wild flowers and words

1. My favorite word of the week in Arabic: haketoolee. It means you (plural) told me. It’s fun to say and I like how all those ideas are stuffed into one word 🙂

2. Pictures to follow soon, but I’ve been really impressed with the wild flowers in the abandoned field I walk through when I’m in a hurry on my way to work. It’s not the most proper short cut, mostly construction workers and cats take it, but I can’t be proper all the time.

Anyways, I had to look twice. There were these tiny white flowers blooming on a plant that I would have guessed was dead, all brown and brittle looking. It’s only rained once since about April, and that was only for 5 minutes so I’m totally amazed by these little flowers. Pictures coming soon (I hope)

In other news, I got my blood test back today, and it’s all fine. But I still need to get my lease stamped (who knew?…all these new rules) so my visa stamp is still pending.

thanks for reading 🙂

Blood Test

I learned today, to my chagrin, that I have to get a blood test to renew my tourist visa. This is a new law and my response was somewhere between UG and I think I’m going to cry now.

I had a really traumatic blood drawing experience once in the States involving a student nurse and her supervisor yelling at her, “Never, never do that!” It hurt, I cried, etc.

Except for the traffic being completely horrendous since it is everyone’s first day back at work after a long vacation, this blood drawing was great.

There was a breeze in the room, the line wasn’t too long and I could see all these tall pine trees out the window surrounding the school next door.

And the woman who pricked me was amazing. I barely knew what happened. And I don’t think there’s going to be a bruise. I’ll go back on Wednesday to pick up the results…hopefully I don’t have any scary diseases!

Sea Squill

In keeping with my new goal of blogging short blogs often, let me introduce you to the sea squill.

I went with two friends to Wadi Dana nature reserve and hiked around the head of the wadi. There weren’t many wild flowers (it hasn’t rained there since March or April), but this slightly alien looking plant was shooting up all over the place. At this time of year, it’s just one silvery green stalk, no leaves, sticking up out of barren soil. The flowers are tiny and slightly sparkly (iridescent?) and the buds look creepily like bugs. But still, wild flowers on the edge of the desert 🙂

I bought a “Wild Flowers of Jordan” guide in the Dana gift shop which is how I identified it and now I know it’s name in arabic too. Well several are listed, but the most romantic sounding one is عود الري، ‘ud al riy, some kind of flute…

Here’s one with Wadi Dana trailing out to the Dead Sea plain and beyond it the Negev.

Sea Squill with Wadi Dana in the background

One other highlight: Wadi Dana is in biblical Edom and I kept imagining I was in an Old Testament story. Looking up the sea squill led me on a wikipedia plant investigation and through a long trail ended up learning that hyssop, as in “cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean” from Psalm 51, is probably a kind of oregano!

Blogging againg

So I’ve been meaning meaning meaning to start blogging again. And I’ve finally found the perfect time; when I’ve stayed up too late, have got my second wind and am procrastinating going to bed. This is not something that happens to me often. I really really love my bed. I even draped my bed spread over my door so I could do a mini photo shoot for my facebook profile picture. (A more embarrassing manifestation of putting off going to bed.)

At least tomorrow is the weekend…I remember in college we would always joke about the weekend starting on Thursday night. Here the weekend really does start on Thursday night. Friday’s the only day that everyone has off. Fortunately I get Saturday off too. It would take me a long time to adapt to a 6 day work week!

So this weekend is exciting because some friends and I are going to Dana Nature Reserve. In keeping with my resolution to blog WAY more often this blog will be short and include a teaser about all the cool things I will report when I’ve actually been to Dana.

The Teaser:

These quotes come from the Rough Guide to Jordan written by Matthew Teller who gives AMAZING directions.

This is a great example: On this road, 800m beyond a lone roadside pistachio tree, three wild cypresses-marking the edge of Jordan’s last wild cypress forest, now protected as part of the reserve-are visible silhouetted on a hillside over your right shoulder.”

Now, when I first began reading the rough guide I would take this type of romanticism with a grain of salt. Now I am a true believer. He says wild cypresses and I expect to see them…probably with the sun setting spectacularly behind them. And I expect to arrive at my destination in exactly the time he predicts it will take.

Other reasons he says Dana is great:

The guest house is “a skillful and attractive blend of traditional Jordanian styles and chic minimalism in stone and iron.”

“Queen Noor, wife of the late King Hussein, famously called the views “ten-star” and its hard to argue with her.”

I feel like I was pretty cooped up in the house during the fasting month of Ramadan and I’m EXCITED to be out and exploring.

Plus, the weather is perfect. Crisp and fresh and clear (enough like fall in New England to make me feel a little homesick).

Ok, I’m going to try to sleep. Expect a report on Dana soon!