Manville

Marhaba (hello in Arabic). Tonight we went down to the "Ballad," the downtown area of Aqaba with the crew. After a long day, we went to the Ballad to eat and peruse the area. Before I tell you of the adventure that was had, I want to let you know that we had our first lesson of Arabic today and did a personality test of sorts. Our Arabic teacher is Armenian and was born in Bagdad. It was exciting to begin to learn the language as it is a big step towards engaging the culture. I was also encouraged that I had remembered a lot of what I had already heard from conversations with people in the past few days. After this, we did a personality test to begin the conversation of goals for the summer. First off, I do not really like planning goals or having things too planned out, yet I am seeing the value of looking ahead. It was an encouraging and challenging time to identify areas of growth of the summer.

The personality tests was called DISK, which is an acronym for something. The test itself was brutal as I felt like I was all of the possible answers for all the questions. I ended up as an "I," which is accurate as it stands for inspirational! Just kidding. I mean tests like this are frustrating because it is fairly easy to look behind the question to what characteristic it is pointing to. Therefore, it is easy to fudge the results. However, I did struggle through and tried to answer as honestly as possible. But I did turn out an "I" and the team agreed that I was clearly an "I." I am not sure of all the specifics, but basically an "I" is a optimist encourager that takes charge of the group through his example and in turn, inspires. I will let you know more of what this means as we will discuss it more in depth tomorrow. 

So at the Ballad tonight we found Manville. As the girls went shopping, the guys walked around the Ballad. We took a step down an alley and found a group of probably 300 guys hanging out. Seriously, their was not a girl in sight and this disturbed me at first. Picture this, a football field area where the first 20 yards was uncovered and had 5 rows of chairs. Guys formed circles and sipped on hot tea and hukka while some were watching King Kong an a little T.V. and the others were watching WWF Women's wrestling. Next to this was a covered area with a similar seating assortment. However, three T.V's with a low-budget Egyptian soap played and pumped sound into the area with a series of cheap speakers. Again, tea and hukka were shared by all. Then, next to this was the big covered area where 200 guys sat, watching either WWF, the Egyptian soap, or Terminator. As we took a seat, we ordered tea and enjoyed the brotherhood that evolves  when you put 300 guys in the same area with bad film, tea, and hukka . My life will no longer be the same.