Osama's Back plus some Interesting Conversations

Sunday, February 23---From Tom:

Osama Returns: This week our friend Osama returned after about 3 weeks in Utah and Ohio. He was pretty excited although he realized it was not the best time of year to visit these areas. He was even taken ice fishing by Chris Coray on Bear Lake. Sorry but that doesn't sound fun at all. Apparently he was hosted well by lots of people and made some good connections for selling his mosaics and other artwork. Many thanks to those of you who helped him ( Bobbie and Chris ).

When he returned, he had Ronna and I over to dinner along with Brent and Margaret Strong.

Dinner at Osama's--Mensef ( rice with roasted lamb) and traditional Arabic salad. 

What's interesting is that he'll have us to dinner and fix a wonderful meal and we eat alone. He and his wife and kids join in conversation after the meal. I still haven't figured that out. We've been to dinner or lunch 5 or 6 times with him but he never sits and eats with us.

Meeting with Ronna's Dean, Dr. Issam: On Thursday Dean Issam asked me to come in and talk with him. I was concerned since I knew he was upset when we took off during Christmas. He also was somewhat upset during the two weeks between semesters when many of the faculty were not there. Often Ronna and I were one of the few.

He is a very genial, seemingly happy man but we have learned that he's somewhat passive aggressive and is also punctilious about rules and procedures.

He asked me about my ideas to bring better moral into the team, to lift their attitudes. I felt that it was a setup and proceeded cautiously. There is an attitude in the College or Faculty, mainly due to the over scripting and endless rules. I suggested that he meet with each faculty member and ask them what their greatest issue was and just listen and be supportive---have no judgement or condemnation. He looked puzzled. I told him he could build the spirit if he became more of a coach and less of a judge; to invite the creativity of the instructors instead of pushing them.

He told me he had previously worked in a bank where everyone was there from 7:45 until 3:15 and couldn't leave. They knew they had to be there. The implication was clear. I told him I started a company that grew and became quite successful and we had no rules, no required times. But staff members came in early and left late because they were excited about their work. He said that both he and the President were concerned when many of the faculty were not in their offices.

I asked him what his goal was; to have teachers in their offices or to have students that were excited about what they were learning. The faculty are very capable and interested in teaching, give them the opportunity to be creative and reward them. I told him about the "Dead Poet's Society" film with Robin Williams. It was an eye opener.

It seems that the Jordanian culture is focused on form and rules and not on creativity and motivation. The students have a very hard time thinking 'out of the box' or doing creative problem solving. I had suggested a day earlier, when I met with the President and Vice President that we ought to teach the faculty from Covey's book, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Think Win-win, Begin with the End in Mind, Seek to Understand before you Seek to be Understood, etc. I never realized what a gap there was. It is so typical to start a meeting by issuing orders rather than  seeking suggestions. So here I go getting in trouble again.

My Concepts Class: It started rough--no notice that I was going to be teaching them, but we got it going and it ended on a high note. I challenged them on some projects to be extraordinarily creative and come up with ideas that hadn't been seen before. Don't worry about the presentation but show me ideas. And they were great! What is interesting is how they all came alive when they got their creative juices going.  This is the group I'm trying to get on an exchange with a college in New Hampshire, but we're still short of some funding. If they go, it will be a wonderful incubator for future classes. We'll see.

You can see the note they left on the board on the last day. It made it worth it.

Note of appreciation on the last day of the Concepts Class

I Finally Met the Guys Who Run This Place:  In the last week or so, I met two of the most significant players on the campus. Father Majdi Siriyani controls the funding for the university. He is a Catholic Priest who works under the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It was totally by coincidence but he had me come in and we talked for about an hour. He's a very bright, capable man with wonderful intentions. He is well educated and experienced. We exchanged ideas that are very helpful in understanding the culture and history of the region, the religious ties and the Catholic Church's mission here. I think I gave him some ideas that could be helpful.

On Saturday I met Alex, who happens to run the business of the AUM campus. He's Jordanian but has worked and lived in Canada for almost 20 years. He's a very savvy, well spoken man who "gets it".

I shared some of my frustrations with the systems here and he agreed that it was utter chaos. I told him I would be willing to help him by creating punch lists of items that need to be fixed, finished and attended to. It would be a very long list. He eagerly accepted my offer and said we could accomplish some significant things. He gets it. Instead of excusing things and rationalizing he wants to put the campus into good shape. He sounds like some of the wonderful contractors we worked with in Utah and is the first person that didn't just make excuses and say it was the way it was and couldn't be changed.

Spring Semester Starts: Our new semester begins tomorrow. Ronna has three classes in English Communications I. She's much relieved having three classes all the same.  She'll also set up and manage the Writing Lab. We are also now getting a laptop computer for her, finally.

The weather has been steadily getting better. Our days are up in the low 70's and 45-50 at night. Very nice. The house is not so bone chilling cold but we still put on several layers. I sleep with a hot water bottle and do quite nicely. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it feels good and we both sleep through the night very well. (It's hard to believe I'll be 70 in 3 weeks. I still feel like a kid, until I try to walk.) Actually our health has been better here than in the cold winter of Utah. I've not needed the antibiotics or prednisone here like I did every winter previously. But we haven't exercised  like I'd like to either.

We love you all!! Stay warm.

Our new Church, new Puppy and new Semester

Sunday, February 16--From Tom:

New Church: Friday was the last church service in the old Swiss Embassy building. We will be moving into our new "church" in a few weeks. In the meantime we are meeting in one of the members homes, ( mini-palace of embassy staff). The new church is the very first property that the LDS is able to own in Jordan and it has been due to the humanitarian service that the church has performed here.

Our new Facility for worship and offices for humanitarian services on ground floor. 

It will be nice to have heating, air conditioning, sound system, restrooms and classrooms. We'll have a major open house where we can bring key people in the community. This should accelerate the ability to perform the humanitarian work here in Jordan. It is in the Abdoun  District, near most of the embassies and the ex-patriot neighborhoods, below the Abdoun Bridge. Who would have thought this would happen in Jordan?

New Puppy:  Remember how we have been plagued by wild dog packs roaming at night through the orchard around our home? While a number of the dogs have been shot, the packs continue. We've just gotten used to them. A few nights ago, I heard loud growling, snapping and whining outside our rear door. I went out and saw that a large white dog had cornered a small puppy next to our rear door. It looked like it was going to attack. I did my best wolf imitation, snarled and bared my teeth and pretended that I was going to throw  rocks. The big white dog ran away and the little puppy immediately bonded with me as the Alpha Dog and won't leave. We now have a puppy.

Our new pet, "Poopy"  the Puppy. 

Home Teaching: Ronna and I have been asked to be Home Teachers to three wonderful families. Pat Hicks is a single woman of about 30 who came to Jordan to teach English. She works at the Greek Orthodox Elementary School. She is very independent, dedicated, intelligent. She takes the bus everywhere and attends both the Arabic speaking branch and the English branch. She just wants to understand the Arab culture.

We also visit President Handricksen's family. He is an IT expert with the US Embassy. Emily home schools their children. Clair, age 9, sometimes leads the singing in Sacrament meeting. Andrew, age 7, always sits with us and wants to be a storm chaser. This week in church as he was sitting with Ronna and making little comments, Ronna would respond quietly and nod her head to give emphasis. He looked at her and with this earnest little grin, asked "why is your skin so wobbly?" She responded, "That's what happens when you get old." Such sweet honesty.

Our third, is Lim Horn. He is an immigrant from Cambodia who is serving as Army support in the US Embassy. He served 3 missions in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. He is a convert from Buddhism. His parents were caught in the Pol Pot holocaust of Cambodia. After many years they escaped to Thailand and finally came to America. He's an incredible fellow who has come through a lot. He calls his family each night.  

Chhenglim  "Lim" Horn, from Cambodia, in our Elders Quorum Presidency. 

New Semester: We start Spring Semester in one week. Hopefully, we will have it figured out by then. Ronna will have 3 English Comm I classes. No more remedials, Hooray!! She also will be setting up a writing lab. She'll do great. I have two classes, one to teach Professional Practice again. The other will be Design Psychology.  I'm also trying to get a study program in New Hampshire, recruit new students from Jordan, recruit new faculty and assist the dean. Last week I got sent to meet with President Hazboun to overturn an opinion of one of the Vice Presidents over the student exchange program. It's getting interesting.

Success at Last plus Dinner at Ra'ed's and Expandable Family Homes

Sunday, February 9--From Tom:

Success at AUM: We did not know exactly what our missions would be when we signed up for this adventure in Jordan. We knew we'd be in a very foreign land teaching at a new university. We had lots of surprises and challenges and have overcome most of them.

One of the things I noticed when I became involved in the AUM campus is that there seemed to be a lot of things that didn't quite make sense or were missing, or didn't even work. It looked pretty good but I started noticing more and more issues that needed attention. I also recognized that it was a little risky for a new American to come on the Arab campus and start telling everyone how to change. Not good politics. Yet, I felt that if we were to have a positive influence on the campus, I needed to get involved, gently.

The Mission Statement of AUM indicates that they want to be a 'world-class' university with a top rated campus. The Catholic Church invested a lot of money ( in the range of $160 million) for new campus and buildings for the purpose of strengthening the Christian social culture in Jordan. It was personally blessed by the Pope and endorsed by the King in the opening ceremonies. It has grown rapidly and has attracted some excellent faculty with international training and experience. But there were things that I believed needed to change.

I started making a list of issues that I saw and then prioritized them. I wrote a seven page letter to my Dean, Ra'ed Qaqish in the first several weeks indicating my observations and suggestions. This got passed around and got sent to the President, his Vice-Presidents and the Deans Council. I was worried at first, but it seemed to be appreciated.

They put me on a committee whose focus was to bring the campus up to American education standards. I was made the Secretary. This let me control the message and tone of what was transpiring. The committee includes my Dean, an American staff member in IT, three very bright and outspoken women professors and Majdi who seems to control everything but never attends.

After a few months we had focused on the items in my letter and arrived at a prioritized list of recommendations. This was presented to the university Steering Committee made up of the President, Vice Presidents and several Deans and other campus leaders. I was a bit nervous.

The result was unanimous support and overwhelming endorsement of the items presented. They also empowered us in the committee to continue to monitor the progress being made and report back if items were not being done. There were about 16 items and I felt that if even a quarter were accomplished it would be a major transformation of the existing campus.

Items included in order: Developing a representative Student Government with elected leaders, establishing a Campus Bookstore, making the Recreation Center available to the Faculty, prequalifying students in English and overall aptitude ( be more selective), begin to develop campus traditions, provide projectors in each classroom, establish a Student Center at the center of campus, expand the snack bar, develop a campus library at the center of campus, provide durable outdoor seating at gathering places, establish Hosting Services for foreign faculty (just what we needed), develop group study spaces, establish a Facilities Committee that would oversee the orderly completion of unfinished construction ( we still don't have an elevator and heating was barely completed), develop a campus graphic 'way-finding' system, become involved in SCUP ( the Society for College and University Planners) and develop integrated housing on the campus to bring student life to the center of campus.

Main Student Gathering Place on AUM Campus

Most of these sound obvious but they were missing and not planned for. It is a commuter campus with a 45-90 minute commute for most since they live in Amman. There is a long story and many hours of discussion behind these but you'll probably understand. Anyway, we got to 1st base but it's still a long road.

Final Exams: These are finally over and there is endless paperwork to submit verifying, validating, certifying and endorsing. I helped as a proctor in several exams, some for Ronna and some for others. This is because the national pastime for Jordanian students is to cheat on exams. Ronna took away several exams and I moved three or four who were cheating. Then the submitting of the grades is on a form that is half in Arabic. Excuse me?? We now have 2 weeks to figure out what we're going to do for next semester. I'm teaching Psychology of Design. Really?? This is crazy.

Dinner at Dean Ra'ed's Home: We had a wonderful dinner at Dean Ra'ed's house up on a hill overlooking Amman. As is typical, the whole house is made up of apartments for their extended family. His mom lives downstairs and is the coolest lady, very spunky. "She don't take no crap".

"Mama Qaqish" and Nana Jensen

View from Ra'ed Qaqish's home. Queen Rania's home, before she was Queen, is in the center. 

Ra'ed's home is on the far north side of Amman, which makes it a 90 minute commute to the AUM campus. So he rented another house in Madaba for the four days of class per week, cutting his commute to about 15 minutes.

Expandable Family Homes: Families here don't buy and sell and move. Families own land for many generations and they don't sell it. We have never seen a "For Sale" sign on a residence or lot. Someone told me that land may be owned by 400-500 people, all cousins inheriting part of it. So homes and buildings are not built to speculate in 'good' neighborhoods, with the hope that the value will increase. They build because they own the property. We see mini palaces in some very squalid neighborhoods and multi-story apartment buildings all alone out in the country. They also build homes for the parents and the families of the several sons all together with the idea of future expansion going up. So they build with columns coming out of the roof and re-bar sticking out of the columns--just in case they expand. Not always, but very frequently. It's strange but maybe it makes sense. Their families are the most important thing to them. Very low interest in their community or nation but total loyalty to the clan, tribe or family.

This sounds good but it can go too far. The only crime we ever hear about is when there is a dispute between families or tribes. There have been a few fights and even killings involving tribal differences recently. They say people can tell exactly which town a family is from by the family name. Mostly the family structure is very positive and supportive and they see living together as an extended family the only way to go. Much different than the US.

Notice the columns at the roof for future expansion--someday. 

New home just north of us--separate units for the families of a father and his three sons. 

Thanks:
We appreciate those who have written and sent their greetings.  We are homesick for all of you--especially our children and grandkids. It's been a lifesaver to get the little photo's and letters. Thanks,

Accidents Happen / Jordanian Picnics / Faces of Jordan

Sunday February 2--From Tom:

CRUNCH--"WELCOME TO JORDAN"-It was bound to happen. I've driven 54 years without an accident. But the odds are against you on the streets of Jordan. We were driving on our shortcut around Madaba Wednesday night on our way to Amman. It's the only continuous street in the whole Middle East and it's a hodgepodge of apartments, commercial and homes behind walls. No intersections are controlled with stop signs or yields so it's a crapshoot. And intersections allow parking anywhere so your vision is cut off. I know you think I drive fast but I've slowed down here since there are too many insanely fast drivers.

Going into the blind intersection, all of a sudden a flash of a yellow taxi came out of the dark, screaming through from the right. We hit the brakes and horn but --- screech---crunch!! Everyone was ok but fenders were bent in. The crowd gathered and I thought there would be a lynching. Someone asked, "where you from??" I said I was from America. They all laughed and said, "welcome to Jordan!! No problem mister" I called Malek, Osama's brother, who rents the car to me and he came right over. I had to hand the phone to the taxi driver to describe where we were since there are no street signs. When Malek got there he said " No problem Dr. Tom. Everything OK" Then he said that the taxi driver and the passenger were both his "cousins" Did I expect that? So he took Ronna and I home and went to the police station to settle. So they kept us out of it and it's all covered by insurance of some kind or another. Mostly it hurt my pride. ( There are no photos )

PICNICS IN JORDAN: There are no parks in Jordan--at least we haven't seen any. Kids plays soccer on dirt patches with rocks as markers. Now that the weather is getting into the 60's we are seeing a new phenomenon. Families drive out along the highway where there are some nice trees and lay out a blanket with a spread of food and maybe a hooka pipe. Kids run in the pastures or throw rocks at the passing cars. It's all good fun. Parks would require water, which they don't have and it would require maintenance, which they don't do. So this works. We take our beautiful parks for granted back home.

Just another Picnic in Jordan---in January

People gather along the highways for picnics, because there are no parks. 
Notice the fields starting to have green shoots coming up--in the end of January.

FACES OF JORDAN:  In a typical day I will be with people from all over the world, mostly places that we wouldn't encounter in Utah. I have students from Malaysia, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Bethlehem in the West Bank and of course Jordanians, some of whom were born in the US. At church we have people from the Philippines, India, Cambodia, Germany, and US Embassy workers whose previous assignments were Finland, Camaroon, Mozambique, Tailand and the US. 

My Faculty members come from Syria, Egypt, Italy, Russia, England, Lebanon. One of my good friends left yesterday to visit his wife and children in Damascus. He needs to fly from Amman to Beirut, Lebanon and hire a car to drive him across, through the checkpoints to Damascus. He said they are still safe, "Insa Allah" or "God willing".  A student in Ronna's Comm II class, Wes'sam went home to Syria over Christmas. He took a bus across the southern sector, one of the worst areas. I asked him about it and he said it was very bad and didn't want to talk more. He will in the near future. 

Meet Lani--a domestic worker  for our landlady. She is from Sri Lanka and one of the happiest people I have ever met. She is always laughing and works very hard but they treat her well.

I will show more in the future.