Hash House Harriers (and why I may never walk normally again)

Me, Dave, and Ben after the run

I slept like a rock Friday night after such an exciting day in Madaba/the Dead Sea. Around 12:30pm Saturday I found the will power to get out of bed and start my day.  Every week we have a quiz and every quiz covers an entire chapter of material so we have a lot to study in a short amount of time. I prepared as best I could for the new grammar, learned the 60 some new vocab words and went off to school.  As a second year Arabic student we are required to type up of our 300 word ish writing assignments (we have like 3 a week). Since the arabic keyboard is (obviously) different I type almost as slow as Dad.  The theme of this weeks chapter is celebration/parties so I spent a lot of time this week writing about/making up goofy Tully traditions.

Monday night Ben, Dave and I participated in something called a hash run (not to be confused with a trip to go buy hash)…. Here is a link to the wiki article about the group: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers) but to give you an intro, their slogan is “A drinking club with a running problem.”  Ben had done a Hash run while in Syria last summer and said it was great so we gave it a try.  We met at a mall on the other side of town.  Eventually, around 30 ex-pats and locals were congregated and we were ready to ship off to our running location.  I drove with Michelle and Ethan, (two Americans visiting a relative who works in Amman for foreign service.) and a local man (my lack of memory for names getting ridiculous) who was some sort of contractor, in his shiny, leather interiored black BMW.  Once at the starting location, a farm house on the outskirts of town, we were split up into runners and walkers.  I decided to be ambitious and try the run.  In theory, the run was awesome with animals freely roaming and goats on the side of the road and children waving and laughing however by mile 4 I was not quiteee able to appreciate the scenery fully as I literally thought my legs would crumble right under me if I had to run up another hill.  Luckily, the crowd was mostly older men with worse knee problems than my own. At least I wasn’t last.  Besides, walking gave me the opportunity to chat and get to know other hashers. One man who I talked to quite a bit invited me and my friends over to the Bedouin tent he has on his roof. His name was Khalil, and I finally I got a name right (ok, ok fine he gave me his card).  Perhaps next week we’ll take him up on that offer.  6 miles up and down hill later, we arrived back at the house.  There was cold beverage, cake, and a bbq waiting for us. We chatted with the runners/walkers and got to hear everyone’s stories. Our socializing was quickly interrupted by lots of screaming from one man as we got into what is called the “virgin circle.” As tradition goes, anyone on their first hash run (making them a hash virgin) must stand in the circle and be ridiculed by the ‘master’ or whatever his title his.  Luckily, there were 6 newbies last Monday (I guess that’s a lot) and we were sort of off the hook. We had to answer a few not so terribly embarrassing questions, and that was that.  We put the burgers we had brought on the grill (we lost our buns) and got to know our fellow hashers.  Around 10pm a man named... Samir, yeah, that’ll due, drove us all the way back to our hotel.  After an awesome night of seeing Jordan from a new perspective, socializing, running, I passed right out as soon as we got home.

         Although the experience was amazing and I cannot wait to go back again (they meet every Monday!) I am still OUTRAGEOUSLY, terribly, I would probably cry if it was socially acceptable, sore in my quads. 
     It's Thursday now and we are off to Petra and Wadi Rum to ride horses and sleep with Bedouins. 


As a parting gift, I'll teach you a new word: "mishmish" مشمش.  Even the word itself looks cute in Arabic. It means (apparently we were wrong, Eve) Apricot.  However I see it more suitable as a word of endearment as in, "What a cute puppy (more like wild goat, camel, wolf around here), you little مشمش!!"