love

I'll admit it, I am one of those people that like Valentine's Day; this is probably due to the 3 years I worked at Hallmark. Sure, it's kind of a crap holiday but it's always fun to spend a day of the year with the one you love and just celebrating the simple fact that you have love for one another. I used to LOVE this holiday, but I think i've become a bit more desensitized since my high school beau days.

One year the boy I was seeing showed up at my door (without me knowing), had a box of chocolates and a personalized rap in hand. He proceeded to rap about his love for me. Aah, those were the days. (This just so happens to be the same boy who grabbed my hand at my birthday party and had me run away with him to his car where he had a kitten with a bow around it's neck waiting for me.) Another year I was really sick and my more steady boyfriend showed up at my house with a bunch of flowers and candy and watched movies in bed with me until we fell asleep.

Valentine's Day isn't really the same in Amman as it is in the States. So the normal 7 of us, who all don't have people to share the holiday with or our significant others aren't in the same country right now, spent the night eating fajitas together and playing drinking games at my apartment. Perfection.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to all my reader(s)! Hope you had a good day celebrating with your loved ones. I know I did, as my current loved ones are 7 other people I live with and couldn't imagine spending the day without them!

four things

I recently read a news article about a man who lived in Gaza while it was attacked by Israel. It was unreal to read some of the things him and his family went through. Afterward he went through a great time of depression, he couldn't leave the house and overall couldn't socially function with others. He allowed himself to be glued to the TV being constantly downtrodden by protests, rioting and violence.

Eventually his sister knew that he needed to get out of the house and really start living his life, so she sent him to a shrink. The shrink asked him what made his life happy, what made each day of his life worth living. He came up with four small things that make his daily life worthwhile and happy. Coffee, books, beans and rice, and emails. Four simple things that made his life happy.

Here are the four simple things in life that make my life happy:

1) The beach. There is quite possibly no place I would rather be than the beach. Being at the beach makes me feel like I'm reconnecting with the earth in some sort of spiritual, hippy way.

2) Pasta. I could eat past for every meal for the rest of my life, and be completely content.

3) Housing blogs. I love looking at pictures of beautifully decorated homes, cottages and beach houses especially ones that have gorgeous staircases.

4) Coffee. Not to copycat this man in any way, but I truly love coffee as well. Nothing feels quite as bad when I have a white mocha latte or caramel macchiato in hand.

why so syria - damascus

In November, me and four other friends traveled to Syria for our Eid break. The culture in Syria is absolutely fantastic, and I loved being there. Traveling in Syria for 12 days I actually saved money because Syria is so cheap compared to Jordan. We did so much that there is no way I could blog about everything in one post, so I'll break it up into cities. First: Damascus.


After our unnecessarily long pit-stop at the border, we got to Damascus around midnight when we were expected to get there around 8. Our host, Josh, was out with friends so instead of going to his apartment we went straight to a bar. Ended up crazy dancing until 4 in the morning.


Umayyad mosque at night.




Umayyad mosque during the day.

The rest of these pictures are mainly from walking around the souqs in Damascus: eating chocolate crescent rolls for breakfast, drinking endless cups of fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice (Miriam was loving it), visiting other mosques, having pizza and wine for dinner, meeting random new friends, etc.







Spice market in Souq Hamadiya.








Sarah and I made friends with this man. We went into his store at least 3 times to haggle with him, and finally on the third time we bothered him enough that he brought down his prices on some pillowcases we were buying for our families.


This last picture portrays how Syria feels about Israel. This metal Israeli flag has been anchored to the ground in one of the main souqs in Damascus so everyday thousands of people walk over it as a sign of disrespect.

chili a la arab

Today just felt like one of those days for chili: its chilly and rainy outside, i'm a bit tired and have a big workload for the night. So after class I went to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients. Of course, living in Amman right now I couldn't quite find all the things I was looking for.

The store didn't have ground beef so I had to go with kafta (lamb) instead. If you don't like the taste of lamb I wouldn't recommend this at all because the lamb taste is a bit overwhelming. Also, couldn't find any sort of chili seasoning so I had to substitute taco seasoning.



Despite all the substitutions this was still pretty good, so this is my newest chili a la arab recipe! Nom.

fire

I can honestly say the excitement never ends in Amman. It seems that some beyond-my-imagination events happen all too often here.

Today Caryl and I were on the verge of taking naps, all snuggled up in bed ready to go. You see, it was necessary that we take naps because we're heading to a sports bar at the ripe time of midnight to watch the Superbowl; it starts at 1:30am our time. All of a sudden I hear Sarah start to yell: (pardon my french, or rather her french) "Fuck! What the fuck! Our washing machine just blew up! Fuuuuuuuck." First thought in my head: well thats a bit rude to yell so loudly when Caryl and I are trying to nap. I wildly debated in my head rather I should investigate what was going on...I finally decided that I should.

When I came out of my room Sarah informed me that there was smoke coming out of the washing machine. I went into the kitchen but realized that the smoke was actually coming from underneath the sink. I opened the cabinet doors and saw a small fire! There must have been some sort of electrical problem because the wires were sparking and a nearby plastic laundry basket had caught on fire. I quickly pulled out the laundry basket, fanned the other flames next to the wires, and voila! No more fire.

The best part was when we called our haris (landlord) to come up and see the commotion: he came up, gave it a look, and left. Came back 20 minutes later with his haris friends and they all had a good laugh before they began to fix/investigate the situation. But thankfully we were home and caught it before it became serious and we're all safe!

The damage...