6:45: Alarm goes off. I hit the snooze button.
6:55: I actually get up, do morning things. Grab some cheese and an apple from the fridge and I'm out the door by 7:20.
7:30: I reach the main street where I can catch a cab. I have to walk to this spot since there aren't many cabs near my street. I take a cab in the morning because I would have to get up at six-ish in order to take a bus that would actually get me to school on time. I take the bus in the afternoon because I'm not in a hurry and it's a lot cheaper.
8:00: Arabic starts. I try to get to school 10 or 15 minutes early, but there have been a couple of days of terrible traffic where I've been 10 or 15 minutes late. Yesterday the cab driver missed a turn and ended up in ridiculous traffic on the opposite side of campus from my Arabic class. Muna (my Arabic professor) was not happy. Today I was 15 minutes early.
10:00/11:00: Depending on the day, I get out of Arabic. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, Arabic is from 8:00-11:00 with a 10 minute break. This includes Ammiyya (colloquial) Arabic. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we just do MSA, so we get out at 10:00. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm then done for the day and I'll hang out with people and study, go to lunch and I go home around 4:00. I'm also now meeting with my tutor, Doaa, on these days between 1:00 and 2:00.
10:00-1:00ish (Mondays and Wednesdays): Here begins my lovely four hour block of Free Time. I head over to Khalifeh Plaza across the street from campus (there's an underpass so I don't have to cross the busy street. There are a lot of shops in the underpass. I bought a pair of sunglasses there), where the CIEE office is, as well as the TAGKS center, where there's a computer lab with a lounge and couches and a snack bar. TAGKS also has this cool fingerprint system for signing in. They recorded my fingerprint when I first got here, so I use my thumb to sign in. Then a female voice says "You are authorized" and I get to use the computer lab. Me being me, I repeat "You are authorized" back to the machine, in the annoying tinny voice. No one understands my tendency to repeat electronic noises here though... Anyway, I've been going to the CIEE office before doing anything else in the last few days so I can check my mail. I never have any. Supposedly Sam sent me a postcard almost two weeks ago, but Jordanian mail is reaaaaaaaaaally slow, so it's not here yet. Then I go downstairs to TAGKS and hang out, do homework, check my email.
--Between these times I will probably drink at least one entire bottle of water. I will search every bathroom in the building for tissues or toilet paper with which to blow my nose because I always forget tissues at home. I never find any (the bathrooms at the University are really terrible. Fortunately that's not the case for the bathrooms in homes). It's really dry here and my nose doesn't like it, so this is a frequent problem.--
1:00ish (Mondays and Wednesdays): At around 1:00 some of us will head to lunch, either at the cafeteria or a local place. The cafeteria here is good, and cheap, but it serves basically the same thing every day. Personally, I like the heart-shaped falafel place. They also have ful, which I'm a big fan of. Also the pizza place at Khalifeh Plaza. I had a turkey sandwich there today where I actually watched them make the bread that they then used for my sandwich. Freshest bread ever. I also had apple and strawberry juice that was distinctly not as good as the juice I had at Souk Jara. It turns out apples are hard to blend.
2:00 (Mondays and Wednesdays): I have my Conflicts in the Middle East class. It's okay so far, but right now we're doing theory. I hate theory. Quite a bit. I understand that it has its place in the world of academia, but it's boring and it's kinda black and white, and my worldview is gray and fuzzy. To me, it seems like PoliSci theory generalizes too much and it treats the world as though it's predictable. It's sort of an "If this, then that" way of looking at things, which doesn't work for me. It totally has its place in the world of academics, but we covered it in International Politics last year, so I'm excited to move on. This probably made sense to about two of you, so Too Boring, Didn't Read: PoliSci theory is boring, I don't like it.
3:30: My Political Islam class, which I like much better. We talked about democracy yesterday and whether or not it's compatible with Islam. I brought up some points made last year in my Secularism an Fundamentalism class, which was good, but I don't think people understood my point. I need to learn how to articulate what we learned in that class better... it's in my head, I just have trouble getting it from my brain to other people.
5:00: Done with classes for the day. Sometimes I head over to TAGKS again to hang out with people, or I just go to the bus stop and wait for the bus to fill up, get home around 6:00.
6:00-10:00: Homework, reading, internet-ing. Hang out with host family, maybe watch a movie... They made me watch "Little Man" the other day. I do not recommend it. I left halfway through because it was so bad; I did not feel like I was getting any kind of cultural value out of watching a grown man act like a really horny baby.
10:00-11:00ish: Bedtime.Yeah, that's right. I go to bed before midnight here. Don't judge me. See above, I get up early.
Speaking of, Castle premiered yesterday and it turns out Sidereel works here, so I'm going to go watch that now so that I can go to bed early. Mas'a-al-kheer (goodnight)!
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