Yesterday was our first day exploring the university of Jordan's campus. I was happy to find out that we will actually be taking classes on the university's campus, even though the CIEE office is right across the street. UJ's camps is not public like most american universities campuses, which created for a bit different feel once we got inside. I saw some Ammani girls walking around talking on cell phones chatting with friends, etc, and thought "Mom! That was you!" (except for the cell phones haha) What a weird feeling. Mom, I seriously felt like I was walking in your footsteps, except not as cliche as walking-in-your-footsteps sounds. Very cool. Miss you sooooo much =) and don't start tearing up because I'm about to.
Here are some pictures of the UJ campus, it's GORGEOUS. Not what I expected in the middle of Amman. Of all the campuses I've been to, it reminded me most of the University of Washington believe it or not--so many trees densely lining the walkways:
Just past the entrance, looking at the main clocktower:
Big building--forgot which one:
After we toured the campus, I sat through my first Arabic class. There's only 6 of us who have had no formal arabic lessons yet so I'm excited for the small class. Trying to think in Arabic is quite difficult when you don't have the switch installed in your brain yet. My cousin Karim said I need to step on the clutch and change language gears in my mind hahaha. First I need to find the pedal.
Today we had an orientation on housing and cultural adjustment. Telling us how Jordanians are way empathetic, less private, more gossipy, louder, more social, etc etc etc. Everything that I already know, and have experienced, but never had presented to me in a powerpoint presentation. This was my favorite part of orientation so far, I feel like I have such a better understanding of what personality traits of mine are likely because of my heritage; mostly the traits about interacting with others =)
This afternoon I got an arabic lesson from my Aunt and cousin, Karim. I now have spelled the entire Arabic alphabet! this is a great accomplishment than you may think..there are 28 letters, and all arabic is in cursive...kinda. Letters look different when they stand alone, when they are at the begining of a word, middle of a word, and end of a word. So you must learn four shapes just to learn a single letter! And of course, not all letters connect with all other letters, so most words come as two parts. Also, all the letters in the alphabet, are not all the letters in the arabic language. There are the couple of rare letters that are just around to confuse you. Also there are different accents that can be added to each letter to change the way that the word sounds...and therefore what it means as well. Also, if you want to sound really legit when you read Arabic, you can pronounce the word differently if it is acting as the subject or object of the sentence. Believe it or not, all these rules actually make spelling and piecing words together a bit easier than in English. There is a rule for EVERYTHING in Arabic. Whereas in English or French (and I'm sure Spanish as well) there are tons of specific exceptions to the rules, in Arabic there IS a rule that governs everything when it comes to reading and writing. The exceptions are the acceptable deviations from those rules, not random exceptions to the entire language. Does that make sense? It's also worth noting that most people do not know, or follow, the nitpicky rules that make your head spin. If learning Mandarin is the holy grail of vocab, perfecting arabic must be the holy grail of grammar. Here's my name spelled in arabic:
Here are some pictures of the UJ campus, it's GORGEOUS. Not what I expected in the middle of Amman. Of all the campuses I've been to, it reminded me most of the University of Washington believe it or not--so many trees densely lining the walkways:
Just past the entrance, looking at the main clocktower:
Big building--forgot which one:
After we toured the campus, I sat through my first Arabic class. There's only 6 of us who have had no formal arabic lessons yet so I'm excited for the small class. Trying to think in Arabic is quite difficult when you don't have the switch installed in your brain yet. My cousin Karim said I need to step on the clutch and change language gears in my mind hahaha. First I need to find the pedal.
Today we had an orientation on housing and cultural adjustment. Telling us how Jordanians are way empathetic, less private, more gossipy, louder, more social, etc etc etc. Everything that I already know, and have experienced, but never had presented to me in a powerpoint presentation. This was my favorite part of orientation so far, I feel like I have such a better understanding of what personality traits of mine are likely because of my heritage; mostly the traits about interacting with others =)
This afternoon I got an arabic lesson from my Aunt and cousin, Karim. I now have spelled the entire Arabic alphabet! this is a great accomplishment than you may think..there are 28 letters, and all arabic is in cursive...kinda. Letters look different when they stand alone, when they are at the begining of a word, middle of a word, and end of a word. So you must learn four shapes just to learn a single letter! And of course, not all letters connect with all other letters, so most words come as two parts. Also, all the letters in the alphabet, are not all the letters in the arabic language. There are the couple of rare letters that are just around to confuse you. Also there are different accents that can be added to each letter to change the way that the word sounds...and therefore what it means as well. Also, if you want to sound really legit when you read Arabic, you can pronounce the word differently if it is acting as the subject or object of the sentence. Believe it or not, all these rules actually make spelling and piecing words together a bit easier than in English. There is a rule for EVERYTHING in Arabic. Whereas in English or French (and I'm sure Spanish as well) there are tons of specific exceptions to the rules, in Arabic there IS a rule that governs everything when it comes to reading and writing. The exceptions are the acceptable deviations from those rules, not random exceptions to the entire language. Does that make sense? It's also worth noting that most people do not know, or follow, the nitpicky rules that make your head spin. If learning Mandarin is the holy grail of vocab, perfecting arabic must be the holy grail of grammar. Here's my name spelled in arabic:
يزن فتالة
And don't forget to read from right to left!
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