Meeting in Amman/Meeting My New Home in Tafilah

This was a busy past couple of days, so I will just put up some pictures with captions. The important notes:

-All of us volunteers went to Amman for a meeting with our future mudeers (principals)

-Then we each spent two days at our future sites, which for me, meant two days in Tafilah in the south.

My mudeer, Salem (Abu Mohammad) Rufoo', and I eating together at the conference in Amman--he's a great man! (It is tough, however, that he speaks effectively no English...but this will be good for my Arabic)

From left: Jamal (the other volunteer who will be serving in Tafilah), Abu Mohammad (my future mudeer),  me, and Abu Omar (Jamal's future mudeer); We built this ridiculous structure out of straws as a team builder.  I'm not sure if this is a bad omen,  but our team lost horribly, haha. To give you an idea, we had to cheat and sneakily tape our base straws to the table so that it would seem like it complied with the requirement to be free-standing. Also, every other group had far more epic architecture. No matter, I think we had the best vibe.

The same crew, this time with the addition of a woman who is a mudeer in Ajloun (she will be working with a volunteer named Alison--you can see Alison's hands on the left, haha)

A road in my village right outside my future house 

The stairs to my future house are visible on the left. That man is the director of education for the directorate that my village is a part of--his name is Hussein Fuqeer, and he was extremely welcoming and excited about working with me over the next two years. 

The stairs to my future home, which is huge by the way--masha'allah (not sure how to translate this, but you say it when something good happens to someone, or when someone has a lot of blessings in their life; it seems to have the sense of "may god grant you even more," but I'm not sure)!

Me and the entrance--thanks to Hussein for taking this picture! (I say this because I was told it would be weird to be taking pictures in the village; this is the reason for the dearth of pictures of my surroundings outdoors).

On the immediate right after entering, there is this room, Bedroom 1 (one of many to come!)

Another shot of Bedroom 1

Next to Bedroom 1 is Bathroom 1 (yeah, that's right, there are 2!). This one has just a turk.

Around the corner, still on the right side of the house, is the kitchen, which is pretty empty, but bigger than I expected.

The other side of the kitchen, which has a door that accesses my veranda

Now, imagine you are back at the entrance of the house through the front door. If you go left, instead of right (where Bedroom 1 is), there is a wide living room type space shown above.

Bedroom 2 (next to the living room, I think--I've been forgetting even with the pictures as a guide)!

Bedroom 3, complete with worn-out princess sticker. Nice! (As I recall, BR3 is next to BR2, at the back of the house).

This is the hilarious mystery picture...I'm pretty sure my house only (haha...only) had 3 BRs, a living room, a kitchen, and two baths (shots of Bathroom 2 to come below), but I can't figure out where this picture belongs. It could be that there was a fourth bedroom, and I'm forgetting where it was, or it could be another angle of one of the 3. 

Clearly the owner had young girls in here before--note Minnie again adorning the door to...BATHROOM 2!

...Complete with WESTERN TOILET. Yeah, baby! There's also a geezer (hot water heater) and a shower (shown below).

A view of the shower head and tub--oh yeah!

For some reason, Blogger won't let me do a normal caption for this picture...it's Hussein standing on my veranda.

A shot of the grapevines (can't wait for spring or summer or whenever grapes grow), and the apricot tree in front of my house--my landlord said I can eat them whenever. Life is so epic sometimes... 

Now, for the few shots of the outside I was able to get without it being too culturally weird...

The back of my future school, Abu Baker (closest friend of the prophet Mohammad) School for Boys.

Some students from Abu Baker (pronounced like "backer," not "baker") who wanted a picture taken

A view of the back of the house where I stayed for two nights in my village; I didn't stay at my future home, but instead with some fellow teachers (one of whom will be my counterpart at Abu Baker) in this college dorm-like setup. It was awesome!

And, what photo blog of a Jordanian village would be complete without a shot of some kharoof (sheep) just cruising around?

In addition to these few photos, I have a quick video of the view from my veranda, but for some reason, my videos don't play once I put them on the blog. I'll try to ask some more tech-savvy people than myself to see if there's a remedy.

I'll check in via Skype this weekend to relay some more stories from this first village visit...and to wish everyone "Merry Christmas!"

Love,
كمال