Night 7: Thank You Cake Wrecks (No joke).

Okay, so I originally had a happy intro to post here before slowly devolving into how shitty my day was, but then I looked at today's Sunday Sweets over at Cake Wrecks (http://www.cakewrecks.com/) and I just had to start with the quote Jen the Cake Wrecks lady used, it totally made my evening: 

"Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost."

— Helen Keller

She put this quote up because it's 9/11 today (for those of you who don't know, Sunday Sweets is a thing that the blog Cake Wrecks does that features really, really pretty cakes every Sunday. Every other day of the week she posts lots of gross and ruined cakes and makes funny, snarky comments about them). For 9/11, Sunday Sweets was about making readers happy, because today everyone needs a smile. Now, my day was not shitty because of 9/11, it was just a regular bad day, but still. This quote is VERY relevant to my day---it's how I should be feeling right now even if it's not exactly how I am feeling at the moment. So thanks Cake Wrecks, you made me smile. :) 

So in my last post I mentioned that I lucked out with my family. After going to classes and talking with other students today, I came to appreciate my host family even more. Other people were talking about shouting parents, loud, large families, and lots and lots of partying. My family doesn't do any of that--they're very laid back and pretty quiet, which I like. Lara talks a lot, but I like talking, and she always makes sure I understand what she's saying. I talked to a CIEE coordinator today, the woman in charge of placing students with families, and when I said that this family is good for those of us who are shy, she told me that yeah, that's why I was put with this family. Good to know my shyness was that obvious based on a homestay application... Still, even though my family is great, today was hard. Today was our first day of classes and it made me really, really miss Beloit. 

This morning I got up at 6:30AM. Bad right from the start; I'm not a morning person. I have to take a bus to the University, which is fine and I prefer it to taking a taxi everyday, but it was packed. I had to stand in the doorway with four or five other women for the first ten minutes of the bus ride, even though the windows very explicitly said in red lettering "NO STANDING." I got to the University okay, though, I didn't miss my stop or get lost or anything, which was a big surprise for me. Once I got to the University, I had my first day of Arabic 101. Most people had their review for their placement test today (the test is tomorrow), to see what Arabic class they're going to be in for the semester, but for those of us who don't know any Arabic, it was just regular class time (we don't have to take the test, haha). My professor's name is Dr. Muna and she's pretty fantastic. We learned a few Amiyyaa (Colloquial) words today (Marhaba! Or, "Hi!"), as well as some of the Arabic alphabet. 

Later, we all met up for lunch and an Amiyyaa activity at a market called Souk (Souk=market) al-Sultan, which was bizarre, difficult, and stressful. That was really the beginning of my bad day, so it was more of a bad afternoon/evening. All we knew about this activity prior to arriving was that it had something to do with the colloquial language, and that it would be at a market. They bussed us over to the market at around 3PM, handed us each a worksheet with some pictures and transliterated Arabic words on it, and then they started. No introduction to what we were doing whatsoever. We were split into haphazard groups and my group had the unfortunate experience of being the first ones to enter the butcher shop. Suddenly, there was this  guy behind a counter holding what looked like a piece of liver high up in the air, shouting at us very loudly in rapid Arabic. Over the course of the next few minutes, it became clear that we were supposed to identify what the pieces of meat he was holding up in the air were and write them down on our sheet in Arabic. The problem was that I had no idea what most of the meat he was showing us was in English, let alone in Arabic. He would shout the Arabic word at us over and over again, but I didn't know if the bloody heart he was juggling was a sheep's heart or a cow's heart, so I wasn't able to put much on my sheet. He also had a whole skinned sheep's head, complete with eyeballs and teeth. It was gross. 

After the butcher shop, we went to a few other market stores; a place selling fruit, a beauty store, and a home furnishings store. The fruit place wasn't great either, because we were supposed to write down how much every kind of fruit was, but I don't know Arabic numbers yet, so I was very lost. At this point, I was fairly stressed out, but pretty much fine. Then the program coordinators were like "You're free, yalla bye!" ("yalla" is a word Jordanians use a lot, it means "let's go" and they frequently use it in conjunction with the English word "bye") and then they left. We were left to our own devices in downtown Amman (which is more conservative and harder to navigate than West Amman, where all of us live) with no transportation back to the University other than taxis. So after a lot of staring into space, roughly 70 American students were hailing cabs on one small street. Not the best planned activity, CIEE. 

I ended up sharing a cab back to the University with a few people. I was going to spend some time there to use Skype and check my email, but my computer was dead, so I went looking for my bus home. This was the hardest, most stressful, worst part of my day. I found the bus "station" after a little while, but this being Jordan, there's no organized bus schedule, so you just wait until your bus shows up and hope you get wherever you're going on time. However, this evening, the bus drivers didn't seem to be in the mood for driving. I don't know if they were taking a really long smoke break, or three buses broke down at the same time, or what, but the three buses at my stop weren't moving and they didn't look like they were going anywhere any time soon. I wandered around a little bit, ready to burst into tears at any moment because I was afraid of not being able to get home. I ended up taking a cab. This is harder than it sounds. Cab drivers don't recognize street names in Amman, they recognize landmarks. So you have to know a landmark near your destination and direct the driver from there. I live near the Palestinian Embassy, so I directed the driver there in English, and apparently got lucky since I got home safely and for only a little bit more than I think I should have been charged (they cheat foreigners that don't know Arabic. My Arabic isn't good enough for me to convince the drivers that I know they're cheating me yet). 

Ufta, long post is long again. Anyway, that was my day. Looking back on it I guess it wasn't actually that bad, I just got very overwhelmed, and being on a college campus made me REALLY miss my college. You have no idea guys, Beloit is so amazing and I can't wait to get back to it. I like it here, but I miss my routine. Study abroad is difficult and I kinda want a pause button. Unfortunately, it turns out there's no "Out of Character" option in Jordan.