Six Abroad

Gloomy

It is cold and gloomy in Amman.

In the desert, when it rains, it pours. 95% of the time, we enjoy beautiful blue skies and sun in Jordan. But for the past few days it has been rainy, cold and windy. So windy that it turns my umbrella inside out. So windy that when I open the gate to my carport, before I can back my car out, the wind has blown the gate shut again. And when it rains in the desert, the dusty roads turn to mud.

But the gloomiest thing about Jordan right now, is that my husband is not here.

The weather forecast predicts that it will rain for two more days before it will slowly warm back up to the sunny Jordan that I love. The forecast for my husband’s return predicts that we won’t see him for another two weeks and two days.

Gloom!

Cats and Karma

Meet Jerry:

Jerry belongs to Jason’s boss, also named Jerry. Jerry the boss had to make an unexpected trip to the U.S. for a few weeks so we are cat-sitting Jerry the cat. Jerry isn’t the cat’s real name. Unfortunately, no one can remember the cat’s real name, so we started calling him “Jerry’s Cat” which quickly morphed into just “Jerry.”

Jason won’t let us have a cat of our own because he’s prejudiced. He claims he has nothing against cats, but he hates cat people. He says that the rest of us become obnoxious cat people when we’re around cats. That makes him prejudice against cat people.

But here’s the great part of this whole scenario: karma has a way of catching up to people with prejudices; and it recently caught up with Jason. Later this week, Jason has to go to Germany for training. His boss Jerry asked him to bring back a bunch of cat treats for cat Jerry, that are only available in Europe. So now Jason has no choice but to search out cat treats in Europe because … Jerry is his boss!

Karma can be hilarious!

Going to College

How is it that the girl who wears her shoes on the wrong feet could possibly be going to college?

OK, it’s true that this picture was taken a while ago. She’s a little taller now. And she mostly wears her shoes on the correct feet. But still, how can this baby be going to college?

And we are proud to announce that the school that gets our little girl for the next four years is:

I just hope they offer Proper Shoe Wearing 101.

You are never too old to come to Jordan

In December my mother-in-law came to live with us for about 2 months. For some people this may invoke the desire to move to Syria, civil war and all, but not me. Luckily, I have a great mother-in-law.

She didn’t want to do much sightseeing while she was in Jordan, but we did manage to take her to see some of the main highlights. I made a little video about going to some of the sites.

My favorite part was getting her to ride a camel in Petra. I kept asking her if she wanted to ride a camel or donkey because you actually have to walk pretty far if you want to see most of the sites. She replied that she could live a happy life without having ridden a camel. That may be true, but if you get a chance to ride a camel–in Petra–you should take it.

Petra is an out-and-back hike. You hike downhill one way. Then you have to turn around and hike back the way you came. My mother-in-law and I had walked about 2 kilometers down into Petra. Then came time to hike back out. Honestly, I was a little worried about her walking another 2 kilometers. She is 81 afterall. So I told her she had no choice. She had to ride a camel or an ambulance. She chose the camel and had a great time. I hope you can tell how much fun she had in the video.

Week Without Walls Ethiopia: by Cecily

Week without Walls is a new program at my school. Basically the whole high school shuts down for a week and everyone leaves to go on trips. There were lots of options for trips. I could have gone to Paris, Switzerland, Nepal, Amsterdam, Ethiopia or stayed in Jordan. I chose Ethiopia. My trip was the only service trip and it was amazing! We flew to Addis Ababa and then drove to a little town about 2 hours away called Debre Zeit. We stayed at Kera Hora Elementary school in Debre Zeit for 6 days. Over the course of those 6 days we started building the foundation for a bathroom complex and taught English and photography lessons. For those 6 days we camped in tents and ate nothing but rice, pasta and porridge. It was a challenging week but it was all worth it. My favorite part of the week was the first day we saw the kids because right when 8 o’clock hit we had around 500 kids running right at us. To be honest, it was a little overwhelming at first but it was the best 2 hours of my life. We took pictures, danced, sang, played hand games and learned simple phrases in Amharic. This trip was definitely the highlight of my senior year.

Enjoy my film that I made about the trip for my school.

Missed Calling

My husband missed his calling in life. He should have been a filmmaker of travel films. He’s really good at putting together videos of our family’s adventures. He enjoys it. And we enjoy his finished products.

And though it’s been published before on this blog, I am republishing this. This classic little 1 minute 25 second gem, the bulk of which was filmed in Singapore, is my personal favorite. Watch it. You’ll be glad you did.

https://sixabroad.com/2013/03/14/what-our-vacations-are-really-like/

Daddy’s Funeral

Yesterday, my nine year-old came home from school and we had this short exchange:

Elizabeth: Mom, I know why you and Dad decided to join the Foreign Service.

Me: Oh really?! Why?

Elizabeth: So that Dad could have an interesting funeral!

As weird as that sounds, there is actually a lot of truth to it. Before joining the FS, Jason had a really good job in the private sector. We had a house in a great community and our kids went to good schools and had good friends. We could have continued that life for the rest of time. But honestly, we were both a little bored. Especially Jason.

When Jason was graduating from college in the mid-90’s, he had a vision for what he hoped his career in the software industry would be. With hard work, perseverance and some luck, he was able to accomplish all of his career goals. The problem was, he accomplished them all by 35. So then what was he to do? Start over and redo all of those same goals?

In 2006, my father died. Jason sat in my dad’s funeral listening to the stories of the life of his father-in-law and started wondering what kinds of things would be said at his own funeral. He decided that, as it was, his funeral would be pretty boring.

That’s when he started checking out the Foreign Service and with my blessing, he applied. The process took about a year and a half, but our lives changed exponentially on the day in June 2010 that he received the job offer. And we have been smiling ever since.

And now, his funeral will be filled with stories of:

Hanging out in temples in Taiwan.

Making out in the ruins of Cambodia.