My Weekend and More On Life

At 3:30 on Thursday afternoon I witnessed what has been called the weekly "mass exodus" of weekday boarders. Within minutes the campus had lost 200 students and had officially shifted into weekend mode. During the weekdays the school feels like any other boarding school I've visited. But when the weekend arrives the pace and feeling of the school change completely. Students no longer move from one place to another with the same deliberation. Instead, I see one or two students casually meander to the dining hall for a late breakfast or a group of twenty assemble in front of the administration building for the school's only source of entertainment on the weekends: off campus trips. Indeed, for now it seems like the off campus are providing a kind of social life support for the students here. Without Friday night dances (When are those starting?) or a town to walk to they're providing the only form of entertainment. But for being the only form of entertainment, the off-campus trips sure do deliver (Corny pun?). Not only does the school provide trips to malls, ice cream parlors, and restaurants but also trips to go paint balling, bowling, and camping. However, since it's still Ramadan and only the second week of school, I've only seen bowling and paint balling trips so far. Since some students are fasting, the school isn't planning any camping/hiking trips yet. I can't wait for these trips to start though. All off-campus trips, not just camping/hiking trips, are open to anyone-student, faculty, or junior fellow- and provide free transportation. An extra advantage for faculty/junior fellows, as well as an incentive to be more involved in suggesting activities for students, is the school's agreement to reimburse faculty/junior fellows assigned to an activity. As long as the faculty/junior fellow brings back his/her receipt for the activity to which he/she was assigned, that faculty is completely reimbursed and gets to enjoy the activity for free. I am therefore keeping a lookout for any signs of a school trip to Petra so that I can either enjoy the free transportation, the free tour if I am assigned, or both.
This weekend, however, there weren't any off-campus trips that particularly interested me. It was only on Thursday night, at the last minute, that I decided to take advantage of an off-campus trip and go paint balling. Now there are several reasons why I made this decision. The first reason was that I wanted to see if paint balling in Jordan was at all similar to paint balling in the U.S. The second was that I wanted to meet more students and bond with them over our mutually inflicted pain. On the weekend activity sign-up sheet paint balling was scheduled to start at 2:30 and finish at 3:30. However, students always have to remember departing transportation time is always included in the time frames. We therefore left campus 2:30 and, after a trip to the northern outskirts of Amman, arrived at 4:00. At first, I couldn't believe that the school had arranged a trip to a paint balling range an hour and a half away. But when I saw the range for myself I realized that the reason the school had chosen this range, despite being so far from school, was that it was probably the only paint balling range in the area to meet the school's standards. The range was actually only a single facility at the "Mountain Breeze Country Club". I couldn't tell if it was a country club in my sense of the term, but it certainly was just as nice as any country club I've ever visited. The club, looking more like an outdoor day-spa in the south of France than a country club, boasted an archery range, an arboretum, a terrace overlooking the valley, as well as a first class paint balling range. We didn't start shooting, however, until about a half hour after we had arrived. We first needed to pay, register, and suit up. The club provided us with camo pants, camo shirts, gloves, facemasks, neck protectors, and torso pads. Then, finally, at around 4:45 we entered the war zone. Now all I'm going to say about paint balling is that it's a great sport but that I'm just not athletic enough for it. To do paint balling right one needs both agility to make quick sprints and strength to run with both protective layers and a gun in one hand. After two fifteen-minute games, we all left the war zone for the last time and returned our gear to the club. Then, after the assigned faculty member had collected enough money from the students, we left the club at 5:30 exactly. This means that in a activity that was scheduled as running from 2:30-5:30 we spent about half an hour actually paint balling. Still, it was a fun trip and I think all the students enjoyed themselves. On a final note, I think I'll share a new rule of Ramadan that one of the swimming coaches here told me. It turns out that the girls on the swim team who are fasting cannot swim in the pool at all because that would run the risk of swallowing small amounts of water. And so since fasting students cannot consume anything during daylight hours, this swimming coach just has to improvise and organize alternative practices. I would ask what these practices consist but I think I'll wait until after Ramadan because I still don't want to think about how the coaches here are running their practices right now. All I know is that the students in fitness either occupy themselves completely with some sort of fitness activity or they at least try for twenty minutes and then politely ask to be excused early. Somehow we're already entering our third week of school with a great start to the year.