Well, another week has past. Just after I finished my previous post, I went out to meet up with my friend, Jasmine, at City Mall. I managed to avoid taking a taxi by myself, although I had all my choice phrases prepared just in case. After a couple hours, we took a taxi back to 2nd circle, which is near Jasmine's house, when her mother called and invited me to come for tea and to meet the family. This was at 10:30, on a school night. However, it is considered to be really rude to turn down an invitation, so off I went on my first Arab family visit. We talked for a bit, had tea and cookies, and I got to meet Jasmine's two sisters and her little brother. Babal Hara came on, and they thought it was really funny when I recognized the theme song. I got to practice some of my Arabic, which was a lot of fun. Jasmine and her mother walked me back to Rainbow St. at 11:45, and when we past Jasmine's aunt's house, they asked if I wanted to come visit her aunt with them. This time I had to decline, after all, I had to be up and functioning for school in 7 hours.
Thursday night was a blast - Christina, Emily, our friends Jessey, Jeff, and Zoe from group, and I went to Jafra. Jafra is this little, hidden restaurant that serves traditional Arabic food in the balad. We had all sorts of stuff: hummus with meat, a yogurt w/ thyme thing you put in pita, eggplant hummus, and this salad thing. I say thing, because I really have no clue what it's called... But it was really good.
On Friday, I took a taxi by myself, and didn't die, I was soooo excited! I went to the Meridien to study at Starbucks for a couple hours before heading off to play Ultimate. When we got the field, I found out we were playing some serious savage - 3 vs 2. It was a workout, but it was definitely worth it. After Ultimate, we went to group, which was actually a baby shower for one of the members.
I spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and studying for my test on Monday. I was put in charge of the first review, so I set up Pictionary and Jeopardy, which went very well. One of my classmates put together "Who wants to be an Arab speaker?" for the class before the test, which was amusing. When it came time for the actual test, we were all pretty nervous. I felt pretty confident when I went it, after all, I had really studied for this test. But when it started, the woman who was asking me the questions was impossible to understand, so I'm not sure how I did on that half of the test. The second part was much easier, we had to translate sentences and we were tested on vocabulary. So it was tough, but I think I did ok. Of course, if I failed, I won't tell anyone...
Yesterday was a pretty good day. We started a new lesson on verbs, which has been challenging, to say the least. For starters, we're learning the past-tense first, because the past-tense form of the verb is actually the root word. And we won't be learning present-tense until next semester. Our teachers also decided that they were going to up the amount of work expected to be done in an hour, so we've been trying to follow the lesson at twice the speed. Not so easy. But I'm still enjoying the challenge. After class, I went home to take my afternoon nap, but was too wired, so I watched a movie and studied for a bit before heading off to the bookshop. I had been at the bookshop for about an hour when Emily came up and asked if I wanted to head out to this cool bridge in Abdoun to take some pictures at sunset. I was all for it, so I packed up, and we headed off to Abdoun to shoot the bridge. It was really pretty at sunset, and we'll go back soon to shoot it at night with all the lights on. After our photo session, I went home to study some more and watch ER. I was exhausted from climbing over walls and hiking through dirt piles for my pictures, so I crashed early.
Today should be fun, I'm going to try out for the only choir in Jordan. It's usually only up for holiday concerts, and I'll miss the actual concert, but I still want to sing. So here's to hoping I make the cut...
Coming up: Results from my try-out, and a proper Iraqi lunch with Jasmine's family.
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