25 May 2012

This week has pretty much been full of studying and the like. It’s been pretty successful. I feel like I’m really learning a lot. Verbs. Verbs. Verbs. Quite a bit of them. Words, too, though, in general. I think the highlight of the week was “adventure.” We receive our vocab words from conversations that we have in class, and that’s what we ended up talking about. This weekend is going to be quite a bit of an adventure. I can’t say much now, but be prepared. 

Like I was saying earlier, this week hasn’t been too terribly exciting. Not truly blog worthy (It’s mostly been things that I’ve already said or involve school). I have been offered so much tea/coffee, though. Particularly in shops. It’s been pretty cool. Just waiting for a friend of mine to try on shirts that she could wear to the mosque (long sleeves!), the shop owner went and got us coffee. Having a conversation with him in Arabish was really fun.

Also, bananas and watermelons are in season and so freaking delicious.

Today, though, a bit more happened. We started off in class talking about random things leading to a conversation about run-ins with the police. Jenna and I went to the library afterward to find sources for our projects. Maisel wants us to find to Arabic sources. So that was pretty interesting: navigating the catalog and communicating with the people at the desk. The system is a little complicated (which is why Maisel wanted us to go through it) so I won’t try to explain it here. After awkwardly communicating with the desk people and having the one man help us find the books, we walked around trying to find a place to write. But as a very general rule, Jordanians are particularly helpful people. Thus, seeing two American girls looking a tad lost in the library led to this two to try to help us. Unfortunately, they  also didn’t speak English. We just wanted to sit down at the table, but they kept trying to move us elsewhere. Then the found someone who knew a bit more English who was incredibly nice. There was still quite a bit of confusion, but eventually Jenna and I just gave up and ended up walking to an aisle and sitting on the floor to take notes.

Then this afternoon we went to another mosque. Unlike the first, we (the women) were able to go into the main prayer hall. It was really neat. To go into the mosque we had to wear abayas, too, and that was kind of cool. After a few more stops (the Coptic church next door, an art gallery), we stopped at a place called Wild Jordan (which is the headquarter for a conservationist organization). It wasn’t quite what we expected and seemed to be just an information center with a gift shop and a restaurant.  It had such a pretty view, though. It was on the neighboring mountain/hill to the citadel we went to a week ago. The city just stretches on forever and the citadel just sits on the hill. Down below offered something interesting as well. We saw a group of people speaking in what I presume to be Arabic sign language, which I thought was really cool.

Then we walked through one of the main neighborhoods in Amman, through the set-up of a market that starts tomorrow (It’s only on Fridays). It was such a beautiful part of town.

Then we were serenaded as we ate dinner (which is where we were walking to, through the city). People played the violin and he switched with a man playing the saxophone. They would play at us and everything. They kind of made me a laugh a little bit. J

But khalas. That’s enough for now. Early day tomorrow as we head off to our little adventure. See you on the other side.