Kidnapped By Syrian Refugees!

     I had some internet problems last week, so I could not blog, but we'll try again today. Also, as for the security update: currently it looks like our trip to Israel and Palestine will proceed as planned. We will hopefully leave next Friday morning.
    And now, here's a quick overview of a couple of recent adventures:

My issues class decided to have an unofficial cultural immersion day in class:) Here we are in full native dress, learning to dance the Dibka

• Last Monday: LDS Charities, BYU Jordan, and a group of Syrian refugees who who all have psychological training have teamed up for a number of different projects. For instance, we have all participated in a language exchange with some of the Syrian teenagers who are stuck in Amman. This Monday, however, our professor's wife let several of us come to a children's event. Basically, we played with the children, chatting with them and watching them draw  pictures. We even all got our faces painted with symbols of Syrian nationalism, which was interesting. The children were charming, although it was strange to think about what they had been through. For instance, one lovely little girl with soft dark curls drew her home in Syria, but in addition to the house, the trees, the little stick-figure child, and the smiling sun she drew, she added a large green helicopter, shooting fireballs down onto the little house.There were other sad things: for the last half hour, they reconvened for an activity that I can only describe as a cross between a Primary meeting and a political rally. The children all sang songs and chanted about freedom, Syria, the will of Allah, and, most importantly, the fall of "the regime." One little girl started crying half-way through her song. She finished singing about the beauty of Syria with tears streaming down her cheeks, and one of the adults whispered to us that her mother had been killed by the regime before they were able to flee Syria.

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  Here we all are with some of our Syrian friends who we have done lots of projects with

   
• That Thursday, we all went to a Syrian refugee camp in the north of Jordan. It was a very small, very nice one (we had originally planned to go to Zaateri--the big, new one, but they were having too many riots). We put on a puppet show in Jordanian Arabic---I played the mother puppet in this one. And here's the second one that the other group put on (You can actually see me the entire time on this one---I sat with the children doing crowd control, and my blue turban--all the girls had to be fully modest to go, which means hair was covered---is at the bottom of the screen:) Anyway, it was one of the funnest things we have done! While we were waiting for the second puppet show to start, I saw a little girl come in, and I started playing with her with my puppet. Soon, I had approximately 12 little Syrian girls sitting around me, plus one little boy on my lap, and we were all chatting away about the puppet show and what they wanted to be when they grew up. For crowd control, I sat with 2 children on my lap, and when the show was finished a group of five of them grabbed my hands and tried to pull me away to go visit their houses. I protested and said the bus was going to leave soon (which was true), so they escorted me to the bus. Several students had to stand at the doors of the bus to prevent the children from boarding, and they all waved and ran after the bus when it started to pull away.

This is our Irbid branch, where we have attended church for months. Yesterday was our last day, so we took a group photo. The senior missionaries who are called to the branch are sitting in front. Also, I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday, which was terrifying. It went really well though, and I will never be nervous for a talk back in the States again, having had to do one in Arabic:)