Snow Day in the Desert

Oh yes, it happened. Last night all schools in the area were cancelled except UJ. This morning as I sat down for breakfast around 7:15 I saw approximately two snowflakes hit the ground, and I received a phone call informing me that classes were cancelled. None of the snow stuck and seems to have turned into rain. Now I'm spending the afternoon at a restaurant/bookstore/coffee shop/internet cafe with Patricia, Amani and Jeremiah... Clearly preferable to classes.

So as you might have guessed, once again we failed to make the journey to Jerash due to foul weather. It was freezing/pouring rain/hailing all weekend. It feels like we've been cooped up in Amman for the last two weekends and we are itching to get out, so next weekend we're planning on going to Beirut for the 3 day weekend.

Classes are going alright, but the Arabic "test" that I had on Thursday ended up just being an activity. It turns out that our teacher tricked us into studying... Very sly.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was the first meeting of culture club. We had a discussion about traditional marriage and Christian and Muslim Jordanian students were there to share their family traditions. It was shocking to me how common arranged marriages are. There was one girl there who was already married, and she was engaged to her husband before they even saw each other. A couple of other girls said that that is exactly how they plan on getting married, too. Marriage here seems more like a business transaction between families. One girl who talked to us works for CIEE and we all know her, and she almost got married last year. She met the guy and they got along pretty well and so he proposed. They were going to get married but his family wouldn't accept it because she's Syrian and his family would only let him marry a Jordanian or Palestinian. Dowries are also expected for Muslims in an average sum of around 10,000JD. I think arranged marriages are also kind of common for Christians, but not as much. Christians also don't expect dowries. It is also really shameful for Christians and Muslims to marry, because it's seen as leaving the family. One girl there is an American in CIEE and she's been here since last semester and actually met a guy and fell in love, but they can never marry because he's from a very well-known Muslim family. Whenever they go out they have to be really careful to make it look like they're not dating because if anyone who knows his family sees them, it's a big scandal. Note to self: don't fall in love with a Jordanian man. What a bummer, I hope I can resist...

Another thing I've been meaning to mention is the really obvious racism here. A lot of it is directed toward Egyptians who have a lot of service type jobs. I know I've heard comments from my own homestay family about them. People are also pretty racist toward anyone with darker skin. For example, my family gave me a dessert one night with a picture of an African-looking boy on the wrapper. I asked Ojou what it was, and she said it's called "head of a negro". It was basically a marshmallow on a graham cracker covered in chocolate... Delicious and offensive.

Most importantly, in my last post I neglected to mention my mother's birthday. Sincerest apologies!

I have a few photos of the ladies that I will add soon, for those of you who are curious.