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| Amman, Jordan with the world's 3rd tallest flag. A beautiful sight. |
Hello again..!
Warning- this will be a long and boring read but is interesting if your interested in my normal life abroad.
As I have mentioned before my study abroad experience does not always consist of me being a tourist in the Middle East. Sometimes I actually live life like a normal person, well a normal study abroad student anyways. What I have wrote about so far is mostly about my awesome weekend and week vacation journeys that consist of exploring centuries old sites of ancient civilizations, floating in the dead sea, wandering around in dangerous Lebanese territory or even skiing(on snow) in the Middle East.
Although all of that will probably be the most memorable parts of my experience it is not the most important parts. Unfortunately, more than anything else, I am a student this SEMESTER. I am over here studying abroad so I can learn and come out with a vast amount of knowledge and wisdom that I could not of obtained back in the States. Well, I could of took the same classes with the same content but I could not of experienced what I was being taught every day. What I mean is: I am obviously taking Arabic language classes. Every day after class I have to use that Arabic to order food, buy stuff, talk to people, and to get home. Well, I have to use it for most of that stuff I listed but I also like to challenge my self and talk to random Jordanians to practice my Arabic. They are very kind and enjoy it when us Americans try to talk to them in their native language. Most the time when I talk to a Jordanian I end up getting an Arabic lesson and making a new friend. Let me note again that they are some of the most generous people I have ever met. Of course they are not all like that, some just use my lack of Arabic knowledge to entertain themselves but the generous Jordanians far outweighs them.
Another class that I get practical knowledge from is "America and the Arabs". Well there is no need to explain how I learn outside the class with that one. I am an American in an Arab country. My other class is the "Israel-Palestinian Conflict". If I get in a good conversation with a Jordanian I often try to ask him how he feels about that subject. I have almost learned more from doing that than I have in the class. So my main point in all this is that in stead of learning from a professor back in the states who has a fancy degree from a famous university, I get to learn with real world experiences and from professors who live the life of the subject they are teaching. It really is a phenomenal thing.
Alright, so I will tell you what my daily life consist of over here. I have 3 different days groups. I have the main group: Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. I have the second group: Mondays and Wednesdays. And I have the fun group: weekends, Friday and Saturdays which I will not discuss because I never know what I am going to do on the weekend.
On the first group of days I only have language classes. I am taking two different types of Arabic here. I am taking Fus-ha, which is the formal Modern Standard Written Arabic or MSA. It is not spoken by everyday people. It is the Arabic that is written in books, newspapers, bibles, and the quran. It is a language that is made on rules and unlike English the rules are not broken. It is very difficult and punctual. The only time that it is spoken is the news, lectures, and by government officials. For muslims, Fus-ha is regarded as a sacred language because they believe that Allah wrote the Quran in Arabic. Most ordinary people in Arab countries do not really know Fus-ha, although if they hear it they will probably know what it means.
The other class I am taking is colloquial dialect Arabic that is used in Jordan. Every Arab country and even the different regions of each country have their own dialect. And it is not like English in America where southerners have a slang. A dialect is almost like a different language. And people who speak in the dialect are not looked down on, even the well educated speak in the dialect. Actually if someone would speak in Fus-ha in a normal conversation, that would be weird. Most dialects are very similar to Fus-ha but still have a lot of differences. They are derived from Fus-ha without all the hard grammar and instead of words that do not flow well verbally are replaced with words that slide off the tongue. Arabs can tell where a person is from by the way they pronounce certain sounds and letters. It is a really neat thing. When I went to Lebanon, I would try speaking to the people in Beirut with my Jordanian dialect and they would not understand me at all. And that was with simple stuff that people in Jordan always understand without questions. Although when I was in rural parts of Lebanon the people there understood me perfectly. It was a cool experience. I like learning the dialect a lot more than learning Fus-ha because I get to use the dialect every day and never use Fus-ha unless I am listening to the news. Although Fus-ha is more important because from that it is easier to learn all the dialects and Fus-ha never changes. That is a bonus and disadvantage of studying abroad in an Arab country, I have to learn 2 different languages.
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| University of Jordan North Gate. very secure. |
Anyways, I have dialect class from 8:30-9:30 on the first group of days and have Fus-ha from 11:00-1:00. I usually get up at 7:00 and eat a light Jordanian breakfast consisting of flat bread and some type of spread. Then I meet with 3 other friends that live in my area and we take a taxi to class. After dialect class a group of us usually go to a donut shop and eat donuts, drink coffee and prepare for Fus-ha class. After Fus-ha I meet up with a couple other friends and we either take a taxi or bus to a gym and I normally work out from 2:00-4:00. We all joined the gym for 3 main reasons. The first of course being that we want to stay in shape while we are here. The other important reason is for the long hot shower we can take at the gym. There is a huge water shortage in Jordan, it is either the 3rd or 5th poorest country in terms of water in the world. So each house gets a tank of water on their roof that gets filled up once a week. If it runs out before the week than they do not have any water for that time. It is a big problem for the people here. As a result showers have to be very short and we feel bad taking them at our homestays so we take them instead at the gym which gets a special amount of water. And the 3rd reason for going to the gym is to use up some of our time with something enjoying. After the gym I usually walk home which is about a 3 mile walk that normally takes me an hour. It is a good time to think and have a little bit of time to myself with nothing to worry about. I enjoy that long walk. So I then get home at about 6:30 and my host mom always has a fantastic meal prepared for me so I eat and then go study for about 2 and a half hours. At 9:00 a show comes on that I watch with my host family every night. It is a Turkish drama that is in Arabic. So it is a good bonding time with my family and a good way to practice my listening skills for Arabic. After that show I study for another hour and go to bed.
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| Fus-ha class |
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| Ghadeer(our Fus-ha professor) and me |
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| Our dialect class. we had a cultural day and went to a restaurant with very tasty Arabic food. my favorite day of class. |
The Second group of days: Monday and Wednesday are a little longer. On those days I have Fus-ha, "America and the Arabs", and "Israel-Palestinian Conflict". I wake up at 8:00 and eat the breakfast and these days I take two busses to class instead of the taxi. I get one bus that takes me to a main hub of busses and then get on one of those busses to take me to the University. It was fun learning how these busses work. They are not public busses, they are little private white busses. It is always a fun experience. My Fus-ha class runs from 9:30-11:00. After that I always go to a shawarma restaurant and eat. Then I head to a coffee shop that I have made friends with the owner and hang out there for 2 hours. I usually drink a coffee and use their wifi to waste time on the internet or read some articles for my classes. After that I have my first political science class-"America and the Arabs". It is taught by Dr. Zubi Al-Zubi. He is a brilliant man and makes the class very enjoyable and the subject is also interesting. At first we learned the history of American interactions in the Middle East since the 1900's and now we are discussing critical thinking subjects about the relationship between America and the Arab countries. It is a great class. It runs from 2:00-3:20. After that I have the seminar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That class runs from 3:30-4:50. The subject and content of the class is awesome and very enlightening. Although our professor Dr. Barari is not good at all. He is very knowledgable and smart but not a good teacher. He stands at the front of the class for over an hour and lectures in a quiet voice. It is not entertaining at all or interactive. Although I do learn a lot from the readings he assigns. Also, us students in the class have discussions on the content of the class which are productive. So the professor is not good but I am still learning a lot. After that class I head to the gym for little while. On those two days I run about 3 miles and take a shower and then head home. I don't walk on those days, I take the bus. After that it is the same routine.
The first 2 months I was here I was never bored. I was always engaged in something from the new experience. But now I can tell I am used to the new culture and new life. I am commonly bored now in this last month or so I am here. The new excitingness is not with me anymore. I am not experiencing new things everyday anymore. It is now just a normal routine. Although, I am not complaining, I feel a sense of normalcy now which is heart warming. I feel lot closer to my host family and the other friends I have made here. It is sad to think that in a little more than one month I will have to leave all this when I am just now getting used to it. But then again I guess that is the best time to leave. I got my sense of a new culture, a completely different and new culture!!.-the Middle East, like no other region in the world. I wish I could go deeper into that.
My boredom will not last for long though because I have a 20 page paper to write for Israel Palestinian class, 3 presentations for 3 of my classes, and studying for my final exams. So this coming weekend I have to start the hard stuff. I will learn what I have learned from this experience.
Until next time.....
- John Michael Middleton
