The Hammouri Family

Well, since I've been here for almost a week now, I suppose I should write a little bit about the people I'm living with.

I am a little bit (understatement) annoyed at how difficult technology is here. It's like...I finally figured out a system that somewhat seems to work; when I have to write a long email, or when I want to write post about something, I write it on my own time on my computer, save it to my flashdrive, and then post it in a matter of minutes (home, it would be seconds...they don't really believe in DSL here). So I wrote a long post about what I did this weekend, and about my family here, and my opinions about blah blah blah, but for some reason when I saved it to my flashdrive, the files got corrupted and I couldn't open them. Or rather, when I opened it with word, my beautiful 4-5 page essay was a bunch of dots. Highlighting it and putting it into "English" didn't work, either; the files must have been corrupted, I'm thinking, because I wrote a long email and was able to open that file fine to cut and paste into my email client. Bleaugh.

Tomorrow I have a meeting at the American Embassy with the HR director. I have seriously been looking forward to this for about a week. More on that later.

I am living with a Muslim family. In this family there are:
Maysoon
Mohammad
Alaa2 (2's in Arabic represent glottal stops. Like when people from Utah say "mountain")
Sanaa
Hibba
Ahmed
Mona
Mahmood

Maysoon is my Arabic mom. Families here are matriarchal. Well. I dunno. Women are not powerless here, though most of them wear veils. I think that's the worst stereotype Westerners tend to have of women, but that is a subject for a different post. Maysoon is amazing. She treats me like her own daughter. She looks after me, she cares about me, she helps me with my homework; every day right after class she calls me to know where I am - she does this with ALL of her daughters. She is also great because she has an open mind about things. Not all Muslims would like to have a little Mormon girl stay with them forever. She and Sanaa are the main reasons that I decided to come to Jordan. I knew her personality before, and knew that I can trust her. She, like the majority of women in the Middle East, is a stay-at-home mom.

Mohammad is my Arabic dad. He is very funny. He (and his wife) are addicted to Viceroy cigarrettes. He hates technology, cell phones, politics, electricity...he's had the same car since 1981. More about "Auti" later. He likes his farm (they have a farm 10 kilometers from the house), he likes his family, and he LOVES Islam. He likes to joke around, and explain things to me slowly.

Alaa2 (24?) is the oldest. I usually only see her in the evenings. She works at Macdonalds in Irbid. She taught me how to play cards.

Sanaa (21) is one of the biggest motivating factors of my decision to come to Jordan. She graduated from Yarmouk last semester and is also working at Macdonalds in Irbid. She and I have similar personalities. Definitely a life friend.

Hibba (20) is 6 months younger than me. She's a junior at Yarmouk. I spend most of my time with her, because we both go to Yarmouk. I thought that we wouldn't get along, but it turns out that we really do. Hibba is more "prissy" than Sanaa. She is definitely a life friend, too.

Ahmed (18) is a senior in highschool, or in other words, he's in tawjihi. Tawjihi is a national test in the Arab world that all seniors have to take, very similar to the "Bac" in France. If you do well on this test, you can have a good job. If you do poorly, you can't. He's funny, sometimes underestimates my understanding capabilities. He cracks me up.

Mona (14?) is fun. She and I talk a lot, I help her with her English - she's cute. She doesn't wear the hijab yet. They explained to me that you don't start wearing the hijab until you have your period. She is probably the epitome of innocence, in my opinion.

Mahmoud (12?) spends most of his time at school or in the mezra3a or local family farm. (3 is for the arabic letter "aaauuu" that sounds like Kermit the Frog...we don't really use that sound very often in English, but we do sometimes). He doesn't like being indoors. He has the hardest accent to understand.

Well, the Language Center guy just waved his hands at me to say that I have to leave the lab now, so more about everything later...more more more...

CHECK OUT MY PICTURES!!!

http://picturesofkateinjordan.blogspot.com

It's not finished yet, but there are a lot of really cool pictures!!!!