tl;dr: home away from home, my cup overfloweth, the expat blob Hello friends and family! Yesterday marked the end of my second full week here in Amman. Mostly over jet leg, mostly settled in. Best way I can describe this first chapter is that it has felt like one giant group hug. The warmth is coming from several sources — first, it has been such a joy to reconnect with old friends, people who have made Amman feel like a home away from home these last two years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my adult life, it’s that for certain friendships, time spent apart affects us little, if at all. Alhamdulillah. Then, in addition to old friends, my new classmates are truly some of the coolest people I’ve ever met… Half of the cohort are straight out of undergrad, like me, and the other half have an astounding variety of life experiences under their belts. We're repping hometowns on different continents, work experiences ranging from English teaching to war reporting, and all sorts of graduate degrees and professional aspirations. The imposter syndrome is real (does anyone in their early 20s not become paralyzed by it at least once a week? lmk) but on a deeper level, I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to learn from these driven and diverse individuals. The first time I studied abroad, I was very sensitive to the implications of hanging out so often with fellow expat students. There’s certainly something bleak about the notion of traveling halfway around the world and then only building social connections via superficial common denominators like language, or "cultural background." This phenomenon is usually labeled "the expat bubble,” and there's an extent to which that imagery makes sense to me: expats seem to congregate in insubstantial and easily poppable social worlds suspended in a matrix of tourism and "comfort." However I think the reality of expat culture is far more complex -- after all, is there not something just as problematic about visitors who strive for a “pure” locality, who seek to distance themselves from the expat bubble entirely and in doing so oversimplify or essentialize what it means to be “native” to a place? The more time I’ve spent here and the more I’ve really thought about it, the term bubble doesn’t actually capture Amman’s expat scene for what it is. Different groups of expatriates permeate the city’s social spaces in different ways. Bubbles are too round, too neat — it’s more of an expat blob. My neighborhood has its social tentacles deeply bound up in the blob, but in a way that I find pleasant and effervescent. I live in an area called Jabal Luwebdeih. You could walk around the main perimeter in under an hour, and streets are mixed residential/commercial. Webdeih is known as a crossroads of expats and “alt” lifestyle types. Lots of cafes, several bars, Christians and atheists, even a yoga studio. The last time I lived in Amman, it was in a neighborhood where it was fairly rare to see single women out and about, and the bars with live music were a solid 30-minute cab ride away. This trip I intentionally sought out a different kind of immersion. Webdeih may be full of hipsters — both foreign and local — but this makes for an abundance of opportunities to talk explicitly about art, music, culture, politics, etc. It is also a short walk from the city center, which is a lot more “sha3bi” (popular/of the people). I was aware from the get-go that the expatty aesthetics of Webdeih will affect my experience of Amman, but the walkability and progressive vibe of the area make it a convenient space to call home. Anyways, long story short, friends, life is good. My cup overflows. When hanging with friends or writing gratuitously long journal entries like this, studies are treating me well. Classes started last week, and, God bless, the teaching staff (truly phenomenal pedagogues) have been merciful to us in terms of homework (as of yet). In the meantime, my classmates and I have been getting to know each other via bilingual conversations over happy hours across the city. Expatty? Absolutely. Honestly, our linguistic faculties are hovering around the level of nerdy, awkward 14-year-olds, so it makes sense right now that we wouldn’t subject the outside world of native speakers to our stuttering speech all that often. Within a month or two, I hope to get to the level of precocious, semi-put-together 16-year-olds, that age when you start trying to explain mature concepts to your (wiser, smirking) elders. I’ve started uploading pictures at this link. If you haven’t checked out my background posts, you can do so here (they’ll probably make these later posts more interesting). And please, if you have questions/comments, do not hesitate to send them my way! I’m screaming into the internet void here, and I’m just crazy enough to continue doing so. That said, it’s nice when the void shouts back every once in a while. تحيات الحارة and much love, Jackie
1 Comment
Rachel
9/18/2018 06:19:13 am
So excited to keep reading about your trip... you do such a brilliant job articulating the beautiful complexities & challenges & unanswerable questions of life abroad. xx
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