My home in Jordan

Widad is holding the baby on the left, Nadia is next holding a baby, Qustandi is next holding a baby, Majida  is standing behind the boy(George), Fadi is next to Majida, and Wafaa is on the right end with her baby. 

اهلا و ساهلا
Hello, I hope you are all doing great, I know I am.  On this blog I will tell you about my host family I am staying with because I think that is a very important aspect of my life over here.  I already touched on my family a little bit on an earlier blog but I will go into more details on this one.  I figure since I have been here for 6 1/2 weeks(wow, time has flew by) I can write in a better way about my family.
      I will start out by saying that they are great.  To be completely honest, I have not found one thing to complain about yet.  I would almost complain about my mom forcing me to eat all the time, but after thinking about it and after eating the food, I realized it is not really something to complain about.
The family at the house is composed of four people which are all Christians: My host mom--Majida, my host brother--Fadi, my host sister--Widad, and me. On top of that there is a lady that stays here most of the time that helps keep the house in order--Rani.  Majida has two other daughters that are married and their names are Nadia and Wafaa and I see at least once a week.  Majida also has a son studying for his doctorate in business in Australia, so I have not seen him at all.
       Rani(the house cleaner) stays at the house most the time and sleeps here also.  She has another job though where she works a couple days a week.  She came from Sri Lanka to Jordan in order to work.  She speaks a little bit of Arabic and a little bit of English so I try to talk to her often.  She has an interesting life.  My host family treats her like she is just another member of the family.
      Nadia lives with her husband about 30 minutes away but she brings her kids over here quite often.  Her kids are George-7 and Mark-5 and Dani-1.  They are both really smart kids and can speak great English and of course Arabic.  They treat me like an Uncle and are always wanting to play with me which reminds me of home.
      Wafaa also has two children: Andre and Jaliil.  They come over sometimes but not as often as Nadia and her kids. Her children are also great.  I actually went to the birthday party of Andre which was a neat experience.
     Widad lives here at the house.  She is not here very much though because she is busily involved with her church.  Since I have been here, she has went on a missions trip to Africa and India.  She told me about India and how much she loved it there.  When I have any problems Widad can usually help; she worked at the US embassy here in Jordan so she speaks English well.  So if I am having a complete miscommunication with Ma'ma, Widad steps in and translates.
     Fadi also lives here at the house.  Similar to Widad, he is not here much.  He is always busy working.  He works for a phone company and he also breeds and sells Huskies. I got to see three of his puppies that he sold a couple days ago.  They are great looking dogs.  Like Widad, Fadi can speak English well so he always helps me out also.  He jokes around with me like my real brother and always offers to bring food such as Shawarma home to me.
      Than there is Majida--my host mom.  In the first 5 minutes I arrived in the house, she told me to call her Ma'ma.  She is usually at the house.  I would say always but on Thursdays she goes to the souk or market.  Sometimes she also goes and visits her daughters.  Besides that she is always at the house, therefore we spend a lot of time together.  Throughout the week when I get done with classes I come home and sit in the tv room with her and usually some houseguest.  We usually watch dramatic shows in Arabic.  Hopefully, I am catching on and learning the language by watching the shows.  While we are watching tv, we usually have a few very small conversations.  I don't think I mentioned that Ma'ma only speaks Arabic (and French which doesn't help me) so our conversations are always fun and challenging.  I will admit though that the conversations usually consist of the subject of me eating or drinking tea.  I know I have improved greatly though since I got here because we had a conversation about politics this morning.  Her main hobby is cooking ( I think) so she watches a lot of cooking shows and cooks a lot of different dishes.  They are all Arabic dishes except one time she made me a hamburger.  Most of everything she has cooked I have liked.  There might of been two things that I did not like, but since this is about new experiences, I ate it anyways.
       Until last week we had 2 Syrian house guests staying with us.  They were both very nice as well.  They left back to Syria last week.

         They now treat me like a member of the family and I feel like I am at home( except of course for a few things and people).


Until next time......
-John Michael Middleton