Last time I posted, I had just arrived at SIT after a snowy (but shockingly successful) commute. I was on the early side to show up, but by 1 or 2 we were all there. The last people presented their research and then we started doing our re-entry workshop around 4:30 or so--how do we re-enter back into America taking what we learned with us? What happened next has to be talked about.
We were supposed to go to dinner as a group. However, it had been snowing all day, and the roads had gotten significantly worse. The vans showed up to take us to dinner, but we then found out that all the restaurants were closed as were the roads. Instead of finishing the conversation at dinner, we were going to go home. But, as logic holds, in order to go home, one has to drive. In order to drive, the roads have to be open and cars have to be on it. We had ourselves a good old mushkilah. After some rushed goodbyes, 4 of us that live in my area got into a car with a professor who lived past us. Another group got into one of the vans to go home.
We started driving on the very sketchy roads, and within minutes, we had reached our first hill. The car was skidding out as were all the others, and we had to push it. For the first time in my life, I was pushing a car up the snowy hill. My friend from Chicago took the wheel, and the ride that normally takes 10-20 minutes depending on traffic took three hours. Here's what the roads looked like:
A few funny things as we were driving, the most significant being the feminist revolution we held. It was small, but it consisted of American girls helping Arab men push cars. That's right guys--we can do it too.
I got home, cold as hell, curled up in a ball, and went to bed. The next morning I woke up, hoping that I'd be able to go back to SIT to say goodbye to friends. A look out the window and I gave up on that plan. In the middle of the day, my brothers told me they were going to the roof to play with the snow. Like an idiot, I didn't put on my waterproof jacket. Here's what happened next:
From the roof, everything was beautiful--albeit cold.
My flight to Turkey was scheduled for 12ish the next day, so I was supposed to be at SIT at 7 or 8 AM. Because it's Jordan, though, obviously the plan changed. I learned that a car was going to come pick me up at 9 PM. Suddenly, my packing became much more frantic. As I was finishing up, of course, the power outage began. It was dark, cold, lightless, and I had to say goodbye to my family.
I'll talk more about this process in my Jordan wrap up post, but to make a longer story short, it was really hard to say goodbye to my host family. To make the next long story short, I spent 18 hours at the airport before going to Turkey. They were afraid the road would freeze over and I wouldn't get out in the morning.
Luckily, I made it to Turkey. I'll talk more about that in a post soon.
Becca
No comments:
Post a Comment