ChaseComer.com

Chase — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:27:06 +0000

I might have seemed harsh on the coffee here. It is just that they make a huge pot of it and let it sit all day. And they add lots of suger and milk.
I like my coffee hot and black. But you go buy the coffee, then have them make it right there to your liking and it is good. The exported coffee is great.

Another thing about Yemen: don’t go to Aden in the summer or Sana in the winter. Sana has an old city that is worth going to see. An interesting thing to note: 60 years ago they still closed the gates of the city everyday at 8:00. They said it used to stink really badly but they have cleaned it up.

Ya Man

Chase — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:44:15 +0000

In Yemen (or as I like to say it YA Man) since being here, I have found many things very interesting. I have found that Quat is not the cause of much of the suffering but it is the escape of that suffering. It is regarded as a drug and at some point in time you will find yourself in the debate about caffeine being a drug and some people being unable to live without having a cup of coffee everyday. So do we qualify something as a drug if it causes even the slightest addiction? We could go so far as to say sugar can be addicting, and it does have long lasting affects on your body–tooth decay for one and some forms of diabites. Maybe we should classify them as hard drugs or soft drugs so we can feel better about our own drug. One could say, “At least I don’t eat caramel. I just eat mashmallows because, you know caramel. Now that is a hard drug; but marshmallows–well they’re a soft one. Come on! Wouldn’t you much rather get hit by a marshmallow than a caramel candy?” That’s what we tend to do. Everyone draws a line and if their line is past yours, they try to get you to come to their line. And if the line is past yours you tend to be judgemental of that farther line. So where is your line? Does it matter? You are going to be wrong anyway, because your line is not where mine is.

One of the main differences between Yemen and Jordan is that life is easier in Jordan but simpler in Yemen. If you want something to eat for breakfast or dinner it may be the same thing: the main dish, refried beans. I mean good refried beans. If they would only use pig fat they would taste even better. I wonder how that marketing ploy would work. There are other simple things like bread and dates beat together with your hand and a little bit of honey. This is also done with bannanas. They call it fata. In Jordan they do the same thing but with bread and hummus. Yemen also has a hot sause. One perk here is spice to the food unlike Jordan. Yemeni food is much like Mexican food. They love their peppers. The bread is not tortillas but a giant tortilla cooked on the side of an oven. You just tear a piece off and dip it in beans, eggs or hot sause. Lunch is the big meal here is where you eat meat and or chicken, salad, noodles, potatoes and rice. So once again, having only beans for just about 2 meals a day I have lost some weight. Not as much as during my Kenya time, so far no worms or parasites.

You would think coffee would be good here. It is one of their main exports. Nope it tastes horrible.

As one coming from Texas to Yemen, in general life is easier, more westernized with more conveniences. Yemen is simpler with fewer choices.

My Next Adventure

Chase — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:51:57 +0000

Well, now that I have finished language school, I now can converse with a lot of folks. I also am able now to start in my comparison of different cultures within the Arab world. Even within the Islamic culture I have found many differences, so I think my next grand adventure is to go and explore these differences. Some of them are very interesting especially in interpretation of the “Honorable Quran”. Certain verses in the Quran have many opinions about interpretation. I would love to put some of them to paper to help others living outside of the middle east understand the wide range of beliefs here. Jordan is a great country to do that; many different nationalities are here from all over the Middle East. It is nice to be able to just walk down the street and start talking to an Iraqi or Syrian and so on.

I am a farmer

Chase — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:50:15 +0000

I just had the most morbid request ever. A guy asked me, “Hey, Chase, did you hear our cat had its kittens?”
“No,” I said, “Congratulations.”
“Uh-uh-uh,” he hesitated, “We were wondering if you could actually kill the kittens for us.”
“…………………” me not knowing how to respond.
“I knew that you grew up on a farm right?”
“well yeah…”
” so I figured you had to have killed things before and were used to it.”
“You’re a sick man.”

one foot

Chase — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:49:04 +0000

That is right– one foot of snow fell here in Jordan in the city of Amman. Other places got even more than us. The city was shut down for about 2 days not because the roads were bad but lots of cars got stuck in the snow and there was a lot of video of cops pushing cars out. We all had a lot of fun in the snow. I also took the opportunity to visit some friends that live by me to catch up on them because I haven’t had a chance in a while.
Arabic school started up again and it was great not having to go, but I will still definitely need to keep working on it.

I was late a day on renewing my Visa at the police station. It took me 3 hours to go to another police station and cost me 2 dollars. Then I had to come back to get the visa. Oh well, just 3 hours gone by, but saw a new part of the city I hardly go to.

pay the bus

Chase — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:49:45 +0000

Arabic uses the same word for “push” and “pay”– “idfay”. This morning at the but stop, the bus stalled in front those of us waiting. The man that takes your money jumped out and said, “Hurry up and idfay.” Everyone laughed as we commenced to “pay” or “push” the bus. It is these small things in the language that help you understand the culture, their thought processes and world view. Because to them to “pay” is to “push”. Think about that one for awhile.

frost on the pumkins

Chase — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:56:16 +0000

Last night and the day before it was below 32 degrees and well let us just say Jordan’s water system is not set up for below that for many days on end so this morning there was probably one or 2 pipes on every main street that was either an earlier leak or a new one from the cold and Amman is a city in the hills it is like San Fransisco (I say that never have being there) and no one knows how to drive in these conditions there isn’t just ice but lots of black ice I fell on one patch of it trying to walk down the mountain after we had ditched our car on the top wanting to wait for the sun to melt the ice but as we continued on we watched car after car try to maneuver down this one teribal patch and car after car would put their breaks on and just slide you could tell they where praying that their car was pointed in the right direction and that they would fly straight in between the 2 cars park on either side most of them would make it down and they would count their lucky stars and go on every once in a while a car would hold on to their brakes and get through and then spin in a circle and as they were getting squerad away the next one was sliding in to meat them they would kiss just barely then the drivers would yell but then they would just go on so the lesson to learn in this situation don’t drive in Jordan when their is ice just because you know how the other drivers don’t and they are your problem

a new year

Chase — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 13:49:34 +0000

I had a friend come and visit me. He was on his way back home from working in Pak, so when he showed up we drove down to Petra–the same trip I made with my brother when he was here. We had a good time and made it back to Amman in time for Christmas. We went to a party on Christmas Eve and then watched the kids while the parents went to a midnight mass. We spent the night and had cinnamon rolls for breakfast. The next night we had another dinner together and stayed up again playing games. The next morning we got in a service and headed to the border. After an hour and half of waiting, the service driver left us at the border. Lesson One: Don’t take a service to the border. After another hour and a half we got entry to Syria. We found another service who drove us about 10 miles and then stopped and put us on a bus that took us in to Damascus. Lesson Two: Don’t take a service from the border. In Damascus we walked to see the old city and met up with some old friends who we stayed the night with. In the morning we headed out to Allepo. We road the bus and when we got there we made our way to a hostel where we dropped our bags and went to see the city. I love Allepo. It has a special place in my heart. We walked all around and saw many things. The market there is so fun and exciting. I got another tea pot for my sister-in-law. I hope it gets to them. My friend said he would clean it and send it to her. We went back to the hostel and early in the morning we went to the train staition and took the train to Lattakia on the coast. We got there really early and the twon was dead but there was a tractor with a dump bed so we jumped on it and rode it to the beach. When I tried to pay he refused to accept anything. We took pictures of the beach and found a cop and asked him for a good palce to eat breakfast. He put us in a service and the service took us down town to this great restaurant. It was the only place with a lot of people so we knew it had to be good. It was some of the best I have ever had. We thought of going to Cyprus by boat like a ferry but there were no ferries during the winter. So we wasted 3 hours just walking around asking people if it was possible. Concluding “no” we finally went to the bus station and headed out to Homs. We got there and saw friends of mine I had met the last time I was in Syria. They were nice to us and it was good to catch up with them and encourage the relationship. Up the next day, we went to the big castle to the west of Homs. It was just as grand as I remembered. We played on it for quite a long time and then hired a car to take us to the border of Syria and Lebonon. We got to the last checkpoint on the Syrian side, walked about a kilometer and got to the Syrian exit office. We got our stamps after some chaos and then walked another kilometer in open land to the Lebanese boarder check. We didn’t understand how that was possible. I mean we could have disappeared and there never would have been any evidance we had left Syria–just poof… gone. At the Lebanese border there was much more order. We got another car to take us to Tripoli, had lunch with our driver and then he put us on a bus to Beirut. Along the way we decided we wanted to go snowboarding so we asked the people in the bus how to get to the mountain. They were so nice and dropped us off right where there was a service going up to the mountain. Once we got there we found all the hotels full because it was New Year’s weekend. We finally found a place and had to pay double because it was high season and had a room that would have housed 20 people. There were 3 in it including us but it was a nice place. We got up the next morning and went snowboarding– had a good time laughing and playing until I realized I had lost my camera. We still had fun after that but no more pictures. It was just as icy as last year, so we decided you definitely should come later in the year. When we got to Beirut and got in a hostel, we started to explore and got stopped by the army because we looked suspicious. So we went bake to the hostel. It was a nice one. I liked it. The first day in Beruit we went to the down town area and walked around, then headed to the beach. We played at the beach then made plans for New Year’s Eve. We found one of the popular streets in Beirut, sat on a stairway for four hours that was located between 6 bars. So we people watched the whole time and made many new friends and saw a majorly different culture than either one of us was used to. I am not doing justice to this story but it was too long ago. Ask me about it in person. We celebrated the New Year by eating cake. Next day we slept late and then tried to get in touch with my friend. He couldn’t meet us till the next day so we went to the musemm. Of course it was closed but we enjoyed walking around. The next day it started to rain and rain hard. We met my friend and then walked around in the rain. I bought a new journal. The next day we went to the Syrian border and waited 5 hours this time. When we got out we got on a bus full of Iraqis and one of the guys had the same camera I had lost, so i gave him my cord that goes from the camera to a usb port in a computer he was happy. We got back to Amman and rested a day at my house, then went camping for 2 days in Wadi Rum then back to Amman and we finally rested. I put him on a plane and that was that.

Thanksgiving

Chase — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:31:03 +0000

Thanksgiving was great. A lot of us Americans got together and had Thanksgiving lunch/all afternoon party. We had 2 turkeys and all the fixings. I was in charge of appetizers so I made stuffed jalapeños and baby spinach and potato quiche. The jalapeños where stuffed with cream cheese mixed with Lawry’s seasoning salt and wrapped in bacon. They were the most popular thing there. the baby quiches drew comments such as cute and tasty but stood no chance against the jalapeños.
Quiche was the first thing my mom taught me to cook but with prepared pie crust already made. So I had to make my own. I used the same recipe for my apple pie crust. For the potato layer I boiled potatoes, shredded them and then put them in the cupcake tin wells. Cooked them for 20 min. and then added the egg mixture. They didn’t turn out like I wanted them to.
So we all got ready to eat. We prayed a good ol’ family prayer. Everyone held hands and the oldest male prayed over the food and we were off. As my turn came I went through the line and when I got to the end I felt like something was missing because there was a place on my plate not filled with something. So I just got some more stuffing not thinking much of it. We continued our party with the blessing jar or kettle. This year everyone had to put something in they were thankful for and then they would be read and everyone would guess who it was that wrote it. We had some good laughs and some good (what do you call it when some thing is said and everyone goes awwwwwwwwwwwww that was so sweet).
We then proceeded to watch a football game–Cowboys vs. Giants. Go cowboys.
We played games, built a puzzle, and watched “A Christmas Story.” Then as we were all cleaning up and handing out leftovers someone had a revelation. “Wait,” they said, “where was the green bean casserole?”… there for a moment in time my heart was saddened but then I reminded myself that I was getting to take a pie home and the world was at peace. So my answer to every crises…..apple pie.

schoooooooool

Chase — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:18:00 +0000

well one month left I have a feeling that this is going to be a slow month just trying to finish this mounth but we will see I hope to travel a little when I get done and try and find a job now that I am done with my language school but we will see.

other than that my mom sent me a Christmas package and that was exciting to get I am getting together with some friends for thanksgiving and I am in charge of appetizers. I am going to make jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon the only problem is I have to move the pork (which if the taxi man knew I had it in his car would probably stone me) from my house to where the party is.