view from Leweibdeh neighborhood

pic above of my school, SIT, which is in a fancy residential area next to the British and Venezuelan embassies.

Well the first week is coming to an end… already. So much has happened and I have been occupied every minute of every day, so much that I haven’t had much time to keep up with the blogging. But, to start this simply, I have been having a great time. There are so many different layers of my excitement to the new things I encounter that span from driving through a new and interesting neighborhood, to getting excited about starting the Jordanian dialect classes so I can more confidently interact with taxi drivers, my host family, etc. Speaking of my host family, I met them today!

The day started early because I had to shove all of my clothes and random trinkets I had fished out of my overly stuffed bags back in the stuffed bags, shower, and eat breakfast by 8:15. After all of that we were bussed over to the SIT building (my school until December), had a health orientation which was pretty silly and explained things that anyone who is over the age of ten would probably know, and then we took our Arabic language placement exam. Classes officially start on Sunday (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday since Friday is the Muslim day that is equivalent to Sunday for Christians) so we had to take the exams in order for the teachers to separate us into classes with other students around our same level of Arabic. There are five different levels that we can test into, which is really great for only 23 students because that means there will be about 5 students per class!! Last term at UO my class only had something like 8 students and I absolutely loved having a smaller class for learning Arabic.

After the language tests we ate lunch and basically waited around for our host families to pick us up. Everyone was really nervous, including me. It felt like we were being sent off to summer camp away from all things familiar for the first time or something. I don’t know why I keep explaining it in that way but it was this strange type of anxiety that I haven’t felt since I was a lot younger ha ha. My host father arrived with another host father and took me and another student back to our homes that are relatively close to each other. Soon after they picked us up all of my anxiety disappeared because the two men were pretty funny. Both of their families are Christian, which is about a 4% minority in all of Jordan, and they don’t seem too religious. Muaad, my host father, was explaining to me that a part of the family name, Al-qsoos, is the plural of saints in Arabic when George (the other host father) loudly interrupted him to explain that Muuad hadn’t stepped inside a church since his marriage day. Side Note: A woman I met later in the evening named Tala blatantly told me that in Jordan everyone has a religion even if they are not particularly religious, it is just strange to claim that you don’t have a religion here like many people do in the US. So no matter what religion one claims to adhere to there are many varying degrees of what exactly that means, whether Christian or Muslim.

I arrived at the house to be greeted by my three host sisters who are 16 and twins that are 14! They kissed me on both cheeks and then invited me in to show me around the house. It is a small flat on the ground floor of a tall building and is situated at the end of a street with no traffic, which is amazing considering the chaotic nature of Amman. After my host mother arrived home from her job at a bank we ate a casual but huge dinner. I felt as comfortable as possible given the circumstances and was pretty glad that I got such a welcoming and warm family. Later in the evening they invited me to join them to another family member’s house where an uncle and some cousins live next door to their somehow related friend named George who was hosting the other student Nick from SIT. We sat in their living room until about midnight being fed snacks like an assortment of really salty nuts, delicious tea with fresh mint from their garden, and way too many sweets that were all similar to Baklava in their texture but had different fillings and toppings. The uncle has three daughters, one of whom was home and I had a really long and interesting conversation with that I was happy about. Tala is 24 and got a B.S. in Engineering from some small technical school in Jordan, but she also spent a year abroad in the U.S. at a huge university in Illinois. She offered to take me on multiple day trips around Jordan, including some areas in Northwestern Jordan where there is actually a pine tree forest and it is the site of some significant biblical history. I plan on taking her up on any and all of her offers. I’m pretty excited about this.

A lot of the night was spent on my part listening to the rest of the group talk furiously and often hysterically in Arabic which was fun to try to follow and at least get the gist of what the conversation was about. Occasionally Tala would try to translate some of the funny stories that were being told by Muuad, apparently he is a great story teller. At one point Suwwar, one of the twins, starting repeating some cheer about falafels and going to the Balad (downtown) and I put it together that her and the uncle were trying to convince the family to make a late night munchie trip. The Uncle accused Muuad of not being a true Jordanian if he didn’t want Falafels of all hours the day. I thought that was pretty hilarious.

I can tell my family is really close with their other family members and friends in Amman I’m positive there will be many, many more evenings like tonight.