We’re tired.
We wake up tired and fall into bed tired and do everything in between tired.
We feel useless in our internships.
We don’t have a printer to get to our class readings.
Because we are constantly cheated in taxis, even getting home at night is a stress.
Some of us are feeling just comfortable enough with our host families to feel pressure and annoyance and guilt from them; others of us despair over ever feeling comfortable here.
Some of us frown in the mirror at the weight-gain induced by a diet of pita bread, cheese, yogurt and rice covered in cheese and yogurt; others of us suffer from constant nausea, or constipation, or the opposite.
In a city of 50-cent falafel sandwiches and unlimited shawarma we crave bagels and burritos and our mothers’ banana bread. We order hamburgers and french-fries in cafes but they just aren’t the same.
In class on Wednesday, Bruce looks around at the bags under our eyes and the worry in our faces and instead of having class we put on a bootleg copy of the King’s Speech and spend the morning in a dog-pile in front of the T.V. in his tiny flat, eating cookies and just existing, for a while, in an environment that doesn’t require a constant firing of synapses at ten times the normal speed.
Luckily, we’re together: I think that being with people we have at least one critical thing in common with has been a big part of why running on full steam all the time for a month has been bearable: we’re all just tired Earlham kids in Jordan.
Hard to believe that spring break is only two weeks away—spring break marks the middle of our program. We’re planning a trek through the south of Jordan: a few nights relaxing in the sun at a hostel in Aqaba that boasts wonderful snorkling, a night in the desert under the stars followed by a day of camel-riding through Wadi Rum, and a couple of days to scramble around Petra. Should be, you know, the best spring break I’ve ever had.
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