Nearly
seven months ago, when I boarded the plane to leave the United States for the
first time in my life, I wasn’t overly nervous. I didn’t cry when I waved
goodbye to my parents, or panic about arriving in a city I hardly knew anything
about. Mostly on my mind was the new experience in front of me and my
excitement to finally fulfill my study abroad dream: living in the Middle East.
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| A view of the city! |
My
plane was bound for Amman, where I was to spend a summer studying Arabic at a
language institute before moving to Cairo for the fall semester. As fate would
have it, my Cairo trip was cancelled and I stayed in Amman for the whole six
months. To some, Amman is a slightly boring, much-less cosmopolitan version of
the other Levantine capitals, Beirut and Damascus; but to me, every day was a
new adventure. I learned to navigate the city, haggle with shop owners, and
chat with taxi drivers. All of these things were more interesting because I got
to speak Arabic while doing them—or at least attempt it. In the summer I was
there for Ramadan, and it became illegal to eat or drink in public during the
day. At night, however, I got my first glimpse at Arab nightlife at a café in
downtown Amman, where we arrived at 9 pm and were still surrounded by groups of
friends and families—with all of their young children—at 1 am, when we decided
it was time to go sleep! I drank limon wa n3na—lemon with mint—smoked
sheesha, and took in the Arab culture surrounding me.
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| Students gather outside of a UJ building |
The
fall brought a new program and with it about one hundred fellow American
students who had come to Amman to study in the same program as me. I breezed
through orientation—after all, I had lived there for two months already!—but
was entirely unprepared for our first day of classes at the University of
Jordan. Although our classes were not with other Jordanian students because of
our Arabic level, we were on the same campus and saw an entirely different
student experience than most of our universities in America. For starters, UJ
has over 37,000 students, so there were literally people everywhere: sitting in
groups on the benches, clustering outside of classrooms, and filling tables in
the cafeteria. There seemed to be a lot of students standing around without
much to do; but then again, when I finally discovered the UJ library, it was
nearly impossible to find a seat among the students there, who were studying
everything from physiology to business to Chinese. I quickly learned an
interesting trick: something as simple as a piece of notebook paper could save
your seat for the rest of the day. And this compared to Penn, where students
will move your laptop and take that seat when you walk to the bathroom!
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| Afnan and I at a university concert |
One
of the best experiences I had at the university was befriending my language
partner, a Jordanian-Palestinian girl just about my age who was studying
Turkish and English. Afnan let me struggle through my amiyya with her—the
colloquial Arabic I finally began learning in Jordan, which is so different
from the fusHa taught in university—while telling me everything from her
reasons for wearing a hijab to her secret desire to marry a pilot! She showed
me places to eat around the university and introduced me to all of her friends,
many of whom became my friends too. I was even lucky enough to go to two
birthday parties with her, one in a restaurant and one at a friend’s house,
where I tried my first home-cooked Jordanian meal. Through relationships like
these, Amman really began to feel like home to me: it was comfortable, never dangerous
but also never boring, full of wonderful people eager to share their culture
with me.
Needless to say, when December
came, I was sad to leave. I dreaded the thoughts of my last Arabic class, our
program’s goodbye dinner, and returning to the airport to leave for good. But
finally, I said tearful goodbyes to my new American classmates, my language
partner and the other Jordanian people I had been lucky enough to befriend. I
fully intend to keep the promise I made to them to come back to Amman: 6
months gave me just a taste of the fascinating culture and welcoming people that
characterize this beautiful city.
_________________________________________________
Amy T. Cass
Al-Bustan Program Assistant
University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2015
International Relations Major
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