Orientation :-)

It's been a busy few days in Jordan, but I finally have a little free time to write.

I moved into Al-Manar Hotel on Sunday, and we spent most of the day hanging out. Since it's Ramadan, we can't eat or drink during the day, and the tap water isn't drinkable, so we were definitely ready for dinner by 7:30. My roommate is from Columbia, and our room's been fun.

I met up with everyone for dinner in the lobby, and we had an awkward Al-Iftar (breaking of the fast) dinner. Then, after dinner, one of the guys in our group had already spent the summer in Jordan, so we went with him out to an American-ish diner where everyone had some hookah. It's kind of a tobacco smoking device... but it's not tobacco, it's like a fruit-type, water thing... Hard to explain. Our table got one with watermelon and one with lemon and mint, as we listened to a very loud, very bad Arab soap opera playing on the TV outside.

Then yesterday started bright and early at 8:30 a.m. We were picked up in a bus, and the tour guide babbled in Arabic while they took us around the city, showing us the important parts. We had lunch in a fantastic, eco-friendly restaurant where we had our first orientation session. It's really difficult when the instructors are only speaking in Arabic, most of us are only getting every 5 words, but it's helping. We played a few get-to-know you games in Arabic, which helped too.

We then toured a few of the major sites of Jordan, including an ancient Roman temple to Hercules and an Umayyad temple. We saw incredible sites of the city the whole day. We had dinner and stayed in at night in order to prepare for today's test.

That was pointless. The test was awful awful awful awful. At least everyone agreed... but I felt like all of my squiggle-knowledge just wasn't there... But oh well. Then, we spent the afternoon touring University of Jordan, which was one nice green spot in the city.

And then, we were exhausted. Really exhausted. We just had dinner a little bit ago, feel like we should go out... but it's just too tiring. Especially because we had to hide anytime we ate or drank during the day today. Time for bed... But excited for tomorrow's surprise field trip.