My Homestay Family

On Thursday afternoon I moved in with my homestay family. At the last minute my family was switched, so I now live in an apartment in the Rabieh section of Amman, down the street from the Chinese and Israeli Embassies with a Muslim couple and their son. I am still the only male in the program to be placed with a Muslim family. Aside from the natural discomfort anyone would feel from living with a family in a different culture, my experience so far has been good. The parents are great, very hospitable, and happy to have me. My "mom" is a great cook, and won't stop feeding me. She works at a bank-there's hundreds of them in Amman, and she speaks to me mostly in Arabic, which has been helpful. I'm starting to pick up some words from the local dialect (Ahmia). My homestay father lived in America for seven years, which has also been helpful because he knows what to expect from me culturally, and his English is still decent. My homestay brother is 22. He is still in college and works part time. My parents are impressed with my Arabic so far, especially for someone who has studied it for only a year. Last night I went out with my "brother" and his friend. I decided to take a break from Arabic and gave them an English lesson. They learned some good, and not so good English vocabulary.

Classes start tomorrow morning. The week here runs from Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. I'll be studying Arabic for three hours every morning with academic seminars in the afternoon. Luckily, classes will be broken up throughout the semester when we travel throughout Jordan, camp with the Bedouins, and go on our one week excursion to Egypt in October.

I've also got some pictures up from earlier in the week. These were taken from various parts of Amman. I'll get pictures of my neighborhood up soon-as soon as I take them.