Sunday was my midterm for the summer semester in Arabic, and that means that I'm half-way through!! I'd love to use the excuse that I was hard-core studying to explain why I haven't posted a real post in forever, but frankly, that's not true...I'm just spacey. Anyways, there is so much to write about, all super positive - after being here for a month, I finally feel as though I am really, truly living in Amman, not just awkwardly visiting as a quasi-tourist! WIN.
Here's a pretty picture of Amman at night!
And me, drinking something green!
My roommate and I made friends with our neighbors and we are currently employed as tutors for their three ADORABLE children, ages 7, 11, and 14, in English. By tutoring, I mean that we go over there for an hour a day and hang out with the kids, speaking only in English, which they all speak fluently, pretty much. We played Bowl Full of Nouns the other day and the 11 year old boy, Ahmad, wrote down the word "photosynthesis." The 14 year old girl, Ranad, read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," in the original with the cray dialect-y stuff, in class last year. The 7 year old, Selene, is just about the cutest thing on the planet and has a penchant for putting dragons into any story we try to tell. So wonderful. Also, on top of getting a chance to hang out with awesome kids and play games and test out some of our Arabic when needed, we also get FED, every night, by the wonderful mom of the family! And she makes us really excellent coffee, also every night. I am the happiest.
Random cool thing: outside my window, on a wall facing the apartment building, is some rather cool graffiti. Here's a picture.
What it says is the following, translated, from right to left, "Not for terrorism, not for Zarqawi: Jordan." This was, I'm guessing, probably painted on there soon after the bombings in Jordan in the mid-2000's at the hands of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, aka the Al Qaeda operative who was the US's most wanted man in Iraq up until he was killed...he was also from a little town an hour outside of Amman called Zarqa' (hence his name). Incidentally, one of my Arabic teachers is from Zarqa' and actually knows Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's family...apparently they're super normal...anyway, just thought that, and the graffiti, was interesting.
Also, we've been making a great deal of effort to go hang out in Amman on weekdays, despite the mounds of homework we get, so last week, we went to a city-wide music festival and a film screening at the Royal Film Commission. The music festival was basically a carnival + dance show + classical Arabic musical performance, and there were mostly families in attendance. It felt super safe and fun and chill, and the music was great...also: random hip-hop dancers gave a kids show and I don't know if they necessarily realized that the music they chose was often inappropro to the point where every other word in one of the songs was a cuss-word (in English...so I guess it didn't matter a ton?). Ridiculous, but pretty fun dancing and tons of little kids imitating the dancers, which was great! An Arabic classical performance happened in another part of the park where the festival was held, and it was equally exciting for us, because half-way through one of the songs, we realized that it sounded super familiar...as it turns out, it was the original version of a song that the earlier choir we had gone to see had re-written lyrics to! I'll put up videos of all this on FB soon...interwebs are not cooperating currently.
Here's a poster from the event!
The film at the Royal Film Commission was also really amazing - it was an Algerian film about the fight for independence, done in real Hollywood style, to be honest (lots of flashy action sequences, really predictable plot), but one of those epic films that almost needs to be made to sort of represent in a really controlled way the arcs of the independence movement. The film was in a conglomerate of the Algerian dialect of Arabic and French, so basically I was eternally grateful for the English subtitles, but it was still really great to get some exposure to Arab film. The best part of watching the movie, though, was the location. The Royal Film Commission screens its films outside, on a giant screen perched on a hillside of Amman. The film's backdrop, then, became the whole city of Amman, glittering with light in the evening, and as we neared the end of the film, the moon began to rise, by degrees, above the screen. It was the best outdoor theatre I could have imagined! We're going to try to head back a couple of times before the end of the summer, I think, no matter what films they end up screening...
Here is an artsy picture of the view from the film commission - by artsy I mean you can barely make out buildings because I forgot to turn on the flash on the camera...
This one gives a better impression of Amman and of the film screening!
Much love, friends! Hope the summer continues to be wonderful :)
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