Pillow

This is my new pillow. The ones that were in the house before I got there are super uncomfortable clumps of hard cotton shoved into a pillow casing. So, I got a new one that really is probably not for a 27 year old women...but its super cute and I love it. It makes me happy and makes my room a little cheerier. My friends urged me to screw over convention and get the bay alligator pillow...I have clearly found some good people.

Been her almost a full week now and have been going, going, going, non-stop since I got here. Its been a great time so far and I feel pretty comfortable in my new place, with my new roommates, with new friends, and in exploring Amman. Been getting a tiny bit homesick yesterday and today, but I know it will pass and its just part of the process.

The last week has gone by in such a blur and changed my life so drastically that nothing was really registering with me completely. Now that some time has passed and I'm working on starting class tomorrow and interviewing for my internship tomorrow as well, both of which will ground my new life here, it has started to slowly register that this is my new world. I'm still happy about that and do feel that this is gonna be insanely hard work, but the right next step for me. However, I'm starting to mourn the life I had before Jordan. It sounds very dramatic, but its true.

Change can be great and change can awful. While this change is good, it is a huge change and completely uproots and reroutes my life. So, while its a positive change, I liked my "old" life as well, so there is a bit if a mourning process that comes with allowing myself to let go of the old and embrace the new. I have to keep the good things I learned from my past experiences, but let it go in order to allow myself to be open to anything new and good in my "new" life here in Jordan. I loved Boston, my friends there, my friends and family at home, etc...so while I bring them with me in many ways while I'm away, I learned from Peace Corps and Boston that anytime I make these huge life changes I, of course change in many ways myself and therefore, return different. Thus, my "new" life here in Jordan starts to become my normal, my new comparison, etc...and therefore I find I let go of many mindsets, thoughts, understandings, sometimes relationships, etc. from the past in the process.

It's all a mourning process, a good mourning process, but still kinda feels like a real mourning process some days. It's just one of those things that isn't the most fun at the time but it passes and it changes and it typically ends better then expected.

Mourning is not forgetting...
It is an undoing.
Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent
and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust.
- Margery Allingham

P.S. I have added many many photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/90572684@N08/sets/