Our first week of school ended yesterday. In Jordan, the work week follows the Muslim calendar, so our weekend is made up of Friday and Saturday, while Sunday is a school day. I didn't have time during the school week to write at all, which turned out to be fine since I didn't have time to do anything either. As promised, we're assigned an hour of homework for every hour of class so, with 4 hours of class, at least 8 hours of my day is taken up with Arabic study. My class is extremely challenging, but I know I'll learn a lot. Almost everyone else in the class spent their first year of Arabic studying Al-Kitab, which is the standard textbook for nearly every Arabic program in the United States. My class at college, though, was probably the one class that didn't use this book, so I'm doing my best to catch up and learn the Al-Kitab vocab. Most people's classes were also taught in Arabic, just like our classes are at Qasid, so they're used to having grammar concepts explained to them and homework assigned to them, all in Arabic. I'm adjusting to having Arabic spoken to me and people actually expecting me to understand most, if not all, of what they're saying. Both my professors are great, although they assign a lot of homework.

We celebrated the end of the week by going out and exploring the city of Amman. First we went to Abdoun, an upscale neighborhood filled with mansions and expensive (well, relatively) stores. We had heard that this was the place to go for the best ice cream in Jordan. I got one small scoop of Double Chocolate Cake for 1.5JD, a little more than $2US, which could buy me lunch for 2 days here, if I ate at our favorite falafel and hummus place near our school. Then we headed downtown to the King Hussein Cultural Center, where a free film festival was going on. We saw the independent film London River, which was very well done. It's a little slow moving at first but, without question, a must see. Probably one of my favorite movies. From there the plan was to walk to Rainbow Street and find a sports bar so that people who were interested could watch the game, but somehow we got turned around and ended up downtown. Our program director Joe happened to be with us, and he asked a man walking near us how to get to Rainbow Street.

You have to be careful when asking for directions in Jordan and most of the Middle East. Even if someone has no idea how to get to your destination, they'll make up specific, detailed directions because they don't want to seem unhelpful. It's best to ask two people and see if their directions match up. This guy seemed to know where he was going though. He walked with us to a steep staircase, going up one of Amman's many hills. We climbed and climbed what seemed like thousands of stairs. As we climbed the staircase got progressively narrower. After a few minutes all 8 of us were walking single file up a staircase that we realized was part of someone's house. We had come up through their basement. We were confused and tried to turn around, but the Jordanian leading us insisted tfadli, tfadli, which means come in, so we did. He escorted us through the front room, where a group of men were gathered, watching the soccer game. He opened the front door of his home and let us out onto what turned out to be Rainbow street.

This morning I went with my roommate to get her hair cut and straightened. I was hoping to be able to practice my Ammiya, the Jordanian dialect, with some of the women in the waiting room. It's hard to find places to practice this dialect since it's considered flirting for me to make conversation with a man and there aren't many women just hanging out, free to talk. Hair salons here are segregated by gender. Women who wear the hijab, the Muslim headscarf, come in, remove their scarves, get their hair done then cover it back up before they go outside. Today, though, we were the only customers at the salon and so didn't practice much Ammiya.

One of the most difficult things about studying Arabic is the diglossic nature of the language. The Standard Arabic used in newspapers, literature, speeches, television and radio broadcasts is not the Arabic people speak everyday. Verbs are conjugated differently, prepositions change their meaning, and even different pronouns are used. Speaking Standard Arabic to someone you meet would be like speaking Shakespearian English to friends in the U.S. It's considered the language of formal communication and isn't used in daily interaction. Ammiya and Standard Arabic are just similar enough to make it incredibly confusing to switch back and forth between the two. During my first 3 hours of classes we speak and are spoken to in Modern Standard. However, during the last hour of class we're supposed to use Ammiya, and are corrected if we use words from Modern Standard that aren't appropriate in Ammiya conversation. I'm glad I'm learning the Jordanian dialect though, because it's understood throughout a large part of the Middle East, unlike the Moroccan dialect, a mix of French, Arabic and Berber, which nobody except Moroccans understands.

Rania, my professor of Modern Standard Arabic. My roommate Morgan is on the right.

A Jordanian toilet in downtown Amman.

The city at night.

King Hussein Bridge (I think?)

View fromt the rooftop hookah bar.