"...you mean those rich guys in Salt Lake City?"

The last few days have been very interesting...as usual. Since my last update I have been trying to get by with my grueling classes. For some reason I always get really tired when I show up at the University at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The classes are intense as the teachers don't really speak much English so it is Arabic only. When we don't know a word, they can only describe the words meaning using other Arabic words. It's actually really great. I have spoken more Arabic in the last three weeks than I did in the 4 semesters of Arabic at BYU. I think I'm starting to make some major improvments.

So as I mentioned a few posts ago, me and a few other people have become good friends with the guy who owns an internet cafe we go to a lot, as well as the girl who gets drinks for the customers there. The girl invited us to visit her university yesterday morning where she studies English literature. Now the university is called "Amman University", so therefore we thought it would be in Amman. But no, it was actually on the outskirts of a town next Amman called Salt. The reason I say this is to make an interesting point about how clost everything is to each other. When I looked at a map of Jordan last night, are fifeteen minute drive from Amman to the outskirts of Salt had brought us halfway between Amman and Israel. No joke this drive was probably like driving from BYU to UVSC. No joke. Anyways getting back to the point, this university is the most expensive university in Jordan and is therefore kind of seen as an upper class institution. I felt a major difference between this place and the University of Jordan as it was more western and liberal. We went with this girl who is actually Iraqi, but lived in Libya most of her life, to her classes. In the first class, a group of students gave a presentation on the westernization and liberalization of the youth in Jordan. It was really interesting to see first hand how Jordanian youth are really conflicted about how to join the west, but still stick to their culture and Islamic principles. The second class we went to was an English conversation class, so the teacher brushed aside what she had prepared to talk about that day and had us talk with the students in English.

On the way home from school, I saw one of the sadest things I saw on this trip since the homless boy sleeping on the street in Cairo. It actually wouldn't be that big of a deal for most people, but this really bummed me out. A tiny little kitten was walking on the sidewalk and these two boys picked it up and carried it across the street. As I walked by I saw the mother cat looking around for the kitten. It broke my heart and really bummed me out for the rest of the day because that cat will never be able to understand what happened. Sorry for the mellow-drama.

Last night we had a meeting with the lady who is setting up our homestays. It is officical, I will be living with a Jordanian family. She talked for about two hours on all of the cultural do's and dont's of living with a Jordanian family. It looks like I'm going to have a rather intereting living exxperience for the next three months. Relationships between family members are very different than they are in America. It looks like I will be expected to sit around with the family for hours on end because that is just what people do. Also, spending time by yourself is considered wierd, so they told us that we will hardly have any privacy for the next few months. We will find out who we are living with on Sunday, and then move in next Saturday.

After the meeting, a bunch of us went to a place called food city which is kind of like a fancy food court. I started talking with a delivery man for one of the restaurants called "Shwarma Wok", a place that specializes in oriental flavored Shwarma (like teriyaki, or masala...very interesting). Anyways, he was totally suprissed I spoke Arabic, and pretty soon I was talking with about five other guys who work at this place. One of them was a security guard who I think was shriking his duties to talk with me. It somehow came up that I don't drink tea or coffe, something that really shocks people here. The security guard said to that, "are you a Mormon or something?" I was shocked, I asked where he heard of Mormons and he said, "of course I know the mormons. You mean those rich guys in Salt Lake City?" It turned out that this guy had actually lived in California for 14 years and worked as a trucker. In fact his wife and kids still live there, but he was deported. He knew all the places in Utah as he traveled all over the place as a truker. It started to get kind of creepy though when the same guy started taking pictures with his phone of the American girls sitting next to me that are in the group. "I will show this to my brother, whe looks like Brittany Spears", he said. I didn't really know what to do. I thought about standing up to him and telling him that they didn't want their pictures taken, but I'm to nice and was worried that I would severly offend them.

Today, the owner of our favorite Internet cafe invited us to his dinner for Mensef. Mensef, as I wrote before, is a traditional Jordanian dish consisting of rice, meat, and a yogurt sauce. At his house we ate it the traditional way...with the right hand only. When I say the right hand, I meant that we actually picked up the food in our hand and rolled it up in to little balls. The yogurt sauce was hot and kind of burned my hand...but it was a really interesting experience. We met the entire family (extended family: his mother, sisters, nieces, nepphews...everyone) and sat around talking for about 5 hours, a typical Jordanian house visit. This really got me excited for the homestays.