Medellin, Colombia

This is a beautiful NYT article about Medellin, Colombia, where so many of my fellow Madison AIESECers have spent months at a time living their respective dreams. While reading it, I begin to long for latin culture and passion for life...

In other news, Karl Rove just resigned!!

And finally, two days until we fly to Turkey for IC 2007!!

mystery, comfort, addiction, anticipation

I love how all things ethnic are thought of as beautiful by the people that surround me back home... even if (and sometimes especially if) they don't understand the significance. It shows a willingness to experience other cultures, viewpoints, places and a desire to learn about them.

Mystery is attractive. The unknown is intriguing. That which we don't understand we are either afraid of or drawn to... and we are in the group that subscribes to the latter.

Comfort is a complacent luxury that is too expensive for our tastes. We become elitest by pushing through to the side that less people see, where things aren't perfectly arranged, but where we discover the potential that places, objects, people hold. And we transform it... more importantly, we are transformed by it.

It's an addiction. Seeing, questioning, learning, understanding, knowing, teaching. And what is a better addiction to hold than an addiction to the unknown? Not just seeking it out, but being dedicated to finding new places to visit, new people to understand, new feelings to capture? What better temptation is there to succumb to than global curiosity?

I think it is all starting to sink in. And I love it.

Souq-ing

Today was the most incredible day of learning, generosity and culture I have experienced yet in Doha. After a gorgeous lunch with Najla and her cousins at her grandfather's home, we went souq-ing (aka Arianespeak for shopping in the markets in Doha).

The souqs are old marketplaces that were recently renovated to look older (ironic, no?) where you can buy anything from neon-colored soccer balls to intricate gold jewlery that was created while you watched to sweets to 2000QR ($550) abayas. It's hard to understand the atmosphere from only viewing the pictures... you need the scents of the cardamom, fennel and cinnamon; the way the sunlight tilts through slats in the ceiling; the way the cool air wafts around you when you're walking through the heart of the building; the old men pushing wheelbarrows around for your purchases; the falcons staring at you with their beady eyes. It is like a different world, one that's portrayed in movies as mystical, foreign, ethnic. It was one of the best days I have spent here, made even more wonderful by the generosity of Najla and her family.

For photos, click here: http://wisc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2267480&l=191c9&id=8604524

I am definitely falling in love with Doha. :)

Doha delusion

I miss Madison. But not in a homesick way. More in a I-miss-how-easy-life-used-to-be way and in an I-miss-Kelly-Eva-Ariane-hugs way...

I'm watching Drama (with a capital D) unfold from the sidelines, eight hours after it happens, even when I'm somewhat involved. It's an interesting feeling.

I'm planning six months ahead, but don't want to talk about what happens a year from now.

I look Lebanese and am spoken to in Arabic, but all I know how to say is "hello," "thanks," "no," "girl," "sweetie," "peace," and "God willing."

I haven't been paid since I arrived in the last week of June, yet all I want to do is go shopping and buy a lot of pairs of fabulous high heels, which I can rarely wear here.

I crave American pop culture [which I never really used to cared about], products [Pepsi, which I never used to drink], people [whoever they may be], but am disappointed when they're not the same as they would be in the U.S., even though I know that nothing is (or can be) the same halfway across the world.

I'm calling my current state Doha delusion. Symptoms can last two to twelve months and may include periods of extreme good-natured fun followed by periods of angry boredom; the ability to ignore being stared at constantly; a craving for a deep tan; the feeling that people at home may be forgetting about you sometimes; the desire to wear an abaya and hijab at all times; jealousy of the experiences of friends in more liberal countries; an addiction to watching Scrubs online; constantly struggling to realize that you are, in fact, in the Middle East; the impulse to go on shopping sprees; occasional crying; forgetting to care that your favorite blogs are blocked; and an affinity for mango juice.

same old...

Just chugging along, day by day. Summer is lazy in Qatar, even if I am not. Makes it tough to get anything done.

Holding out until IC (seven days away!), where Lonneke and I will descend, sporting wicked tans, networking chutzpah, fierce abayas and a boatload of culture.

Meeting today with a monthly happenings magazine went well. Once we're legal and get this career counseling PBoX off the ground (anyone interested in building a new generation of ballsy, market-savvy Qataris? Let me know.), we'll have events and publicity like woah. Unhappily, still no update on QP's funding of the 400,000QR project.

Meeting tomorrow with HSBC. Trying to build regional partnership for exchange. I usually get freaked out before these big meetings, but they always seem to go pretty well.

Wishing the members were more driven. Still need to help them find their passion for AIESEC [I keep insisting to myself that it's there, they just need to recognize it]. In general, social events/sleeping seems to be their priority... how do you teach people to put their future first? Shouldn't that desire be inherent? Maybe it is and they just don't see how AIESEC fits in... I just want to shake them and say, "You're coasting! You're coasting! Push yourselves!" I didn't come here to watch people coast in familiarity and comfort... There's definitely a ton to still figure out. *sigh*

First recruitment starts the last week of August. MC will be in Istanbul. It's not the best situation, but not the worst, either. I think Facebook will be a gold mine. We just have to start moving on things.

the weekend

I was pretty angry when I was writing my last post. But it's really not so bad here. Really! You just have to find the people with which you connect.

AIESEC has some connections to the U.S. Embassy here, so we meet with the Cultural Attache every once in a while. I recently started hanging out with an intern of his, a cool girl that goes to UPenn, but was here for the summer. She studied at AUC this past year and only has a week left in Doha. This girl has been in Doha for a month and a half, lives in a huge villa all by herself and doesn't have a car. It seems that she has been really lonely... I know I would be. First, it's great to talk to another American in person (after not having done so for almost two months), and second, understanding her situation in Doha makes me appreciate all the wonderful AIESECers even more. And when I told her that wherever I go in the world, there will be AIESECers there to meet, she was amazed. :)

Friday (the first day of our weekend) was fantastic. Three members and I got up early and drove about 45 minutes to the inland sea to learn how to scuba dive. The morning started with the "experienced" scuba diver in the group commanding us to eat breakfast, because, apparently, "you can't dive on an empty stomach." We arrived to the beach/desert around 10 and spent the next few hours lounging in the 115F heat, enjoying the super warm water and looking at the little snails scurry along the sand floor of the Persian Gulf. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. We had brought food and we were planning on having a barbecue, but decided our tans were perfect and it was getting too hot around 1 pm. So we went home, showered, took naps and met out for dinner a little later. A movie followed, Shadowboxer (it was the only one playing at the little theater where we wanted to go), and to be honest, it sucked. An hour-and-a- half movie is pretty difficult to understand when a half hour is cut out because of censoring. There was one point where we went through four or five different scenes, only getting a sentence out of each one. But that's life here, for better or for worse. Overall, it was a great day and night... and I think we're going to barbecue today at some point on the corniche.

In other news, the "n" key on my keyboard isn't working, so I'm pasting the letter every time I want to use it. I will get that fixed tomorrow. It's so annoying.

Lonneke arrives on Thursday! I've been alone for the past week in the apartment, which isn't so bad, but it'll be great to have her here, finally.

Also, IC in TURKEY is in ten days! So much to do in so little time... We leave on the 15th.

I hope everything is well in your corners of the world. :)

All dressed up...

... and nowhere to go. My life in Doha, literally and figuratively.

Coming up next: words that are not in the vocabulary of Qatar residents. Like "nightlife." And "planning."

Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps, Idols

"Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, Afghanistan has been developing in fits and starts. Among the unchanging circumstances that still leave people fitful: continuing war, inept leaders, corrupt police officers and woeful living conditions. According to the government’s latest surveys, only 43 percent of all households have nonleaking windows and roofs, 31 percent have safe drinking water and 7 percent have sanitary toilets.

But television is off to a phenomenal start, with Afghans now engrossed, for better or worse, in much of the same escapist fare that seduces the rest of the world: soap operas that pit the unbearably conniving against the implausibly virtuous, chefs preparing meals that most people would never eat in kitchens they could never afford, talk show hosts wheedling secrets from those too shameless to keep their troubles to themselves.

The latest national survey, which dates from 2005, shows that 19 percent of Afghan households own a television, a remarkable total considering not only that owning a TV was a crime under the Taliban but that a mere 14 percent of the population has access to public electricity. In a study this year of Afghanistan’s five most urban provinces, two-thirds of all people said they watched TV every day or almost every day."

Read more: Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps, Idols (NYT)

hatred

To what extent does hating a religion, a race, a culture (and the manifestation of that thing in every day life), define oneself? Or does it just detract from one's life, adding negativity and subtracting happiness?

It's the difference between clinging to the past and letting it dictate your present and living for a better future to resolve the initial conflict. If no one ever talks about it, how will anything change?

This is especially relevant in this region of the world. Even here, the place that is home to cultures about which the West has the greatest apprehension, there is extreme discrimination. Even in friends, AIESECers, people who are open in every other way, the ugly element of hate exists.

So many colors, beliefs, truths, ethics, nationalities, dialects. But everyone agrees on one issue almost without exception. I have never heard anyone speak with so much hate about another group than I have here. It makes me sad for the future of the world.