Sunday was the 1st Host Family Dinner for the AL students (I'm in LC, language and culture. AL is purely language though I don't think it actually stands for All Language... :P ). It was also our 1st dabka show. Went sooo well!! In the regular Jordanian way, we all met at 6:30 or 6:45, and our leader, Ala, got there at like 7:15. Which meant no practicing beforehand. Then the dinner "started" at 8 and we danced after salads at...9, 9:15. We didn't have the space we were thinking of so we danced in the middle of the host families and did it twice so we could face everyone. Lot of fun. Lots of fun. Then tues was my 1st final in listening, which went terribly. It was NOTHING like the last one. But I don't feel like I failed any worse than anyone else, and everything here is on a curve, so I think I did acceptably. And anyway, it's really hard to do well in a class you hate and know you're gonna fail anyway. Then was MY host family dinner, which went FANTASTICALLY! But again, nothing like what was planned. We danced again, which was superb. [the next few names I'm going to throw out are other students at CIEE and my friends.] Then Rose sang and Joanna accompanied her; they were really good but we had no microphone and the restaurant was loud. So they had to sing 2 or 3 times; Yoo yoo (Joseph but called Yoo Yoo by my class thanks to Saleh) played his song in 2 of the sections, and I sang in 2 of them. I did well and everyone loved it, despite the fact that I had to practically scream it and because I was doing it without music I didn't have my starting notes. That made the song a bit interesting sometimes. But as I hear everyone was just so excited I knew the words and was singing this famous song that no one cared.
Today was the Re-entry orientation and Arabic post-test. The post-test was actually good because it showed me I actually learned something this semester! Of course there were questions that I had no idea, and by the end I just started circling the pretty letters cuz I was sick of it. But I understood much more than at the beginning of the semester. AND the speaking was MUCH easier. The speaking section was hilarious--I switched off almost every other word fusha-amiyya. But Najeh, the head of the department and a really sweet guy, didn't care. It was great.
As for re-entry orientation, Allison pointed out some good points, though not much that I didn't know already. It's gonna be HARD coming back! I'm kinda nervous about it, especially the Wes social life. But I'm still very very ready to be home. 10 days till mom and Molly get here!!!! and counting! :)
2 finals on Monday, 1 on Tues, 2 on Wednesday, and chalas!! Next update will be after that.
ps. ...I'm listening to a Daft Punk song on my computer and a child's toy playing "how much is that doggie in the window" outside my room.....really really weird mix....
No comments:
Post a Comment