the deadest of the dead

Delightful pictures from my trip to the Dead Sea/Madaba this weekend. To the left, Monika with her camel friend. Monika and Oksana with a nut seller who thinks us wanting to take a picture of his uh...products, is the most hilarious thing that has happened to him. Perhaps ever.

Off we went to the Dead Sea, which is much much hotter than Amman, as it is the lowest point on earth. We were some of the most scantily dressed in our baggy t-shirts -- many of the women wore full covering as they wade into the water to sit in the lovely mud. Imagine -- wearing all of your clothes into the saltiest water on earth: regular sea water is 3-4% salt and the Dead Sea is 30%. THIRTY! I could feel the salt on my lips for days, and I don't think it's out of my hair yet.

Another wonderful part of our trip was that we were accompanied the whole time by Mr. Mahmoud, our taxi driver, who lounged with us on the beach, drank coffee and checked his watch as the sun set on our day. One of the most miraculous things was that during the day, we couldn't see to the other side of the sea because of the haze of evaporating water that permeates the air. But at night, as the sun set, all of a sudden you could see all the towns dotted with light on the otherside. Israel. An incredible sight.

And then a picture of me attempting to wrap my scarf around my head while we wait for our taxi driver to take part in the midday prayer. Sizzling heat and the loudest, most emphatic voice coming out of the mosque loudspeaker. Putting the Baptist preachers to shame.

It was so good to get out of town -- now we dive head first into recruitment.

this morning

A fun bureaucratic experience this morning running from one office to the next trying to get residency.

"But why didn't you get the police station in your neighborhood to stamp your passports?"

"Because they said we had to come here to take care of it"

"why?"

"I don't know"

"Ok well first you must obtain 3 pictures of yourself. Then you must take a blood test. Then you must go to the police station closest to your house. Then you must do five push-ups. And five laps around the block. And after that come back here and pay us in gold coins and Maybe you'll get a stamp on your passport."

No problem.

So After all this nonesense we went to meet:

The Deputy chairperson of Parliament. Yes that's right. Sat in some big fancy room. Drank some fancy coffee and talked about AIESEC with lightning speed. He supports us fully, and will do anything, Anything to help us.

Later in the day, we found out that the printing we thought would cost us roughly 700 dollars was priced at...free.

It's been a good day.

Recruitment! Beautiful!

Our Awesome Recruitment material! After weeks of preparing and negotiating, we finally received almost all of our recruitment material today. Beautiful banners, colorful posters, marvelous t-shirts and stickers. Starting on Sunday we enter recruitment mania, ie, hanging out on campus, wearing the same t-shirt for two weeks and in general getting the boys and girls of the world to join AIESEC.

In the picture we are posing with our lovely materials and wearing our t-shirts which say : Are you thinking about leadership or Leading a Global Organization? The fun starts Sunday...

Above Left: My fabulous MENA coordinator Tamer and I. On the last day of a two and half week conference -- Needless to say, I'm exhausted.

Above Right: Pretending to Sleep at the Moscow airport. We put a sleeping bag in the middle of the floor and tried to sleep for a few hours on the way home, during our 9 hour layover.

Middle: Oksana with the Qatari girls. This is what All Qatari women wear-- when they first put it one, no one recognized them and everyone was a bit freaked out. But when you realize it's the same person you had an amazing conversation with the other day, everyone got more comfortable and Everyone was taking pictures with them. It was important that they dressed like this to expose people to a completely different culture that is relatively new to AIESEC. The people working in Qatar talked about how they did information sessions about AIESEC with girls in the full dress and that the girls eyes sparkled as they talked about the opportunities for leadership development that AIESEC provides.

It's amazing how my worldview is changing -- a few months ago I would have thought these women were oppressed and had no power. But that's far from the truth. We did a session about stereotypes between Arab countries and the most consistent comment that came up about the Gulf states was that the women ruled over the men. Not exactly what you would think. Or that Bahrain has the highest percentage of people holding PhD's in the world.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures!

More pictures

Upper left: Morrocco, Bahrain and Jordan at the Global Village.
Above: Her name is Annika too! And she's from Finland! I met her the first day that I was at IC and introduced myself.

"Hi my name is Annika."
"I'm Annika"
"No my name is Annika."
"So is mine".

All in all there were three Annikas at the conference. Wooo hooo!

Above left: Gannet, originally from Egypt but starting up AIESEC in Qatar, talking to a group of people about why AIESEC is particularly important in the MENA region. These meetings about MENA, as well as sessions about breaking down stereotypes between the "Arab" and "Western" world, were some of the most fascinating of the whole conference. Gives me chills. Our whole team noticed how we reacted to girls wearing short skirts, or songs with references to sex or drinking -- couldn't help but ponder what our members will think of the conferences.

Poland Pictures

Upper Left: Representing the Middle East and North Africa. We became an official Growth Network at this conference, which basically means it will be much easier to work together on projects pertinant to the region. To the left: The Jordan girls and the girls from Egypt in our wonderful traditional outfits. As usual, Oksana has her eyes closed.
Above: Monika and I displaying our love for camels at the Global Village, held in the middle of Warsaw and attended by a few thousand Polish folks in addition to us crazy AIESECers. "So where are you from?" "I'm from Jordan." "But where are you REALLY from?"

Safe in Amman

I just wanted to let everyone know that me and my teammates are all ok. Yesterday a man shot 7 tourists in downtown Amman, killing one. What a welcome home present.

We are being cautious, but still feel entirely safe being here. Once again, such things can happen anywhere and I'm far more afraid of dying in a car accident.

So sending love to everyone.

One night in the Moscow airport

We liked the Moscow airport so much on the way to Poland that on the way back, we decided to check it out again, for a longer period of time to thoroughly scour all the duty free shops.

The best time to spend is Moscow airport is between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am. This is when people settle down to their lush cardboard and granite mattresses and cover themselves with clothing items to stay warm while getting a little shuteye. The mellifluous sound of humming fluorescent lights and delirious coffee drinkers trying to stay awake fills the air, providing an ambience not unlike an Enya cd, or one of those alarm clocks of waves crashing along the shoreline.

My teammates and I spent roughly 9 hours in the Moscow airport last night after approximately two weeks of sleeping no more than 4 hours per day, eating crappy food and drinking copious amounts of weak coffee. We were exhausted, wearing dirty clothes, dehydrated, hungry and yet somehow in a good enough mood to break out into reams of feverish laughter about sleeping bags and puppy blankets.

It was a special night.

Our Ms. President turned 25 at midnight. Oksana and I struggled for a while to come up with a plan of celebration, which initially landed us in surprisingly delicious seafood restaurant in the airport, which we praised for being marvelously cheap until we got the bill and converted it to Euros. Whoops.

Around 10:30 we schemers made a quiet exit to use the restroom facilities and came up with the following plan: To spell out the words happy birthday using any resources we had in the airport, be it people, crackers or cigarettes. We quickly realized that shop owners were less than enthusiastic to help us out, but random strangers trying to stay awake and entertained gladly cooperated to form a Y or a T or an extremely lame H.

We came back about 30 minutes later unable to hold in our secret for another hour, rationalizing that Somewhere it was already her birthday and we best get the celebration underway. The look on Monika’s face as she scrolled through the picture Almost matched the adorable smile she gets whenever you show her anything camel related.

Off to sleep we went, under a puppy blanket, on the lush sleeping bag on granite floor mattress, while Monika stayed awake to become one of the delirious coffee drinkers.

A gloriously empty plane ride later we arrived back home in Amman, ready to get some sleep and start the next stage of this adventure.