Host Family

I have been in Jordan for narly a week now and I just arrived at the house of my host family - the Abu Mahers - with whom I wll live for nine weeks while I study Arabic and do training. I am in the village of Tura, which, with a population of 30,000 is hardly a village by American standards. It is interesting, it seems any settlement of peple that is not a major city is called a village. Ramtha, where the female Youth Development (YD) trainees are for their homestay has an estimated population of 100 thousand, and was also described as a village (goreea).

The family I am wifth are very nice. In addition to Abu and Umm Maher (father and mother of Maher there are three sons - Ahmed, 15; Khaled, 12; and Abdullah, 9 - and a baby girl, Noor, who is 16 months, who enjoys running around the house, but then often looses her balance and plopping on the ground. There are also evidently three older girls, all of whom are married and live outside the household.

The house itself is very quaint, and is lined with Olive Trees, with grape vines in the rear . My bedroom itself seems to be a later addition, as it is only accessable outside the house, having a door on the porch. It is probably normally used primarily as a secondary sitting room for celebrations, perhaps where te men congregate, leaving women the normal living room inside the house proper, which is easily accesible to the kitchen and the bedrooms, though this has not been cooroberated. My room is very large, perhaps ten feet by twenty, lined with floor cushons to sit on, and a fan in the center.

My house is right next door where two other YD male volunteers - Erik and Randy - are staying and is of similar size. The fourth volunteer, along with our Language and Cultural Facilitator, Ahmed, are living in a house which can only be described as tricked out, and could possibly be on the Jordanian version of MTV "Cribs," complete with a proper toilet (most homes use a Turkish toilet, which will be intimnatly described in a latter entry), a Play Station 2, around 6 sitting rooms, a big screen TV - this all being only on the first floor - there are three. It is funy, because who would have thought one's living stanbdards would actually improve in the Peace Corps.

That is it for now, will add more later.