Whoah this week went fast

This week marks the exact halfway mark for my travels abroad.

Many, many, many things have happened in the past few days. I looked at the date of my last blog post and was shocked to see it was almost a WEEK ago!! Wow.

Here's the latest with Hibba's stalker - he's in the hospital in Malt, because he loves her so much she's made him totally sick. And "Inti illi wa BAS!" has become a family joke. (you belong to ONLY ME! - one of his weird text message). He called her over fifty times the day before yesterday, but yesterday he suddenly stopped. What a creep.

I'm making some really great friends in the International club. Jihad is an Arab-Israeli (the word for that in Arabic is arab-tamanya-we-arba'aeen), Wadat is the president of the international student club, she's Algerian, not Moroccan...we speak French together. And of course, there's Malik, probably my best friend here besides my Arab sisters.

Malik taught me how to play backgammon. Writing that sentence in English...it seems juvenile. Let me tell you though, backgammon is really fun. He has a really hard time pronouncing "Massachusetts". I have a really hard time pronouncing the Arabic word for "foam" - rghwa. He quizzes me on my leaders of Middle Eastern Countries. I think he'd kick my trash in the capitals game, although probably not if it included capitals of the United States.

Malik and I talk about interesting stuff. Like his opinions on the summit that is going on right now with the Arab league, which is extremely corrupt - why Syrian Economics are screwed up, why Americans have such a negative concept of Arabs, our various states of coming in and out of culture shock (remember, even though he lives about an hour away, he's from a completely different country, and Bashar Assad is a totally different kind of leader from King Abdullah II).

My Arabic! I sometimes get frustrated, but its kind of pointless to sit around lamenting the fact that I can't speak as well as I'd like to yet. So instead, I just speak - and end up doing okay. I would say I have more than doubled my vocabulary in the past month. I sometimes go for days without speaking any English, which is fun.

Last night, we went to the airport to welcome a group of French students coming from the University of Marseilles for a cultural-exchange program with Yarmouk. I had so much fun. The French students were SO cool. I love being able to speak French.

I'm looking forward to hanging out with them more.

MAKING FRIENDS, FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

General Conference here...is gonna be interesting.

Being an International Student

So far, probably my favorite part about being an International Student at Yarmouk is Ayhem's office. It's the meeting point for us International Students. When I first got here, I didn't really think about how other Arab students also experience sodoma thokofia (culture shock), homesickness, and problems with Visas, transportation etc.

All of my non-church/non-Hammouri friends I met through the International Student Office. Adam - American friend from Tallahassee
Falata - Nigerian friend who lived in Saudi for many years before coming to Jordan
Malik - Syrian friend, probably my closest guy friend here besides Tamr. He's extremely smart, loves politics, and is comfortable to be around
The Moroccan grad student in charge of the Internional Student Club. We speak French together. She's majoring in International Relations.
And apart from them, there is always a host of people coming in and out of this office - the Egyptian girl who smokes (the only young Arab female that I have seen here who smokes; it's normal amongst older Arab women but not normal for a young Arab girl), the guy from the Bahrain who is always sleepy, the Jordanian-Jordanian-goh (pure) faculty members that come in this office just to say hi and drink some coffee or tea...

Right now I am typing this from Ayhem's computer. He is the only person in the entire University who has any kind of responsibility towards International Students. I think of BYU and it's just incomparable. How to describe this place...think, crappy administration, FIVE STAR WORLD CLASS hospitality.

Actually, this is a fairly accurate model of the differences between West and Middle East, in almost all sectors.