Another Post!

Right, what do I need to catch up on....

News as of today: our program was going to spend a week in Egypt in March, but due to the current unrest that's been cancelled. On the bright side--that means we're going to Turkey instead! Istanbul, with a free day where we can travel anywhere in Turkey.

Also, ice cream trucks! They all play the same cheerful whistly melody, too, and drive around the neighborhoods.

At least, ice cream truck was my first guess, though I've never been in a neighborhood with one. Also the first guess of a lot of my classmates. But I started thinking... it's winter here, cold enough we're using space heaters--who'd buy ice cream in this weather? My suspicion was confirmed when I saw one pass by--they sell small LP tanks for space heaters. Smart!

50% of my Thematic Seminar grade was finished this week. 20% on the paper we had to write, 15% on introducing our first lecturer and leading the discussion afterwards (I'm told I seemed very teacherly, though I'm not sure I felt it), and 15% on a paper reflecting on the lecture and discussion. Signed up early, and it's over with!

My other two classes are Field Studies Seminar (common-sense and boring mostly, but will help a bit with our coming projects) and Arabic. Arabic is divided into 1.25 hours fusHa (Modern Standard) and 1.25 hours 'amiyya (Amman's dialect). Our class is small--only 5 students. We're in level 4 of 4 and our two teachers are amazing. Between them and having to know Arabic to use it, and being in an environment where it's spoken a lot, I feel like I'm learning a lot at a good pace.

Anything people want to know?