Bruce Al-Abbady

Lots of crazy stuff has been going on over here. First of all, we started our classes on Sunday. My teachers are nice, but they come from a different school of thought concerning class behavior. In America it is usually just fine to lean over and whisper to the person sitting next to you as long as it is not so loud that it is disturbing what is being said. Here, if you're not even looking at the person talking, you are disturbing the class. The tests we took to place us in our respective classes were no help whatsoever because everyone bombed.

My favorite thing about Jordan is how hospitable people are here. I have already recived three dinner invitations for this weekend. Everywhere we go people want to sit down and talk with you. It can also get a little frustrating when it is late at night and you just want to go home. For example, right after writting my last entry, me and the other three people I was with at the internet cafe couldn't leave because the owner and his friend insisted that we stay and talk to them for an hour and a half. It also feels like I keep having the same conversation with people over and over again. First we will talk about where we are from...then the people we are talking to will be suprised that we speak Arabic, so we have to talk about that for awhile...then we either go to talking about politics or Islam...and if the conversation has continued to this point it can go anywhere. Thankfully we met a guy at a Falafal shop acrossed the street from the Univserity who has kind of tunred into a really good person to talk to because we can't get Falafal there without talking to him for an hour. Plus, he dosen't speak any English.

Yesterday was quite an experience. After my class got out, I went with some guys to this place in the University that is known for its Shabab (Arab guys from the age of 14-25 sitting around in big groups making fun of eachother.) This was because we are suppossed to get 2 hours of speaking in each day, and visiting the shabab is a really good way to do it. When the three of us showed up, the area was relativly quite...within a few minutes the Shabab were swarming us. They employed the "divide an conquer" tactic by splitting the three of us up. First they tried to teach me Debak, a traditional Jordanian dance. It was really hard because I couldn't understand anything these guys were saying. I was introduced to about twenty different shabab, and it turned out that they were all from the same tribe in Northern Jordan, the Abbady Tribe. I noticed that everyone would intorduce themselves as (insert Arab first name here)Al-Abbady. So if someone's name was Muhammad and he was from the tribe of Al-Abbady, is name would therefore be Muhammad Al-Abbady. So, I was still trying to figure this out and asked one of the guys, "So if I was an Abbady too, my name would be Bruce Al-Abbady, right?". At this, there was an uproar form the fifteen shabab that were still around. Guys came over and shook my hand and couldn't stop laughing. Everytime for the next hour and a half that one of there Abbady friends would walk by, they would tell me to introduce myslef with my new name to which the new person would come up to me and give me one of those really hard handshakes that meant I was his new best friend. We had the hardest time trying to leave. We we finally broke away from the main group, we got followed by someother guys from the same group who were determined to make sure we got out of the University safely.