يوم السل و يوم بسل

Hello Everyone,

Joyous Superbowl to my friends and family who are watching the game. If I was home, I would have gotten balloons and a giant cookie to celebrate the Ravens being at the Superbowl. I hope everyone is having fun :)

Today was my first day of classes. I had three hours of Arabic class today, one hour of Fusha and one hour of Jordanian Arabic. Fusha, or Modern Standard Arabic is a very formal form of Arabic that is used in universities, the media and the Quran. Most American students learn Fusha before a dialect because it is much more difficult and has so many grammar rules. Colloquial or a dialect is simplified so that people can use it more efficiently and with more ease. Everyone here understand Fusha when I speak it, but will respond in colloquial and laugh. It is like speaking Shakespearian English to an American. We can get the idea, but it sounds ridiculous. I wonder if I will ever be able to speak in colloquial Arabic. It is just so different from the Fusha I know. Right now, I feel like a failure. I can talk to a college professor or give a lecture, but I can't talk to the fruit seller on the street, who only knows colloquial Arabic. I just asked my host sister to teach me some new words and some colloquial Arabic.

My Fusha Professor, Professor Mahmoud is a nice man who was very cheery today. I think his class will be fun. Rema teaches the colloquial class. I don't know if I will like that class as much as the fusha. I don't like playing games in order to learn more words. I want to sit and have conversations and write papers. These are things that are done in a Fusha class. I'm just not a ball of fun. I also had my research methods class today. This class sounds interesting because I will learn ethics and how to conduct interviews according to Jordanian culture. This should be fun.

After school, a group of students and I walked to a supermarket to walk around. Next door to the supermarket was a mosque. I heard the call to prayer in the distance coming from another mosque, but I did not hear the call to prayer from the mosque next to me. I told the students that I was disapointed that the mosque next door wasn't giving the call to prayer yet. We kept walking and stood in an open field with a beautiful view of Amman. All of a sudden, two other mosques had their call to prayer. The call to prayer echoed off buildings and continued as if they were singing in a round. It was so beautiful. Eventually, the mosque next door chimed in and I was excited.

You might be wondering what the heck the title of this post is. يوم السل و يوم بسل is a colloquial proverb that is one of my favorites in Arabic. It translates to some days honey and some days onion. Essentially it states that there are good days and bad days. Today was a mess in regards to taxis. When I left for SIT this morning, I had trouble finding a cab. When I found one, I just hopped in and forget to check that he turned on the meter. After a few seconds, I started listening to the radio in Arabic. I noticed that it was a talk show type of time talking about how Palestine should reclaim Jerusalem. Immediately I felt awkward because I'm American and here they take that as I don't support Palestine. In fact, I am a strong supporter of a Two State Solution with Jerusalem becoming a UN protectorate or something of the sort so no one can claim it. As we were driving, he kept cranking up the radio. I pretended that I didn't understand, but I know he wanted me to listen. Once we were far into the journey, I realized that there was no meter in the car. Damn, I thought. This means that the taxi driver can charge me anything he wants and I have to pay it. I immediately tried to think of a way I could ask him to lower the fee to an appropriate amount. Normally a very expensive cab ride would cost a person 5JD in Jordan. My friends this weekend went in a cab without a meter and were charged 9JD. That is ridiculous! You could call the police in such a situation, but its better to just pay so you don't get in a fight. When my driver went to drop me off, he said in English that the meter was broken and I could pay what I thought was fair. I was relieved that he was so kind. He could have charged me alot of money and was very kind about my mistake. Jordanians are the kindest people I have met. They will go out of their way to help you.

The way home was also difficult. As I have said numerous times, Jordanians and Jordanian Cab drivers do not know street names. On the way home, the driver took me from a different direction than my host mom showed me and I couldn't find my house. I paid the cab and decided to start walking. I knew the driver wouldn't help me and I knew I was in the correct area. I figured I would save some dinar and just walk. I know that the taxi driver had overcharged me by 1.5 JD at this point to take me where he took me. I can't argue, but I know he took advantage of the fact I was not able to say or do anything. The money is so small, but the idea is a sad one. Even if I continued with the taxi driver, he would just be driving around like crazy anyway so I could walk around by myself. Plus the taxis drive so fast I don't have time to think about where to turn and such.  I walked around for a bit and became very confused. I could not figure out where to go. I eventually called my host sister, but of course she could not help me as she too did not know street names very well. Eventually, I walked up to a pharmacy, a grocery store and many random people to ask for directions. They kept telling me to go to a mosque a few streets up. I was becoming upset because everyone wants me to go to this mosque and I just want to go to my home.I became very upset and started to cry on the street. I had to get it together because I can not be losing it in the street. A man came up to me though and told me he spoke English and wanted to help. That was nice. My host mother has never used a mosque to tell me where to go and I knew that the mosque was a bit from my house. However, I walked up to the mosque and all of a sudden I found the street I wanted and found my home. Normally, this journey should take me under 10 minutes, however today it took me 2 hours, because I had to walked a mile from SIT to find a taxi. I had to walk a mile to find a cab outside SIT because for some odd reason none were in the SIT neighboorhood. The only two taxis I could find had two men inside each one and they wanted me to share. I was not born yesterday. I walked away and decided I would just walk on for a cab since I know the direction between my house and SIT. I walked a distance past the American, British and Syrian Embassy to a crowded square where I could get a cab. Here I finally got a ride.

What I learned from this experience: While my host mom takes one way from SIT and her house, Taxis take another. Taxis take a longer way and at this point I don't want to call them out on it. As a result, I will tell the taxis to drop me off at the mosque. It is actually pretty close to where I live and is in a nice safe area. Also, Amman and my neighborhood are not on a grid, roads twist and turn wherever and whenever. It does not make sense to me at all.

For now, I will watch an Adel Iman movie on TV before starting my piles of Arabic homework. Not everyday in Jordan is going to be a dream vacation sort of day. There will be ups and downs. Hopefully, tomorrow will go smother. My host mom left some kitcat bars and homemade cookies in my room for when I came home from school today. That was such a nice surprise after I had so many problems getting home. I will definitely thank her so much when she comes home. One of my friends has a host family that is very conservative with food, but they are very kind to her. This weekend she lost so much weight that now her pants won't fit and they fall down. She was skinny to begin with. Today I brought her some of the food my host mom left for me. Tomorrow I might share some of the cookies because she is pretty hungry. All the students need to stick together in order to have the best experience possible. Since I have too much food, I should share and help others. I am sure they would help me if I needed it too. I have plenty of cookies to share.

To a honey day tomorrow!