Trans-Jordan

I am just concluding my fifth day in Jordan. The situation is like this...we are currently living in a weird hotel run by really nice people until March 23 when we will be placed with host families (maybe). As far as Arabic classes go, we took a ridiculous placement test (which I doubt will be very helpful in placing any of us since we had never seen 60% of the vocabulary before), and will start classes on Sunday. (Friday here is like Sunday in the U.S.; therefore Sunday is like Monday.) The program is really disorganized, but it isn't the leaders' fault, that is just how stuff works here.

We are supposed to do two hours of Arabic speaking everyday, but this has been difficult as 1)they taught us Egyptian Arabic at BYU and 2)Jordanians would much rather speak English with you if they can instead of Arabic. This last point is due to the fact that we can hardly understand what they say, and therefore they don't want to put up with having to say stuff over and over again when they could just get it over with in English. It's kind of funny because when people hear us speak Egyptian Arabic, they either laugh or say that it's cute.

The first day here, I went to the university and saw all the old places I used to spend my time at. It was pretty surreal because it was like I hadn't left.

The second day, Me and some other people went exploring around our area and the University. I went to my old favorite restaurant "AlBal" which is across the street from the university. It was just the same except all the big screen TVs had disappeared and my favorite item on the menu had been taken off. At the restaurant, it was somebody's birthday, and to celebrate they brought out a cake with fireworks shooting out six feet into the air from. They then lit sparklers and danced around. Everything smelled like sulfur for the rest of dining experience. We were supposed to go out and make friends at the University and get a lot of speaking time in, but I had no luck with that. It's weird for both you and the other person to just walk up to random strangers and try to start a conversation without a specific point, so I decided to try starting these conversations by asking where certain things were. This didn't work. That night we went to an internet cafe, and on the way out, the owner gave each of us a special "gift", a special micro-chip that you are supposed to put on your cell phone to keep the radio waves from giving you cancer. We then were hailed down by some guys to eat shwarma with them at a sidewalk cafe. It was a perfect opportunity because they hardly knew any English. It was also kind of sketchy because one of the guys kept trying to hit on a girl that was with us, and insisting that she stay in Jordan and marry him.

The third day we took an advanced reading test and had the rest of the day free. Nothing very interesting happened that night except I had a really interesting conversation with the owner of the restaurant at our hotel. He claimed that America is the most dangerous country in the world, and that President Bush will crushed by the hand of God. He also tried to get me to go to the Mosque with him so that I could become a Muslim. He was also racist towards African-Americans and used derogatory terms to describe them, something that really surprised me.

On the fourth day, we took the ridiculous test mentioned above. After that, I went shopping at this really ghetto mall in North Amman. That night, we and some other people went to a free concert at the roman ampitheatre downtown. Right before the concert started it started to rain, something that hardly ever happens here. The concert was supposed to celebrate the founding of the European Union, but the music was Arab with disco and funk beats placed in here and there. It was awesome.

The fifth day (today), I accidentally got left behind at the hotel because I was off in the corner playing that little snake game on my cell phone. I could have taken a taxi by myself to church, but we are strictly forbidden from going anywhere by ourselves. Tonight I had an interview with the branch president as a get to know you kind of thing. When I showed up, a whole bunch of other BYU students were camped out in the tunnel because they had an interview also, or because the church gets free Wi-Fi. The vast majority were there for the second reason. Because I was there, I had to stay for a fireside/lecture in which the Elders Qourm president gave a detailed over view of battles in the Book of Mormon. It was crazy. He drew up detailed maps of the Nephite-Lamanite wars and talked at great detail about it for two hours.

That is my last week in detail.