The State Department is hiring...

A long article in the New York Times.

Day trip to Madaba with Peace Corps Volunteers

Over the Eid holiday we hosted two friends of our friend Rob. (We offer our hospitality to friends of friends, or else we'd have no houseguests at all). Rob's friends had just finished up their 27 months in Morocco. We hoped that a few days with us, as fellow Americans in the Arab world, would help their transition back to the States - but we have our doubts. We had a dinner in their honor, and invited a few of the many former Peace Corps volunteers who now work for the State Dept. I don't think our dinner table discussion (rug shopping in Syria and the discovery of a new spa) compared with their tales of washing clothes in a plastic bucket. Or as one of our guests put it - when he was in the Peace Corp he met many State Department officers and found them all to be "neo-colonialist [jerks]" I fear we left the same impression on our guests. We were, however, able to provide hot water, a down comforter and Internet access - so maybe they can be bought.

They took a day trip to Petra and the next day we showed them the Baptism site and Madaba (site of a mosaic map and our favorite restaurant in Jordan). They suggested we all go somewhere we hadn't been before but we had to admit that Jordan is a small country and their really aren't that many places we haven't seen. We are thinking about organizing an outing to Mafraq because we heard there is a sheikh there with a herd of really pretty white camels but it didn't seem like a good destination for people who are only in Jordan for two days. In the Madaba church, which is known for the mosaic map, we noticed a different (less ancient) mosaic which we thought looked a lot like Joseph with his baby Jesus hand puppet.

Scorpian Hunting in Dana

The month of December is 50% holidays for us. We spent the last one, which was the Eid in honor of God letting Abraham slaughter a sheep instead of his son (Ismail or Isaac), at one of Jordan's National Parks - Dana. This is about an hour north of Petra but with the same sandstone cliffs (but no carved tombs).

On the first day, we did a not very fun hike - because it was straight down and then straight up.




The rooms were quite plain but as you can see the view from our balcony was beautiful.


We got up early the next day - ready for our guided hike. V ery few (read almost no) trails in Jordan are marked and so if you go hiking you usually need to hire a guide to help you find the interesting things. Our guide Khalid started the day telling stories about quail hunting including wearing a mask that apparently makes it easier to catch quail (this point was confusing since I assume quail don't like coyotes either).



Our first break during the day. Some of the trees that were pointed out to us were 800 years old - I can't remember if this was one of them - but all of the old trees looked pretty scraggly - this is a desert so no majestic redwoods.





At our second break, Khalid started a fire and made us sage tea. He also passed around date cookies that his wife had made.

Part of our hike was through the Valley of the Scorpians and Khalid acted as though his tip was a function of the size of the scorpian he was able to locate for us. The first scorpian he found was a black scorpian which he dismissed as not very dangerous. He then proceeded to find half a dozen yellow scorpians which he said would all kill a child. He also spent time poking them with sticks so they would walk around. This seemed foolhardy to me - but this also seemed to be part of what hiring a guide got us (in addition to date cookies)

Book Club, Dinner Club and the Rest of the Week

Tonight my book club will be discussing Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany. I am a little fearful about sounding like a curmudgeon because it seems like I don't like any of the books we read for book group that I didn't recommend. This month's book is about Egyptian immigrants in Chicago most of whom have some tie to a particular department at a university there. I don't know if it was because it was in translation but the American characters especially didn't ring true. I likewise imagine if I and all the Americans I know in Jordan wrote a book entitled "Amman" - it likewise wouldn't ring very true for Jordanians. My book club is also a potluck dinner and tonight I am bringing a yellow cake with a praline icing. I was actually intending on bringing vanilla fudge but the fudge didn't set right so I baked a cake and spread the soft fudge on top and am calling it praline icing.

Last weekend, we was also our monthly dinner club. This month's theme: Breakfast for Dinner. We made a mushroom strata (a savory bread pudding) that was tasty but we were cheaters because it is in fact someone we have made before (and in fact had served the same dish to half of our fellow dinner club members). The most delicious dish by far was Banana and Peanut Butter stuffed french toast which Scott said was a Paula Dean recipe. It was unbelievably good - you should make it this weekend or better still for Christmas morning - although we should warn you that we left this dinner club feeling leaden (or the way you would imagine you'd feel if you ate a lot of bready breakfasty dishes at 8:00 at night).

Yesterday, I met someone who has been to Trinidad many times and really likes it (more frequently we get praise for the tourist destination Tobago). It is possible that Peter really likes Trinidad because he is an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement expert and apparently Trinidad because it has a domestic soca music industry to protect actually cares about music and other IP piracy (unlike Jordan which has no such industry to protect - and would probably also be a nicer place to live if it had a music industry).

We were in Aleppo a while ago...

We never posted our pictures from Aleppo. I don't think we will ever succeed in convincing friends back home how great a tourist destination Syria is - inexpensive, nice people (okay bad government), tremendous amounts of history, and tasty food (yay French colonizers). We spent a long weekend in Aleppo recently and while no one should spend a week there - here are some highlights:

• Wandering around the citadel which has views over the entire city
• A souq where Aleppans really shop (the souq in Damascas and especially the one in Cairo are mostly for tourists today)
• Eating kebabs featuring local pistachios (the word for pistachio in Arabic is Aleppan peanuts) and cherry sauce
• Visiting beautiful Syrian-style homes with an inner courtyard and rooms built around it. Our small inn was in this format with a lovely courtyard and a nice restaurant but our room was a little too authentic with very plain furniture and only a window that opened into the courtyard.
• Hearing souq shopkeepers talk to us in French - who clearly are the only people who visit Syria. Shopkeepers would then run through a list of countries "are you Swiss? Swedish? German?" They never guess American. If you do decide to have a conversation with them and say that you are American - and especially if you speak to them in Arabic - they then say "you must work for the government."

Dan at the Citadel


Outside of the Citadel

Duffy inside a courtyard



Dan at the art museum

Israeli Thanksgiving Days Three and Four

DAY THREE
Stop 6: Tabgha and Capernaum – the sites of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount and the site of the loaves and fishes miracles. The church on the site of the fishes miracles had a pond with really attractive koi – do people eat them?

Stop 7: Nazareth – this town was actually a disappointment. The churches were only okay; the town was chaotically laid out and lunch was so-so but no bargain. So we packed up early and decided to head to on.

Stop 8: Haifa suburban movie theatres. We have gone to Tel Aviv for movie-weekend but on Saturday we headed to Haifa and coincidentally drove past a 23-screen multiplex where we stopped and watched the Duchess (very good) and Body of Lies (pretty good).

DAY FOUR

Stop 9: Mt. Taybor – pretty views into the countryside, nice mosaics and the possible site of the transfiguration. We overheard a tour guide saying that the transfiguration actually is more likely to have occurred at Mt. Harmon (Israel’s ski resort) and the discussion was about the likelihood of which mountain rather than the likelihood of the event.

Stop 10: Bet Shean – this is one of Israel’s largest archaeology sites and indeed pretty impressive as things go – but our visit was short – mostly because we had already seen Roman cities on the trip and many during our time in Jordan and so that we would have time to eat one last falafel lunch before making it to the border crossing.

Thanksgiving in Israel Day Two

DAY TWO Stop 4: Safed – this town is known as a the center of Jewish mysticism and indeed we saw some artwork that appeared to have incorporated Madonna into its themes. We visited some old synagogues and some galleries. But the thing that made me laugh (although tragic) was this sign letting people know that Safed candles had moved because of a fire (and indeed the place was gutted)

Stop 5: The Golan – I think the true test of whether you have picked the right traveling companion is how they answer “what about spending the rest of the day in the Golan Heights?” This is the territory that Israel won in the Six Day War and is the area most likely to be hit when terrorists start shelling from Lebanon. It is also the prettiest and most rural part of Israel – we all felt like we were visiting another country – green and lush – until we stopped at various propaganda stops which reminded us we were in Israel. You'd be amazed how many playgrounds had a "tank" theme - this one is green but we saw blue and pink and yellow too.

Trenches and baracks that the Syrians had built and which the Israelis took over.

Thanksgiving in Israel - Day One

This weekend, we gave up the prospect of cooking a very expensive imported turkey in our very small oven and headed to Northern Israel to visit some places we hadn’t seen before along with our friend Ben.

DAY ONE

Stop 1: Tzippori – This National Park with mosaics and the remains of a Roman city was nearly empty. The mosaics were among the most impressive we have ever seen – including one dubbed the Mona Lisa of Galilee. Here we are trying to pass as locals.

Stop 2: Akko – Normally my Arabic teacher tends to scowl a little when I mention that we are going to Israel (and I think Israelis are incredulous that we like Arabs) – but she didn’t blink when I said we are going to Akko which is a mostly Arab town on the sea. We toured the ruins but mostly enjoyed dinner at Uri Buri. This restaurant’s approach is “we have a menu you can order from but why don’t we just bring half portions of everything we make and tell us when to stop doing that.” We clarified that we don’t like calamari and then began a parade of dishes – salmon sashimi with wasabi ice cream, ceviche, a spicy shrimp dish … and ended with creamy scallops. I wonder if they ever sell dessert

Stop 3: Our bed and breakfast in Korazim. If the Sea of Galilee is a clock – we were staying at 12:00 o’clock. Our innkeepers were retirees who had both immigrated from America as teens and fallen in love with Israel. Breakfast each morning included fresh baked breads and perfectly ripe avocados. We tried the pomelo from their garden but found it a citrus fruit that was hard to love.

Body of Lies Wasn't Filmed in Jordan

This weekend we went and saw Body of Lies. The movie was pretty good (but not great) and if you haven't seen it, it is about the relationship between the CIA and Jordan's equivalent: the GID.

In case anyone has seen it, I want to point out that the film wasn't made in Jordan - it was made in Morocco - so no, Amman doesn't look like that. Morocco and Jordan are about 2500 miles apart - about as far apart as New York and San Francisco - two cities that also don't look very similar (as opposed to naturally Toronto and every city it has ever pretended to be in a movie).

I would like to brag that my Arabic is better than Leonardo DiCaprio's and in one scene he is apparently able to "pass" as an Iraqi. I don't ever pass as an "Iraqi" or anything Arabic. We saw the film in Isael where it was naturally subtitled in Hebrew. A few of the scenes were in Arabic but thankfully our Arabic was (a) either good enough or (b) the dialogue was easy enough that we could understand what was happening. Thankfully all of the actors spoke high Arabic, which is what we were originally taught - but again would be a barrier in one's ability to "pass" as Iraqi.