I don’t know how many conclusions I can draw from the study abroad at this point. I don’t really have a context of before and after that I can put it in at this point, so it would probably be superficial for me to write an epilogue to draw all the loose ends together.

I can, however, say a couple of things.

I love the Arab culture and people much more now than I did before I left. I feel that I’ve grown and matured tremendously from the study abroad experience. I don’t know where my Arabic studies will ultimately take me, but I think I can see the next few steps a little bit clearer.

And finally, I feel that maybe, just maybe, I’m at the cusp of making the transition from a sophomore level of understanding (where you don’t know anything and you know that you don’t know anything) and a junior level of understanding (where you know something but you don’t know that you know something). It’s impossible to tell, and I still feel so ignorant of Middle East politics, history, peoples, and language, but I feel in some nebulous way that I’ve made progress.

Time will tell what all of this actually means.

Thus endeth Journey to Jordan. I do write several other blogs, though. If you want to keep reading about my thoughts and experiences, here they are:

A Thousand and One Parsecs: This is a journal of my life and experiences as an aspiring writer. Here I write about the books I’m writing, my story ideas, reviews of the books I read, and life experiences as they relate to my dreams and aspirations as a writer. And other random thoughts, ramblings, and occasional links to cooler stuff.

Onelowerlight’s Daily Photo Safari: My daily photoblog, where I post a new image every day from photos of the places I go and the things I see in everyday life. Right now, the photoblog is down, but I plan to bring it back before too long. This is my most active and longest running blog, though it’s more about the photography and less about my own personal thoughts and experiences.

عرب وغرب: أين الاختلاف؟ This is my Arabic language journal, or at least it’s supposed to be. I haven’t written in it in a while. If you go there now, you will see all the gloriously embarrassing mistakes I made when I didn’t know Arabic very well (it’s written almost entirely in Arabic). I’m going to develop it quite a bit in the next few months, though I’m not sure what I’ll do with it exactly. It will mostly be in Arabic, but I’ll probably write in English about my language learning experiences. So if you want to keep up with the Arabic side of my life, that’s probably the best place to go…after I fix it up a little bit.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading about my thoughts and experiences in the Middle East!  I hope you enjoyed it.  If anybody found anything insightful, thought provoking, or meaningful among the many long, rambling posts that I wrote on this blog, then I’ve succeeded.

If you find something meaningful here, I hope you take the time to visit my other blogs.  I really love blogging: it is a great way to share your thoughts and experiences with other people, and to get wonderfully diverse perspectives from people across the world.  Even though this blog is finished, you can still keep up with me through these other blogs.  I hope you find something meaningful there as well.

I’ve been back in Provo this past week, getting settled in for the start of the next semester. It’s been a trippy experience. In some ways, things are completely different. All my old friends from the capitol house (where I used to hang out all the time) are living in other places, all the people I knew from the Arabic house are gone as well.

But the strangest thing is how little everything has changed.

It’s comforting in some ways to be back in such a familiar place. After two and a half years, I feel like I know Provo really well, and BYU is practically my home in some ways. I love the mountains, the people, the college atmosphere, and the independence.

At the same time, this is my sixth semester at BYU, and I’m starting to feel the college fatigue that precedes senioritis (if it weren’t for senioritis, I doubt I’d ever graduate ). But it’s not merely a question of “what am I still doing here in college?” I’m not that anxious to get out of school–though that may change midway through this semester.  I’m not super thrilled to start classes.

It goes deeper than that, though.  I’ve changed a lot since the Jordan study abroad.  The travel experience did a lot to humble me and show me what I need to change in my personal life. I don’t want to just fall back into my same old routine, get stuck in the same comfort zone, or watch my life pass by on like scenery from a car window. I want this semester to be the start of something different.

At the same time, there is more to it.  Walking around on campus, everything felt so familiar that it was…unfamiliar.  If that makes any sense.  On the study abroad, I confronted the strange and unfamiliar on a daily basis.  It became the norm.  I fell into something of a routine, but there was always something different, confusing, and slightly unnerving where-ever I went.  I guess that after a while, I not only got used to it, I got comfortable with it as well.  At least to the point where it feels unnerving not to be in an unfamiliar place.

Despite all the familiarity, I can tell that I’m not just going to slip back into who I was before the study abroad experience.  I might fall back into some old habits if I don’t watch out, but my priorities and outlook on life have changed significantly.  I feel like I’m more aware of things, including myself and how I come across to others.  I’m a lot more laid back and take things at a slower pace.  I enjoy being with people and listening to them more than I used to.  I get more rejuvenation from spiritual activities such as prayer and scripture study.

Outwardly, too, things have changed.  As I was unpacking this week, meeting my roommates, and setting things up the way I like it, I saw just how much of an influence the study abroad has had on me.  I’ve been putting up posters of Bedouins, the Aish Bedunha boycott stuff, Jerusalem, and other pictures.  I’ve been talking with everyone in Arabic, and just talking with them I can tell that I’ve changed a lot.  The RF this year (Basseem) is a friend of mine, and we get along just swimmingly talking all about Jordan, Palestine, the Arab world, Arab culture, etc.  I’m definitely going to be bringing a small piece of Jordan with me to the Arabic house this year, and that’s going to be fun.

As the days go by, I can feel things stabilizing.  I hope I’m not falling back into old habits that I don’t want.  This weekend, I’m going to sit down and figure out who I want to be and what I want to be doing with myself this semester.

But honestly, I’m not too worried.  I’m actually quite excited.  If this is the end of one thing, it’s the start of something else.  As I was talking with Dave Kerman the other day, he remarked “this is going to be a really good year–I can tell.” And guess what?  So can I.  This is going to be a really good year. I can tell.

I love roadtrips.  I think that’s something that makes me really American.  Out here in the USA, we’re always on the move.  We have friends and family from all over the country, and many of us move from one state to another several times in our lives.  Roads, highways, and travel are a part of our national mythology, from the pioneer trails to route 66.  I’m no exception to any of this–I totally love it.  Whenever I get the urge to just hop in a car and go somewhere, I feel in some small way like it’s my American heritage calling to me.

We started Saturday by loading up Danny’s truck, hooking up the Uhaul trailer, loading it up with all the furniture, luggage, boxes, and miscellaneous junk that we were taking out to Utah, and headed out!

My father was REALLY generous.  A lot more than he needed to be.  He paid for the trailer, gave us nearly $500 for gas, and bought enough food to nearly last us the entire way.  That was pretty awesome.

That first day, we drove through Western Massachusetts, New York, the tip of Pennsylvania up near lake Eerie, and halfway through Ohio.  It was a BEAUTIFUL drive.  Holy cow, I didn’t realize that American farms could be so beautiful.  There were so many in New York and Pennsylvania, big red barns and gray metal silos next to huge fields of corn, with green rolling hills and forests in the background.  It was really pretty.

Cincinnati was really confusing, but fortunately Danny had a GPS device (a Magellen–we called her “maggie”) that helped us navigate through the spaghetti bowl of highways out there.  In fact, Maggie was really useful the whole trip–she led us to campsites and gas stations, and at the very end led us through Heber and Provo Canyon and helped us shave off quite a bit of time.

We camped out at a random campground out in Ohio, then went to church at the local ward there.  It was really interesting to go to church in an actual chapel with pews.  The ceiling was so high, and the room was so big!  Definitely not what I’m used to, after four months of the Amman branch and three years of student wards.

The dynamic in the church was really interesting, too.  It felt more rural–the people were a lot different than the people in the Amman branch, where nearly all the Americans are world travelers and government workers.  Still, it was the same church, the same gospel, the same organization and everything else.  It really opened my eyes to the fact that even in different, far away places, among people that I hardly know, it’s still the same church.  Kind of interesting.

We drove through Toledo, Indiana, passed just south of Chicago, and made it midway through Iowa before the end of the night.  Flat country, LOTS of farms.  It was still really green, but there weren’t as many forests.  Mostly just farms.  Indiana was kind of more of the same, but it got really flat in Illinois and we started seeing cornfields that stretched all the way to the horizon.  Crazy.

Let me just say something here about tolls.  They suck.  When we passed from New York to Pennsylvania, we had to pay a hefty $35.  $35!!!  It would have been a lot cheaper, but we were pulling a trailer.  Things didn’t get much better until Illinois.  $2 in Pennsylvania, about $10 in Ohio, and $16 in Indiana.  By that time, we asked the lady at the toll booth in Indiana if things were much worse in Illinois, and she said “oh yeah, Illinois tolls are REALLY high.” We passed the border dreading what we would find, but after paying $1.70 to get on the road, we were able to pass through the state without paying anything else.  And after we crossed the Mississippi into the Western US, there were no more tolls at all.  There also weren’t any giant, luxurious rest stops with massive convenience stores, arcades, and fast food restaurants, but I was ok with that.

After crossing the Mississippi–the quintessential north-south line that cuts America in half, culturally and historically as well as geographically–we passed through Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming, three states that I’ve never really seen.  They were strikingly different from the other states we passed through in the East.  Trees gave way to plains, cornfields gave way to cattle, cities and towns gave way to open stretches of highway populated only with farmers and truckers, and accents became thicker and much more rural.  It was really interesting.  America is such a fascinating place.

We camped in Iowa at a campground on the side of the highway (literally), then took off early in the morning.  By this time, we were both really excited just to get to our final destination, so we decided that if we weren’t too tired by the end of the day, we’d just push on for Utah without stopping until we got there.  I was ok with that.  Most of the sites I wanted to see were pretty far off of the highway (Nauvoo, for example is several hours south of I-80–it would have taken a whole day just to go there), and I really did want to get to Utah at this point.  And really, I found the drive itself interesting enough that I didn’t really feel compelled to stop at the major historical sites.  They would be cool to visit, but maybe some other time.  After all, whenever you go to a really cool place, it’s always a good idea to leave at least a couple of things undone so you have an excuse to come back.

Nebraska is HUGE.  It took FOREVER to get through that state!  But Wyoming was really beautiful, especially in the light of the setting sun.  We passed just south of an enormous thunderstorm, and that was incredibly beautiful.  I love storms, especially the huge ones that tower over the plains with their black, moody, ominous clouds that are so brilliantly white at their peaks.  The flat plains and endless cornfields gradually gave way to rolling cattle lands, and I started to feel like we had truly entered an empty place.  The cloudless blue skies gave way to marvelous and beautiful skyscapes, as wonderful as any of the scenery that we had passed through earlier.  As we crossed into Wyoming, we started to see mountains on the horizon, and hills right in front of us, and I started to feel like we’d truly passed into the West.

Highway exits and gas stations started to become scarce.  We gassed up at this old station deep in Wyoming that looked like it had been built in 40s and hadn’t been renovated since.  It was right next to some amazingly beautiful mountains overlooking the endless emptiness of the rolling cattle lands out there.  Awesome.

We passed through the rest of Wyoming in the night–lots of confusing and unnerving road construction, with twists and turns as we made our way through the few mountains that lie on I-80 between Wyoming and Utah.  For the most part, I-80 is flat, even out into the rockies, which is one of the reasons why we chose it.  Fewer treacherous mountain cliffs and passes, but more truckers.  You trade the one for the other, but it was better for us since we had a trailer ourselves, and didn’t want to climb (or descend) any steep slopes.  When you’re going down a hill, hit 75 mph, and the trailer on your back starts to wobble, it can be kind of scary.  Braking only makes the wobbling worse, so all you can really do is downshift or ride the hill out.  Despite the difficulties, we pressed on.

By the time we got to Utah, I was a zombie.  I drove until I was too exhausted to be able to drive safely, and Danny stayed awake by singing along to Les Miserables and listening to the second half of Harry Potter 5 on CD.  Neither one of these were conducive to sleeping, so instead I zombified.  When we pulled into Provo and drove down University Avenue towards Springville (where we spent the night at Danny’s grandparents’ house), I was happy to finally be in Provo but so tired that the news had little effect.  We pulled up to the McQueens’ beautiful house, I grabbed my clothes, took a room in the basement, and passed out.

So that was our roadtrip.  These last couple of days, I’ve mostly been figuring things out–housing, classes, car, clothes, stuff in storage, etc.  My mother and sisters are all out here, and it’s been really cool to see them!  I gave them all the gifts that I brought for them from the Middle East, and they really enjoyed them.  That was really great.

I love America.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best country in the world, and I really truly believe that.  It’s my country.  I love learning about its history, its culture, and after spending the last four months abroad, I’m more enthusiastic than ever to be back and see it again.  There is such a HUGE difference between East and West, between New England and the Midwest, and the Midwest and the Rockies.  I could just feel it in a hundred different subtle ways as we passed through.  Iowa and Nebraska aren’t just nowhere states–they have their own distinct feel to them, things that set them apart from the other places.  The people, too, are so different.

Seeing all these differences in America made me wonder if Jordan is much the same way.  To my eyes, as a foreigner, most of the places seemed very similar.  Amman was definitely its own place, and the landscape in Irbid was a lot different from the landscape in Kerak and Mafraq, but other than the city-village-Bedouin divisions that were fairly obvious, I didn’t really pick up on many other differences in the people.  A corner store in Amman is prettymuch the same as a corner store anywhere else in the country, and the houses and villages everywhere look prettymuch the same.  At least, to my eyes they did.  I’m sure there are differences, but they were so subtle, and my eyes and ears were so untrained, that I didn’t pick up on them.  Yet, in my own country, I can pick up on all the subtle differences between regions.  What if I knew Jordan well enough that I could do the same there?  I have to come back someday.

As far as culture shock goes, it was more exhilarating than exhausting or unnerving.  The only two things that I still find truly shocking are the taboos against disposing of toilet paper in waste baskets and how incredibly TINY American coinage is.  When I got back to BYU, though, I did get another shock that was kind of funny.  At the University of Jordan, there are a lot of beautiful girls, but they almost all wear the hijab.  At BYU, there are even more beautiful girls–really, some of the most amazingly drop dead gorgeous girls you will ever see in your life–and NONE of them wear the hijab.  All that beauty, totally uncovered…it was something of a shock to me.  For the first five minutes at least.  And then I started to get used to it (and realized that I still don’t like typical Utah hairstyles–in fact I like them less now).

The plan is to drive from here (Massachusetts) to Provo, Utah, arriving sometime Tuesday or Wednesday.  We don’t have a really set itinerary.  We may stop places along the way, we might not.

I’m looking forward to it.  I LOVE road trips.  I used to drive across the country all the time growing up, going to visit family in far away places like Texas and Utah.  I’ve wanted to go on a long drive for some time.

I know that the Jordan study abroad is technically over, but I thought I’d keep up this blog just to record some of my thoughts as I adjust back to life in the states.  I still think of Jordan a lot.  Just now I realized that if I make the “be quiet” sign while driving, people will think I’m flipping them off. Last night, while walking around at the Big Y supermarket, I realized that the grocery store was maybe three times bigger than the Safeway in Shmeysane (I can never transliterate that word).  Last night, as I cooked up some beans for a burrito, I realized that Jordanians would probably use a spoon instead of a fork.  Little stuff like that.

I do feel like I’m on the ground running again, though.  I’m not apathetic or disoriented anymore.  Life is great and I’m excited to be home, to be driving across this awesome country that is the United States, and to be back in Utah.

I won’t be blogging on the trip (since I won’t have an internet connection, probably), but I may or may not write a few posts longhand and put them up later.  I don’t know, but we’ll see.

Gotta go.  See y’all around!

However, I’ve been having some serious computer issues recently, and as a result I’ve been forced to temporarily suspend my photoblog.  My Dell laptop, which has faithfully served me for nearly three years, is getting old.  While I was studying abroad, the power contacts in the back started to wear down.  As a result, whenever I plugged it into a power outlet, it would get real finnicky and sometimes wouldn’t connect.

Things got really bad once I got home, to the point where I can’t hardly charge the batteries.  As a result, I’ve been forced to use other computers.  Trouble is, all my photo editing software and archives are on my laptop.  So…while I can write for this blog (and my writing blog) on public computers, I can’t update my photoblog.

Honestly, this is not a small blow to me.  One of the reasons I started my photoblog was to prove to myself that I could start a project and be consistent with it.  I was really proud of the fact that I’d been updating it daily for so long.  And, after all this time, it’s really grown on me.  Updating the photoblog is something that I do almost automatically.  To not have it anymore is…a little unsettling.

However, I AM really happy that I was able to keep it updated consistently throughout the study abroad trip.  I have a photo up there for literally every day we were in the Middle East (sometimes four or five per day).  If it had to go down at any point, now would be the perfect time.

So…yeah, everything is up in the air.  I want to resume the photoblog once I get settled out in Utah, but I won’t know what I’m doing until the computer situation is resolved.  In the meantime, I’ll have to use public computers and flash drives (and I think my second flash drive is on the verge of crashing…scary).  In a lot of ways, I feel like I did in the Ambassador hotel back in May–no routine, everything up in the air, not sure where I’m going or what I’m doing.  Things don’t really begin until I’m back out in Utah.

So, if you’re wondering why the Daily Photo Safari is down, that’s why.

There are the usual things you might expect.  The United States is very different from Jordan, especially out here in Massachusetts.  Here are a few of the things about America that I’ve found the most shocking:

• American currency.  Pennies, quarters, nickels and dimes…they are so SMALL.  I’m afraid that they’ll slip right through my fingers!  The smallest Jordanian coin (five qirsh) is much larger and thicker than our quarter (the largest American coin).
• Flushing toilet paper down the toilet instead of putting it in the garbage can.  Every time I do this, I feel like I’m doing something wrong.
• New England foliage.  The first night I was here, I felt like I was in a jungle.  The cicadas were so loud, and everything is so green…trees, forests, it’s crazy.  What’s more, there’s actually rain out here, and the mosquitoes are out in force.
• Road construction.  It’s everywhere.  Parts of my hometown have been shut down by it, which seems really strange to me, because the roads aren’t any worse than the roads in Jordan.  Why can’t they just let it be?
• American refined foods.  They make me sick.  In some ways, the food here makes me sicker than the food in the Middle East, strangely enough.  I had digestive problems before coming to Jordan, and was really worried that they would get worse, but honestly, the whole time I was there I didn’t have any problems.  Immediately after getting back, however, and eating a few American meals, the same problems have come right back.  Middle Eastern foods are generally really healthy–home grown, unrefined, full of natural vitamins and fibers–and they are delicious. I look at American junk food right now and I have no desire to eat it.  What I would give for some Diwali, though…

Honestly, though, I don’t feel like I’m going through culture shock.  It’s like it was when I came back for Kate’s wedding.  Things are different, but familiar enough that I can slip right back in without too much trouble.

I do think of Jordan a lot, however.  I still use a lot of Arab body language, which confuses and/or amuses my Dad (I’ve been using the “be quiet and listen to me” hand gesture quite a bit).  Mostly, it’s the little things that get me to thinking about Jordan.  I’ll see something small, almost inconsequential, and say to myself “the Arabs in Jordan don’t do things that way.  They do it like this.” And then, more often than not, I say “I like their way better.”

I’d give an example, but I can’t think of anything specific.  Like I said, it’s the little, fleeting things that get to me.  Five minutes later, and I’ve already forgotten about it.

All these things are kind of weird to me.  But really, they aren’t that weird.  I was expecting them.  The thing I wasn’t expecting, however, was the way I’d react.

Those of you who know me know that I am NOT an apathetic person.  I hope that you’d also agree that I am NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, a flakey person.  Most of the time, I know what I want (or at least what feels like something I’d want), I’m passionate about it, and I’m out to get it.  If I say I’ll be there, I’ll be there.  Period.

That’s why my reaction is so strange.  These past couple of days, I’ve felt apathetic, listless, even a little bit melancholy.  I just haven’t been really excited about things.  In some ways, that’s good, because it’s easier for me to pick my battles.  Something annoying happens (like the fact that my Dad decided to have the floors refinished this week, so we couldn’t go upstairs and had to live out of the cellar), and I get frustrated but instead of fighting it and getting upset, I just swallow it and let it pass.

In other ways, it’s really not good.  In fact, I find it more than a little disturbing.  The strangest thing about this apathy is that it makes me really flakey.  The other day, my Dad took me out to see a movie, and it wasn’t until we showed up at the theater that I realized I didn’t want to watch a movie.  Nothing in the cinema excited me, so why should I waste my time watching one.  I told him “I don’t know, Pop–it’s your decision, but I don’t really want to see anything.” (we ended up leaving, but came back the next day and watched Wall-E; great movie!  I actually enjoyed it a lot).  When I was driving around by myself, I thought I wanted to go to Barnes & Nobles to hang out and read some books, but when I got there I realized that nothing there excited me, so after browsing the shelves listlessly for about half an hour, I left and went to the mall…realizing, once again, that I didn’t really have any desire to be there.

Weird.  I’ve never felt this way before.

I suppose that this strange state of mind/being is, on some level, a reaction to the shock of coming back to the US, but I don’t know how it works.  I was expecting something external, not something so deeply internal.

Then again, it might have less to do with leaving Jordan as a place and more to do with leaving all my friends behind–both my Arab friends and my BYU friends.  I’m alone out here.  The only person I know that I see every day is my Dad.  All the rest of my family is out in Utah, and most of my friends as well.  Without most of the people who mean a lot to me, there’s not much to do out here, and that, more than anything else, is a shock to me.

So now, in a weird twist, I’m starting to feel homesick for Utah, of all places.  Provo, that lovely little city that can be so frustratingly boring sometimes.  Utah Valley, the sheltered, overwhelmingly Mormon place that spawned the 3,500+ strong “in Utah, but not of Utah” facebook group.

Don’t get me wrong–I love Utah, and I love going to school in Provo.  It’s just that it’s something of a love-hate relationship.  When spring and summer come around, it’s perfectly natural to start saying “I want to freaking get out of Utah,” even for those like me for whom BYU was their first choice of school.  I know I was saying that back in April.  When you didn’t grow up there, nine months in Utah is too long.  Way too long.

But honestly, my favorite place is wherever my friends are.  That’s what I’ve figured out these last few days.  The place itself doesn’t really matter as much as the people.  And I miss the people–whether in Jordan or in Utah.  I’m looking forward to setting out on this road trip and finally getting back to Provo.  I can already tell that it’s going to feel good to be back.

To preface this post, you need to know a few things.  I grew up in Massachusetts (mostly, at least), but I don’t really consider the place “home” anymore.  Not in the sense that Arabs mean “home,” anyways.  Home to my Arab friends is a fortress of family and familiarity that you can retreat to and shut yourself out from the hassles and dangers of the outside world.  I’ve been a nomad since I moved out of my house in 2003, and I don’t think a place like that exists for me–not as a concrete “place” anyways.

Two years ago, my parents moved out of the house where I grew up.  The new house isn’t all that familiar to me, since I haven’t lived in it for more than a couple weeks at a time.  It feels more like my grandparents’ house, except…they’re my parents.  I enjoy visiting, but really, I don’t consider it my home.  Like I said, I’m a nomad.

Since Massachusetts is no longer my current home, whenever I come back to visit I find it entertaining to immerse myself with nostalgia.  I have no childhood memories from the house my parents live in, but all the old stuff is there and I enjoy sorting through it.  It’s also very interesting and nostalgic to drive around my old town, especially the neighborhood where we used to live.

I wasn’t prepared, though, for what happened when I saw my old house.

Nothing else for me to do back home except explore old memories, I decided spontaneously to drive up to the old house where I’d grown up. It wasn’t ours anymore. We’d moved out of it nearly two years go. The woman who bought it from us was single and had nearly a dozen kids from three different parents. After we moved out, they trashed the place. That’s the last I’d heard of it.

As I drove past, I saw that all the plants in the front were grown over. The red brick mailbox was partially destroyed, evidently by a careless driver. There was a For Sale sign leaning against it. The driveway was empty, but I was hesitant for fear of someone seeing me through a window.

Then I saw a black box dangling from the doorknob on the front door. “What the heck?” I parked the car and walked boldly across the lawn. Sure enough, there was a notice pasted on the door. It said “to enquire about this property, please call…”

The house was foreclosed. The previous residents were all gone.

Nobody was there.

I couldn’t hold myself back. I stepped around the house, peering in all the windows. I walked around back, as if exploring some ancient ruins in a far off land. This space where I had grown up, where I hadn’t returned in nearly a quarter of my life, was practically sacred to me–which only made the desolation that much more surreal.

Walking across the lawn where I used to play as a child, it seemed like the walls of the house were screaming at me. The place was saturated with memories, and they all came back to me as I reverently walked around the property. This was where we had built the old swingset. This was where we had house trained our dog, late at night, while watching Apollo 13 which had just come out on DVD. This overgrown, jungle-infested hill was where I had worked one summer to build terraces for a garden that we never planted. That window was the one that we kids used to secretly leave unlocked so that we could sneak inside if we had to. It was locked tight.

I felt like the place was a holy temple that some gang of street thugs had tagged with crude, ugly, spray painted words of hate. I felt violated. The plants which we had so carefully tended were collapsing on their own, untended overgrowth. Weeds as tall as myself grew in front of the doors. Inside the windows, the floors were scratched to pieces, the doors were dented at the corners, the carpets were stained and dirty. The awning we’d put over the deck was completely gone. The equipment for the fireplace was in pieces, leaning against the wall.

It was like ages had gone by, and the walls were screaming out to me. I was too shocked by what I saw to cry. Yet, at the same time, I was grimly fascinated. It was like I was watching a movie, entertaining myself with my thoughts while someone else controlled my body and my emotions.

All this time, I couldn’t help but think how ironic it would be if one of my old neighbors called the cops on me. To be arrested for walking around the house that, five years ago, I’d left and entered every day. That to return to the place where I’d made the transition from childhood to adolescence and left my adolescence behind now felt like a crime and made me look suspicious. I didn’t care enough to let it stop me.

Later that night, I heard the rest of the story from my father. The woman who had bought the house from us had fallen behind on her mortgage. She was probably one of the thousands of Americans who used the housing bubble to buy a house far beyond her means. Instead, she took out a twisted insurance policy: she slept with the son of her creditor for ammunition to use as blackmail.

It didn’t work, though. In the end, she got foreclosed and evicted just like everyone else. And now, my old home sits ruined and abandoned.

To me, the place is as fractured and weathered as Jerash, Luxor, or Um Al-Jumaal. It’s just gone.

My thoughts and attitudes have changed a lot in the past few hours.  In my last post, I was already missing the Middle East and struck by the realization that I only had one complete day left.  However, when I woke up the next morning, my thoughts changed almost completely.

Instead of missing things and being sad that I was leaving them, I started to get jittery and excited about leaving and returning home.  This phase of my life–studying abroad–has pretty much come to a close, and I’m anxious to move on and start the next one.  I’m also anxious to be home again, and the fact that several hours separated me from that ultimate destination started to frustrate me somewhat.  I could understand what Gini was saying when she explained why she was so cranky, walking around wast al-balad.  I wasn’t cranky, though–just really, REALLY jittery.

Our last day at church was pretty good.  One of the girls from the archeological expedition to Petra spoke to us and shared some cool experiences, such as bearing her testimony of why she didn’t need archeological proof to believe the Book of Mormon to a newspaper crew who pressed her on that point.  There was a good Sunday school lesson, too, but by priesthood I was just tired and/or really jittery, so I didn’t really hear much of what was said.

After that, there was something of a mixup.  Gini and I were going over to Lafi’s house to say goodbye, but we weren’t getting picked up until five o’clock.  I kind of wanted to go home first, but it wasn’t totally necessary, and the place where we were getting picked up was fairly close to the church.  When Ryan, my roommate, told me he was staying late, I just decided to stick around.

Of course, it didn’t help that time was moving too slowly and we weren’t at the airport yet.  I mean, in some ways, this day felt like empty space, like a grey zone I was passing through before doing things that were really meaningful.  I wasn’t upset about it, and I didn’t act all pissy around everyone else, but inwardly I just felt tied down when I needed to be somewhere else.

There was a baptism after church, and I decided to stick around for it.  Yes, another baptism–believe it or not, this past month we’ve had baptisms every Friday.  I’ve seen more baptisms in the Middle East than I’ve seen the past two and a half years in Utah.  Awesome.  It really was a good baptism, with some great talks, good people, and great refreshments.

While sitting around outside eating the refreshments, I remembered my mother’s words to treat each of my last moments like I was on the brink of discovering something worthwhile, and I got into a conversation with one of the Korean branch members about his work.  He works at the UN, something I didn’t realize and hadn’t really considered as much of a job opportunity.  He said that he NEVER planned on ending up where he did, but the UN needs a lot of people in the Middle East, working on the front lines where the problems are.  Working for the UN in New York is one thing, but working in the regional offices facing the crises head on is something else, and not a lot of Americans are out there doing it.  He voiced a lot of his frustrations over lack of funding, lack of military forces, etc that tend to paralyze the UN.  Overall, though, what he said was pretty interesting, and as long as I’m keeping my options open, I should give this one a good hard looking into.

Let me just say, very quickly, that I really love the Amman Jordan branch.  The people are great, and there is a wonderful sense of community among all the Latter-day Saints there, even though they come from dozens of different nationalities and speak half a dozen languages.  Nothing–and I mean absolutely NOTHING–unites human beings from different backgrounds better and more thoroughly than the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I can testify that the spirit of God is guiding the Amman branch as much as it is the rest of the church.  Whenever I stepped into the little church building / missionary apartment up there, I felt like I was truly among brothers and sisters.  The gospel is true, Christ is our Savior and Redeemer, and this is God’s restored church.

To pass the time (the baptism finished around two o’clock) I went to the library and watched some old church videos.  They were a little cheesy, I could see the parts where artistic license had given way to unflinching historical accuracy, but they brought back good memories from my childhood and really did bring in the spirit.  It was good to think and ponder about church history, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and all these other things that are so easy to take for granted and/or forget about when you’re faced with the more immediate problems of life.  And really, watching those movies was exactly what I needed, because it calmed me down quite a bit.  From there, read Kitab Mormon for a while (I am SO behind…but I WILL get caught up before school!), then headed out.

Gini and I walked to Duwar Dughliyya, and even though it was a little frustrating to find our ride, we finally did and went over to Lafi to say goodbye.  I don’t know why I haven’t written more about Lafi and his beautiful family on this blog.  They are honestly some of my best friends here in Jordan, and even though I usually feel a little bit on the edge when I’m hanging out around Arabs, whenever I’m with them I feel right at home.  Lafi is a very good person, and I’m going to miss him and his family.  We weren’t able to stay very long, unfortunately, because something came up and they had to go to the hospital to visit his wife’s parents, but we did have time to sit around and talk for a while.  Lafi’s mother, bless her heart, cried when we left.  Next time I’m here, I will DEFINITELY stop by to visit–possibly even stay at their house for some time.  Lafi wants to take me to Syria to see Damascus, and that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.  Inshallah.  Inshallah.

Since we left a little early, I had more time than I thought I’d had.  Spent it up on the roof again, catching the internet and talking with friends.  I know, I know–I was on the roof just the night before, dwelling on the fact that that was the last time I’d be up there.  Well, I wasn’t so melancholy that I didn’t turn myself into a liar.  And really, it was great.  Got a chance to catch up with Aneeka, an old Quark friend, and we chatted about our writing, about publishing nonfiction, etc.  I don’t know if I’ll ever turn this blog into a book, but it wouldn’t hurt to try, even though I don’t have much platform (I’ve only got like twenty or thirty hits a day on this blog–sometimes up to eighty, but never more than a hundred), I’m not really famous, and who’s going to publish this thing?  But you never know.  So long as you keep one foot in the real world, it doesn’t hurt to daydream.

Speaking of daydreaming, that’s how I finished the evening.  My mind was racing with all the experiences of this past summer and the excitement of going home and starting the next phase of my life, and even after I’d finished I spent a good time just pacing around up there, under the stars, pacing around and talking to myself.  It sounds really dorky, but I had a lot of things going through my mind, and it felt really good just to get it all out that way.

So that was my last full day in Amman.  The next morning, Ryan and I said a warm goodbye to our host family and headed over to the Ambassador hotel, where we got in a bus and headed to the airport.  We were all in high spirits, boiling over with excitement to be going home, and a bunch of us spontaneously broke into patriotic American songs.  Throughout the stressful events of the next 24 hours, we found ourselves breaking into “God Bless America” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and Niel Diamond’s clasic “America.”

Travelling is stressful, but if you have low expectations you won’t be dissapointed.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Egypt Air, for some reason, booked our flight from Amman to Cairo AFTER the flight from Cairo to JFK left on the 16th, so we ended up spending the night in a hotel.  It took us hours and hours of passing through various checkpoints, waiting in various lines, and sitting on various floors before we got to a hotel on the waterfront at Giza.  Some people got really stressed out, but I didn’t.  In fact, I was pleased and delighted when our hotel served us lunch AND dinner AND breakfast, all compliments of Egyptair.  The whole day, I just floated along with everyone else and enjoyed what I could, didn’t mind what I couldn’t.  Best way to travel.

A few people left out on the town, but unfortunately I didn’t get my stuff into my room until they’d all left.  That kind of sucked, because I wanted to get out and do something.  I felt a little cooped up in the hotel, but the view from the roof was cool–you could see the pyramids in the distance, with the sun setting in the smog just above the horizon next to them and DOZENS of beautiful kites flying from the roofs of the slums.  Beaufiful.

Later, Issac wanted to head out so I went with him.  We just walked around the local neighborhood a bit, which is to say that we went slumming.  Ah, slumming–the act of walking through a slum and observing what there is to observe.  Dirtiest streets I’ve seen in my life, and everyone wearing sandals.  Donkeys mixing with cars.  Children who stare at you as if you’re a curiousity (because there, you are) and run up to beg money from you.  Dozens of small stores selling the weirdest little things.

Cairo is immensely different from Amman–in fact, I don’t think it’s much of an exageration to say that they are like two different worlds.  Walking around in Cairo the night before we returned to America, I can say that I am thrilled beyond measure that we spend the last three months in Jordan and not in Egypt.  The air is dirty, the streets are filthy, the people, for the most part, are trying to take something from you, the society just works in ways that are much weirder and make little to no sense (even to Jordanians)…it’s just a much more stressful place to me, and I’m glad that we lived in Jordan.  Jordan is beautiful.  Amman is clean.  The people are great.

I should say, though, on the flipside that Egyptians tend to be a lot more mellow and have a lighter, more humorous outlook than Jordanians.  Just in the faces of the few people that we stopped to talk with, I could see it.  Egyptians like being funny, and all across the Middle East they are famous for their sense of humor.  When we found someone who wasn’t trying to beg us or rip us off, it was a delight to talk with them–even though I could barely understand what they were saying.  Egyptian colloquial is SO different from Jordanian, and honestly, I have no desire to go back to speaking Musri.  I think that Shami is a lot more beautiful.

So after a night in the hotel, we got up in the morning and headed off to the circus that is the airport.  Cairo international is reknowned for its hellishness (Zacharias Sheikh wrote about it in the editorial of the last Al-Haqiqa newspaper that we bought), but again, if you have low expectations, enjoy what you can, and never mind the rest, everything was good.   And I was delighted to find that the airport had free wireless.  Free wireless!  Last time I flew across the states, only Hartford and some airport down south had free wireless!  Americans, take a hint!

I’ve only got 9% battery left, so this is going to be quick, but I had an interesting conversation with my friend Angela as I checked my email and downloaded my podcasts.  She asked me what I missed the most from America, and honestly I have to say that the thing I miss the most is being comfortable.  I mean, I’ve been comfortable every now and again out here in the Middle East, but it isn’t the normal state of affairs.  Most of the time, even the simplest things have been a struggle, like walking into a cafe / falafel place and ordering something to eat.  I’ve really missed knowing what’s going on and feeling comfortable doing the little stuff like that.

But at the same time, being uncomfortable has been one of the best things for me.  I’ve written about this at length before, but coming out here took me out of a comfort zone that was holding me down, and helped motivate me to start making changes that were long overdue.  When I get home, I’m going to start a new phase in my life, work harder to serve others, to be closer to the Lord, to get out and meet people, and to genuinely listen to them.  It’s going to be great, and I can already tell that this next school year is going to be awesome.  I’m really excited.

I’m going to miss the Middle East, but I’ll be back, inshallah.  This place is too cool and I have too many friends here to leave and never return.  Whether it’s as a tourist, as a student again, or in some professional capacity, I will be back here.

In the meantime, I want to come back home and share what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced, and what I’ve learned with my friends and family.  There is so much ignorance back home about this place, so much fear where there shouldn’t be fear, and if what I share can help dispel at least a small portion of that, I will be very satisfied.

But honestly, more than anything else, the thing that’s on my mind now is “I’m coming home!  Yay!  God Bless America, I’m coming HOME!!!”

I’ve noticed an interesting shift, however.  A week ago, I was missing the United States something strong, and thinking about all of the things that I was going to do when I got back.  Drink root beer, eat breakfast cereal, watch Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, not have to worry about people misunderstanding me when I speak, relaxing with my family, etc etc.  I think all of us were/are feeling that.  Now, however, that going home is a reality that’s not just on the horizon, I’m starting to feel sad about leaving Jordan.

It’s a little bit like coming home from a mission, except not nearly as strong.  When you’re a missionary on your last transfer, you can’t help but think about all the things at home that you miss, all the things you’re going to do when you get back, etc.  Everyone reacts to it differently, but just about everyone experiences that.

When the last week comes, you’re emotions are playing so many tricks on you that you’re just about ready to go insane.  As you finish up with your last few discussions and start saying your final goodbyes, you start to miss your mission something crazy, even though you haven’t gone yet.  You say all your goodbyes that final day at church, drive around to say goodbye to all your friends and investigators, and it can be really hard.  You’re swept away in this really powerful mix of conflicting thoughts and emotions and all you can do is hold on.

Then you get home, the ground drops out from beneath you, and you do your best to make a new life for yourself.  A lot of returned missionaries really struggle with that, and I don’t think anyone is fully adjusted until after the first six months.

I’m feeling a little bit like that right now, though not nearly as strong as it was when I came home from my mission.  I’m starting to miss Jordan even though I haven’t left yet, I’ve got a lot of conflicting thoughts and emotions, etc etc.  I’m not sure if coming home will be such a difficult adjustment–certainly not as hard as adjusting to regular life after my mission–but there probably will be some culture shock in coming back.  I don’t know how much, but I’ll definitely write about it.

A few months ago, when we were in church at Jerusalem and listening to the outgoing group of BYU Jerusalem Center students talk about how much they missed the states, I didn’t really understand how they could feel that way after being in the Middle East for such a short time.  I understand a little better now, after feeling that myself.  It has more to do with knowing that you’re going home soon than how much time you spend in a foreign place.  And, while I feel that way myself, I also feel at the same time like I’m going to miss this place.  Certainly two months from now, when we’re taking our midterms and I’m up to my knees in the grueling work of another semester, I’m going to wish I was back here.  Because of this, these past couple of days have been very different from the others.

And what’s going to happen when I get home?  What is going to be a shock to me, and what is going to come natural?  What will I notice about America, now that I’ve lived in a foreign country for some time?  What about America is going to remind me of Jordan?  I don’t know, but I’ll keep writing in this blog for the next few weeks to let you know.

The morning started out easy enough, but after I wrote a couple of blog posts I started looking around for my flash drive and realized that it was gone.  I looked around for it for a while but it wasn’t in my bedroom.  I ran through all the places I’d been with it the day before and figured I’d probably left it in the university.  That was ok, though, because I had a couple of things to do up there before leaving for America–and besides, there’s a lot more to do at the university than there is at my homestay house.

Sure enough, I found my flash drive in the language center.  Thank goodness!  Used the internet for a while, went downstairs to look at the tests (they were graded, but we wouldn’t get them back until Dil looked at them back in the states, so this was our way of seeing what we’d got).  I did pretty well on the final, and it was good to know that.  After that, used the internet again, walked around the university, and realized that this was the last time I’d be up here in a while.  Kind of weird to realize that.

Because I didn’t have any minutes left, I was waiting for a call from Gini and Nikki.  They were volunteering somewhere in the morning, and we had planned to go to wast al-balad after they were finished.  I read Seven Years in Tibet to pass the time.  They called me around one thirty and I met them at ad-dustour to head down.

Gini has a completely different take on going home than me.  I’m kind of sad to be going, but she’s angry and upset because we really have no purpose in still being here.  That’s understandable.  Despite this, I think we all had a good time.  We walked around, I bought some gifts for my family, we had juice at Palestine Mountain like we always used to, etc etc.  I was glad just to walk around downtown one last time.  Wast al-balad is probably my favorite place in Amman, and I’m going to miss it.  Missing it already, in some ways.

After that, we headed up to a contemporary art museum in Jebel Webdei.  It was an interesting experience.  The art was pretty cool, especially some of the Palestinian stuff.  You could tell that wars and conflicts had influenced several of the artists.  My mom would really have loved the museum (she’s an elementary school art teacher).

Afterwards, we hung out in the gardens outside, relaxing and doing nothing in particular.  It was a little hot but nice in the shade.  Nikki met up with some friends and left with them for lunch.  Since her flight leaves tonight, we said our goodbyes.  I’ll probably see her in Provo, but she’s already graduated and leaves for South America on the 30th, so really it’s just another goodbye after that.  Crazy.

Me and Gini relaxed for a while, then headed back to our homes (which are relatively close to each other).  I went upstairs to the roof in the evening to use the internet and chat with friends.  It was a beautiful evening, with the call to prayer, the twilight, the fireworks, and the whole city spread out beneath me.  My battery died, I packed up, and then realized that this was probably the last time I’d be up on this roof.  Crazy!  I just kind of stood around up there, drinking in the place as much as I could until finally I turned and went back downstairs.

So that’s what my day has been like.  One “last” after another, one goodbye after another.  I feel like I’m in limbo until we step onto the plane, and until then, I’m simultaneously missing Jordan and looking forward to getting back to the states.  It’s a weird, weird feeling.