Video tour of my apartment in Jordan

Pictures take forever so just check facebook

Had our first test and it was pretty damn difficult, but not impossible I guess. My time is nearly entirely consumed by homework but this weekend we visited some ancient sites like Um Qais, the Aljoun Castle, and Jerash. Lots of Roman ruins which were fun to climb around on and explore.

Some other interesting things about Jordan: people are absurdly, borderline uncomfortably friendly. Me and two of my friends were eating dinner tonight, came up to us, asked if we spoke English, then promptly invited the guy in our group to visit his village and asked to be his friend. All before asking his name! Our friend Mohammad routinely gets asked for his number and invited to dinner by other guys. People will offer you free rides and invite you to coffee because you're American. At the ruins yesterday a girl asked us if we would take a picture with her...just because.

In my free time, I've been hanging out with people in the program and watching TV either in Arabic or with Arabic subtitles. I've gotten super into CSI NY and ER, let me tell ya.

Classes and Amman

Fun fact: Arabic is really hard to learn in such a short and condensed amount of time.

Our classes are very difficult and it's kind of rough because there are definitely people in our class that are ahead of us in regard to how much we learned. For example, my friend Kevin from Princeton knows a lot more than I do, yet he is in my class. At the same time, I think I'm in better shape than a few other people in my class, so I guess it works out.

This weekend we went to Amman, the capital of Jordan. It is more Westernized than most of Jordan and it shows. It sort of reminded me of a Chinatown of New York only with Middle Eastern people. We saw the Citadel which were some ancient ruins and whatnot. Saw a mosque or two as well. I finally bought my kuffiyeh which I'm pretty happy about, especially because I lied and haggled in Arabic and got it for a dinar ($1.4) less than what it was originally. Noice.

We also went out and experienced the Amman nightlife, but if you want to hear those stories, you're going to have to ask me personally via skype/AIM/facebook/email/whatever. I will say that the night did end with my friend Peter and I making some Jordanian fruit selling guys that gave us free oranges and bananas. It was fun.

Now it's back to the grind. Oh well.

First FULL day of classes

Ohhhh man.

Our first full day of classes were today, meaning approx. 5 hours worth of classes. They divide our classes up so it's not just straight Arabic. I have ammiyah (our dialect class) every day for a little over 2 weeks, then we don't have to take that and it's only 4 hours a day. I also have conversation, grammar, reading, listening, and writing classes, although we don't have writing until tomorrow.

Ammiyah was really fun, reading is pretty decent, grammar was GREAT (I know right), conversation was awesome (although I'm sure I'll be terrified of it in the future), and listening was THE DEVIL. Seriously we watched this video over and over again and I still could not understand a word. But we all struggled with it so I guess it's okay. Other than that, classes were awesome. All in Arabic but I was able to understand most of it. They're challenging but in a great way. The professors are extremely enthusiastic and very helpful. It's great so far.

Not so great would be the homework...I spent 5 hours on it and am still not fully done. Grrrr.

We're trying to plan our Amman trip for this weekend. I'm pretty pumped to go to a club in Jordan haha

Nothing too interesting

Just hanging out in the Language Center's computer lab. We just had our oral interviews, but a few more people still have to go so we're just killing time. Mine was pretty comical, considering my Arabic is really rusty and I accidentally said I ate the city of Irbid this morning. But we all laughed and the professors are super friendly, energetic, and helpful. Tomorrow we have our written placement test which will probably be much less embarrassing.

We're all starting to get to know the city better which is great. A few of us went to a hookah bar last night and man, I have to improve my smoking skills. One of my goals (yes, there's a list) is to learn how to make smoke rings. Other goals include buying a keffiyeh, getting invited to a Jordanian wedding, making a legit Jordanian friend, and traveling to at least one or more of the following places: Syria, Israel, the West Bank, and/or Lebanon. It'll happen.

In case any of you read this, I'll be on skype at around 2pm EST, so chat with me. :) heather.giuffre

Okay? Okay.

Traveling and the first day

I wrote this last night obviously:

6/11/09 11:53pm Jordan time; 4:52pm EST

WARNING SUPER LONG ENTRY AHEAD

The past 24 (or 26, really) hours have been completely absurd, unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I don’t have internet access in my room, but I’m typing this up now to add to my blog later. Yeah.

We all met at the Ramada Hotel right near JFK Airport for our orientation. I got to meet a few people before orientation started and off the bat everyone was really nice. Some are nerdier than others but everyone is obviously very intelligent, motivated and, so far at least, pleasant to be around. I connected to some more than others, but again, there’s no one that stands out in a negative way.

Orientation was relatively pointless and way too long, especially because we had been mailed a giant 115pg orientation manual that all of us read beforehand. We got a pretty good Indian dinner from the hotel, though.

After orientating for a while we headed to JFK, where we were stuck waiting for WAY too long for our luggage to get checked. Eventually we got through that, then waited on the chaotic line that was security. Lots of Arabic was thrown around already; we were the only people of non-Middle Eastern descent (other than the few Arabs in our group) in the terminal.

Finally we boarded the plane and headed off. We got in flight meals which I’ve never experienced before. I also got to bond with the girl, Lilly, that was sitting next to me, and watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop with Arabic subtitles. Sort of slept, sort of didn’t. There were TONS and I mean TONS of young children on our flight, many of whom obviously did not enjoy the trip and cried at various points. At about 4am EST one child even began SCREAMING non-stop for at least 15 minutes. I don’t know if this is an Arab stereotype or not, but I noticed that a lot of children ran somewhat wild and were not really tended to like you’d see an American parent when a child was crying. Like an American parent will get embarrassed when their child acts up in public, while many Arab parents I noticed chose to ignore it. Just an observation.

For as long as the flight was though, it could’ve been worse. Getting through customs and getting our baggage was DEFINITELY worse. Clusterfuck is the only word I could use to describe it, and that doesn’t even describe how bad it was. People blatantly cut lines and luckily the New York in me kicked in and I was able to get myself and a friend through before another family cut us off. But yeah. It blew. And two people, including my roommate (her name is Stephanie, she’s from UVA and is cool and the only other girl in Lower Intermediate) got some of their bags lost. I think they’ll be returned tomorrow though.

From there we took a bus to a supermarket, where Steph and I bought some food/water for tomorrow. Paying in Jordanian currency was an adventure, but even with a shitty exchange rate, I got a 6 pack of HUGE water bottles, pita bread, 2 green apples (they were the most expensive thing, go figure), a tub of hummus, and a coke for about $6.

Back on the bus to Irbid. Made it to our apartments. Me and Steph’s is on the 3^rd floor which was a huge pain with luggage but isn’t that big of a deal. I’ll post pictures of it soon.

That’s all for now! Just letting you all know I’m safe and very excited for my future in Jordan.

Right now:

Just ate. So full. Kinda tired. Probably because I didn't sleep last night. Thursday nights are big here and the city was loud and the birds were REALLY LOUD but no worries. Internet costs money wtf.