Week Two: Still lovin' it

I realize that I'm writing about my second week here a few days late, but I'm going to try to be better about posting in a timely manner ;)

So, week two is come and gone. It was the first full week of classes, and I have to say it is kind of odd, dreading Sunday instead of Monday (because our school week starts on Sunday). It can really mess with your head. For example, I have a speaking appointment on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th days of the school week. You'd think that means Mon, Wed, Fri, I know that is how I think of it in my head, and what I start to say, but then  Iremember that we don't have school on Fridays, so it really is Sun, Tues, Thurs. Plus, now various acronyms are absolete. TGIF (thank goodness it's friday) is now TGIT (thank goodness it's Thursday), Wednesday is no longer "hump day". Oh, and one of the things that messes with my head the most? Looking at my computer and it says the date, then getting on facebook and seeing everyone else's time-stamp say it's a day earlier. The whole time difference thing, really bites. My various family members live in Central standard Time, Mountain standard time, and Pacific standard time....that would make them 8, 9, or 10 hours behind. Essentially, when I call them in the morning, it's late-afternoon or early evening for them, or if I call them later in the day it's super early for them.....it is annoying, but I am lucky that I am able to call them at all. 

I knew that I was going to miss my family (and like 4 people have their birthdays while I'm gone and I'd have to call them for their birthday anyway), so I got this special membership on skype, so that I can call from my computer to any computer or phone, without all the extra costs (I only pay about $6.50 a month). So it is a great thing that I am taking advantage of.

Anyway, about classes, yeah they're hard, somewhat overwhelming, time consuming, at times they're depressing....but I knew that going in, and for some reason I still enjoy them....but you can only do homework for so long before you lose it :)

A majority of my homework is translating news articles, and most of the articles have at least one mention of death/people dying. Lately, most of the articles talk about Syria and trying to accommodate 180,000 -ish Syrian refugees in Jordan, and the issues that come with that. 

But, my professor Dil, does have a sense of humor. He is the one that picks the articles we read, and one of the ones we read yesterday was about a body that was found in a burning car in Dhahiat al-Rasheed. Now, I know that doesn't seem so funny, but here's the funny part: Dhahiat al-Rasheed is the name of the neighborhood where we (the students) all live. He had originally picked a different article for us to read, but went to one of the TAs and told him "Have them read this article instead, they'll love it" and had a big grin on his face.Yup, that's a very Dil thing to do, he has a rather twisted sense of humor. 

Oh, another Dil-ism from last week: Al-Jazeera is the main Arab news station, and some of the articles we have to read are on their website, well, Pro-Syrian activists hacked the Al-Jazeera website, so it showed a screen with a Syrian flag and a message to Al-Jazeera. essentially the message said that they didn't approve of what Al-Jazeera was saying about the situation in Syria (Al-Jazeera supports the rebels, whom the hackers consider to be militant groups of people spreading lies) and that they hacked Al-Jazeera in response. So, that night, we couldn't access the website to get the article we needed (until Dil sent it out in an email), and the next day in class, Dil writes what the hackers had posted on the board and we translate it in class. We get partway through, when Dil says "That is a grammatical error". Part of the reason it was so funny is that of all the things he could've said, Dil commented on the grammatical accuracy, also, he said it in a dead pan voice, as if it was part of the translation. 

Aside from homework, I now have 3 different appointments that I go to. I have a speaking presentation 3 days a week. I prepare a 3-5 minute presentation on a topic and give it to a professor while recording it. We listen to it, with the Professor stopping it to correct mistakes, then you re-record it (in theory with all the mistakes fixed).  Then I also have a speaking appointment (also 3 days a week, but the presentation is at 8:15am and the appointment is from 2-3pm), where I speak with an assigned person for an hour. Last week I had a different person each time (you're supposed to be with the same person every time), and sometimes it went well, and sometimes it was just plain awkward; I'd try to ask questions to keep the conversation going, but the person would give one sentence answers and essentially end that line of thought. Then I also have two writing appointments, where I write 1/2-1 page on a topic and I give it to an assigned professor, who then reads it, corrects it, and goes over the mistakes with me. Of the three, the writing is the least painful. It takes a little longer to prepare for, but I've noticed (at least with my presentation) that the longer I try to prepare for something speaking related the worse I do. Anyways, these appointments are good for me, but they are time consuming and just drain me, so that by the afternoon, I'm ready for a nap. 

My classes are fun. Every week we have a "theme" and then each day we focus on a different aspect of the theme. Last week, the theme was "Window into the Arab world" and eaach day we focused on a different region/country. There are 8 students in my class, so we all have a chance to talk, and we all end up getting to know each other pretty well. My professor, Ustaaza Zainab (Ustaaza means female professor), is awesome. She is young, and lively, and she just "gets" us. She understands/appreciates our humor and is super relaxed with us. The first day one of the comments she made was "american football? That's not football, that's handball....and sometimes they kick" Later she said "American football....men weraring tights chasing after each other".  Then, later in class, she did/said something (I can't remember what exactly) but she said "Damn, I'm good." It just caught us all off guard, to hear a (woman) professor talk like that. The next day, we all were being quiet, and she said "Are you guessing? Do I need to punch one of them? *gestures at where the guys in class are sitting*... because I don't punch women."  I think the main reason we like her is that she is so different from most Arab women. She is muslim and wears the hijab, but she is more open, outspoken, and opinionated. In some ways she acts more Western. 

Alright, so, the school week is hard, and we all find ourselves longing for the weekend. Last Thursday, in celebration of our completion of our first full week of school, some of us went to this place called the Taj Mall (NOT the Taj Mahal) and found this wonderful cafe...... 

Yes, there actually is a Nestle TollHouse Cafe, and yes, we did go get cookies there. 

We also had a Sunday er, I mean Friday night dinner with most of the people on the Study Abroad program (Dil and his wife even came and joined us). It was a giant potluck, and we fit everyone into my apartment, and we actually had room for more. 

There are some married couples here and 3 of them have kids. One of the couples came and brought their 8wk old daughter, Nadya. She is super adorable, and probably the favorite of the babies (mainly because we can hold her; the other two 'babies' are 13 and 11 months old). Nadya has a full head of hair that sticks up no matter what her parents do. She also has big eyes, and we all came to the consensus that she looks like the Troll dolls we used to play with. 

Guess who I found? 

Saturday's are still our "free" day. This last Saturday we went to the Amman Citadel and Roman Ampitheater. It was a lot of fun. The Citadel is a large area that is comprised of several different ruins. There are the ruins of the Temple of Hercules, some Roman pillars, an Umayyad palace, the remnants of an Ammonite settlement, and the hill the Citadel is on is the hill where the arrows that killed Uriah (in the Old Testament) were fired from. 

The Ampitheater was really cool. The acoustics are amazing. When standing in the middle of the floor, you can literally hear everything. It sounds as if there is a megaphone in your ear. Also, there are certain parts of the wall that, if you speak at one you can hear it at one of the others that are 50 ft further down the wall. We had a huge game of telephone, and that was awesome. 

Well, it's getting late, and I have to get up early, so I'll post more later.

Love, always

Chels