You're in Jordan, you'll want that in Arabic!

One of the minor annoyances is the tendency of apps to think that, because you are in Jordan you want everything in Arabic.

This greeted me on my attempt to put up the last post:

(Note how everything is aligned right to left, with the "close" button moved to the right. All the toolbars switched sides too.)

And the entire Blogger site was in Arabic from that point on. Alison help fix it for me, because oddly hers didn't change over, but when I go to the preview function it still gives portions of it in Arabic.

Google search reverts every now and again to Arabic, again right adjusted, but seems to go back after a few searches in English.

I also get very helpful messages from my phone provider in Arabic. Fortunately on-line translation works really well for them, once I learned how to cut and paste the text.

The school itself

So this is the school.

Built outside of town about 10 years ago, so everything is quite new and fresh. All in one rambling multi-story building going up the side of a quite steep hill (most of Amman is hilly).

Like all the schools here, and particularly the private ones, it has a bit of a tendency to look like a prison.

They all have steel barriers surrounding them on top of the surrounding high stone walls. Because students can’t go off site, pretty much for any reason, they have huge barriers to prevent balls being kicked out, which you can see on the left of my first photo. (In some of the schools the wire extends over the top of the play area too, so the children are effectively in a giant cage.)

And here is the entrance (with my bus to the right ready to take me home).

The main gates are closed all the time (presumably they are only for deliveries of bulk material). There are guards on all the time, and everyone has to go past them. Staff have ID cards, which we have to wear all the time, and visitors are checked out thoroughly and then given visitor cards. The only other entrance is at the back, where the buses go deliver the students, and it is also guarded. Staff and students stay on site for the whole day, unless it is an organized trip out.

Apparently at least one of the guards is armed.

All the private schools are like this, except  the American Community School, which is high security. That has armed guards outside all the time, and it has unmarked buses.

This is the playing and lunch area at myschool. By local standards it is extremely large and well provided – the advantage of having a new site out of town.

By comparison, this is the football area at one of the primary schools in Salt, a nearby town.

The photo makes it look bigger than it is, which is smaller than a tennis court. The only other space at that school is a similar space, fully paved, just with a huge shade-cloth over it for the summer sun. No schools have grass areas.

It's all quite different from the space and greenness of NZ.

Country spotting

The blogger's curse - either there's nothing happening, in which case I have plenty of time to write about it, or we're busy, in which case there's plenty to write about but no time to do it.

Last weekend we added to our collection of countries that we have looked at across a body of water but not actually set foot in. (Countries seen from planes don't count.)

We took a day tour organised by university students up to the north of Jordan, to visit Yarmouk, where in 636 the massively outnumbered Arab Muslim troops defeated the Byzantine Empire army, and then the ruins of Gadara (one of the cities of the Decapolis, as everybody knows) at Umm Qais. It was a small but diverse tour group - us, a few Canadians, an English guy, his Spanish wife, a group of Philippino women, a Chinese student and a few local-ish students. The trip was a little light on actual explanation of what we were seeing, and not all the explanations were totally correct, but it was a great day out and a chance to see part of Jordan that we otherwise might not have got to.  We also got to sample and buy some delicious local food produced by the tour guide’s extended family at quite reasonable prices (we were totally free to say no, but the labneh and pomegranate molasses were actually very tasty and we were happy to buy some).

It’s much greener up north than around Amman, and indeed this is the part of Jordan where most of the horticulture happens.

Young people would rather work in the city than on the farms though, so there are less crops being grown here than there used to be. The only crop that hasn't suffered is olives, as it only takes a few days a year to harvest them, and people take a few days' holiday and come home to help out.

From the Jordanian part of the Yarmouk site you can see Syria across the valley, and also Israel. You can see both of them without even glancing from side to side, because this is the Golan Heights, part of Syria occupied by Israel since 1981. We could see a set of buildings that our guide claimed was a methane gas plant in the distance, but its white dome looked remarkably like the Waihopai satellite communications station. There was also a very clear fence line, though I wasn’t sure whether it was keeping people out or in. (It does seem that if you want to make money in Israel, selling fence-building supplies would be a grand business to be in.)

It was the first weekend of sunshine for a few weeks, and the locals were making the most of it at both Yarmouk and Umm Qais and all points in between. Any spot of open land seemed to be fair game for lighting up the barbecue and shisha pipe (slightly fuzzy photo taken from the bus window as we were moving).

Did you know that Christians use the fish symbol because Jesus ate fish from the Jordan River on Fridays? That’s the local story, anyway. Less contentious was the guide’s claim that over the centuries local people recycled stone from the older parts of Umm Qais to make houses around the edges of the site, where they continued to live until the mid-1980s when the Ministry of Antiquities took over the site and rehoused the villagers down the road in town. 

From Umm Qais, as well as all the ruins and an impromptu dance by a group of lads ...

 ... there’s a view of Lake Tiberias, aka the Sea of Galilee ...

... and of course the sunset.

  Next instalment: Mark's take on teaching so far, and then our assault on As-Salt.

In the neighbourhood

Slightly random photos from round and about

Several times a day there's tinny and slightly off-key music from down on the street, like an icecream truck in a horror movie. Far from being the local Mr Whippy, it's the bottled-gas man, and he drives around all day, so whether you run out of gas in the middle of cooking breakfast, dinner or late-night supper there's never too long to wait. (I guess local children don't expect the music to herald frozen treats, so don't feel let down every time they hear it.) There are even competing gas men. The one we hear most often has the horror movie music, but there's another whose truck plays "Für Elise", and a third whose truck plays the theme from Chariots of Fire (I swear I am not making this up). 

 

There's a less musical truck whose driver shouts into a megaphone as he drives along, or maybe he drives and his passenger shouts. It's possible he's listing the vegetables he has for sale, but he could be reciting nursery rhymes or boasting about how at least there's something to eat on his truck. His timing is a bit erratic, so I haven't bought anything from him yet. Also, by the time I unlock the door, lock it behind me (because we have been told to never ever leave the door unlocked even when we're home), dash down two flights of stairs and out the front door to the gate he's likely to have moved on.

There's also shouting from trucks like this one. When they're not cruising the neighbourhood touting for dead bodies appliances to take away for scrap or general delivery jobs they congregate behind the local petrol station and smoke.

 

Just around the corner from us is the Royal Jordanian Automobile Club. The Club part is very mysteriously hidden behind 6-metre-high fences with security guards, but they also teach people to drive, and every afternoon there's a steady stream of yellow cars that look a lot like taxis being driven slowly around the same circuit of streets. Part of what the novice drivers are learning is how to deal with all the honking that is an essential part of driving here, and maybe even how to honk themselves. Often if the learner driver is a woman there will be one or more other people sitting in the back seat, sometimes holding small children on their laps. Fun for all the family!

Here's an assortment of local shops. First, my home away from home, C-Town. It really is nicer inside than out (and just as well, too).

I can't shop at Happy Smiley Stores, not because of the name but because their butchery section is entirely devoid of English, so it is pretty much inevitable that I would wind up with spleens or gizzards.

In the building next to it, a couple of floors up from the Golden Waves Liquor Store, is a medical centre, the closest one recommended by the school Mark is working at so presumably not too fly-by-night. The centre's official address is "7th Circle, behind the C-Town Complex Khayat 4, next to the Happy Family Stores". Most addresses here are in a similar format (we are "7th Circle, Ibrahim Qattan Street, beside Al Burj gas station ...), so I guess featured businesses are not allowed to change names or disappear. (We are a couple of blocks from the petrol station, not right next to it, but it's our nearest landmark.)

Some of the many, many phone shops. Competing shops selling the same brands practically side by side.

Nothing says romance like a huge dusty teddy bear, right?

OSH does not seem to be a feature in Jordan. This chap is two storeys up, standing right on the end of a plank (actually 3 planks tied together) hanging by ropes from the top of the building, using power tools, without even a high vis vest to protect him.
 

And today's guy is sticking up advertising while clinging to a rope ladder. What the photo doesn't show is that the ladder goes up and over the end of the building and appears to be being counterweighted by two other men rather than tied to anything. At least it's not windy.

Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's ....

Camels disqualified from Saudi Arabia beauty contest after being injected with Botox

Batty eyelashes, pouty lips and perfectly placed humps - not all camels are blessed with such good looks. Enter cosmetic enhancements.
A dozen camels were banned from a beauty contest during the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Saudi Arabia after they were given Botox injections, according to the National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Some 30,000 camels were brought to the annual event in Al Dhana, near Riyadh, for racing, an obedience competition and a beauty pageant.
The National reported that prize money totals $77 million (NZ) with $43m reserved for "pageantry".
But some people apparently tried to cheat the system - enhancing the animals' natural beauty.
"They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw," Ali Al Mazrouei, the son of a top Emirati breeder, told the newspaper.
"It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it's like, 'Oh look at how big is that head is. It has big lips, a big nose.'"
The King Abdulaziz Camel Festival's website has a section explaining the "standards of camel beauty."
Leading up to the festival, which runs through January, Saudi media reported that a veterinarian was caught performing cosmetic surgery on camels - giving them Botox and making their ears smaller, according to the National.
Ali Obaid, a pageant guide, told the National that cheaters may even "pull the lips of the camel."
"They pull it by hand like this every day to make it longer," he told the newspaper. "Secondly, they use hormones to make it more muscular and Botox makes the head bigger and bigger. Everyone wants to be a winner."
Others may lather them with oil to make their coats appear darker, according to the National.
The National reported that judges at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival do take steps to guard against cheating:
"The age of a camel is measured by its teeth, camels must be microchipped to compete and some competitions require blood testing. At Al Dhafra, competing camels are obliged to overnight at judging pens on the eve of competitions. Owners still douse humps with hairspray and give camels a fine combing to give that fluff on the hump extra volume but after a night at the pens, the pampering makes little difference. Misty mornings in the desert wreak havoc on hair and by the time of the judging, prospective champions will only have their God-given beauty.
"If all else fails there is a time-honoured safeguard. Before winners are announced, owners must swear on the Quran about a camel's age and ownership. Whatever tactics employed to con judges, owners are reminded that while breeders may be judging the camels, God is judging them. This, in the end, does the trick."
...

 - The Washington Post

I suppose it's only natural that if there's big prize money at stake there will also be cheating. 
For the full story including video and photos of beautiful camels, see www.stuff.co.nz/world/africa/100882567/camels-disqualified-from-saudi-arabia-beauty-contest-after-being-injected-with-botox (story originally featured in the Washington Post - I guess there were no NZ reporters at the event.)

What we're eating (and not eating)

About 90% of food in Jordan is imported, and this makes it a bit hard to tell whether we're eating like the locals do or not. In our neighbourhood, at least half the places to eat out serve burgers or pizza (and that's just the independent places - there's also KFC, McDonald's, Domino's, Carl's Jr ...). But I'm shopping in the local supermarkets, and not just heading for the familiar brands (Barilla pasta, Maggi & Nestle everything).

We've only eaten out a handful of times so far - a local chili burger restaurant (speciality chili mince on spaghetti ... hmmm), a shawarma (kebab) fast food place where I foolishly neglected to take photos of my dinner (it was very tasty), and Hashem, a famous falafel and hummus place downtown where it's rumoured the local royal family like to drop in for a snack late at night (maybe they don't get the plastic tablecloths though):

)

I will spare my delicate readers my photos of the meat section in the local supermarket. I have been very bravely dealing with bones in my chicken breasts, but I am not yet ready to cook lamb spleen, heart, brains, tripe, tongues or feet. They don't just butcher animals here; they completely dismantle them. I am very very grateful that the supermarket labels things in English as well as Arabic though, so at least I won't accidentally buy anything too challenging. Hearts are obvious, spleens less so. And it's clear some of these are considered desirable cuts of meat - lamb hearts are more expensive than chicken breast.

We're sampling our way through the local confectionery, though it can be hard to find amid all the imported stuff. There's something that looks and tastes exactly like Turkish delight, but is half the price:

(Yes, mastic is the flavour.)

But to really get the party started, you need these:

Yep, sugar coated chickpeas, full of nutritious goodness, a bit like peanut M&M's without the allergy risk.

It may come as a surprise to some of you that we haven't had a single taste of wine or beer since we've been here. There are bottle stores all over our neighbourhood, but they make the Huntly Cheep Liquor shop look inviting so I have not ventured inside. What we have had instead is malt beverages - 0% alcohol fizzy malt drinks with fruit flavours. They're all the rage. And just because the local kids don't get to drink Vodka Cruisers doesn't mean they have to miss out on drinking things that look like them.

 

Second childhood

When I was about 4 years old, I watched a lovely friendly man give my mum a small blue car because he had a much larger and better green car that he was keeping for himself.

Clearly I had no idea what was actually going on. Now that I am old and wise I know that what he actually said must have been, "Well, for your budget I can sell you this small and not very desirable Datsun, which will get you from A to B if you're not in a hurry, but for just double that amount you could be the proud owner of this Kingswood, which is clearly much cooler."

And it's that completely clueless part of childhood that I am revisiting now. So much of what happens around me is mystifying. I can't even read the alphabet. I can however count to three - wahid, itneen, talata! - thanks to an app intended to prepare Jordanian kids for preschool. With any luck, by the time we leave here I'll be able to mumble my way through numbers up to 10, and maybe even sound out a few words. And unlike most 4-year-olds I'm allowed to cross busy roads by myself.

Yesterday we had to go and have our fingerprints taken. I think this was something to do with our visas, but for all I actually know it could just have been because it's really funny to see foreigners wandering around with their fingers and thumbs covered in black ink. Luckily the school has staff who know how to deal with these things, so we were driven (in a school bus, because they don't seem to have any minivans or cars) to the Customs office, where we handed our phones over to the security guards (hence no photos) and then meekly followed our guide from one office to another while he did paperwork and talked to the officials on our behalf. The fingerprint forms were carefully labelled with our names - "MARK NADREW" and "ALLSON MARY ARWD" - and put on top of a large pile of other people's fingerprints (apparently there is a reference number on the form which matches up to another form that has our full names correct, but I didn't get the impression that there is any hurry to collate the forms. And yes, even Nadrew is a better shot at writing in English than I could hope to do in Arabic). And then we were escorted away again, and the bus delivered Mark back to school and then took me home where I washed my inky fingers and settled in to watch a bit of TV.

Because I can't type Arabic into Google to look things up, I'm free to make up my own reality when I'm blipping through the channels. Sometimes it's clear enough what's actually going on:

And other times, well ....