Test
AMMAN, Jordan — "Now boarding rows 32 and above," said the ticket agent for Royal Jordanian airlines. I looked around the crowded gate area and saw only one student of the six I’d brought with me on the eight-day tour of this Middle Eastern nation. "Where the devil are they?" I thought to myself. Then aloud to the lone journalism graduate student standing beside me: "They better show up," I told her. "I can’t go home and tell someone's mama: 'Sorry, ma'am, your daughter didn't make the plane home.'"
In retrospect, I realize this was my first real panic attack. I'd survived a student canceling two days before we left Columbia for Jordan. Weathered another getting ill (and canceling) the day we were scheduled to depart. Found a doctor in Jordan to tend to another who was so sick to her stomach that she was doubled over in pain. And I'd made it through assorted questions in the weeks before we left * and the week while we were in Jordan. (When you're group leader, you're supposed to know EVERYTHING.) So I'd spoken often as an authority on what to wear, what to say, how to act * even "Do I have to eat this?" at a meal more suited to Jordanian palates than Southeastern American taste buds.
It had been a good trip, but I was ready to go home. And furious when five of six students were not on hand 20 minutes before our international flight was scheduled to depart from Amman for New York. The students did finally show up. So did my colleague, Scott Farrand, who doggedly helped search for them when I got so worried. When I ranted over their tardiness, the young women to whom I’d grown so attached responded with confusion, courtesy and apologies. They hung their heads, slipped quietly into their seats and slipped over to my row to say how sorry they were. Typically, the excuse was simple: It was the crack of dawn. They had found a Starbucks in the Amman airport, a favorite hangout in the United States * and a favorite coffee stop for Christine Moore, the consultant to the Jordan Board of Tourism who had helped organize our trip.
The problem? The airline had a new rule: no coffee from the terminal could be brought aboard the plane. While I'd panicked, they'd been sipping. Such is the life of this de facto tour group leader * really a religion editor and journalist-turned-college professor. My first trip to Jordan in 2005 with my husband, Jace Holloman, a freelance photographer, had been just as busy as the one this spring, but I'd had a little less responsibility. Last year, all I had to do was be wife and reporter. This time my Type A personality struggled not to lapse (read ZOOM) into overdrive. I wanted to lead this trip, open my students' consciousness to a new people, a different faith and a gracious, welcoming culture in what Americans view as a really dangerous part of the world. It was far too easy to worry too much and forget why I was group leader and why I’d jumped through so many hoops to organize the Student Journalist Study Trip to Jordan for the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
My goals were really close to ones I had for 23 years as a full-time journalist, most of them as a reporter on religion for a secular newspaper. I wanted to explode myths * not make or magnify them. I wanted to help eradicate stereotypes, break down barriers, change personal perceptions. I wanted my students, just as I once wanted my readers, to see Islam as friend not foe, Jordan and Jordanians as American allies in every sense of that term and the Middle East as the vast, complex, incredibly fascinating part of the world that it is. So I was willing to add to an already labor-intensive teaching load, and organize a trip in less than 30 days in the final month of the spring semester.
That meant juggling meetings with the students, determining and outlining course objectives for several independent study projects and answering question-after-question-after-question as plans for the trip ensued. My objectives for our trip were similar to the goals I had had as a reporter for our stories. And this time, I felt a little like an ancient Greek heroine. Our journey became an eight-day Jordanian odyssey that took us from the hubbub of Amman to the heights of Mount Nebo where Moses finally stopped after his arduous Exodus in the Old Testament and looked out upon the Promised Land.
We'd danced in a bar called The Cave in the little town near the rose-red rocks of Petra, the ancient city literally carved from rock by the Nabateans several centuries before Christ. We'd mimicked Bedouins, crowded around a campfire under the incredibly bright stars visible in the night sky n the desert spaces of Wadi Rum. We’d climbed an enormous sand dune, ridden camels and horses, dipped our feet in the Jordan River and covered ourselves in mud from the Dead Sea.
Launch Party for Book
Tuesday, April 25, 6-7:30 p.m
Stirling Room, Trinity Cathedral Columbia, S.C.
Book Signing
Saturday, May 20 1-3 p.m.
Happy Bookseller, Forest Drive, Columbia, S.C.
It will be six weeks or more before my book is officially published. But already I'm trying to learn the ropes of being an author. For a journalist -- used to being the interviewer, not the subject, this is a big change. All of a sudden, I have to learn how to market myself -- or, at least, my work. So I watched the pros -- authors already published by Harbor House, my publisher, work the crowd the last weekend in February during the S.C. Book Festival.
In retrospect, I realize this was my first real panic attack. I'd survived a student canceling two days before we left Columbia for Jordan. Weathered another getting ill (and canceling) the day we were scheduled to depart. Found a doctor in Jordan to tend to another who was so sick to her stomach that she was doubled over in pain. And I'd made it through assorted questions in the weeks before we left * and the week while we were in Jordan. (When you're group leader, you're supposed to know EVERYTHING.) So I'd spoken often as an authority on what to wear, what to say, how to act * even "Do I have to eat this?" at a meal more suited to Jordanian palates than Southeastern American taste buds.
It had been a good trip, but I was ready to go home. And furious when five of six students were not on hand 20 minutes before our international flight was scheduled to depart from Amman for New York. The students did finally show up. So did my colleague, Scott Farrand, who doggedly helped search for them when I got so worried. When I ranted over their tardiness, the young women to whom I’d grown so attached responded with confusion, courtesy and apologies. They hung their heads, slipped quietly into their seats and slipped over to my row to say how sorry they were. Typically, the excuse was simple: It was the crack of dawn. They had found a Starbucks in the Amman airport, a favorite hangout in the United States * and a favorite coffee stop for Christine Moore, the consultant to the Jordan Board of Tourism who had helped organize our trip.
The problem? The airline had a new rule: no coffee from the terminal could be brought aboard the plane. While I'd panicked, they'd been sipping. Such is the life of this de facto tour group leader * really a religion editor and journalist-turned-college professor. My first trip to Jordan in 2005 with my husband, Jace Holloman, a freelance photographer, had been just as busy as the one this spring, but I'd had a little less responsibility. Last year, all I had to do was be wife and reporter. This time my Type A personality struggled not to lapse (read ZOOM) into overdrive. I wanted to lead this trip, open my students' consciousness to a new people, a different faith and a gracious, welcoming culture in what Americans view as a really dangerous part of the world. It was far too easy to worry too much and forget why I was group leader and why I’d jumped through so many hoops to organize the Student Journalist Study Trip to Jordan for the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
My goals were really close to ones I had for 23 years as a full-time journalist, most of them as a reporter on religion for a secular newspaper. I wanted to explode myths * not make or magnify them. I wanted to help eradicate stereotypes, break down barriers, change personal perceptions. I wanted my students, just as I once wanted my readers, to see Islam as friend not foe, Jordan and Jordanians as American allies in every sense of that term and the Middle East as the vast, complex, incredibly fascinating part of the world that it is. So I was willing to add to an already labor-intensive teaching load, and organize a trip in less than 30 days in the final month of the spring semester.
That meant juggling meetings with the students, determining and outlining course objectives for several independent study projects and answering question-after-question-after-question as plans for the trip ensued. My objectives for our trip were similar to the goals I had had as a reporter for our stories. And this time, I felt a little like an ancient Greek heroine. Our journey became an eight-day Jordanian odyssey that took us from the hubbub of Amman to the heights of Mount Nebo where Moses finally stopped after his arduous Exodus in the Old Testament and looked out upon the Promised Land.
We'd danced in a bar called The Cave in the little town near the rose-red rocks of Petra, the ancient city literally carved from rock by the Nabateans several centuries before Christ. We'd mimicked Bedouins, crowded around a campfire under the incredibly bright stars visible in the night sky n the desert spaces of Wadi Rum. We’d climbed an enormous sand dune, ridden camels and horses, dipped our feet in the Jordan River and covered ourselves in mud from the Dead Sea.
Launch Party for Book
Tuesday, April 25, 6-7:30 p.m
Stirling Room, Trinity Cathedral Columbia, S.C.
Book Signing
Saturday, May 20 1-3 p.m.
Happy Bookseller, Forest Drive, Columbia, S.C.
It will be six weeks or more before my book is officially published. But already I'm trying to learn the ropes of being an author. For a journalist -- used to being the interviewer, not the subject, this is a big change. All of a sudden, I have to learn how to market myself -- or, at least, my work. So I watched the pros -- authors already published by Harbor House, my publisher, work the crowd the last weekend in February during the S.C. Book Festival.
Labels: Travels...
Launch Party for Book Tuesday, April 25, 6-7:30 p.m Stirling Room, Trinity Cathedral Columbia, S.C.
