okay, here we go. first official blog post from me. the one we all knew from the start was going to be the worst at actually keeping a blog. (proving to be true)
story #1: the basketball game
every wednesday we have a "cultural exchange" with a group of jordanian students who are about our age. one of these students is very enthusiastic about having new friends and is really nice and he invited a group of us to watch another of the students play in a basketball game at a local, famous sports club (an-naadi). the club is in a really nice, westernized part of town so all of the people there were all done up and made us look like scrubs in comparison. we got there early, in time to witness the team warm ups. we literally could have been back in the us. bad pop hits playing over the loudspeakers and the teams shooting
baskets (teams including both boys AND girls. woah!). the game itself was fairly routine and uneventful. but wait. sitting on one of the team's benches was a man. a man who stood out due to his BIC pen mascot costume. that's right. can't picture it? it looked a little something like this:
after a crushing defeat, BIC got a little distressed:
the greatest part about this mascot (besides, you know, everything about the getup) was that he just sat there the entire time. there was no dancing, no cheering, no extra movement of any sort. except for the one time when apparently it got a little too warm in the mascot suit and he removed the head. only to find a sad little middle-aged, moderately chubby man inside the suit. there is a reason why being a mascot should be an anonymous pursuit.
so, we were all pretty happy with our time at the game, mostly made up of making fun of the mascot man, trying to learn cheers in arabic, drinking some free juice, etc. and then came the half time show. imagine the tv show 'america's got talent' except it was in the middle east and the band was entirely made up of 12-year-olds and there were some break dancing crews and some other crazy dancing happening. the band performed such crowd favorites as "dancing queen" and "i will survive". what winners. i'm still unsure what the outcome of the game itself was, but it was a pretty great night.
story #2: the doll.
on to a slightly more serious topic. so. there are a total of seven people in our family, including two parents, four children, and one unidentifiable entity. on first glance, one would probably call it simply a "doll". a child's plaything. no big deal, right?
BUT WAIT. the doll is so much more. it has matted chunks of grey hair, a lazy eye, remnants of creepy writing all over its old body, and definitely not enough limbs. a visual cue is necessary:
so that is it. just sitting there. on our family's living room couch. all the time. but not just in one, static place like it is some heirloom or something to be looked at. it is like actually just another member of the family. all the other family members sit with it and play with it and hang out with it all the time. probably more than they hang out with us. it's weird. after a little while, it got so ridiculous that cesca and i just had to ask them about it (we were, honestly, a little worried that it was just them playing a trick on us and seeing how long it would take us to call them out on their weird behavior). this, however, was not the case. when we asked them what the deal was (in broken, probably incorrect arabic, of course), they all proceeded to look at us as if WE were the crazy ones as they clung to the doll defensively: 'what do you mean, what is the deal with this? do you not have dolls in america?' we dropped the subject. we'll keep you updated.
so, yeah! just a couple of tidbits from our lovely time here in 'amman. yay! one entire blog post. check.
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