Today I got lunch with my language partner Nimr, and we chatted in about 90% Arabic! Not just about the weather and our families, but about what we want to do when we graduate and what we're learning in our classes and how we're both not very excited for finals. It was one of the first time I've felt more than a couple of moments of speaking in arabic, and not stuttering out arabic words that make sense while trying to pull my tongue out of the back of my throat after I may or may not have insulted my listener by mistake. But in all truth, the only time I've said something rude that I didn't realize was rude till after the fact was when I made a racist food reference to Palestinians in front of a group of 50 or so local students...thank god they realized I didn't know what I was talking about and laughed at me. I've never been so happy to be laughed at.
After lunch Nimr asked me "kassat shae a-shawarib" which literally translates to "cups of tea for our mustaches?" It's an expression not super well known, but well known enough that it made the guy laugh who we ordered tea from. Then he almost wouldn't accept Nimr's money for the tea. So ensued the typical Jordanian fight over who was in fact going to pay for our tea. The man who was actually going to give us our tea or Nimr. Me? Never! If I wanted to stand a chance at getting in the middle of two Jordanian men fighting over the check, I would have had to quietly slip in before we even showed up, given the man our 20 cents for the tea, and told him "when I come back later with my friend, just give us the tea, me and you have a deal buddy" preferably in a film noir mobster voice for added effect.
Nimr was telling me about how in Jordan, you don't have the control over your future like you do in the states. The system kinda takes you for a ride and if you don't go along with the whims of whatever situation you're in., whether you like them or not, you'll just be spit out hopeless. An example is the Tawjihi exam senior year of high school. Seniors in high school take this monster of all monstrous exams called the Tawjihi. If you decide to stay in Jordan after graduating high school (which is the only choice for most Jordanians if they want a college degree...which not all do. I've sat in more cabs than I can remember where the cabby was younger than I am) The score you get on the tawjiji determines, not only which school you can go to, but what you can study at that school. You really don't retake it either. "So you got a 96 out of 100? sorry, you have to have gotten 97 if you wanna be a doctor...have fun in business or law school" What about following you passion? Well I guess you just hope that you did well enough on one standardized test to do so...
The taxi driver on the way home today spoke pretty good English. He had lived in Lexington, Kentucky for 14 years as a delivery driver for papa-johns. He was telling us about how much he missed mowing his lawn, living in a house, meeting all the nice american people, the green, the hills, stopping at stop signs when he was driving, staying in his own lane when he was driving, and saying phrases like "hey man, what's up dude, how you doin bro." The last one kinda surprised me since many conversations in arabic just equate to saying those exact words in about 15 ways in the span of 2 minutes. Once again I am reminded of how lucky I am.
After lunch Nimr asked me "kassat shae a-shawarib" which literally translates to "cups of tea for our mustaches?" It's an expression not super well known, but well known enough that it made the guy laugh who we ordered tea from. Then he almost wouldn't accept Nimr's money for the tea. So ensued the typical Jordanian fight over who was in fact going to pay for our tea. The man who was actually going to give us our tea or Nimr. Me? Never! If I wanted to stand a chance at getting in the middle of two Jordanian men fighting over the check, I would have had to quietly slip in before we even showed up, given the man our 20 cents for the tea, and told him "when I come back later with my friend, just give us the tea, me and you have a deal buddy" preferably in a film noir mobster voice for added effect.
Nimr was telling me about how in Jordan, you don't have the control over your future like you do in the states. The system kinda takes you for a ride and if you don't go along with the whims of whatever situation you're in., whether you like them or not, you'll just be spit out hopeless. An example is the Tawjihi exam senior year of high school. Seniors in high school take this monster of all monstrous exams called the Tawjihi. If you decide to stay in Jordan after graduating high school (which is the only choice for most Jordanians if they want a college degree...which not all do. I've sat in more cabs than I can remember where the cabby was younger than I am) The score you get on the tawjiji determines, not only which school you can go to, but what you can study at that school. You really don't retake it either. "So you got a 96 out of 100? sorry, you have to have gotten 97 if you wanna be a doctor...have fun in business or law school" What about following you passion? Well I guess you just hope that you did well enough on one standardized test to do so...
The taxi driver on the way home today spoke pretty good English. He had lived in Lexington, Kentucky for 14 years as a delivery driver for papa-johns. He was telling us about how much he missed mowing his lawn, living in a house, meeting all the nice american people, the green, the hills, stopping at stop signs when he was driving, staying in his own lane when he was driving, and saying phrases like "hey man, what's up dude, how you doin bro." The last one kinda surprised me since many conversations in arabic just equate to saying those exact words in about 15 ways in the span of 2 minutes. Once again I am reminded of how lucky I am.
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