Went to see Jack Johnson Monday night. It was pretty good! I love his music, but it doesn't do quite as well in person for some reason. Or maybe it was because I had lawn seating, which makes it a bit less personal. I just didn't get the same feeling from the concert as I did from the Coldplay concert. But, of course, perhaps that's because the people I went with didn't like Jack Johnson quite as much as I did and they talked throughout a lot of the songs. That kind of pissed me off. Oh well. It was still good and I'm glad I went. The pictures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. The first one is me with the stage way behind me on the right. The others include a picture of the massive number of people in the lawn seating and a closer picture of Jack on stage.

Living with roommates is not my favorite thing to do. I don't want to complain about my current roommate because she's actually a very nice person. She's considerate, responsible, etc....but after having the place to myself for the entire summer (she did an internship over the summer working at Bryce Canyon Park in Utah), I'm realizing that living by myself ROCKS. She just got back about 6 days ago (not even a week) and I'm not liking it at all. So, I made a decision over the weekend that I'm going to try to find her a replacement roommate and I'm going to find a place of my own. Moving again!!! YES!!!! I LOVE to move. And my friends here love the fact that I move so often.

I haven't actually broken the situation to my roommate, yet. She was out of town this weekend when I finally made up my mind, so I need to tell her tonight. Whee!

I'm also going to see Jack Johnson play tonight! Updates and pictures about that soon to come.

It's so ironic how you FINALLY figure out one thing only to have something else block you from doing anything about it. Basically, I think I've finally figured out what I want to do with my life (career-wise and other). I've been doing a lot of thinking, researching, "soul searching," etc, and I found this program at Denver University that sounds superbly wonderful for me. It's the International and Intercultural Communications degree. I would be studying other cultures, countries, policies, languages, etc....I could come out of the graduate program as a teacher in this area, a diplomat, a leader in various International arenas, etc. It's sounds really interesting to me and a part of me would LOVE to move back to Denver. I felt so free and happy there.

So, why on earth wouldn't I go for it? Well....my job here has started getting better. Seems like there is a lot of opportunity for me to make a real difference in the university here, even though it's in a field that I don't really care for. Plus, there is the whole decent salary, benefits, health insurance thing. And the support structure of friends that I've built for myself here. But I still don't feel truly happy here....I don't like Indianapolis the way I liked Denver. And I don't see me staying interested in my job for too long. I just feel kind of trapped here. Like I'm here, not because I want to be here, but because it makes sense to be here. And no matter how hard I try to stay happy, there is something inside of me that longs SO much to explore, take risks, learn, experience, grow, etc. So.....do I stay here for stability and stucture? Or do I take a risk to pursue my dreams....and it would indeed be a risk. The only thing holding me back is me.

BAND PHOTOS!! We look so incredibly cool, I can't hardly contain myself! Eric is modeling the AW jacket, t-shirt...and of course those sexy marching rubbers (the shoes!!!). Rinnert is showing us the basic food-group of band...and there's me marching with my cymbals!! Oh yes, and the infamous Woody photo where he looks pissed as hell with one of his high school girlfriends. I really think you guys were in the process of breaking up right at that moment. My bad.

Steve Miller Band Rocks the house! Well....kind of. My friend Chad and I went to the concert last night and I was really excited about it. They started off with one of their classics, Swing Town. But then they played about 45 minutes of Blues songs that were written by other people. Don't get me wrong. I like Blues. I would go to a concert to hear Blues, even. But when you go to a Steve Miller Band concert, you expect to hear all their great classics that everyone knows and loves. They actually started to lose the crowd a little bit...people started to sit down, take naps, chill out, etc. I even sat down and waited for the good songs after the first 30 minutes of blues. Then, with only about 30 minutes of the show left, they started playing some of the good stuff. Fly Like an Eagle (20 minute, psychadellic version of this, which would have been cool had I been drunk or high. I was sober, however, and it dragged on for quite some time), The Joker, Space Cowboy, Ganster of Love, Abracadabra, etc. Now, THAT was cool and I boogied down for the rest of the show. Overall, though, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. Oh well....I got lawn seats, which were only $13.50 per ticket, so I'm not too upset over it. I thought this picture I took of the band was cool....

Any mountain bikers in the house? I wouldn't say I'm an avid mountain biker, but I generally go mountain biking a handful of times during a season. So far, I've gone mountain biking 4 times this summer, most recently was my trip last night. I thought I'd share my HILARIOUS situation with mountain biking last night.

So, yeah....my friend James and I decided that mountain biking would be fun last night. When the time came, I wasn't really feeling it but figured I'd get into the swing of things once we got going. And I was.....until I went a few degrees too left on the trail and fell down a 6-foot-plus ravine into the White River only to completely submerge under water, having my bike fall on top of me a split-second later and losing my right shoe in the process (I just bought them two weeks ago). I stood up in the water (which came up past my waist) and my pants were falling down. I was COMPLETELY soaked, hanging on to my bike while looking for my missing shoe. James appeared about a minute later with utter shock on his face...."How did you do that???" I was still trying to find my shoe. I was finally able to hand my bike up to him and then he jumped in to the water to help me look for my shoe....we never did find the bastard shoe. I was so pissed about that. We then had to climb up a tree limb near where I fell in order to get out of the water (the area I fell down was too steep to get up). Note how dirty I was in the pic as well as wet.

After we got out of the water, it was starting to get dark. James lent me his shoe and we had to ride the trail back for about 15 or 20 minutes in order to get back to where the car was. So, there we were, wet, James with only one shoe on, my bike chain locking up on me every few seconds, riding in the dark in the middle of the woods. It was hilarious. Oh, and after I finally took off my riding gloves (after being wet in them), My hands were completely stained from the gloves. My hands are still currently stained as I sit here and type in my blog.

Ok, here are the first round of high school photos. Ahhh, yes.....the dorky senior-year pictures. I couldn't find all of your pics, unfortunately. I know I had Rinnert's and Woody's pics....even Herbs. I just couldn't find all of them. That makes me sad. :( BUT, the rest of the pictures make me giggle. Curly in a tie? Who's he trying to fool? And Eric with the background matching his tie. That's classic. And, of course, my Anthony Wayne ID card. Hey, did ya'll know that Amy just had a baby about two months ago? Time flies.

Coldplay rocks the house! I went to my first Coldplay concert Friday night and it was EXCELLENT! They sounded great, the light-show was awesome, and the vibe from them and the crowd was awesome. It was the first bigger concert I had been to and I was most impressed. I had absolutely no idea that I was going to react this way, but....I actually cried during the first three songs. It was just so intense! All of your senses going and the crowd around you all happy and loud....and then the songs. They were sung with such heartfelt..... real meaning behind the words and you could totally feel that. I started crying like a little girl, but after the third song I was OK. So...yeah. Definitely two thumbs up from me. I'm so excited to go to the rest of the concerts this summer, now. Steve Miller Band is playing next weekend and I'm wondering if I should go to that, too. It's only $13.50 for lawn seating! I love the one song of theirs, "Never Going Back Again." The guitar in that is really impressive....very skillfully done.

Animals are so great! But, of course, my favorite animal for the single, renting life is cats. Cats rock! My cats, Anna and Max, are so amazing. They dispell all the myths that cats have about them. They come when their names are called. They obey me when I tell them not to do something. Anna plays fetch with her little ball (yes, she actually brings it back to me). Max licks your hands and face if you get near him (that is actually VERY annoying and I'm trying to break him of the habit. Cat tongues are NOT soft). This is actually a funny story....often when I fall asleep, I have my arms over my head or lying up on top of my pillow. Well, Max likes to visit at night and occasionally he starts licking me. I once woke up to him licking my ARM-PIT. Aaaargh! I pushed him off the bed and yelled at him.

Anyway, besides the gross licking thing, my cats are great. My top five animals for my current lifestyle includes:

1.) Cats - short haired domestic
2.) Standard Poodle (of course)
3.) Airedale Terrier
4.) Fish
5.) Squirrel

Ok, so I really wouldn't want to have a squirrel, but I've always thought about how it would be neat to have one if they were domesticated.

When it rains, it pours. Things have been so busy for me at work, it's kinda nutty. I skipped out on two meetings this week already and I still feel like I'm playing catch-up. Not only that, but I have a lot of fun-stuff going on, too. August is packed full of stuff. This Friday I'm going to the Coldplay concert. Then, there is also the Jack Johnson conert and the Jimmy Buffet concert. My roommate is returning home in a few weeks, which will be an adjustment since she's been gone all summer. And I had hoped on having my wine-tasting disco party this month, too (yes, wine and disco DO go together!!). Remember the disco party I had during high school?? That was fun. This one will be even more fun, as adding alcohol to the mix can only enhance it. :) Then, my sister is visiting for a week the first of September. We'll be driving to good 'ol Toledo for my mom's 60th birthday.

So, yeah....lots going on. I think September will be a little less crazy, but who knows. At least most of the craziness is fun!

During my visit in Jordan, I spent a lot of time with my brother and his family. They are on this new nutrition plan that they swear by....it's called Eat Right for your Type. It's this guy that says people need to eat certain foods based on their blood type, as blood type apparently determines a lot of things in a person's body. So, while my bullshit-o-meter peaked as they were telling me all about this, I decided to go ahead and give it a try for three weeks to derermine if it's truly bullshit or not.

The main reason I'm giving it a go is because for the last two years I've had real problems with feeling tired. Not just your normal "I'm tired" feeling, but just feeling plain exhausted, not being able to do as much as I used to do in the way of activities, exercise, staying up late, etc. It was something that happened all of a sudden after getting sick one winter and I have been unable to shake it. I've been to the doctor's numerous times, had tons of tests done....lesseee....mono, chronic fatigue syndrome, Hypothyrodism, other diseases, etc. Everything came back negative. I've had a physical and I'm healthier than healthy. The doctor finally determined that it's probably just due to stress and anxiety, and just sort of wrote me off. I think she's full of shit. So, now I'm wondering if I might have gluten sensitivity (related to Celiac Disease)....basically, if you eat anything that contains gluten in it (wheat is a main culprit), your body can't digest it and prevents you from digesting other nutrients, too. Being tired is one of the side-effects as well as other things.

This diet takes all wheat and dairy out of your nutrition plan if you are type O+ (me). So, I am eliminating all of this from my diet for the next three weeks to see what happens. I am eating lots of brown rice, lots of meat, veggies and fruit, etc. Staying away from wheat and gluten is difficult, but we'll see what happens. What a pain!!

Being back home is so nice after being away for what felt like a month. I know my trip was only a week, but it was so tiring. I'm still recovering from my wacked out sleep-cycle and today is the first day that my digestive system feels fairly normal. I was getting concerned about that and thought I'd have to go to the doctor to get antibiotics or something. That Traveler's illness is NOT fun, lemme tell ya.

So, since I've been back I've been sleeping a lot, getting stuff organized at home and at work, and trying to not feel overwhelmed by it all (especially since the "sleeping a lot" hasn't worked out as well as I hoped). But, I just heard from my roommate that she won't be back for another couple of weeks when I intitially expected her back this Friday. ROCK ON!!! (she is in Utah for the summer.....she sends rent checks but I get to live alone. Nice, eh?).

Anyway, I just thought of another topic to write about in my blog, so I'm bailing on this one. :)

My flight(s) out there...

Let me first say that while this is not my first International flight (as you all well know), it was the first time for me to fly Internationally by myself. I flew from Indianapolis to Chicago (1 hour flight, 2 hour layover), from Chicago to Frankfurt (8 hour flight, 8 hour layover), from Frankfurt to Amman (4 hour flight). Count 'em up and that's a full 24 hours of travel if you include the extra two hours I needed to be at the Indy airport prior to leaving. I was damn tired upon arriving in Amman, and I knew I would only be more tired as the trip progressed with all the activity. I knew it was well worth the fatigue as my excitement mounted exiting the plane in Amman. I had to wait in lines to obtain my Visa and then the customs person questioningly stated my full name to me, "Mona Thabet Al-Kheiry???" I said yes in Arabic and then he proceeded to spout out Arabic to me. I smiled and said "English, please." He wanted to know my father's name, where in Saudi Arabia I was born and the purpose of my visit. He approved my visit and I was finally able to go out to the area where you can meet up with people. As I walked out, I saw a sea of Arab faces all trying to get my attention because I was a "blonde" female obviously by myself. I kept looking getting slightly concerned that I wasn't finding my family right away. And then I saw Amo's (Talal's) huge smile as he quickly walked toward me with open arms. Auntie (Haia) was behind him, and I burst into tears. He looks so much like dad and seedo.

Jerash...

We stayed at their extremely nice hotel in beautiful Jerash. It is absolutely AMAZING there. Their hotel is on top of a large hill that overlooks the country-side. Jerash is very hilly and "mountainy." It kind of reminded me of the foothills in Denver, except that it was covered with Olive trees as far as the eye can see. The rooms were nice and clean (except that they don't really dust there), with wimpy toilets that don't flush very well and wimpy showers that take about 5 minutes to fully penetrate my hair. I hate that part of International trips. I like me mah 'merican toilets, dammit! Everything else was great, though. They served a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner for their hotel guests, which we, of course, would partake in. Traditional Arabic food for every meal....hummus, babaghanoush, cucumber/tomato salads, haloumi cheese, eggs, chicken, rice, lamb, fusulia (green beans in tomato sauce), yummy sweet desserts, etc. By the third day I had a grumbling stomach before bed and decided that eating hummus three times a day for the past 3 days was probably the culprit....so I decided to cut back on that. Besides eating and sleeping at the hotel, we also hung out by the pool, visited with family and friends, took walks, and played in the game room which contained a pool table, foosball table (is that how you spell it?) and a ping-pong table. I had a very touching moment in the middle of the night at the hotel, too. I got up, perhaps at 3 in the morning, too look outside. It was very quiet and peaceful, with a few wild dogs barking in the distance. As I looked out at the stars, the prayer-call started....not just one, but at the top of the hill you could hear 3 or 4 different prayer-calls simultaneously from different directions. Then all the wild dogs started howling with the prayer-call....it was an incredibly beautiful moment. This was my second time to start crying during my visit.

Visiting expectations (of course)....

Jamal, Wendy and the kids arrived the day after me. The kids are all beautiful and doing great. It was wonderful to see them all and spend some quality time getting to know the kids better after not seeing them for two years. The next day we went and visited with family and friends the entire day in Amman. This is the traditional thing to do....for those of you who might know, we went and visite Amo Sameer (who's brother had died the week before and Sameer was somewhat gloomy about that), Sanah (see pictures to see who this is), and some family that probably is a relative, but I am not sure and I don't know their names. It was amusing...at one point Alex asked me "Who's house are we at this time??" I just gave him an understanding smile and said "I have no clue Alex...this is just how it is. You go to people's houses and visit whether you know who they are not. Just smile and be patient." He gave a sigh and sat back quietly...probably doing the same thing we would do when we were visiting people we didn't know....looking at the gaudy Arabic furnishings, studying faces, or wondering when the food would be served.

The Salon...

The pre-wedding preparations...In addition to all the other preparations and planning that Auntie Haia did, she had all the close relatives and friends of the family booked to get their hair and makeup done. We went to the salon around 11:30 and I ended up staying there until 4:30 that late afternoon. For the most part, I was having my hair worked on the entire time....yes, this is possible. They first straightened my hair. They then put it in rollers. I sat in rollers for about 45 minutes and then came the real work. The guy (all the salon people are male...apparently male stylists are considered better there) didn't "fix" my hair....he "BUILT" my hair. The sheer enormity of the style was amazing. He had most of it up, and would intertwine the locks on top in different directions, thoroughly hairsparying each strand until it was wet. He used, I kid you not, about 80 pins and a full can of hairspray on my head. He then came out with the STRONG hold hairspray to ensure that my head would deflect bullets. I think he was successful. I had to bend down further than usual to get into the car with my hair as high as it was. Also, the fact that the windows were down while we were traveling at high speeds didn't matter one bit....I'm certain that my hair would have remained in tact in a tornado, perhaps providing my head with much needed protection from dangerous flying objects...such as a trailer or an automobile. THEN CAME THE MAKEUP....a friend of the family was actually doing the makeup and I was reassured by both Auntie and Seema that she gave a natural look, "Simply enhancing your natural features." Apparently my natural features require a mixture of purple, green and charcoal eye-shadow with a quarter-inch thickness of eye-liner around the upper and bottom lids. It was great....I felt slightly like a drag queen except that my outfit was much too subdued to be an actual drag queen. If I were wearing 4 inch heals (which would make me 6' 4" tall) with a sequenced/beaded outfit, I am confident that I would have won any drag-queen competition out there. Bring it on!! The photos don't quite capture all of this very well....I was actually disappointed with how the makeup and hair didn't look quite as big and bold in the photos as they did in real life.

The wedding....

The wedding was wonderful and very different than traditional American weddings. First, the groom's family and close friends go to the groom's parents' house. There was a "band" that sang traditional Arabic with drums and a bagpipe. There was dancing, beverages, visiting, etc. Seema and Deema danced with their big brother and I started crying for my third time during the visit. Adel, a friend of Amo Tala's, informed me that I wasn't allowed to cry again because seeing me cry made him completely lose it, too. We then all piled into about 10 different cars and followed Amer's car, which was all decorated with flowers, to the bride's house. This was much the same thing, except with the bride's family, too. We then all piled into about 20 cars and drove around Amman, our hazard lights flashing, all of us beeping our horns in celebration. Cars passed by beeping their horns back at us....it was great! Then we got to the Sheraton hotel's banquet hall for the reception party. There were 350 people at the wedding, and they definitely filled the entire hall. The wedding reception didn't officially start until 9:30pm with food being scheduled for 11:00pm. I thought that was a bit ridiculous, but apparently this is the norm. After the food, which was absolutely delicious, we danced Arabic style, debka style, etc until 2:00AM. They had a variety of music, including traditional Arabic to disco's "I will Survive." It was a lot of fun, and Rebecca enjoyed herself immensely on the dance-floor. At one point, there was a group of about 5 grown men surrounding Becca all taking turns picking her up and dancing with her. She was having so much fun!!

The flight(s) back...

After getting maybe 6 hours of sleep the night after the wedding, we ended up having a busy next day. That night about 30 of us went out to dinner (a late dinner, as usual) to a restaurant in Amman. After eating there, we immediately went to go get my luggage so I could catch my 3:10AM flight out of Amman. Let me just explain the severity of the situation to you.....I was exhausted after the week's festivities, having to go back to the airport at 1:00AM. In addition to being tired beyond tired, I had what I call "Tornado of the butt," which essentially means I ate something or caught some virus that was making me have the shits. Wendy was also having problems. So, there I was at the airport at 1:30AM completely exhausted, trying not to fart for fear I would crap myself. After being on the plane (after an hour delay), I went to the bathroom to find that my period started unexpectedly (sorry if this is too much information for some of you, but it was significant at the time). So, I spent the remainder of the flight with my gastro intestines grumbling, my uterus cramping, and some guy next to me talking my ear off while I tried to politely stay awake (and not fart). It was horrible. But the anti-crap medicine finally started kicking in, which made things much more tolerable. I finally made it back to Indianapolis around 2:00pm. I did the math and I think Saturday, July 30th for me ended up being about a 32 hour day since it started 8 hours earlier in Amman compared to Indiana. I'm sure flight travel cut down the hours by some, but it certainly felt like it was a 32 hour day....if not longer!!!

PICTURES: http://blue.butler.edu/~mkheiry/jordan/FrameSet.htm