Good Afternoon.
I just arrived back to my house (in Jordan) from another exciting weekend. This weekend was not really planned but nonetheless it was fun and interesting. On an earlier blog, I said I was going to start writing about my everyday life in Jordan but since I had another weekend trip I will just take the easy way out and write about that. So please enjoy.!
As I earlier said I have a host sister that lives with her husband in another city of Jordan. Nadia and her husband Nabil live in a city 30 minutes away from Amman named Zarqa. According to Nabil it is a city of 1.5 million, in which Amman is a city of 4 million. Nadia and Nabil have three kids: George-7, Mark-5, and Danny-1, three little boys. George and Mark go to the international elementary school that Nabil is superintendent of and Nadia is kind of like the principal/secretary of. Well, there is some background info for you.
Last Saturday Nabil, Nadia and the kids came over to the house(like most weekends) and spent time here. As Nabil and I were talking, he came up with an idea to bring me back to Zarqa with him to talk to the kids at his school and teach them a little bit about American culture. I have been here in Jordan learning their culture from all these generous Jordanians so I decided to return the favor and accept his offer. Plus, I am always up for something new and exciting. After talking for a while we decided that Thursday would be the best day for me to go to the school. Which to be honest I was a little nervous and upset about having to miss a day of school because thursday is one of the main Arabic days in which we have class for 2 hours. So I knew I was going to miss a lot of material. But Nabil was very convincing so I decided to go anyways. And I can always catch up, plus this would be a rare culture and learning experience for me. So we originally planned for a friend of Nabil's that lives in Amman to take me with her to Zarqa on Thursday morning to the school. Well when Wednesday rolled around, I guess Nabil got anxious and picked me up from the house at 10 that night and brought me to Zarqa early to spend the night there.
At 6:00AM on Thursday morning I woke up to Danny crying in the other room. So I fell back to sleep for a few minutes but by 7:00 the kids were up and getting ready so I decided to get up as well. I had some toast that Nabil made for me with strawberry jam, which was great because I haven't had toast since I've been here. At 8:30 we headed to the school. Nabil and I went into his office and were greeted by a man wanting to enroll his daughter at the school for the rest of the semester. Since she was not going the full semester, Nabil and the man negotiated a fair price of enrollment for about 30 minutes. I was very interesting for me to watch these two educated Arab men try to come to an agreement. They were calm and using educated logic the whole time, in which both of their view points on the fair price made since. Eventually they met kind of in the middle, leaning a little bit towards Nabil's side. After that Nabil took me up to a classroom to watch the teaching method to see what I thought. I first sat in on the 1st grade. The teacher started the day off with a breakfast which I came in when that ended and then they started singing educational songs to get the kids awake and to ware off some of the energy from the meal they just ate. It was really neat because this classroom was full of twenty kids from all over the world. The majority were from Jordan but there were also a couple from America, Pakistan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. So these kids first language was not English and some of them did not speak english. Although the class was taught in English and when needed the lady would translate. It really made me think: I am over here learning Arabic and these parents are trying to get their kids away from the Arabic language and over to complete English.
After sitting in the classes, Nabil took me to each class 1 by 1 for me to talk about myself. He wanted me to tell the kids about my high school life. They were really interested about cross country and my lawn mowing job. Here in Jordan it is not okay to just go run outside in the city. Running only happens in the gym or on a track. Also, there is not much grass in Amman so they were confused about why I cut the grass back in the states. It was fun. Also, Nabil told them how much I made an hour so they were very impressed by that. It was neat for me to talk to them about my life.
So after a couple hours of sitting in different classrooms the kids got recess. That is where the main event that Nabil had planned took place--Basketball. Nabil had me explain to the (what I guessed to be 100 kids) students the rules of basketball. These kids were so excited about this therefore it was difficult to explain to them the rules because of the loud noise they were producing. So Nabil came over and translated what I was saying to Arabic (I was happy during that because I could understand what he was saying) so all the kids were clear on the rules of basketball. Then the fun began. We split the kids up in teams of 8 vs. 8. Each grade got 10 minutes to play the American game. They had so much fun. Although, as you can imaging they did not stick to the rules which is what brought in the humor. There was a lady teacher there that had a whistle. She was listening to me explain the rules to the kids and especially the part about having to dribble. She was constantly blowing the whistle like a high-school referee. She did not give these 5-10 year old kids a break with the rules. Every time she would blow the whistle it made me laugh. It was quite an experience.
Than the school day was over. So I went back to the house with Nadia and the kids. After an hour we were hungry so we decided to go to McDonalds to eat. Here in Jordan I ate my first Big Mac and it tasted great, lol. From McDonalds, I headed back to the school with Nabil. We spent two hours there fixing the desks. The screws and stuff were messed up so we repaired them. Finally, we headed back to his house and watched movies with the kids. It was a good productive day at the school. I learned a lot and I hope the kids learned a little bit about American culture.
I just arrived back to my house (in Jordan) from another exciting weekend. This weekend was not really planned but nonetheless it was fun and interesting. On an earlier blog, I said I was going to start writing about my everyday life in Jordan but since I had another weekend trip I will just take the easy way out and write about that. So please enjoy.!
As I earlier said I have a host sister that lives with her husband in another city of Jordan. Nadia and her husband Nabil live in a city 30 minutes away from Amman named Zarqa. According to Nabil it is a city of 1.5 million, in which Amman is a city of 4 million. Nadia and Nabil have three kids: George-7, Mark-5, and Danny-1, three little boys. George and Mark go to the international elementary school that Nabil is superintendent of and Nadia is kind of like the principal/secretary of. Well, there is some background info for you.
Last Saturday Nabil, Nadia and the kids came over to the house(like most weekends) and spent time here. As Nabil and I were talking, he came up with an idea to bring me back to Zarqa with him to talk to the kids at his school and teach them a little bit about American culture. I have been here in Jordan learning their culture from all these generous Jordanians so I decided to return the favor and accept his offer. Plus, I am always up for something new and exciting. After talking for a while we decided that Thursday would be the best day for me to go to the school. Which to be honest I was a little nervous and upset about having to miss a day of school because thursday is one of the main Arabic days in which we have class for 2 hours. So I knew I was going to miss a lot of material. But Nabil was very convincing so I decided to go anyways. And I can always catch up, plus this would be a rare culture and learning experience for me. So we originally planned for a friend of Nabil's that lives in Amman to take me with her to Zarqa on Thursday morning to the school. Well when Wednesday rolled around, I guess Nabil got anxious and picked me up from the house at 10 that night and brought me to Zarqa early to spend the night there.
At 6:00AM on Thursday morning I woke up to Danny crying in the other room. So I fell back to sleep for a few minutes but by 7:00 the kids were up and getting ready so I decided to get up as well. I had some toast that Nabil made for me with strawberry jam, which was great because I haven't had toast since I've been here. At 8:30 we headed to the school. Nabil and I went into his office and were greeted by a man wanting to enroll his daughter at the school for the rest of the semester. Since she was not going the full semester, Nabil and the man negotiated a fair price of enrollment for about 30 minutes. I was very interesting for me to watch these two educated Arab men try to come to an agreement. They were calm and using educated logic the whole time, in which both of their view points on the fair price made since. Eventually they met kind of in the middle, leaning a little bit towards Nabil's side. After that Nabil took me up to a classroom to watch the teaching method to see what I thought. I first sat in on the 1st grade. The teacher started the day off with a breakfast which I came in when that ended and then they started singing educational songs to get the kids awake and to ware off some of the energy from the meal they just ate. It was really neat because this classroom was full of twenty kids from all over the world. The majority were from Jordan but there were also a couple from America, Pakistan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. So these kids first language was not English and some of them did not speak english. Although the class was taught in English and when needed the lady would translate. It really made me think: I am over here learning Arabic and these parents are trying to get their kids away from the Arabic language and over to complete English.
After sitting in the classes, Nabil took me to each class 1 by 1 for me to talk about myself. He wanted me to tell the kids about my high school life. They were really interested about cross country and my lawn mowing job. Here in Jordan it is not okay to just go run outside in the city. Running only happens in the gym or on a track. Also, there is not much grass in Amman so they were confused about why I cut the grass back in the states. It was fun. Also, Nabil told them how much I made an hour so they were very impressed by that. It was neat for me to talk to them about my life.
So after a couple hours of sitting in different classrooms the kids got recess. That is where the main event that Nabil had planned took place--Basketball. Nabil had me explain to the (what I guessed to be 100 kids) students the rules of basketball. These kids were so excited about this therefore it was difficult to explain to them the rules because of the loud noise they were producing. So Nabil came over and translated what I was saying to Arabic (I was happy during that because I could understand what he was saying) so all the kids were clear on the rules of basketball. Then the fun began. We split the kids up in teams of 8 vs. 8. Each grade got 10 minutes to play the American game. They had so much fun. Although, as you can imaging they did not stick to the rules which is what brought in the humor. There was a lady teacher there that had a whistle. She was listening to me explain the rules to the kids and especially the part about having to dribble. She was constantly blowing the whistle like a high-school referee. She did not give these 5-10 year old kids a break with the rules. Every time she would blow the whistle it made me laugh. It was quite an experience.
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| The kids were playing. (notice the tall women in the middle blowing the whistle) |
After basketball, the teachers started trying to get the kids to go back inside to learn some more school stuff. There is another class that this school has that is particularly interesting. Each student gets to learn Taekwondo. So I went and sat in on one of the 30 minute classes which was taught by a black belt woman and man. It was fun to watch these little kids try to perform the karate moves. This was also after lunch so it wore off some of the energy so they would focus better in class.
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| taekwondo class |
Friday we all slept in till about 9:00. Also, on Friday one of the teachers from the school came over to spend time with Nadia and Nabil. She is also from the states. Nabil wanted to have an American type day so we told him we wanted barbecue. He was very excited about that idea and made us a great feast with the help of Nadia and Rachael(the American teacher). I told them the best bbq sauce was Sweet Baby Rays so we looked up on the internet how to make it. They don't sell anything like that here in Jordan. So we made it from scratch which was tasty. The girls made mashed potatoes, baked beans and garlic bread (foreign foods to Jordan). Nabil made the bbq up on his roof. They have a roof with a nice patio and the weather was great so it was nice up there. It was not completely American BBQ though because instead of beef we had lamb. Nabil did a great job and we all enjoyed the delicious homestyle meal on the roof. It was a pleasant afternoon which very much reminded me of a summer day at home.
After the feast we all went back inside and watched a couple movies on tv and they headed to bed. I had to stay up till 1:00 in the morning. I had to register for my fall classes at Mizzou. The registration opened up for me at 4:00PM which is 1:00 AM here in Jordan. I surprisingly got all the classes I wanted.
This morning(Saturday) we woke up early and came to Amman. Nabil had some type of appointment. He is also a Physics tutor to the students at the university in Amman. So now I am back at the house from an exciting weekend in Zarqa. I really enjoyed this weekend. It will be one that I think I will always remember.
Until next time.......
-John Michael Middleton
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