22 May

Second day of classes today. Some people moved up from our class, and some people moved down into ours. For some reason everyone seemed exhausted in our class compared to the first class last Thursday, including me. The four straight hours of Arabic is definitely going to be a challenge once we go into the details on grammar and whatnot. The instructors here definitely use a lot of exercises in class. For example, one exercise was to take a list of words and create a paragraph about them. Another was to describe pictures on a projector using new words in 3ammiyyah. Another was to charades/describe (in Arabic) a word to someone who has to guess it. Stuff like that.

I'd love to make some hummus here in our apartment. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we have access to a food processor. Maybe if it's cheap enough, we might consider buying one for this trip. But probably not. How cheap could a food processor get?

Culture/Language notes:

• A truck was driving by in our residential area today. There was speakers shouting some words that sounded like slogans. It sounded vaguely angry or demanding, like a political protestor. I can't tell, I couldn't understand the broadcast. But it looks like trucks circulating around neighborhoods is a common way to get stuff across.
• Fascinating lecture today by Dr. Bader al-Madi, a Jordanian political scientist. I made notes, but I don't really want to rehash it into this blog post.
• Many things that would be refrigerated constantly in America aren't so much here. Some eggs aren't refrigerated. A lot of boxed juice isn't refrigerated. Milk isn't refrigerated until opened. It makes me wonder what's different. Is it a difference in quality, in the eggs/milk produced here from different chickens/cows, in the packaging, or is it really just a cultural norm in America to refrigerate all dairy all the time? 

No pictures today.