Prince Ra'ad:
There's something insanely important in Jordan called wasta, translated to "connections". A good example is Maher's step-mother's son from her first marriage is named Ibrahim. He's is good friends with my host family, and was over one night and said he was planning a meeting at the university soon for his boss the Prince; would I like to come to the meeting and meet him? So I went to a meeting on People with Disabilities in Jordan and didn't really get to meet the prince, but I got to shake his hand. I have shaken hands with royalty. The meeting was really interesting, mainly because I was able to read what the speakers were saying off their powerpoint presentation and tried to understand what they were talking about. I caught stuff now and then and recognized a lot of words, which I think is a plus.
Classes:
1. My Waterways class is moving!!!! I no longer have to walk the 20 minutes uphill and the 15-20 min back and still be late for my afternoon classes; now all my classes are in one building! Yay!
2. My Amiyya teacher is pregnant (4 months in? maybe 5) and last class she left half an hour early because she was in extreme pain and went to the hospital. It was seriously painful watching her we all felt so bad that we were keeping her there. But she's had a small surgery, and alhamdulilleh she and her baby are fine. This coming week Najah, the head of the Arabic dept, is going to teach our classes.
3.Wednesday was a REAL eye opener for me. First, in Waterways, we started on the main focus of the class, the conflicts in the Middle East. The time we're dealing with begins around WWI when Great Britian controlled the area now known as Palestine, through Britian's promise to 2 different groups of people that they could have that land, and into the time when Israel became a state. Now I've known for years and years that what Hamas did could be seen, and is seen by many, as terrorism. But getting people to admit that in the States is like pulling teeth. And although I've been prepared for attacks on Israel my entire time here, it was still a slap in the face to see the slide that described how the "Jewish terrorist gangs" forced Palestinians off their land, followed by the slide that said "In 1948 Israel declared its independence" with a gunshot sound to make the point. Whoopee, this is gonna be the rest of the semester! Also, my teacher kept saying "the Jews" and then correcting himself to "the Israelis"; it's kind of him to correct himself but that does show his opinion; which means I'm doing my best to speak from a historical American point of view and not a Jewish one. Thank god I'm good at keeping my mouth shut.
There's more, there's always more, but I need to go. So the one last thing is family! Rana wanted a picture of our family for the next group of students so I have a really good pic.
This is: Maher and Laith, Shireen and Tala, and Amaal.
This one is Amaal's kids and Diana's kids (Diana is Maher's sister). Jude is raising her hand, Aya is squatting, and Laith and Tala you can recognize. As I've heard almost every day, Aya looks a lot like me.
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