6/17-
Today, we did a group activity with a psychotherapist, Andrea, who specializes in work with Americans living abroad. We were all blindfolded and weren't allowed to speak and were told to order ourselves in reverse order based on the first letter of our first names. The exercise simulated a situation we will inevitably find ourselves in where we can't speak/understand anyones words and even body language can signify vastly different things and it will seem like a seemingly impossible task to communicate. It was really interesting to see how everything unfolded. Everyone took different approaches to communicating the first letter of their first name: some people tried writing it on peoples backs with their finger, some tried using sign language, some tried to feel peoples shoes and recognize them that way etc. And then, it was interesting to see what people did with the information they acquired. Some tried to take control and put people in the order they thought they needed to be and some figured that just standing still and letting themselves be moved around would be the best way they could contribute. After the exercise, we debriefed and talked about the frustration of not being able to communicate and helpful and unhelpful coping mechanisms. While the frustration hasn't set in yet because it is so early on in the trip and everything is still so surreal and amazing seeming, I think these will be useful things to keep in mind going forward. In the afternoon we headed to Ajloun Castle and Jerash, which is in 6/18- Today we broke up into groups of 3 and set out on scavenger hunts to get to know our neighborhood a little better. We were given a list of basic Arabic words like car, medication and food and were tasked with finding everything on the list and taking selfies with them. We live on the top of a hill so we headed down to the bottom where two big streets intersect and they are both full of shops and restaurants. However, since it is Ramadan, the street was eerily empty. However, when we stepped into the huge multilevel Carrefour, in which there were tons of people all shopping for ingredients for iftar (the meal at sunset to break the fast). The Carrefour was huge and offered basically everything you could find in a Walmart or Safeway, including the largest selection of shampoos I had ever seen. They had a huge selection of both imported and locally grown fruit as well. We also stopped into a little store close to our house that is the size of a gas station store but packed with everything from cake mixes and canned soup to fresh produce and racks of lamb and even has house supplies like laundry detergent and dish soap. I was surprised by how expensive everything was though. Not only were the American products almost 2x as expensive as they are in the States, even the local products were much more expensive than I expected. We returned to our apartments and got more oriented and finished unpacking and started on a load of laundry. 6/19- Today we had our orientation and placement test at Qasid Institute, the Arabic school where we will be studying for the next 6 weeks. We watched a presentation by the Director of Study Abroad at Qasid which covered life in Amman and at Qasid and then we had our placement test (which was actually an interview). There were 3 teachers who asked us to talk about ourselves and then asked us to read some texts and explain what the text meant. I think that my speaking section went pretty well because I have been practicing introducing myself a ton but I am not so sure about the reading section since the text did not have any diacritic marks, which is like trying to read a book without half of the vowels. You might be able to do it for a little while in a language and topic you are familiar with but it is incredibly challenging when you are just starting to learn a language. Try reading this- H m Sph nd m stdng rbc n Jrdn. :) Tomorrow we will find out our placement and we will be split into 3 different classes of 7 students each based on our placement today because everyone did varying amounts of the pre-program studying. For dinner we headed to Allia, a restaurant on Madinat St (which is called 'Hunger Street' by locals because of the abundance of restaurants) It was abuzz with tons of people in a hurry to get their food to go and take it home for iftar. We all ordered different stews with different grains but didn't realize until we got them that we had all accidentally ordered a family size dish and grain portion. I got enough freekeh for at least 3 people and we quickly realized that most families of 5 or 6 got 2 or 3 main courses for the whole family to share. Luckily, the food was amazing! I had kofta kebab in a tomato sauce with veggies on top of freekeh and I was actually really glad to have leftovers for the next day since getting dinner took us almost an hour and a half. It's really interesting because doing seemingly mundane things like grocery shopping or getting dinner can be so new and fun and exciting but at the same time it can be time consuming and frustrating. Sorry that this is so overdue! More to come! Sophia
1 Comment
Murtaza Vahanvaty
7/6/2016 09:10:56 pm
I am so happy that you are having such a rich experience
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We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us. !أهلا و ساهلاHi! I'm Sophia, a high schooler from the San Francisco Bay Area. I received a scholarship through the State Dept. to study Arabic in Jordan in the summer of 2016. Categories
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