Jordanian Bureaucracy

I was told before I came that I had to bring my original diploma to have it certified by AMIDEAST and the Ministry of Education in order to be officially hired by the Ahliyyah School for Girls. So I had my transcripts sent, brought my original diploma and paid an insane amount, $120, to have this all certified. When I went to Amideast a month ago with Melissa to get our diploma's and transcripts certified you can imagine how surprised I was when she told me that they stamp your original diploma. What?! Why not just make a copy of it and stamp that? Doesn't seem to difficult.....but then again it is Jordan. At least the process was relatively smooth and I didn't have to make 20 trips to various offices using 'international sign language' to explain myself.

Today I picked up my diploma and transcripst from Amideast and sure enough my diploma has three stamps on the back. And they are clearly visible even with something behind the diploma. So I guess I'm going to have to order a new diploma to get framed. Lets see....I graduated two and a half years ago and still haven't framed it....so maybe in a couple years I'll actually get around to getting a new one....

Gretchen arrived from the States 2 days ago and it's good to have here here, especially because I had the apartment to myself for the past few days as Sine went back to Denmark and Nadia is in Palestine for three weeks. Having 2 cats of her own in the US, Gretchen is our designated cat expert. I guess it's not good to have the kitten smoke hookah and feed her cheeseburgers after all.....so I'm going to stick with giving here a lot of lebnah; the cat might actually like it more than I do which is hard to believe.