perfectly clean.

If only we had baby wipes, I thought. And then I remembered that our closet is full of diapers and baby wipes.

They worked wonderfully and my dress was clean by the time we left for FHE.

The ladies thought that my dress was embroidered beautifully but they were appalled that I was so covered. They got over that though when we quoted some scriptures from the Qur'an about modesty (for both males and females) and explained some reasons why they cover up the way they do. I also was able to honestly tell them that it's not that hot under there.

Sure, there are women who feel forced to dress that way, but I could name quite a few young ladies (and even some older ones) in our church who feel "oppressed" by the standard of modesty that we hold.

Anyway, our discussion went smoothly and the ladies were pretty open to what we had to say.

I must say things got kind of awkward at the end though.

The lady who asked us to speak specifically asked us to steer clear of the Iraq war and other such related issues, so we did. At the very end though when we were fielding our last few questions she asked, "So, with all this in mind, how do you feel about the war in Iraq?"

That's a pretty hot topic for a lot of people and you could feel the room tense up with passion. People started shooting off their opinions left and right, forgetting everything we'd just told them and normal, middle-of-the-road Arabs.

"Well, that's another topic for another day..." said Andrew loudly. And with that, we ate a nice slice of raspberry pie.

Almost...but not quite

First, I almost met Elder Holland today...but not quite. He was being interviewed in the classroom of Special Collections. I walked by like 3 or 4 times while I was at work (on my way to use the restroom), but I didn't ever meet him.

My second "almost" today also happened at work. I almost burst out laughing at a girl when she walked in today...but not quite. She wasn't really doing anything humorous except that she was wearing one of those kimono shirts that are coming into style:

There is nothing wrong with these shirts. Don't get me wrong. They are even kind of cute, I suppose.

However, they most definitely are sold in the lingerie section of the shops in Jordan. It's true. My friend Arielle bought one while we were there...I remember how embarrassed I was that Arielle wanted to buy lingerie while I was with her. Totally not my thing to do.

Oddly enough, we weren't given a second look at the cash register. That was my first time out in Amman by myself (meaning without my husband).

Later I learned that we didn't really have anything to be ashamed of. Amman is completely awash with lingerie--and not like in America where it's kind of in the backs of the stores. No, in Amman it's all up front, more like Europe. In fact, they even have street vendors that just lay it out in the streets, and not all of it is as modest as the kimono thing.

One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life was a group of fully veiled women in hijabs holding lingerie up to each other in the street. It was just a little...oxymoronic.

So anyway, every time I saw this girl, I had to hold in my giggles and suppress my memories of lingerie stores in Amman. It's not everyday you get to see someone walking around BYU campus wearing lingerie...of course it wasn't really lingerie, but still...

What is with the mascots?

Approximately 20 days ago, we went to The Mayan to celebrate Matthew's birthday. And, of course, everyone forgot their cameras. I hereby vow to take interesting pictures of things and put them on my blog. Honestly, it's not like it costs me anything to do it. I have a camera, I have a computer, I should just do it...

Lucky for us, this strange bird called Toucie graced the birthday boy with a complimentary picture of said bird posing with Matthew. Toucie is supposedly a toucan and his or her name should then be said "Too-key" to sound like toucan, however, when I read "Toucie" I want to pronounce it as "two-sea" or even better, "two-chia."

So, here's the picture, finally, now that Matthew is almost 8 years and a month old...

I'm not sure what the grimace is on Matthew's face, but I know that I probably would have been afraid of that bird if it put its arm around me and forced me to smile for a picture when I was only eight years old.

"Toucie" was speaking in an awfully high voice and kept using his/her left arm to hold the top part of his/her beak up so that s/he didn't walk into things and could actually look at the people s/he was talking to. It was a pretty scary mascot, but really, as far as mascots go, it wasn't too bad.

It was fairly new and didn't smell funny...the person inside didn't try to force balloons into childrens' hands and try make their parents pay for them. No, this was a fairly good mascot. But do you know where mascots go when they die?

Jordan. They go to Jordan and they look nappy and smell funny and force balloons into childrens' hands and try to force their parents to pay for them.

See, Matthew, there was nothing to worry about. You could have snuggled up to that mascot without a care in the world. Had you been a little Jordanian child, you would have gotten this left-over thing. Now that's scary!

Arabic Reunion

I'm not sure how much our family will appreciate this post, but our friends who spent time in Jordan with us will! Hillary and Nate hosted an Arabic Reunion this evening and it was a ton of fun. The theme was "what you missed most while in Jordan" but a lot of people brought what they missed from Jordan. That was nice because that meant we had humus and kosheri and pita and falafel and shweirma! Yippee!

I took pictures of everyone while we were still just mingling and sharing stories about Jordan. We talked about bathrooms a lot, and how glad we are to have toilet paper now. We also talked a lot about different people and places that we missed.

Not very many of us came, it was mostly the couples: Nate and Hillary (of course), Ben and Ashley, Andrew (and me, but I'm not in the picture because I'm taking it), and Alia and Bryan are featured in the picture below:

Here we have Matt and Brittany (who didn't go to Jordan with us, unfortunately. She's hilarious!). And then some of our single friends: Sami (aka Andrew), and Brian.

Shawn was hard to catch on film (er...on my digital disk thingy) because he kept heading back to the kitchen for more food. I'm not sure how many times he filled up his plate. I'm pretty sure he lost count. He was sure packing it in! I caught him in the kitchen though (getting more food, of course).

Alison was also there, but she left after just a few minutes.

It was so much fun to see everyone! When our chatter finally started dying down, we pulled out a rather old version of Trivial Pursuit to see if we could answer any of the questions. I took a video of it because this is so typical of us while we were in Jordan. We once got together at the Steeds while Bridget and Jeremy were living there and played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.

Our conversations just kept getting weirder and weirder. Then Nate broke out the chain mail. This stemmed from one of the questions asked during our game: What chain did Ray Croc establish?

This question seemed to stump us all. After someone finally shouted out "McDonald's" we all started saying what we were thinking: chain link fence, ball and chain...chain mail.

At that, Nate got up and left the room. He came back with some chain mail and threw it on the floor. The guys in the room, of course, scrambled for it. So, Hillary told us this great story about how she found out that Nate was into chain mail. She had mentioned something about wire while in Jordan, and he answered her and expanded on her knowledge of chain mail more than she thought anyone should ever be able to. Come to find out, during his sophomore year, he had made a whole suit of armor. So, we had to make fun of that a little bit. Brian was getting really into it. He's so hilarious and was one of our main sources of entertainment while in Jordan. We'd beg him to tell stories at every get together.

So, this video is us teasing Nate...and then somehow we get into Hillary's first attempt at making falafel. She thought oil had to boil before you put in anything to fry it. She ended up getting a visit from the fire department. Actually, that was one of two times that semester. It's not really my story but I'll give you the just of it. She had wanted to make cinnamon rolls to impress a boy who was coming to study at her apartment early in the morning. So, she was up at 3 AM making dough. She thought that she'd just put it in the oven to rise and have a short nap. So, she put the bowl with the dough in the oven and covered it with a towel and thought that she had turned it to low, but actually put it on high...and then she went to sleep. Anyway, that was the second story, but the camera ran out of room before she got to that point.

Ahhh...nice memories of Amman are flooding back to me, but since I've already written well over 200 pages about that, I think that this will suffice for now.