Christmas traditions? I don't know

So Christmas turned out better than I thought, and much better than last year. I think last year I spent Christmas studying Arabic alone in my apartment…not that is was bad, just not quite what I was used to. Anyway, I pretty much pictured this Christmas being the same. However, Christmas eve, after work I went to play squash (which I am getting quite good at) with a couple friends. Afterward, one of the guys invited me to come over to his house for Christmas eve with his family (just his mom and sister) and another friend. It was a lot of fun. They are Christian and so they celebrate Christmas. I love it when I get to go to people house here and meet their family, it is my favorite part about living here, especially now because I can converse well in Arabic. Arab families can be so much fun and friendly once you get to know them…I love it. I stayed there until about 11:30.

Christmas morning was very nice as well. I went to the church for their Christmas service. Most of the service was singing, which was really great because I got to sing Arabic Christmas songs. There are some hymns in Arabic that are absolutely amazing, and today was the first time I heard the Arabic Christmas carols (some were translations of our carols, some where Arabic originals). After the service a big group of people went to visit the pastor and have Christmas cookies and Arabic coffee. I made it back to the apartment around 2pm and spent the rest of the day listening to sermons and studying Arabic, until it got late enough here to call my dad back in Alaska.

I am sorry I did not take any pictures of the ‘holiday events’ here, but here is a picture of the biggest Christmas tree in Jordan. It is in a village called Fuheis, the only majority Christian village in Jordan. It is kinda neat. I saw this when I went to visit a couple friends who live there.

I am hoping to make a trip to Jerusalem for the new year to visit the Hollidays and the Shakkours. Hopefully the recent fighting won’t shut down the borders, but you never know…such is life in the Middle East.

cars, shoes, and oil production

yeah, I know, it's a weird title, but it will make sense by the end. I didn't have any one thing that I felt deserved an entire post, so I decided to post a few different things that have been on my mind.

The first is a left over from the recent vacation we had here. During the holiday I rented a car for two days so that I could take a couple friends to a couple places here in Jordan. At first I was somewhat hesitant because driving in Jordan is VERY different than in Alaska, probably as far opposite as it could be. However, I decided to go for it anyway since the car came with insurance. As it turns out it was easier than I anticipated, and I happen to be a very good Jordanian driver (though for those of you who already doubt my driving, it is probably best you never come driving with me in the middle east). I actually had alot of fun just driving around. I didn't realize how much I miss driving. I was like an adventure just being in the car. (that is for you Brian). The car was a Puegot 206. It is a nice car.

Thought number two, President Bush's shoe dodging ability. Who knew that the aged president was so quick and nimble at avoiding projectile footwear! You can imagine that this video has been on every single computer and TV screen in the arab world. People have been asking me for the last three days "hey did you see what happened to Bush?? what do you think?" I tell them I am very proud of my president, he displayed remarkable agility, and a sense of good humor to boot... By the way, for those who don't know, taking off and throwing your shoe at someone is the biggest insult you could perform in arab culture, and being called a dog is one of the most insulting things you could say. The fact that this guy is still alive says something about freedom of speech by American standards and that which existed under Saddam.

Thought number three; I recently read that OPEC is cutting oil production by 2.2 million barrels/day, which sparked my interest to see just how much oil is produced per day around the world. The number varied a bit depending on the source, but a rough estimate is about 80 million barrels per day. To give you an idea of how much oil that is, Lake Erie (the world's tenth largest lake) is about 4137 million barrels. That means that in around 50 days the world produces "one Lake Erie" of oil. Or for those in the Mid East, it is 'one Dead Sea' in 16 days. Now, in case that doesn't shock you, this is oil PRODUCTION, not oil extraction. In general, oil production is not a very efficient process, and thus a large portion of the oil extracted is either unusable, wasted, or reinserted into the ground.
I guess this is just food for thought next time you fill up your car, buy an imported product (shipping is the largest use of crude oil in the world), or use a plastic product...

The Dead Sea

Why I love Google Earth

So the holiday break here is now officially at an end here in Jordan, but I ended up being able to go out more than I had originally expected. Definitely more than I did last year. The first three days I spent in the house studying arabic and doing some computer work. The next day a couple friends from Lebanon came over to Jordan, so I spent the day with them visiting people in Amman and a couple of the neighborhoods close by. However, the day after I had been planning a two day camping/hiking trip with a number of the guys from the church and friends from the university. So in preparation for the trip I had to find a nice place to show them. Most Jordanians have never done any kind of exploring of Jordan. Their idea of camping is to take a bunch of stuff in a car, stop on the side of the highway, and have a big meal then sit around. Anyway, a friend of mine has a couple books about hiking here in Jordan that she let me borrow, they have almost all of the valleys along the dead sea in them. So I found a valley that sounded interesting and semi-easy and went to Google Earth. About a month ago I bought a subscription to google earth and some extra software so that it can be integrated with my GPS, all told it was only about 35$. I found the valley on Google Earth, zoomed in, mapped the route on the software, then transferred it to my GPS. After than I downloaded the satellite images to my cellphone, since I don't have a basemap of the middle east on the GPS. I zoomed in and got fairly detailed images of the route (not that all this was nesecary since I had the cooridinates and since it is a valley/canyon which makes it difficult to get lost...but it was cool anyway). By the way, the valley we walked in used to be part of the land of Edom, near the border of Moab.

I spent the night before the trip shopping for supplies, because I knew if I let them do the shopping we'd end up carrying way too much stuff (as it turns out they bought a bunch of extra stuff anyway). We left the next morning, drove past the dead sea, passed al-Karak (a major stronghold from the crusader period with a huge castle), and arrived at the valley entrance via the GPS marker. The hike was alot of fun, though the trail turned out to be more difficult than expected due to higher than average water levels, and some of the less fit guys had a hard time. We ended up only walking about 3 miles in (which took 4 hours) then stopping, set up camp, had a big dinner, and played cards via moonlight and flashlights. The next morning we walked back to the cars and headed back for Amman. Overall it was a fun trip and I got to know the guys alot more personally, and got to show them some of their country. I will post pictures of the trip later.
Anyone interested in exploration and cartography, especially if you live overseas, I highly recommed the Google Earth/GPS option. The addition software I got was called "ge2gpx".

Ok, I am done rambling. signing off.

Sound Bytes

HAPPY HOLLIDAYS!!

...well at least here in Jordan (and the rest of the muslim world). Tomorrow is the big Islamic holiday of the year, called the holiday of sacrifice ('eid al-adha), which is based on when Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, but God stopped him. The story is the same in Islam, except for the vital point that muslim believe the son was Ishmael, not Isaac, even though the name is never mentioned in the Qu'ran. Anyway, what it means to me is that I have a week off of work. Holidays here are spent visiting the vast amount of family members, of which I have none, so I am kinda left out of the holiday scence. I will probably spend the majority of the vacation sitting at home studying/working on the plethera of things I have to do. Although I plan on renting a car for a couple days and trying to get a few friends together to go hiking in one of Jordan's scenic/historic places.

I've been trying to do alot of memorization work lately. Here is a sample of my apartment wall. Every week or two I tear down the verses and put new ones up. Also, I recorded one of the verses for anyone who is interested in knowing what Isaiah 53:3-6 sounds like in Arabic. It is actually very beautifully translated, I would say it carries the same weight and significance as our King James....umm apparently adding a sound file was not as straight forward as I thought. I was able to upload it to the location below, but can't seem to get Blogger to play the file itself. Perhaps some of your more experienced bloggers can tell me how. Thanks

http://www.box.net/shared/qcbe2q2eax