Another week gone. The days seem to fly by, but go so slowly at the same time. My weekend has just started, so I'm really happy to have some down time. We have two more class days (Saturday and Monday) before the Eid starts. The Eid is almost a week off, a national holiday, to celebrate the end of Ramadan. It'll be the first time in a month and a half that I'll have have more than one day off in a row. I'm so excited for it! A lot of people take this time to travel and go sightseeing, but a lot of places are closed, or extremely crowded, so I'm not really sure if I'll be going anywhere.
This past week was a busy one. After my last post, I went to choir, and really enjoyed it. The director asked me to try out this week instead, but more about that later. Thursday, I went to Jafra again with the same group of people, and I got to try stuffed grape leaves. They were really strong, and heavy in taste. It's definitely an acquired taste...
Friday was a relatively quiet day. I went to church, and got to meet a bunch of new people. After church, I went to Jasmine's for lunch. Her mom made a dish with rice, boiled eggs, meatballs, potatoes, pine nuts, cranberries, and chicken. I think it's called mansaf, but I'm not sure. Anyways, it was delicious. I ate way more than I thought I could. Apparently Arabs drink yogurt blended with salt and water with lunch - I tried it, but I really did not like it. Maybe with curry, but probably not. After lunch, I chatted with the family for a bit, some in Arabic, but mostly English. I don't know enough Arabic to really talk to people yet. We had tea and baklava, as well as some other traditional Arab sweets, and I left after a couple hours. I spent the evening in, studying and watching a movie. I wasn't able to make small group because of other commitments, but small group pretty much came to me. Jessey, Jeff, Emily, and another couple all came back to our apartment for pizza and to hang out, which was really fun.
Saturday, I got my test results back. Turns out I did pretty well, for all my worrying - I got a 91. I guess all that studying really paid off... The rest of the weekend was quiet, I spent a lot of time studying and took some time for myself. On Sunday night, I went with Emily to another group member's house to watch Sunday Night Football - Carolina vs. the Vikings. I really wanted to watch the Eagles game, but it didn't start until midnight, and I had school in the morning. Definitely reminded me of how much I dislike the huge time difference.
This week has been busy, mostly with school work. The difficulty of the lessons is increasing, which for some reason makes our teachers think it should go faster as well. But it's all good, we're getting better at the patterns and at keeping up. I had dinner with one of my classmates on Tuesday night - we made a spiced lamb bolognese with pasta, salad, and fried goat cheese. It was really tasty, and nice to have a home cooked meal. I don't cook full meals for myself too often, it's time consuming. But it was worth it, I might have to start actually cooking again. Wednesday was choir night, I went early for my try out. I was the first there, so I sang a song and did some scales so she could put me in whatever section she thought was appropriate. And I got in - as an alto, but she's puts me in soprano II when she gets bored, it's kind of amusing.
Today was really good as well. Classes weren't too hard, we were all in a funny mood, so we were cracking jokes in Arabic as often as we could. After class, I headed out to City Mall with a classmate to get a new pair of jeans and some more food. Tonight, I'm having a movie night with some other friends of mine from school, complete with popcorn and whatever unhealthy baked goods we can throw together before nightfall.
Of all the things going on right now, the change in the weather is probably my favorite. Sounds ridiculous, I know. But it's starting to cool down. The evenings are low 70's, which from high 90's, is pretty chilly. And it's dropping fast. We were in the 60's last night, supposed to be in the low 50's tonight, freezing on Friday night, and below freezing by Saturday night. But still in the 80s during the day, of course. Love that desert weather! We're getting clouds during the day, and we're supposed to have the first rain this weekend. I'm really excited! Any excuse to pull out my favorite hoodies and curl up with a cup of hot chocolate...
Coming up: Rain check, freezing nights, warm comforters, hot chocolate, a week off, end of Ramadan celebrations, and perhaps a bus trip to Jeresh. It'll be an interesting week.
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