BLAH (G)

Last night I made over two hundred flashcards. Tonight looks to repeat the experience. It's good that I feel that I'm making in progress in Arabic, especially since I speak it much better than I ever have all in the past 2 weeks. But I'm very very tired this morning. We leave to live with the Bedouins in a day. I'm really excited to get out of this city as it's pretty boring. Also we're going to be hanging out with sheep and in Wadi Rum one of the more beautiful places in the region I'm told. I'll also have plenty of time to catch up on Arabic vocabulary, and won't be distracted by the need to keep in contact with America (as happens when everyone is hanging out at school after hours to use the internet, it's hopping)
One of the reasons that Amman is so boring is that there is not a youth or alternative culture. Politics is divided between three fronts, the Islamic movement, the monarchy, and the democratic secularists. Most people here support one or more of them, not many people support none. In the states I've lost interest in all national politics as I've gotten further into home-grown politics and lost faith in any and all national figures. Not accidently I've gotten further into my Quaker faith and began thinking more and more how the Bible subverts all worldly authority. The last two sentences just boiled down about 6 years so I'll perhaps elaborate more later. The point I want to make here is that, though I have somewhat unorthodox political views, I never expected anyone else to live up to them. To me it's perfectly conceivable that a community might establish a kingdom. I don't know, I didn't grow up that way.
So here in an honest to god monarchy, I'm at a bit of a loss. It doesn't help that the class I'm in is comprised almost entirely of political science and international relations majors. As much as Jordan pretends that it's not, it is a police state. There are soldiers outside every single important building, schools, mosques, churches, embassies, police stations (we went today to get an extended visa, it was a fortress). These soldiers just don't choose to enforce traffic law. The king's image is greatly based on his history of a soldier in Germany serving with the American army. However the culture resembles something that is being praised in the states by some of the radicals I hang out with. People generally stay within walking distance of their extended family, there is an extreme community mind. At the beginning, we were told that sexual violators were dealt with by mob violence, no discussion needed, just a woman's scream. Some of the folks that are staying with close knit families don't go anywhere between 5 and 8 and generally don't stay out past 9:30. There is little or no generation gap when it comes to music, a little more when it comes to dress and mannerism, but not a lot, there are a lot of young people who wear hijab, and I've even seen some in dishdashas and kuffiyehs.
However, the first two lectures we had illuminated the delicate position the democracy advocates are in. There isn't the strong secularism here that there is in Tunisia, so a democratic system could elect a conservative Muslim power, who, although not necessarily anti-democratic, would be intensely socially conservative. On the other hand, the king, who was not trained for the job and got it at the 11th hour, is stuck with a failing vision of a unified Arab government (whose support, Political Islam is maybe taking) and still hasn't delivered so much on the Israel-Palestine issue, which regardless of all others is *the* primary issue to the Arabs, and is losing popularity by allying with the West.
Sum total: There are no radicals who are not Islamic or democratic intellectual. And it's odd because the people are definitely alienated politically. I mean come on, how has the lot of the Arab people improved in the last 50 years? I realize how foreign my idea must seem to the people here (even to people in the states) and it has put me off developing it for now.
I'm going to stop here because I'm rapidly running out of battery, sometime soon though, with pictures.