Saturday in Amman

It's Saturday night and back safely enscounced at ACOR. I had to get up early this morning to finish one of the two presentations I had to give this morning over at the University of Jordan (and after yesterday's long flight it was a challenge). The first one was about Global Modules and, not surprisingly, I was able to adapt that one fairly quickly. The second presentation was my own take on intercultural awareness, which was an interesting topic (although I'm sure not an interesting presentation). Both presentations, along with several others, were part of a small conference that UJ put together for their Intercultural Communication class. I had spent several hours working on the second presentation - mainly going back through thousands of old pictures from foreign travel and seeing what they sparked. In the end it was a series of pictures along with corresponding observations on what it means when cultures meet/clash/meld - the philosophers will be happy to know that I started with a picture I took from inside a cave at Petra and ended with a drawing of Plato's allegory of the cave. They both went well and it was a lot of fun. The kids from UJ, like their own international colleagues, really do want to communicate with the US. I'd love to have the people who routinely bad mouth the Middle East just spend some time with these wonderful students.

After the meeting I went out to Sane Yagi's house for lunch. Yagi is a UJ professor who is a big supporter of the GMs. He had a really nice house in a new suburb of Amman - and, like seemingly every building in Amman, it is made of white stone. He assures me it is very nice because he went in with all of his brothers on the construction of it (and because, before coming to UJ, he worked overseas for years). The house has five levels, with Yagi and his family living on the first floor, and four other brothers having their own level. We had a huge lunch - I accused Yagi and his wife of being closet Indians in their mad desire to stuff me - and I spent a long time talking to Yagi, his wife, and his two sons, both of whom are great young men. The younger son had just finished a midterm exam and UJ, while the other son is in e-commerce and was getting ready to take off in a couple hours for a conference in Las Vegas - typically, he handed his mother a long list of things he needed for the trip at the last moment (he had studied in Australia and New Zealand and had a wonderful mixed Arabic-Australian-Kiwi accent). His wife taught chemistry at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman for years. In addition I met Yagi's father, who also lives with them. We talked about politics and students and the peculiarites of the Arabic and English languages. All in all, a lovely day.

So, I'm now back at ACOR listening to Neil Young sing about a "Bad Fog of Loneliness." ACOR is a nice place to stay, but the only two TVs are downstairs, so the rooms are a bit quiet at night. Still, they have quite a collection of burnt CDs so maybe I'll go pick one out for a viewing on the laptop. But first, time to raid the kitchen for leftovers.