05.04.2007 — She traveled more than 24 hours to get here, and more than 24 hours to get home again. We hadn't seen each other since she put me on the plane for Washington DC more than 9 months ago. In between there have been tears on both sides, and on my side, for sure, interludes of longing so severe it's like chest pain. One of the hardest parts of Peace Corps service is homesickness. We all get it, no matter how happy we are in our country of service, how great our jobs are, how rewarding our personal lives, and deep our friendships with other Volunteers. And in those situations which don't go so well, and they do exist, it's even worse. It's a big stressor. For me, it ebbs and flows in cycles. It's the big bad thing in the closet and I have had to learn to "manage" it and to give up thinking it will just go away.
 
So last week when I traveled to Amman to collect my daughter, Carolyn, from the airport, I felt as though I didn't even need the car to make the journey. The welcoming committee consisted of my mudeera's husband Khaled, his brother Muhammed, and Muhammed's four year old son, Saif. We left town careening like a get-away car from the Beverly Hillbillies, chewing on shawarma sandweeshes and splashing soda around on the hair-pin turns. Saif fell asleep standing up in the front seat of the car and was passed back to me for a proper nap on my lap, a meltingly sweet sensation. (Jordan is like the 1950s of my youth, before seat belts. Children sit anywhere; pick-up trucks have people hanging out the back, it's all aadi, ordinary, normal.)
 
She was here for a mere week, and beyond arranging for her to do a workshop with me for the Peace Corps, I'd been utterly unable to make any personal plans: my Jordanian family kept insisting that we just hang loose and let things happen in the moment. They also insisted that whatever was going to happen, we would do it all together. I was totally caught between being charmed and a bit exasperated, but in the event deciding nothing was a good decision.
 
One of my major programs here has been working with a talented and highly motivated bunch of girls at the high school in my town. The high school boasts about 1000 students, all girls. Coed is unknown in Jordan until one hits university. I'd been here a number of months before I happened to get invited to the high school by a teacher. I was astonished to find a really lovely school, complete with science labs, computer labs, a sports field, gardens planted and maintained by the students, art studios, and a home-ec kitchen in which nutrition and cooking are taught. After an event that we put on in December for the top English students in the school, I was approached to ask if we could have some workshops for girls who were interested in applying for universities in the US. One of the mandates of PC/Jordan is to "empower youth", and despite a number of misgivings about the reality basis of this project I jumped in.
 
I challenged the girls from the outset: whose family is really going to allow them to study abroad? Where will the money from? Whose family will let them go to a non-Muslim country, and study in an atmosphere in which friendships with boys are taken for granted? I told them that anyone who couldn't have some hope of their parents saying yes to this should not be in the workshop. It settled down to 32 or so participants after an initial 40 showed up. Impressive. Most of my research on this took place on-line, and to my huge relief, I found that most colleges in the US now use a "common application", which vastly simplified the job of how to download applications to a bunch of different places.
 
Then the bell struck: my daughter, Carolyn, both graduated from and now works for Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, the oldest women's college in the US! And she was coming to visit me. Wow. We could do a workshop together on Mt. Holyoke. If Jordanian parents might agree to any US study for their undergraduate daughters, what could be more encouraging than a women's college? So Carolyn came armed with materials from the admissions office. As it happens Mt. Holyoke is well known for having a significant number of international students, including from several Arab countries.
 
I'm going to address the issue of different cultural expectations in another post: testing, getting student visas for the US, and the very difficult question of how to write an essay in English which turns out to be very very tricky.
 
After this workshop was over, Carolyn and I proceeded to have a fantastic and wonderful week in the almost complete absence of any sightseeing. She loved Jordan and my Jordanian family took her to their warm hearts even more than I could have imagined.
 
She's planning to come back next year and stay for a longer time. On her last morning with my family, Khaled's mother gave her a dress, an abeya. She wept, Carolyn wept, my mudeera wept, then of course I started. Khaled, the only man in the room, told us sternly to cut it out. And wiped the corner of his eye.