15 May 2012

It was another successful day today. No one has died yet, for those of you that were concerned. :P I spent most of my day studying or in class, and I think that this is probably going to be a typical weekday. That’s not to say that there wasn’t some downtime. Between classes we had about an hour and a half for lunch. It turns out that that the university has ridiculously cheap food that’s pretty darn good. I had very tasty shwarma and “bibsii” (pepsi) for less than a dinar (about a dollar). I think we’ll be going here quite frequently. I had a falafel yesterday, who knows what’ll come next.

That only too up so much time, though. After that we decided to go exploring. We had heard a lot about some place on campus called the Milk Bar, and so because of our curiosity (and someone in our group’s craving for ice cream and our assumption of dairy products), we set out to look for it. We asked a few groups of girls, all very helpful, but eventually one girl offered to walk us there. As a side note, the people that I’ve met in Jordan are extremely nice. This isn’t terribly novel, but still extremely sweet. She was extraordinarily nice. Anyways, we were walking and we started to notice that we were walking back the way we had come from after a little detour on our adventure. It turns out that the “Milk” Bar has absolutely nothing to do with milk, but instead is the cafeteria that we have been eating at.  

Tonight we went to a traditional restaurant where we had absolutely delicious food. There was mansf, chicken and rice, tabouli, fatoush, kebabs, humus, and roasted vegetables. There was so much of it. We could barely come close to eating it all. I guess that all of the cats will be happy.  

We’ve been learning so much today. So many new vocabulary words, both from Professor Maisel (from GVSU) and our professor from the university, Noor. Maisel set out to ask people for directions to different places on campus. It went pretty well, but pronunciation can be kind of a pain… Go figure, right? Noor’s class went pretty well, too. She spoke almost entirely in Arabic (95%), and so sometimes it was a little difficult to keep up. We got through it, though, and I feel like we accomplished quite a bit. I can’t believe how patient Noor is. You would think that the repeated blank looks would be discouraging, but it seems to work for her. We all work together. Although directions for exercises are a bit unclear. That’s probably a pretty good trade-off, though, considering.

It’s getting late, though, and Jenna is already asleep. Time to finally turn the lights out. I hope that all is well.  :)