Random

First, I cannot believe this wasn’t in the Dubai post. I forgot my passport, or rather thought of it, then thought I grabbed it but didn’t, on our way to Dubai. I realized when our bus from Irbid was about five minutes from Amman and there was no going back. After scrambling to find a phone charger and phone numbers, we, (or really Mike), arranged for the hotel to give my passport to Nabil, the same Nabil who brought us home, and have him speed it to Amman. He got there seconds too late. The man at the check-in desk was going to have someone taxi me out to the plane, even though it was about to take off, but some lady and her child came up and she was yelling and crying in Arabic and a fiasco ensued and I missed the flight. He felt bad and switched my flight for free, and I arrived three hours after the others. Being in the airport alone for three hours was boring, and a little creepy. It’s a nice airport, but I counted only four other women there in the first two hours, and they were with their husbands. Everyone stares at American girls all the time, but usually Brianna is there and we distract each other. As I sat in different spots, and was surrounded each time, I began to feel very uncomfortable, and I called Jimmy from a payphone. It was about 5AM his time, so I left a message. Everything was fine and I ended up sitting by my gate and finally meeting a group of American students studying in Syria, but the interesting thing is Jimmy never got the voicemail, even though the call went through and I definitely got a confirmation message at the end. His theory: “You’re studying Arabic, you know Farsi, you’re calling from an airport in a Middle Eastern country, traveling by plane to another Middle Eastern country, calling someone from Afghanistan, currently in the U.S….seems suspicious, I’m not surprised I didn’t get the message.” Maybe this is why he and my dad get along.
Anyway, we took our midterm yesterday and now we’re essentially done with level one of Arabic! It doesn’t feel like we’re already halfway through the program, but we have learned a lot. We study for hours here. Much more than at home. The program is intense and we’re moving fast, but I’m really excited about it. It’s so crazy to me that you can learn a language, at least learn how to read, write and get by with it, in only 6 weeks. This program is making me want to study Persian more next semester too. If I studied as much at home as I do here I would be practically fluent by now. Learning languages is really fun and fairly easy for me. Something about it makes sense, which is probably why I’m terrible with math or science…you can’t have everything I guess. This week was not too eventful, just school and studying and running errands. There is some drama among the group, which is not worth going into, but I feel like I’m in middle school when certain people leave for class early just so Brianna and I can’t sit next to each other, (and that’s a miniscule example). It’s ridiculous how immature some 24-year-olds can be. Our shower is finally fixed! That’s the good news. And even though Irbid is wearing on us, I think its small charms will hold for three more weeks…then Egypt, Greece and Turkey!
Last night to celebrate being done with the exam, a group of people went to a traditional Yemeni restaurant for dinner. You sit on rugs and they bring sweet tea and huge rounds of the best bread I’ve ever had in my life, and everyone orders a bowl of food, (spicy chicken, an egg dish, a bean dish, veal…all delicious and hard to describe), and digs in with their hands and the bread. It was a lot of fun and different than anything we’ve had here so far.