16 May 2012

The day’s not over yet. We are going over to have dinner in Libby and Kate’s apartment later. Pretty excited about that. Right now we just have some downtime after class. I should be studying, but… it turns out that Arabic is a bit tiring. It’s better even than yesterday. I can’t remember if I said it before (I think that I did), but our teacher speaks entirely in Arabic. Yesterday and the day before were a bit overwhelming, and even today I felt an improvement. Arabic works on a root system of words meaning that words have three letter “roots” in them that tell you the general meaning of the word. It groups them together. Like… aktab= I write, mktabah=library, kitaab= book. Their root is k-t-b.

Long story short is that when she’s speaking, it’s becoming easier to hear the roots when she talks and infer the meaning. That and the context. So it’s pretty cool.

We all started researching for our project for Maisel’s class. Mine is on street sayings, jokes, and proverbs in Jordan. It’s a bit intimidating. I think that Maisel overestimates my Arabic skills. We have to use Arabic sources and present in mostly Arabic. We also have to bring something in to represent our topic, but that has nothing to do with a language concern. I did use a search engine at the library today (in Arabic!), and found a few possible sources, so we’ll see how this goes. I have about two weeks… We’ll see what I can do.

Walking back from class today through the university, though, was really funny. It turns out that Arabic guys are completely shameless. Along the ledge next to the walkway, there were so many groups of guys and they all were just staring at us entirely unabashed. One time I accidentally caught one of the guy’s eyes and he blew me a kiss. Then a group of eight guys or so serenaded us with the Barney song. One even had a guitar. Everyone shouts welcome. Usually it’s not quite so bad, but it’s still extremely amusing. Someone actually hung out the window to look at us walking up the hill back to our apartment. Usually there are just stares and over friendly “Welcomes” from time to time. Sometimes an attempted conversation.

It’s really strange being such a minority. There are not really any other skin tones or cultures at play here. It’s Arabic or at least Western Asian/Middle Eastern. Walking through campus, you can’t help to feel extraordinarily American. There’s no real way to blend in at all. Everyone knows. At the university, everyone usually clumps in groups of no larger than two or three (except sometimes to stop and talk). We on the other hand clump in rather large groups. We do all get along pretty well, though, so it almost makes the difference alright.

But I’ll leave you with that. I’m sitting around hanging out with my roommates, and I should probably start taking a more active role in the conversation. Now the topic has switched to the restaurant “Lebnani Snack.” It has the best smoothies ever. The food’s pretty good too. Someone doesn’t agree. Time to defend some honor! But take care, you guys!